By Whitney Hale

An undergraduate in the University of Kentucky's College of Communication and Information and a doctoral candidate in the College of Arts and Sciences have received Critical Language Scholarships to study languages abroad. Meredith King, a senior majoring in communication, will study Chinese in China, and Lydia Shanklin Roll, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, will study Turkish in Turkey.

The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program, a program of the United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, will offer intensive summer language

By Katy Bennett

For the past few months, many UK students have been looking forward to a favorite college tradition — Spring Break. For some students this means hitting the gym, getting ready to hit the beach. For others, it’s calling their summer job in hopes of a week to work and make a little extra money. But for students participating in the Center for Community Outreach’s Alternative Service Breaks (ASB) program, it is a time to prepare for serving others and learning about the issues faced by people across the globe.

In 2008, UK’s ASB program was developed as a part of the national movement to involve college students in community-based service projects and to give students opportunities to learn about the complex issues faced by

By Breanna Shelton, Whitney Hale

In celebration of the University of Kentucky's upcoming sesquicentennial in 2015, the 46th of 150 weekly installments remembers the accomplishments of integration pioneer Doris Wilkinson.

As a freshman, Doris Wilkinson was one of the first African Americans to participate in the integration of UK after the Supreme Court declared public school segregation illegal. After receiving her bachelor's degree in 1958 from UK and her master's and doctoral degrees from Case Western Reserve University, the trailblazer became the first full-time female African-American faculty member at UK.

As a UK professor in the Department of Sociology, Wilkinson would also design the university's

By Kathy Johnson

George Crothers, anthropology, and Paolo Visona, art and visual studies, were the guests on Feb. 27's "UK at the Half," which aired during the UK vs. Mississippi State game that was broadcast on radio.  Among the topics discussed is the ancient city they found during an archeological dig in Northern Italy last summer.

"UK at the Half" airs during halftime of each UK football and basketball game broadcast on radio and is hosted by Carl Nathe of UK Public Relations and Marketing.

To hear the "UK at the Half" interview, click here. To view a transcript of the "UK at the Half" interview,

By Allison Perry

A groundbreaking new study led by the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center's Dr. Peter Zhou found that triple-negative breast cancer cells are missing a key enzyme that other cancer cells contain — providing insight into potential therapeutic targets to treat the aggressive cancer. Zhou's study is unique in that his lab is the only one in the country to specifically study the metabolic process of triple-negative breast cancer cells.

Normally, all cells — including cancerous cells — use glucose to initiate the process of making Adenosine-5'-triphosphate (ATP) for fuel to carry out essential functions. This process, called glycolysis, leads to other processes that use oxygen to make higher quantities of ATP — but solid tumor cells, which have little access to oxygen, are

By Gail Hairston

Internationally regarded sustainability scholar and activist Vandana Shiva returns to the University of Kentucky Thursday to share her expertise with the campus and community.

Her publications and work in sustainable agriculture, development, feminist theory, alternative globalization and bioengineering as well as her creation of Navdanya, a participatory research initiative to provide direction and support to environmental activism in India, have inspired colleagues to deem her one of the brightest minds working in the interdisciplinary field of sustainability today.

Shiva will present her lecture at 8 p.m. Feb. 28, in Memorial Hall. This event is

By Alicia Gregory

“From the standpoint of training the next generation of highly skilled professors, industrial scientists, people to work in government laboratories, people to advance our understanding of disease and advance the next generation of therapies, it will be profoundly devastating for this generation of students.”

That’s the message University of Kentucky physiologist Michael B. Reid conveys in a University of Kentucky video on the impact of sequestration — automatic cuts in research and other government spending — due to take effect March 1. Reid and UK colleagues Suzanne Weaver Smith in mechanical engineering and

By Whitney Hale, Mack McCormick

University Press of Kentucky (UPK) author bell hooks has been named the recipient of the 2013 Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s (BCALA) Best Poetry Award for her book "Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place."

The BCALA Literary Awards recognize excellence in adult fiction, nonfiction, poetry and publishing by African American authors published during the previous year, including an award for Best Poetry and a citation for Outstanding Contribution to Publishing. The award will be presented to hooks at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association

UK Biology professor Jeramiah Smith, collaborating with scientists from 35 other institutions worldwide, was recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics for his work with genome sequence of the sea lamprey.

Lampreys are representatives of an ancient vertebrate lineage that diverged from our own, approximately 500 million years ago.  By virtue of this deeply shared ancestry, the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) genome is uniquely poised to provide insight into the ancestry of vertebrate genomes and fundamentals of vertebrate biology.

"The reason that lampreys are interesting is that they are vertebrates, but are more distantly related from

Video by UK Public Relations and Marketing

By Jenny Wells

Fifteen undergraduate researchers from the University of Kentucky have been selected to present at the 2013 Posters-at-the-Capitol event today at the state Capitol in Frankfort, Ky. This event will host more than 200 student representatives from across the state displaying the results of their research and scholarly or creative work.

"Posters-at-the-Capitol is a very competitive program," said Diane Snow, director of the UK Office of Undergraduate Research. "So we are very proud of our undergraduate student researchers! In addition to having the opportunity to present their work, these students also have an excellent opportunity to educate those who are making important decisions about expenditures in Kentucky and issues

By Sarah Geegan

Since 1948, the University of Kentucky has operated a geology field camp in the Rocky Mountains. The field camp presents students in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES) with a unique opportunity to apply principles and ideas learned from the classroom in a real-world setting.

This summer EES will offer a similarly unique opportunity for its alumni: a reunion for past field camp participants taking place from July 4-6.

“This was a chance to get all of the UK geology field camp alumni who want to come back. Instructors and students can come back for our big bash out there,” EES professor David Moecher said.

As fellow EES

By Whitney Hale

The Kentucky Women Writers Conference will feature best-selling novelist and National Book Award finalist Bonnie Jo Campbell as its keynote speaker at the 2013 conference, scheduled for Sept. 20 and 21.

"Campbell is a fearless teacher and writer whose fiction is shaped by the exigencies of rural Michigan," said Julie Wrinn, director of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference "The vivid sense of place in her work should resonate with Kentuckians, and you might even say that her characters 'kick ass.'"

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the best-selling novel "Once Upon a River" (Norton, 2011), a river odyssey through rural

By Whitney Hale, Emily Damron

Tomorrow's #AskACat Twitter Chat will give followers an opportunity to ask questions regarding sustainability efforts at the University of Kentucky and general issues of sustainability.

UK Sustainability Coordinator Shane Tedder will answer questions that our followers have about sustainability at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 19, via the university's official Twitter account, @universityofky. Those interested in following and/or participating in the chat can follow the university's account or #AskACat for questions posed and responses from the Twitter chat.

Tedder can speak to several sustainability topics at UK and beyond, including the

Video by UK Public Relations and Marketing.

By Jenny Wells, Sarah Geegan

Mark Summers, professor of history in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, shares his thoughts on remembering the accomplishments of U.S. presidents.

To view a transcript of the video, click here.

Video by UK Public Relations and Marketing.  Photos courtesy of Ree & Lou Karibo and Special Collections, University of Kentucky. 

By Sarah Geegan

In 1956, Elvis Presley released "Love Me Tender," a ballad that would become a Valentine's Day classic. That same year, Lou and Ella Marie "Ree" Karibo were married. This couple who met and fell in love at the University of Kentucky have since brought to life the love song of the era: "Love me tender, love me dear; tell me you are mine. I'll be yours through all the years, till the end of time."

He was a football player and a diver; she was a cheerleader and a dancer. Both from Louisville, though they had never even heard of each other's high schools, the Karibos met at the UK Student Union Building in 1951. Lou came to UK on a football scholarship offered to him by the legendary

By Whitney Hale

On Wednesday, Feb. 20, the first-ever Western singers trained in modern Mandarin lyric diction will debut a special evening of music from the East and West on a Bluegrass stage courtesy of the University of Kentucky Confucius Institute. "I Sing Beijing," which will have made its American debut at New York's Lincoln Center only four days earlier, will grace the Singletary Center for the Arts Recital Hall stage beginning at 7 p.m. The program is free and open to the public.

Joining the Western singers, who represent some of the top young artists programs in the world, will be rising stars from China to perform a concert that

This entry is the first in a series of guest bloggers I am welcoming to this space over the next year. It will be an opportunity for faculty, staff and students to share with us their Wildcat experience. In this first installment, Sarah Geegan, an integrated strategic communications graduate, current graduate student and information specialist in UK Public Relations and Marketing, recently returned from our nation’s capital where she joined fellow students and alumni for the Presidential Inauguration Ceremony. Please enjoy.  -President Eli Capiluto

By Sarah Geegan
 

Last month I was fortunate enough to witness in person a monumental moment in United States history, the 57th presidential inauguration ceremony. Nestled under about five layers of clothing and equipped with the essentials (hand-warmers, binoculars, a camera and

UK History professor Jeremy D. Popkin has been named the Christian Wolff Visiting Professor at the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany, for 2013. Popkin will be in residence in Halle in June 2013 and will deliver lectures on his research on the press during the French Revolution and on the French Revolution’s debates about slavery. 

“It’s a great honor to be invited to lecture at one of Germany’s most historic universities,” Popkin said.

During the 2012-2013 academic year, Popkin has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. He also spent a month in Berlin as a guest scholar at the

By Sarah Geegan

A new hybrid course in the College of Arts and Sciences will bridge the gap between to seemingly unrelated areas: art and epidemics.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the course will focus on five different diseases: alcoholism, tuberculosis, AIDS, cancer and the plague, through both scientific and humanities approaches. Students will explore opposite ways of conceptualizing, expressing and writing about this common theme. This 3-credit course will be available in the fall 2013 semester, and is open to all students majoring in the humanities or the sciences.

The course is titled, "UKC 310: Art and Epidemics."

Instructors Katherine Rogers-Carpenter and Rita Basuray structured the course to cover the science

by Guy Spriggs

UK Sociology associate professor Shaunna Scott was recently named editor of the Journal of Appalachian Studies (JAS). Scott is a former president of the Appalachian Studies Association – which publishes the journal – and becomes the second sociologist from UK to serve as editor of JAS.

“Being the editor of the journal has been one of my career goals for a long time,” Scott said. “I am very gratified that my colleagues in Appalachian studies have entrusted me with this important position.”

Scott is a long-time contributor to JAS and served on the steering committee that implemented the change from publishing conference proceedings to a peer-reviewed