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By Whitney Hale

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 23, 2022) — University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences students have received Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships to support their education abroad goals.

The Gilman Scholarship supports students who have been traditionally under-represented in study abroad, including but not limited to  students with high financial need, community college students, students in under-represented fields such as the sciences and engineering, students with diverse ethnic backgrounds and students with disabilities. Award recipients are chosen by a competitive selection process and must use the award, ranging from $100 to $5,000, to defray the cost of tuition, room and board, books, local

By Lindsey PiercyAllison Perry and Danielle Donham

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 19, 2022) — In a myth-busting WVLK segment, “That’s Not How Any of This Works,” experts from various disciplines at the University of Kentucky discuss how their career paths and fields of study aren’t as they always appear on screen.

Stephen Voss, associate professor in the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, guest hosted the show, which aired live on Aug. 19. The segment is also 

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Cameron McAlister, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences, has received a National Institute of Social Science 2022 Dissertation Grant. The grant is for $5,000.  

McAlister’s research examines how uneven development affects rural opportunity structures and outcomes for health and mortality. His dissertation, “Deaths of Deaths of Despair, Rurality, and Spatial Inequality: Emplacing Violent Death,” examines elevated rates of suicides and drug- and alcohol-

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 27, 2022) — Two University of Kentucky students have been selected for the Henry Clay Internship at NASA for the 2022-23 academic year. The internship offers an exceptional opportunity for highly accomplished students to serve in the NASA Office of the Chief Scientist.

NASA’s chief scientist serves as principal adviser to the NASA administrator and other senior officials on agency science programs, strategic planning and the evaluation of related investments. The Henry Clay Internship with this office is sponsored by the Kentucky Society of Washington in partnership with the NASA

For a photo gallery from the learning experience, click here.

By Daniel Flener

LEXINGTON, Ky (July 26, 2022) — This summer, Jim Krupa, UK biology professor, led a course on the evolutionary ecology of the Galápagos archipelago.

“The life on the islands is almost otherworldly,” Krupa said. “The students are absolutely shocked and amazed when they arrive. It’s incredible to see their reactions.”

The Galápagos Islands host some of the rarest life forms on Earth and hold a deep historical connection to the study of evolution. In 1835, Charles Darwin visited

By Elizabeth Chapin

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 20, 2022) — A team of University of Kentucky researchers led by College of Engineering Professor Dibakar Bhattacharyya and his  Ph.D. student, Rollie Mills, have developed a medical face mask membrane that can capture and deactivate the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on contact.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Bhattacharyya, known to friends and colleagues as “DB,” along with collaborators across disciplines at UK, received a grant from the National Science Foundation o create the material. Their work was published in the Nature journal Communications Materials on May 24.

SARS-CoV-2 is covered in spike proteins, which allow the virus

By Jesi Jones-Bowman

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 25, 2021) — Eight University of Kentucky students have been selected for the Sustainability Summer Research Fellowship program, a high-impact learning experience that contributes to the students’ academic growth as well as sustainability-focused research initiatives at UK and within the community at large.

The Sustainability Research Fellowship is a collaborative program coordinated by the Office of Undergraduate Research and sponsored by the UK Student Sustainability Council and UK Sustainability. The fellowship’s goal is to support and promote sustainability-related undergraduate research endeavors. The program, which launched in 2014, has supported 48 undergraduate sustainability summer projects.

“Sustainability Research Fellowships have been

LEXINGTON, Ky. —  A new initiative led by the Interdisciplinary Program in Jewish Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky features a collaboration with educators from across the Commonwealth to enhance K-12 Holocaust education and provide professional learning and teaching tools to meet the requirements of the 2018 Ann Klein and Fred Gross Holocaust Education Act.   Funded by a grant from the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence, the UK Holocaust Education Initiative will create a network of teachers who will include Holocaust curricula in their classrooms. The initiative will create opportunities for interdisciplinary content sharing, pedagogical training and collaborative planning.   Through an extremely competitive process, the steering committee chose 20 teachers to lead this initiative:   Jill Armstrong, Greenup County High School,

By Marci Adams

University of Kentucky Information Technology Services has recognized employees who celebrated milestone years of service during the year 2021. These 49 employees, ranging from seven different ITS divisions, combined for a total of 760 years of service at UK. ITS also honored student workers who have worked with ITS for two or more semesters.  

Dr. Susan Odom, faculty member of Chemistry Department in UK's College of Arts & Sciences served on the IT Advisory Council. Odom was committed to mentoring and supporting women in STEM fields. She co-founded a group to encourage girls to pursue their academic goals and served on the Kentucky ACE Women’s Network. ITS presented the faculty Customer Excellence award to Dr. Odom’s family in memoriam this spring, as she died in April 2021.   

See a complete list of ITS employees, student workers, and

By Richard LeComte 

Check out this gallery of photos from the dig. 

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Behind the older but spiffed-up University of Kentucky buildings along East Maxwell Street, beneath a canopy, UK students methodically dig two orderly, rectangular and deep holes. In said holes, they find what seems to be the foundation of a former outbuilding, some 1960s pull-tabs from old soda cans, pieces of ceramics and shards of china and glass — treasures from a recent past.  

“So far we

By Jennifer T. Allen

“The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns” by UK alumnus William H. Turner has been nominated for the Book of the Year Award by the Museum of African American History in Cambridge, Mass. The Museum of African American History (MAAH) Stone Book Award is an annual prize that encourages scholarship and writing within the field of African American history and culture.

“Pulitzer Prize winner Alex Haley (Roots) used to say, ‘If you ever see a little frog up on a 6-foot fence, somebody picked it up and put it there.’ Dr. Larry Tarpey (economist), Dr. John B. Stephenson and Dr. Doris Y. Wilkinson (sociologists) were my teachers at UK between 1966-1968. Each affirmed for me what they called ‘the unique -- but universal -- experience of Blacks in Appalachia,’” Turner said. “I came to UK as a junior from the Southeast

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 17, 2022) — Stephen Davis, an associate professor in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky, has been awarded a 2022 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant.

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Digital Justice Grant Program is designed to promote and provide resources for digital humanities projects that aim to diversify the digital domain, advance justice and equity in digital

By Trey Conatser and Jill Abney

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 27, 2022) — The Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching  launched the Teaching Innovation Institute in 2020 as an incubator for cutting-edge instructional techniques. Two faculty cohorts have completed the program with a third on the way for the next academic year. The three cohorts have involved 61 faculty from 14 colleges and 46 departments or schools.

Members of the 2022 cohort of the Teaching Innovation Institute are: 

Stefan Bird-Pollen, Department of Philosophy. Eladio Bobadilla, Department of History. Anna Bosch, Department of Linguistics. Nicole Breazeale, Department of Community and Leadership Development. Brenna Byrd, Department of Modern and Classical Languages,

By Elizabeth Chapin

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 24, 2022) — The first cohort of interns in a new Kentucky Geological Survey program are spending their summers contributing to statewide research projects focused on geologic resources, environmental issues and natural hazards affecting Kentucky.

The new Paul Edwin Potter Internship Program is giving University of Kentucky students interested in geoscience research the opportunity to engage in a hands-on research project for 10 weeks throughout the summer. Although the program was limited to UK students during its first year, it will be expanded in future years to include students from other universities.

Supported by a gift from the late Paul Edwin Potter, a

By Jesi Jones-Bowman

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 23, 2022) — The Office of Undergraduate Research has selected 16 undergraduates for the 2022 Commonwealth Undergraduate Research Experience Fellowship program.

The new CURE Fellowships, sponsored by UK Office of Undergraduate Research and the Office of the Vice President for Research, empowers undergraduates to become leaders for their communities by providing opportunities to develop new knowledge and skills through research within UK’s seven research priority areas: cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes & obesity, diversity and inclusion, energy, neuroscience and substance use disorder.

“Conducting summer research will provide me with valuable experience that

By Lauren Parsons

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 20, 2022) — More than 60,000 pages of Fayette County’s historical property records containing information about enslaved people from the late 1700s through 1865 will soon be available to the public online thanks to a partnership between the Fayette County Clerk, University of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies (CIBS), the Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative, Blue Grass Community Foundation and its Knight Foundation Donor Advised Charitable Fund.

The Fayette County Clerk began digitizing documents during the 1990s, but the books of historical property records remained on paper, including transactions detailing names of individuals sold and bought as slaves, mortgages naming enslaved people as collateral and

By Danielle Donham


Looking to learn more about the history of Juneteenth and civil rights in Kentucky? The University Press of Kentucky’s Civil Rights catalog has you covered.

With titles spanning the topics of African American studies, race and sports, and the struggle for Black equality, there are plenty to choose from.

Several of the titles in the catalog are authored and edited by University of Kentucky faculty members and community members, including Gerald L. SmithDerrick E. WhiteCrystal Wilkinson — all faculty in the UK College of Arts and Sciences — and former faculty member Nikky Finney. The

By Lindsey Piercy

Stephen Davis specializes in anti-apartheid politics.

Stephen Davis, an associate professor in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky, has been awarded a 2022 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant.

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Digital Justice Grant Program is designed to promote and provide resources for digital humanities projects that aim to diversify the digital domain, advance justice and equity in digital scholarly practice, and contribute to public

By Kody Kiser and Ryan Girves

 

Sunday, June 19, 2022, will mark the second year of the federally celebrated holiday, Juneteenth. 

Long celebrated in the Black community, Juneteenth marks the day U.S. Army Gen. Gordon Granger announced to the people of Galveston, Texas, that slavery was over — more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

In recent years, we as a country have pushed for more. More discussion, more acknowledgment, more reform. With that has come more recognition of African American history that has been largely marginalized.

As the country continues to progress, so does the University of Kentucky, who made Juneteenth an academic holiday in 2020. The announcement came after the release of a multi-step action plan to increase the commitment to — and investments in — access and

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

Results from two separate research studies, led by University of Kentucky postdoctoral scholar Valeria Olivares and graduate student Arnab Sarkar, will be presented during the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) semiannual meeting, taking place in Pasadena, California, this week.

As the largest astronomy conference in the United States, the AAS meeting will bring together more than 2,000 astronomers, educators, students and journalists to highlight the nation’s most groundbreaking work in the fields of physics and astronomy.

“Approximately 30 works from around the world are being highlighted at the AAS press conference, representing some of the highest impact findings of this year,” said Yuanyuan Su, assistant professor in the UK Department of Physics and Astronomy and faculty mentor to Olivares and