1.         Ground Broken for Biomedical/Biological Sciences Research Building

University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd, Jr., and other dignitaries broke ground early this month for the new Biomedical/Biological Sciences Research Building.  Construction on the $67.2 million, 185,000-square-foot building is scheduled to begin this spring, with completion in the spring of 2004.  The building, which will have four floors of research space and a basement, will be located on South Limestone Street across from the Kentucky Clinic.  The building will provide state-of-the-art space for researchers in the fields of neurosciences that will include the development of a Neurosciences Institute (including the Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center and sensory biology), genetics and genomics, and vaccine development and host resistance.  The Biomedical/Biological Sciences Research Building is the first development of the West Campus and is the largest capital project UK has ever undertaken.

2.         UK Receives $4 Million for Health and Education Initiatives

The University of Kentucky has received $4 million in federal funding for separate projects that will enhance health care and education for Kentucky residents.  U.S. Senator Mitchell McConnell secured $1 million for the UK Center for Instructional Technology and Learning, which will develop assistive and instructional technologies to help local school districts meet special educational needs of students with disabilities.   McConnell also was instrumental in securing $1 million for a UK Center for Improving Medication-Related Healthcare Outcomes to help doctors and hospitals identify specific causes of medication-related errors and develop strategies to prevent those errors. Congressman Hal Rogers secured $2 million for a major addition to the UK Center for Rural Health in Hazard. The expansion will include a new dental clinic and dental training programs, as well as classrooms and lab facilities to serve the center's physical therapy program and other course work.

3.         UK Wins $950,000 Grant to Help Kentucky’s Uninsured Children

The University of Kentucky has received a $950,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help Kentucky’s eligible uninsured children get free health care coverage through the Kentucky Children’s Health Insurance Program.  Julia Field Costich, UK Center for Health Services Management and Research, is the project director.  The grant will be used to find and help enroll eligible children, simplify enrollment and renewal processes, and coordinate health care coverage programs. 

4.         Lexington Community College Ranks with Fastest-Growing Two-Year Schools 

Lexington Community College ranks fifth among the nation’s top 50 fastest growing public two-year colleges with enrollments between 5,000 and 9,999 students, according the December 10 issue of Community College Week.  Data from the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Department of Education, is used to rank the colleges that experienced the largest percentage change in total student enrollment between fall 1994 and fall 1999.  During that time, LCC experienced 36 percent growth.

5.         Whitney and Hendrickson Cancer Facility for Women is Dedicated

Officials from the University of Kentucky and McDowell Cancer Foundation held a dedication ceremony in early December for the new Marylou Whitney and John Hendrickson Cancer Facility for Women at the UK Markey Cancer Center.  The very generous $2.5 million gift from Marylou Whitney and John Hendrickson for the new Cancer Facility for Women was a major portion of the $9.2 million required to build the facility.  The new building will have three floors, with more than 9,500 square feet per floor, and the clinics are scheduled to open by early 2002.  This more than doubles the space available for each of the cancer clinics and programs that will move to the new facility

6.         Extension Enlisted to Spread Health Education in $800,000 Collaboration

County agents in UK’s Cooperative Extension Service will join forces with the UK College of Medicine to expand the delivery of health care information to Kentuckians.  Funded by an $800,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Health Education through Extension Leadership program, a collaboration between the College of Agriculture and the College of Medicine, will involve Kentucky School of Public Health education specialists collaborating with county Extension agents in all Kentucky counties to provide basic health care information to residents.

7.         UK Freshman’s Photo Interest is Featured in National Geographic

Chris Saling, a freshman from Louisville majoring in Social Work, was featured in a profile in the “Behind the Scenes” section of the January 2002 issue of National Geographic magazine.  Saling, who has cystic fibrosis, accompanied photographer Joel Sartore on a wildlife assignment in British Columbia, Canada, and shot pictures of several animals, including a bathing beaver and orcas.  Saling’s trip was arranged by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

8.         Faculty Open Education Center in Rural Russia 

A team of UK College of Allied Health Professions instructors have partnered with health officials in Pereyaslavska, Russia to open a community health center.  Led by Elizabeth Schulman, the team is helping the center with anatomical medical models, computers with Internet access and healthy lifestyle information. There are plans to open a women’s wellness center within the local hospital next year for family planning and sexually transmitted disease treatment. 

9.         LCC Rated State’s Best in Overall Satisfaction by Alumni

Lexington Community College earned the highest overall satisfaction rating of Kentucky’s colleges and universities in the Council on Postsecondary Education’s Summer 2001 Alumni Survey.  In the Overall Satisfaction with Education category, 92% of respondents were either completely satisfied or satisfied with their LCC experience.  In addition, 95% of surveyed LCC alumni, the highest percentage in the state, said they definitely or probably would recommend LCC to someone considering pursuing a degree. 

10.       Health Commissioners Share Views at UK  Appalachian Health Summit

The Kentucky and West Virginia commissioners of health joined discussions on chronic health issues in early December at a conference at UK for the new Appalachian Health Alliance.  The conference, which focused on the special needs of the two Appalachian states, heard Rice Leach, Kentucky’s public health commissioner, and Henry Taylor, West Virginia’s public health commissioner, on tobacco use, cancer, over self-medication and abuse of prescription drugs, environmental contributors, risk behaviors, and special needs of youth and the elderly.

11.       UK Classics Department Wins Praise in National Magazine

The Classics Department garnered international publicity in an article in New Yorker magazine in September. During a tour of America, Luigi Miraglia, a world-renowned proponent of the instruction of spoken Latin, praised the UK’s Classics Department as “one of the leading centers of spoken Latin teaching in the United States.”

12.       LCC Opens Doors to Winchester-Clark County Campus

Lexington Community College officially opened the doors to its new Winchester-Clark County campus at a ribbon-cutting ceremony held last week.  LCC has offered classes at various Winchester-Clark County locations for the last 10 years, but the new campus provides the first centralized location where students have access to advising, registration and instruction in programs leading to associate degrees, as well as a full range of transferable pre-baccalaureate courses.  Classes currently offered at the Winchester-Clark County campus include subjects ranging from Anthropology and Biology to Economics and Spanish. 

13.       Significant Activities of Students

Louay Constant, Martin School of Public Policy and Administration doctoral candidate, won the 2001 Pi Alpha Alpha Doctoral Student Manuscript Award for his paper, “Interest Groups, Campaign Contributions and Roll Call Votes on Education Bills.”  This is the second year in a row that a Martin School graduate student has won this prestigious award.

Veleashia Smith, Social Work, was recently appointed as the undergraduate representative on President Todd's Commission for Diversity. 

14.       Significant Faculty and Staff Activities

Mary Anglin, Anthropology, is president-elect of the Association for Feminist Anthropology.

Mary Arthur, Forestry, received a grant of $215,000 to conduct research concerning the role of fire in oak regeneration in Southern Appalachia.

David Atwood, Chemistry, received $315,000 award from the Southeast Center for Aluminum Technology of Lexington for studies on the “Reduction of Oxidative Melt Loss in Aluminum Processing.”  He also received $471,593 from the U.S. Office of Naval Research for a study entitled “Molecular Routes to Nanoparticulate Metal Chalcogenides.”  Atwood also will direct a $159,500 teaching grant program in the Department of Chemistry, funded by the National Science Foundation, “Research Experience for Undergraduates:  Research and Training in Nano-Scale Chemistry.”

Lars Björk, Education, has co-authored a chapter in The Educational Leadership Challenge: Redefining Leadership for the 21st Century: Ninety-ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education.

Carolyn Brock, Chemistry, has been appointed a Governor of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, representing the North American scientific community in crystallography.   She also serves as a co-editor of several sections of the prestigious Acta Crystallographica. 

Russell Brown, Mathematics, published “Estimates for the Scattering Map Associated with a Two-Dimensional First-Order System,” co-authored with his student Jeffrey Sykes, in the November issue of the Journal of Nonlinear Science.

Glenn Collins, Agronomy, received a grant of $400,000 from the United Soybean Board to support the Soybean Tissue Culture and Genetic Engineering Center.

Diane Davey, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, was recently installed as 50th president of the American Society of Cytopathology.

Burt Davis, Center for Applied Energy Research received the American Chemical Society’s 2002 Henry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chemistry, which recognizes distinguished contributions to fundamental or engineering research on the chemistry and utilization of coal or related materials.

Ronald Gariepy, Mathematics, and his co-author, L.C. Evans of the University of California-Berkeley, have had their joint research monograph Measure Theory and Fine Properties of Functions published in a Russian edition.

J. John Harris III, Education, received the Torch of Excellence award from the Graduate School and Lyman T. Johnson alumni society in October 2001.

Cindy Iten, Arts and Sciences Advising Center, presented “One of Many Voices: The Growing Role of Support Staff in the Advising Program” at the National Academic Advising Association conference in Ottawa, Canada, in October.

Tae Ji, Chemistry, received a five-year $1,629,290 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study LH receptors, an area involving biochemical regulation of mammalian reproduction. 

Inmaculada Pertusa, Spanish, was co-chair of the Twelfth International Conference of the Asociación de Literatura Femenina Hispánica held at UK this past fall. 

Anna Secor, Geography, received a two-year, $257,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for her study, “Reshaping Civil Society: Islam, Democracy and Diversity in Istanbul.”  The research explores relationships between civil society, Islamist politics and democratic values through an urban geography of Istanbul.

Mike Shanks and Christine Blank, Arts and Sciences Advising Center, presented “Mandatory Probation Advising: Intrusive Strategies that Work!” at the National Academic Advising Association conference in Ottawa, Canada, in October.

Kristen Stapleton, History, received a $1 million grant from the Freeman Foundation to fund an Asian Studies project.

Ted Suffridge, Mathematics, gave a series of lectures on complex analysis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.

Dong-Sheng Yang, Chemistry, was awarded a three-year $278,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study “Spectroscopic Studies of Weakly Bound Metal-Ligand Complexes.”

Steve Yates, Chemistry, received a three-year, $756,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study “Using Fast Neutrons to Explore Nuclear Structure.”