By Rebekah Tilley

“Last summer I was in Budapest briefly locked in a gypsy’s apartment while she tried to extort more money from me, and had a great time…” said Joe Nickell, as if he were describing a weekend at the lake. He is a man with many interests – over 200 “personas” are listed on his personal website including folksinger, stage magician, and séance conductor. His current title is Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and investigative columnist for Skeptical Inquirer magazine. However, he identifies himself simply as a writer.



“Writer seemed the one thing that complimented my insatiable curiosity,” said the author, co-author or editor of over 30 books. “The reason through so many interests and activities that I’ve held it all together – I

by Colleen Glenn

Patience is a virtue. Just ask Ginny Carney. An alum of the English Department, Carney is now President of Leech Lake Tribal College in Minnesota. But she didn’t get there overnight.

Carney, who is Cherokee Indian, was raised in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. The oldest of five children, Carney grew up without electricity (no phone or TV), indoor plumbing, or transportation. “As achildgrowing up in an isolated mountain region of East Tennessee, I assumed that everyone shared our worldview,” she recalls.

But all of the time she spent not watching television led Carney to become a voracious reader, and the more she read, the more she soon learned about cultures other than her own.

Disturbed by the disparaging views many authors held of Appalachian people as well as the stereotypical beliefs regarding American Indians, she vowed

story by Jay Blanton

video by Kody Kiser



To many people, Matt Cutts, Arts and Sciences and Engineering, '95, is simply known as No. 71.

But in the high-tech world of Silicon Valley, that means he is much more than just a number.

As one of Google's first 100 employees ever, Cutts was on the ground floor of what is today the world's largest search engine. It's a company that operates each day under the premise that helping people access the information they need when they need it can literally change the world for the better.

And Cutts, a native of Morehead, Ky., gives much of the credit for his success at Google to the undergraduate education he received at the University of Kentucky.

"There's no reason you can't get as good of an education at UK as anywhere else in the world," said Cutts, a 1995

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

Because the Russian Empire had 18 million men-in-arms, 5 million prisoners-of war and 2 million deaths during World War I, University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences history Professor and department Chair Karen Petrone just couldn't believe that no one remembered World War I in Russia.

"I spoke to colleagues in Russian history who told me that World War I memory was not a category in the Soviet Union, and that there was nothing about it in governmental archives," Petrone said. "Scholars believed that World War I memory did not exist."

While Petrone didn't necessarily set out to prove her fellow researchers wrong in 2002, she was inspired by the work of

By Whitney Hale

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, University of Kentucky's School of Music and the Latin American Studies Program present "Latin America in Music: A concert of Latin American Music." This concert featuring UK faculty and students, as well as international guest artists, will take the stage at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 21, at the Worsham Theater, in the UK Student Center. The concert is free and open to the public.

"Latin America in Music" will feature performances by:

If you are one of the many students still weighing graduate school or higher education options, you aren’t alone. Hispanic Studies graduate student Jeffrey Zamostny chose to complete a Graduate Certificate in Social Theory at UK because Social Theory encompasses more than one academic field and offers a broad spectrum of studies that he could tailor with a specialized dissertation.

“I was drawn to Social Theory because when you are in a Ph.D. program at UK, you are often with the same people, since you’re in a rather narrow field. Social Theory gives you the opportunity to meet many people in a wide range of departments. They approach the same topics, but from a variety of perspectives,” said Zamostny.

Zamostny discovered the Committee on Social Theory after taking a course in Gender and Women’s Studies. He liked many aspects of the class, but he wanted to combine

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

University of Kentucky students and alumni from throughout campus and the community received career counseling from the inside out this past summer in a new eight-week online course offered by the College of Arts & Sciences.

A&S 350, or "Personal Strengths and Your Career Development," is a three-credit-hour self-development course, according to A&S Director of Advising and Student Services Greg Bocchino, a social science theorist with a heart for helping students who designed the class.

"This is an academic course based on chaos theory that focuses on a non-linear career decision-making strategy." Bocchino said. "Yet we're also developmental, moving students from point A to point

Biology professor David Westneat from the University of Kentucky's College of Arts & Sciences has won a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), guaranteeing 10 weeks of research to 10 undergraduate students at UK's Ecological Research Facility (ERF) or Griffith Woods beginning next summer.

UK biologists, along with researchers from the College of Agriculture and the College of Education will host an annual 10-week summer program for undergraduate research on suburban ecology and invasive species.

In summer 2011, Arts & Sciences Video Production team member Natalie Baxter traveled to Whitesburg, Ky to help teach Appalshop interns how to create documentary style short films about the Appalachian region. The program, Appalachian Media Institute (AMI), has interns ages 14 to 21 that live in the surrounding Appalachian Kentucky counties.



Filmed by: Dana Rogers, Brian Connors Manke, and Noah Adler



Edited by: Dana Rogers

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The emotional suffering and clinical treatment associated with infertility is wide-ranging and ever-changing.

In the Middle Eastern world, many of the couples unable to have children suffer a social stigma as well, according to Marcia Inhorn, William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale University.

Inhorn, a specialist on Middle Eastern gender and health issues, will present the second lecture of the UK Department of Anthropology's Annual Colloquium Series titled 

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky continues on its international course with a visit from University of Haifa Rector (Provost) David Faraggi this week.  While here, Faraggi signed a memorandum of understanding, or a general cooperation agreement, with President Eli Capilouto Monday, Sept. 12.

“The University of Kentucky is excited about the opportunity to partner with the University of Haifa,” said Capilouto. “With the phenomenal advances in technology and industry, strategic collaborations between postsecondary institutions play an important role in a growing global economy.”

This past June, a UK delegation including public health professors Douglas Scutchfield and Jim Holsinger and Associate Provost for International Programs Susan Carvalho traveled to

Dean Mark Kornbluh continues his Dean's Channel series, sitting down with professor Gang Cao from the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Director of UK's Center for Advanced Materials.

They discuss the great benefit of UK housing its own helium liquefier as well as a number of other advances with materials research.

Dean Mark Kornbluh continues his Dean's Channel series, sitting down with professor Gang Cao from the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Director of UK's Center for Advanced Materials. 

They discuss the great benefit of UK housing its own helium liquefier as well as a number of other advances with materials research.

by Robin Roenker



What is the value of nature? Does it have intrinsic value of its own—or only as it relates to humans and our uses for it?



Does a conservationist perspective (which seeks to regulate human use) or a preservationist perspective (which aims to limit human use altogether) better foster an equitable stewardship of natural resources?



What isenvironmental sustainability—and how do we achieve it?



UK’s new philosophy class on Environmental Ethics, PHI 336, challenges students to consider complex questions like these—questions that, at their heart, delve into fundamental issues of mankind’s role as stewards of the environment, and the responsibilities that entails.



While efforts to launch an Environmental Ethics course within the Philosophy Department

UK Physics Professor Gang Cao talks about what makes the research at the Center for Advanced Materials unique. He leads up a team of graduate students who work dilegently on breaking new ground for the technology of electronic materials. The motivation for this, according to Cao is "that whoever controls materials, controls technologies and research."

Click here for a Dean's Channel Chat with Professor Cao and Mark Kornbluh, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

By Kendall Smith

The UK College of Arts and Sciences Passport to the World program is taking a look at China, a country that continues to grow in global significance.

“It is one of the most important countries for America to develop better opportunities with economically, politically and socially,” said Keiko Tanaka, coordinator of the China Initiative.

Particularly over the the past 50 years, China has been one of the fastest growing countries in the world and has made its presence felt in the global arena and shows no signs of slowing down.

“We picked China because it is one of the most important countries for America to develop better opportunities with economically, politically and socially,” said Keiko Tanaka, coordinator of the China Initiative.

Particularly over the

By Gail Hairston, Erin Holaday Ziegler

There's an academic side of Martin Luther King Jr. that few people know about. From John Locke to Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, King studied them all and considered going into academia himself.

University of Kentucky philosophy Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences and the inaugural UK Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center Scholar-in-Residence Arnold Farr would like to bring this integral aspect of King's life to the forefront of discussion at UK.

To that end, he has initiated a MLK Scholar-in-Residence Series

The International Studies program in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky developed three years ago in response to a recognition that the world and its problems are increasingly interrelated. Whether it's religious beliefs; social or political circumstances; environmental, economic or health outcomes; events in one part of the world today affect those elsewhere.

New International Studies Program Director Carlos de la Torre is accustomed to creative and interdisciplinary work across colleges and continents.

De la Torre comes to UK from his native Ecuador, where he returned in 2003 to direct the creation of a

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media professor Adam Banks sits down with Renee Shaw on KET's Connections to talk about digital communications, models of Black leadership, new media platforms, and what this means for minorities facing the Digital Divide. His second book, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age, develops a specific approach to teaching writing rooted in African-American rhetorical traditions and was published by Southern Illinois University Press's Studies in Writing and Rhetoric series. Watch the full interview here.

by Arne Bathke

When elections are thrust into the media spotlight we are inundated by numbers, graphs, and figures. Every day, someone presents new poll results and predictions, statistical analyses, or interpretations. 

Candidates are trying to find out which target group to focus on with their efforts to sway voters. Journalists want to be the first in forecasting the outcomes of important races. Political analysts and scientists strive to comprehend the underlying political and sociological movements that determine election results.

Neither group can succeed without a good understanding of statistics. In fact, knowing your stats well gives you the extra edge over your competitors.

Statistics and politics have long historical ties. The term “Statistics” derives from the Italian “statista” which means “Statesman”, and it is