By Amaya DeVicente 

Last year, 18 percent of the University of Kentucky graduating class graduated with global experience. The university’s International Center has taken steps to increase that percentage.

The UK International Center’s Education Abroad and Exchanges program (UK EA) recently announced a new 2018-19 scholarship and program fee reduction initiative for selected UK exchange partners around the world, ranging from $1,000-$5,000.

UK students who participate in an exchange program have the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the language and culture of a host university, city and country. They enroll in courses at the host institution for either a semester or an academic year and earn transfer credit, while still paying their regular tuition to UK.

Nicole Funk, a junior from

By Gail Hairston

University of Kentucky Professor Emeritus Edward Stanton’s young adult, prehistoric fiction novel “Wide as the Wind” has received a second international award — the coveted Moonbeam Children’s Book Award, presented by the Jenkins Group for authors, illustrators and publishers from the United States, Canada and six additional countries.

Earlier this year, “Wide as the Wind” (Open Books Press) won the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Young Adult Fiction.

Described by the publisher as “a timely piece of environmental fiction,” “Wide as the Wind” is the first novel of any genre to deal with the stunning, tragic history of Easter Island and its implications for our modern world. It has been described as “both a stirring novel of adventure and a prophetic tale for our times.”

That’s an impressive achievement for any book, much

By Gail Hairston

World Languages Day and more than 250 Kentucky high school students return to the University of Kentucky campus Nov. 1.

Two UK College of Arts and Sciences departments, the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the Department of Hispanic Studies, have planned a full day for the young students.

The students, who are studying either Spanish, French, German, Latin, Chinese, Russian or Japanese, will attend two classes in the morning and then have a question and answer session with current UK students and alumni regarding careers and opportunities in language and cultural study.

World Languages Day will continue with Assistant Professor Molly Blasing, who will discuss the college’s Keys

By Gail Hairston

(Left to right) Dan Reedy, Karl Raitz, Dean Mark Kornbluh, Martha Rolingson, Charles Grizzle and Tom Spalding.

The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences celebrated its Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Friday, Oct. 6, at the Don & Cathy Jacobs Science Building.

This year's Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Reception honored alumni Charlie Grizzle, Martha Rolingson and Tom Spalding, and College of Arts and Sciences faculty members Karl B. Raitz and Daniel R. Reedy. For more about each honoree, see their brief biographies below.

Alumni Inductees

Charlie Grizzle, English, bachelor’s degree, 1973 

Charles "Charlie" L. Grizzle, a native of Argillite, Kentucky, in Greenup County, earned his bachelor

By Amaya DeVicente and Gail Hairston

Nicole Funk, a junior from Lexington majoring in natural resources and environmental science with a Spanish minor, participated in an Education Abroad semester-long direct exchange program at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) in Quito, Ecuador. It was through a community internship that Funk received recognition for best of “Pasantía en la Comunidad” (PASEC) work at USFQ. All USFQ students must complete this program in order to graduate, and international students also have the opportunity to complete a PASEC program if they wish.

Nicole Funk (second from left) with Universidad San Francisco de Quito faculty and staff.

For Funk's PASEC service program, she completed a service-learning experience at Instituto Educativo Fiscomisional

By Gail Hairston

Arts and Sciences Professor Emeritus Edward Stanton’s recently published book "Wide as the Wind" has been named by the Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group as one of the best indie books of 2017.

Stanton, formerly a UK professor of Hispanic studies, based his young adult novel on the decade of research and traveling he did on Easter Island. The prophetic story of adventure he created reflects the Polynesian exploration of the Pacific Ocean in wooden, handcrafted canoes with no metal parts or instruments of navigation. The National Geographic has called the Polynesian exploration the greatest feat in human

By Lori Minter

The University of Kentucky has released its Dean's List for the spring 2017 semester.  A total of 6,412 students were recognized for their outstanding academic performance. 

To make a Dean’s List in one of the UK colleges, a student must earn a grade point average of 3.6 or higher and must have earned 12 credits or more in that semester, excluding credits earned in pass-fail classes.  Some UK colleges require a 3.5 GPA to make the Dean’s List.

The full Dean's List can be accessed by visiting: www.uky.edu/PR/News/DeansList/.

UK is the University for Kentucky. At UK, we are educating more students, treating more patients with complex illnesses and conducting more research and service than at any time in our 150-year history. To read more about the UK

By Gail Hairston

The languages and cultures of the world will be highlighted at the University of Kentucky March 25 at the Kentucky World Language Association World Language Showcase.

The UK College of Arts and Sciences departments of Hispanic Studies and Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures will play host to nearly 200 student-competitors from across Kentucky.

The students will display their proficiency in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and French. UK faculty, graduate and undergraduate students will lead language and cultural sessions in Arabic, French, German, Latin, ancient Greek, Italian, Russian, Chinese, American Sign Language and Japanese. A presentation dedicated to using language professionally is also scheduled.

Representatives from GlobalLex, World Trade Center, Sister Cities, UK Education Abroad and Kentucky Refugee

By Kathy Johnson

The "Civic Life" panel series, developed by the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, is a new weekly forum exploring a wide range of issues confronting society today. Open to the entire UK campus, these lunchtime panel discussions will take place each Wednesday for the remainder of the semester, and the series kicks off Wednesday, March 22, with a discussion of immigration — a topic making headlines worldwide.

“At the core of the mission of the College of Arts and Sciences is the commitment to prepare students to be engaged citizens in our Commonwealth, in an increasingly diverse nation, and in an ever-more interconnected world," said Mark Kornbluh, dean of the college. "Faculty members across all of the disciplines of our college take this commitment seriously and are seeking to provide

By Lori Minter

A record number of students made the University of Kentucky Dean's List for the fall 2016 semester. The 7,408 students were recognized for their outstanding academic performance.  That's an increase of more than 200 over the previous record reached in fall 2015 when the number of students on the UK Dean's List surpassed 7,000 for the first time.  Last semester's Dean's List includes over 700 more students than the spring 2016 semester's list.

To make a Dean’s List in one of the UK colleges, a student must earn a grade point average of 3.6 or higher and must have earned 12 credits or more in that semester, excluding credits earned in pass-fail classes.  Some UK colleges require a 3.5 GPA to make the Dean’s List.

The full Dean's List can be accessed by visiting www.uky.edu/PR

By Whitney Hale

Paige A. Dauparas, a University of Kentucky accounting, English and Spanish literature and culture senior from Mokena, Illinois, has been selected to present the 23rd annual Edward T. Breathitt Undergraduate Lectureship in the Humanities at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, in the UK Athletics Auditorium at William T. Young Library. Dauparas' free public lecture focuses on diversity and how the search for individuality impacts unity.

The Breathitt Lectureship was named for an outstanding UK alumnus who showed an

By Whitney Hale

University of Kentucky senior Rachel Dixon, of Lexington, was recently named a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship. Dixon, an English and writing, rhetoric and digital studies major, will interview for the prestigious scholarship that funds graduate study at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Rhodes Scholars are chosen not only for their outstanding scholarly achievements, but for their character, commitment to others and to the common good, and for their potential for leadership in whatever domains their careers may lead.

A UK Honors College member and former ambassador, Dixon is a

John Jay Allen, emeritus professor of the University of Kentucky’s Department of Hispanic Studies, has been made a corresponding member of the Spanish Royal Academy of the Language (Real Academia Española de la Lengua), one of the highest academic honors in the Spanish-speaking world.

Allen taught in the UK College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Hispanic Studies (formerly Department of Spanish and Italian) from 1983 to 1999 and as emeritus professor since 2000.

Allen´s accomplishments are quite numerous, but the most salient are: National Endowement for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for Independent Research, 1981-82; NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers, 1989; Residential Fellowship to the National Humanities Center, North Carolina, 1989-90; UK's Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial Prize; and an honorary doctor of letters from Middlebury College

By Whitney Hale

(April 14, 2015) — A University of Kentucky senior and recent graduate have been selected for fellowships from the Princeton in Asia program. As part of the program, biochemistry senior Calvin Hong and 2015 arts administration and Spanish graduate Brittney Woodrum will teach in Hong Kong and Myanmar respectively.

Princeton in Asia (PiA) sponsors more than 150 fellowships and internships in 20 countries and is the oldest and largest organization of its kind, unique in its scope, size, century-long

By Tasha Ramsey

When given the option, some students would jump at the chance to graduate early. But for Mason King, a senior double majoring in Spanish and political science at the University of Kentucky, the decision to forego an early graduation date in order to take part in an internship with the U.S. Department of State is one he doesn't regret.

In the spring of 2015, King learned that he could choose to participate in the December commencement rather than take another semester of classes to stay on his four-year track. Seeing this as an opportunity to extend his education rather than starting his career search an entire semester early, King set out in search of internships instead.

“I really didn’t care to rush my undergraduate experience and

By Gail Hairston

(Oct. 22,  2015) — A new assessment of the lasting impact of Hernán Cortés and the Spanish Empire’s conquest of the Aztec Empire will be discussed at “New Perspectives on Spanish Conquest and Empire: From the 16th to the 21st Centuries.” The event begins at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, in the Great Hall of the Margaret King Library at the University of Kentucky.

The event also kicks off the King Library’s November exhibition of singular photographs of Steve Raymer and event presenter Kathleen Myers. As the name suggests, the exhibition, “In the Shadow of Cortés: From Veracruz to Mexico City,” is a modern pictorial tour of the route Cortés marched from the sea to doomed Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire.

By Jenny Wells

(Aug. 26, 2015) — The University of Kentucky Chellgren Center for Undergraduate Excellence honored its newest class of Chellgren Fellows Sunday, Aug. 23. Five Chellgren Endowed Professorships were also announced. 

The Chellgren Fellows Program is for students with exceptional academic potential and aspirations, who are eager to participate in a special learning community designed to cultivate extraordinary achievement. Outstanding faculty members from across campus serve as individual mentors for the Fellows.

The students selected as 2015-16 Chellgren Fellows include:

•  Sloan Ander, a

By Alicia Gregory, Whitney Harder

(Aug. 10, 2015) — Computer science and the St. Chad Gospels. Physics and Spanish. Math and international studies. The combination of these don't seem to make a lot of sense, but it is these interests that have shaped the undergraduate career of one UK senior.

Stephen Parsons, a computer science and international studies major, with minors in physics, Spanish and mathematics, has thrived in a range of studies during his time at UK.

He has also worked in research that merged the fields of computer science and humanities. Parsons, who is a

By Guy Spriggs

(Aug. 5, 2015) — Started in the summer of 2012 as an intensive “boot camp” to help the University of Kentucky’s new students prepare for college-level calculus, the FastTrack program has become an integral part of efforts to help students transition to the college classroom and set them up for success in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The curriculum for FastTrack has expanded over the last four years, and now gives students an invaluable introduction to UK’s math, biology, chemistry, engineering, Spanish and WRD (Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies). A key part of the program’s continued growth is the recent addition of FOCUS (FastTrack Orientation for College Undergraduate Success), a component built around developing the non-academic skills students need to

By Whitney Hale

(July 8, 2015) — University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that a seventh UK student has been named a recipient of Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarships. The UK recipients are among more than 1,900 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2015-2016 academic year through the prestigious program.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department