Month: December 2012

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Junior Michael Case knew he would have to miss two days of classes the week before finals, but when you’re personally invited to the White House by the Office of Public Engagement, you figure out how to make it work. Case, a political science and international affairs double major and president of Transylvania University’s College Democrats, received an invitation to tour the White House and attend an issues briefing about averting the fiscal cliff. He was selected after gaining the attention of the Obama campaign leadership in Kentucky for organizing a trip to go to Cincinnati and go door to door for President Obama’s re-election campaign. “I did not realize how much Kentucky has to lose in the budget debates,” said Case. “Kentucky is one of those states that collects more from the federal government than it pays in. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid contribute 23.6 billion dollars to our state’s economy, annually.” While in Washington, Case had breakfast at The Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank, and listened to presentations about the fiscal cliff and how it should be handled. He heard briefings about how Kentuckians would be impacted if no agreement is reached before December 31, including one by Jon Carson, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Case worked alongside other Kentuckians to formulate a plan of action for motivating fellow Kentuckians to contact their representatives in Congress before the end of

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Deans Jagger and Walz playfully display a giant slide rule, now an old-fashioned symbol of engineering, that was used as a demonstration model to teach Transylvania science students how to use normal slide rules to perform calculations. Slide rules were used by engineers before calculators became smaller and cheaper. LEXINGTON, Ky.—To prepare students who want to work in an engineering field, Transylvania University has announced a new partnership with the University of Kentucky. Transylvania students can now take up to six courses at the University of Kentucky College of Engineering as part of their undergraduate work and be fully prepared to enter a master’s or doctoral engineering program upon graduation. “This innovative partnership between Transylvania and the UK College of Engineering provides our students an extraordinary opportunity,” said Kathleen Jagger, Transylvania’s interim vice president and dean of the college. “The liberal arts promotes the critical reading, imaginative thinking and engagement with big ideas that will serve engineers well in their future careers. Taking foundational engineering courses alongside liberal arts courses will engage students more purposefully in the future they see for themselves and prepare them optimally for graduate studies in engineering.” This new partnership with UK allows the students to remain on Transylvania’s campus for their entire four-year undergraduate career. Previously, the only option was a 3-2 arrangement, where students earn a B.A. in physics or liberal studies from Transylvania in three years, then a B.S. in engineering from UK

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University senior Jake Hawkins has spent the last four years working on The Rambler student newspaper and honing his reporting skills. Now a major newspaper has taken notice. Hawkins has been selected as one of 19 USA Today Collegiate Correspondents for the spring 2013 semester. He will write stories for www.usatodaycollege.com with the chance to be published in the print edition of USA Today. The Princeton, Ky., native is just the second student from Kentucky to be named a collegiate correspondent for the news outlet. Alumni from the program have been from top journalism schools including Syracuse University, Michigan State University, New York University and Northwestern University. A writing, rhetoric and communication major, Hawkins has been working with the Transylvania faculty to cater his curriculum to journalism. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of The Rambler. “I really feel like I’ve gotten a personalized education at Transylvania,” Hawkins said. “Even though we don’t have a formal journalism program, my WRC professors and Rambler advisors have gone out of their way to tailor WRC to journalism for me.” Hawkins found the USA Today application while researching his senior seminar project in which he’s compiling a portfolio of freelance journalism stories. The deadline for the application was just two hours away, so he quickly filled it out and submitted clips. He then wrote an article on the fiscal cliff and how it relates to college students, earning him selection to

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