Month: June 2014

LEXINGTON, Ky.—The Lexington Tattoo Project, the acclaimed multimedia community art project imagined by Transylvania art professor Kurt Gohde and English professor Kremena Todorova, received more national attention by being named to the Americans for the Arts’ Public Art Network 2014 Year in Review. Each year the Public Art Network recognizes 50 of the most outstanding public art projects from around the country. Public arts professionals serve as jurors to review the applications. The Lexington Tattoo Project brought together more than 250 people from around Lexington to be tattooed with words from a poem about Lexington, “The _____________ of the Universe: A Love Story,” written by 2003 Transylvania graduate Bianca Spriggs. Gohde and Todorova photographed each tattoo and created a video by digitally stitching together the photographs. When viewed together, the tattoos—which include a pattern of small circles surrounding the inked words—reveal the number “4” inside a large circle, representing New Circle Road, which encircles downtown Lexington. The video was underscored by a composition by Lexington musician Ben Sollee, and a 160-page coffee table book featured a portrait of each of the tattoos. “We were excited and honored when we found out that the Lexington Tattoo Project was selected,” Todorova said. “With the publication of the coffee table book, we continue to receive inquiries from individuals and organizations about working with them on their own tattoo projects.” The pair has received word that they are finalists for a Detroit Knight Arts

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania biology professor Becky Fox palmed baby sparrows from a nest on the side of an old barn. As she weighed the chicks on a digital scale, the parents probably weren’t far off. Sometimes they watch, raising a fuss. How particular birds cope with ruffled feathers is actually part of what Fox, a group of Transylvania students and University of Kentucky professors David Westneat and Matthew Schofield are studying this summer at the sprawling Coldstream Farm research facility. A four-year, $670,000 National Science Foundation grant is funding the project. Depending on personality, birds react differently to environmental variability. These researchers want to know how that affects parental care. Fox measures the parents’ blood levels for two hormones—corticosterone, which varies as individuals deal with environmental stress, and prolactin, which broadly underlies how these house sparrows raise nestlings. To mix things up, researchers swap chicks and attach objects to the nests. When faced with stressors such as these, some parents try harder to feed offspring; others don’t. Fox wants to know if hormonal differences are at work. “The field of animal personality is new,” she said. “We don’t have a handle on the physiology.” There is great interest in describing these individual differences quantitatively. And research such as this could help shed light on human parenting. Westneat is studying how sparrow parents gamble by visiting either areas where they know there will be a small but reliable amount of food or

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Karen Anderson, coordinator of community service and civic engagement at Transylvania University, has been appointed to the Kentucky Commission on Community Volunteerism and Service by Gov. Steve Beshear. The 25-member commission was created in 1994 and serves as a conduit for funding supporting Kentucky AmeriCorps programs. Commission members review and recommend funding requests for service opportunities all around the state, a process Anderson has become very familiar with during her nearly 20 years at Transylvania. She was asked to apply by former commissioner Eileen Cackowski. “I’m grateful she asked me,” Anderson said. “I think being a commissioner will be a natural part of what I’m already doing at Transylvania. Commissioners go out and see what’s going on and represent our commonwealth and our government, and I’ve been doing that as part of my job for years. So I’ll be able to keep getting out and connecting, not just for Transylvania, but on behalf of our commonwealth.” AmeriCorps is a national program that works to place people in full-time service opportunities in exchange for a living stipend. Opportunities include mentoring and tutoring in Kentucky schools, working with homelessness prevention and providing in-home services to seniors with disabilities. Part of Anderson’s time as commissioner will be spent organizing the 20th anniversary of the program, which will take place around the National Day of Service Sept. 11. “Here in Kentucky we’ll be using that opportunity for the swearing in of our new

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