Archive

Hall classes make studies convenient, fun
UK researchers make breakthrough in brain cancer cases
Interest in Hispanic culture, population growing
Server Fund brings Mexico to University
Exhibit features transportation themes in artwork
Book previews ­ "Perception and Prejudice" "One the Job Training"

Hall classes make studies convenient, fun

More than attending classes and studying goes in to a positive and holistic college experience. Students must balance their academic life with their social and resident life.

The University of Kentucky is trying to help with creating that balance by merging the academic and residence hall scene for students. Classes, workshops and tutoring sessions are being offered this semester in the halls to allow students to get academic help when they need it in their University homes. This is the first time the University has offered such extensive programming, said Lou Swift, dean of undergraduate studies.

"Life in the residence halls is an extension of the classroom," said James Wims, director of residence life for UK. "It is important for students to see faculty and staff member in roles other than the classroom. When they have that contact, there is a positive impact on the retention of students and information."

Holding classes and offering academic assistance in the residence halls in evenings makes it comfortable and convenient for students to get individual help with particular study problems.

"We are trying to get the students in the habit of learning," Swift said. "Studying and learning are a regular part of life. We want to get students and faculty away from thinking students have two very distinct lives ­ an academic one and a resident one."

Residence hall academic programs also help freshmen make it through that tough first year, Swift said.

Each year, the University loses about 22 percent of its freshman class. Because over 85 percent of all freshman live in a residence hall, many at the university say in-hall events are a great way to retain students.

"We're trying very hard to connect residence life with academic life to help students stay at the University and do well," Swift said.

Teaching assistants offer tutoring sessions and workshops in math, science and English each week. Peer tutors from the Student Government Association provide assistance for chemistry, math and Spanish in the residence halls. Upon special request, a retired social work professor has returned to the University to offer tutoring to a fraternity. This year, two communications classes are being offered solely in a residence hall.

For the second year, students who wish to get a more in-depth education in French can live on the French Floor in Blanding I Hall. Other special interest floors have emerged thanks to resident assistants who recognize common interests and provide programs to engage students.

An additional class ­ History 296: East Asian History Since 1800 ­ is being planned for next year in Jewell Hall.

"A lot of times, people live clustered together because they have a common interest," said Melanie Tyner-Wilson, assistant director of residence life. "If they can get a sense that this is their home, then they can go out into the University, be more comfortable, learn more and do better academically."

Wims, Swift and Tyner-Wilson said the University is looking for opportunities to offer more academic programming in residence halls, because the student reaction has already been most positive. Many classes and workshops ­ many optional and voluntary ­ are regularly full, Swift said.

"We're all here to go to school," Tyner-Wilson said. "But, it means so much to students when faculty take the time to interact with them personally. It has a positive effect on them and their studies."

Any faculty or staff member who would like to propose programming or other ideas to integrate the residence and academic lives at UK can call Tyner-Wilson at 257-4783 or Swift at 257-3027.

By Selena Stevens

UK researchers make breakthrough in brain cancer cases

University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center researchers have shown that surgical treatment plus radiation therapy is superior to surgical treatment alone in the treatment of the most common type of brain tumors. The results of the randomized trial were published in the Nov. 3 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Metastatic brain tumors are tumors that arise in organs other than the brain and then later spread to the brain. These brain tumors occur in about 25 percent of all patients with cancer and are a significant cause of suffering and death in cancer patients.

"Death due to brain cancer involves the inexorable loss of mental and physical abilities and is the most difficult type of death with which patients and their families have to cope," said Roy Patchell, a UK neuro-oncologist and associate professor of surgery and neurology at the UK College of Medicine. "We are attempting to reduce the suffering that these patients must go through."

The goal of treatment of brain metastasis is to eliminate the tumor in the brain and prevent recurrence, Patchell said. UK researchers believed that the addition of radiation therapy would help to eradicate microscopic cells that were undetected at the time of surgery. They enrolled 95 patients with brain metastases. All were treated with surgery and were examined by magnetic resonance imaging, an accurate type of brain scan, to rule out other areas of cancer in the brain. Patients randomly were assigned to treatment with postoperative radiation or no further treatment.

Patients in the radiation group received daily doses of radiation beginning 28 days after surgery. Radiation treatments continued for five and a half weeks. The brain MRI scans were repeated for all patients at three-month intervals for the first year after treatment and every six months thereafter.

To decide which treatment was better, researchers evaluated the length of survival, presence of tumor recurrence in the brain, length of time to brain recurrence and the cause of death of patients.

"The addition of postoperative radiotherapy resulted in substantially better control of the brain tumor than with only surgery," Patchell said. "Patients receiving radiation had significantly less recurrence of tumor in the brain, and even when they did have brain tumor recurrence, it usually occurred later than in the group that did not receive radiation."

The addition of radiation prevented patients from dying as a direct result of their brain tumors. Only 14 percent of patients in the radiation group died of neurologic causes as compared to 44 percent in the group that did not receive radiation. Despite the reduction in brain recurrence rates and death due to neurologic causes, postoperative radiotherapy did not result in increased overall survival or improvement in the length of time that patients were able to independently function.

By UK Chandler Medical Center Public Relations

Interest in Hispanic culture, population growing

When the director of the University of Kentucky's Latin American Studies broke her finger, she was treated by a doctor from Ecuador, something a lot of people in Lexington might have found surprising. However, with the Hispanic population in the United States growing, that is likely to become less and less unusual.

That growth, and the growth of U.S. trade with Latin America, presents an opportunity for the University, director Francie Chassen-Lopez said. That is why Hispanics and non-Hispanics alike are taking an interest in Latin American Studies.

"This certainly is a growth area," Chassen-Lopez said. "We need to learn what the needs are."

Latin American Studies at UK involves the fields of agronomy, anthropology, communication, economics, geography, history, horticulture, music, pediatrics, political science, sociology, Spanish and statistics. The program is more than 10 years old, draws 35 to 40 students per semester to its main course (LAS 201) and draws even bigger crowds to its extracurricular events.

Among the program's mainstays is a film series showing four films a semester ­ mainly Latin American films with subtitles and films about Latin America. The showings often are standing-room-only with students from the programs and their friends. There also is a lecture series, which has included figures like Gustavo Esteva, a Mexican sociologist who serves as adviser to the Zapatista Liberation Front, and Maggi Popkin, director for Latin America and Africa at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights.

While the Hispanic population is small in Kentucky when compared to California, Texas or Florida, it is growing, particularly in Lexington, sparked in part by tobacco's reliance on migrant workers. The growth here has at times caused tension, such as when some Cardinal Valley residents circulated a petition against opening a Hispanic center in their neighborhood.
To address the issues in Cardinal Valley, Chassen-Lopez organized a panel on the local Hispanic community, which was held on campus Sept. 16.

But the growth of the Hispanic population in Lexington also offers opportunities in all three of the University's land grant missions: education, research and service. For example, students studying Spanish have new opportunities to hone their language skills, researchers have a largely unstudied population to explore and academia's communication, medical, legal and other skills are greatly needed.

While those sorts of connections already are being made, there needs to be more, Spanish professor Lourdes Torres said.

"Even if it's not apparent at this point, the situation is, across the United States, that the Latino community is growing, and we have to educate ourselves about groups we share the country with."

By encouraging interaction between UK and local Hispanics, both the University and the growing community benefit.

"The Hispanic community can be a resource, and we should be a resource to that community," Torres said.

By Doug Tattershall

Server Fund brings Mexico to University

While the Latin American Studies Program is relatively new, one of its best resources at the University of Kentucky was established 35 years ago.

In 1963, romance languages professor Alberta Wilson Server established the $15,000 Lou Emma Wilson Mexicana Fund to Special Collections as a way to bring early editions of Mexican publications to UK. Today, the catalog lists 115 entries in the collection.

Server was a Ludlow native who moved with her parents to Mexico, where her father Albert H. Wilson fought in the country's war for independence from Spain. The family returned to Kentucky, and Server studied at UK after graduating from Somerset High School.

Server went on to study in Spain and France and returned to UK as an instructor in 1945. She established the Mexicana Fund in the name of her mother and retired from UK in 1966.

By Doug Tattershall

Exhibit features transportation themes in artwork

"Crossing the Ohio River to Louisville," a gelatin silver print on paper by Danny Lyon, is one of several artworks on display as part of "Way to Go: Transportation Themes in the Collection." The exhibit at the University of Kentucky Art Museum will be open through March 21, 1999.

This permanent collection show includes works featuring all modes of transportation, from horsepower to air power. It even includes a 19th century Russian painting of Czar Alexander II in a sleigh, on loan from the Kentucky Department of Parks' historic site White Hall, located near Richmond.

For more information on the exhibit or museum, call 257-5716.

Staff report

Book preview ­ "Perception and Prejudice"

Book: "Perception and Prejudice"

Editors: Mark Peffley, University of Kentucky professor of political science, and John Hurwitz, University of Pittsburgh professor of political science.

What it's about: This book investigates the relationship between racial perceptions and policy choices in America. The writers explore and clarify images of African Americans that white Americans hold and the complex ways that racial stereotypes shape modern political debates about such issues as affirmative action, housing, welfare and crime. The book is based on one of the most extensive scientific surveys of race ever conducted ­ the Race and Politics Study conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley.

Publisher: Yale University Press

Book preview ­ "One the Job Training"

Book: "On the Job Training"

Authors: Mark Berger, William B. Sturgill professor of economics and director of the Center for Business and Economic Research in the Carol Martin Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky; John M. Barron, professor of in the Department of Economics in the Graduate School of Management of Purdue University; and Dan Black, professor of economics and a Gatton Research Fellow at the Gatton College of Business and Economics.

What it's about: "On the Job Training" explores how companies and workers invest in themselves with specific and general job training. The book presents a theoretical framework for measuring the effects of training on productivity, wages and turnover and investigates the extent of training offered by companies. It compares company perceptions of training provision to perceptions of workers of the amount of training received. The book offers some recommendations for companies and policy makers on the provision of training.

Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Kalamazoo, Mich.