1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Transylvania launches Summer Academic Program for high schoolers

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Beginning this summer, Transylvania University will offer area high school students the opportunity to get a head start on their college careers in its new Summer Academic Program. Rising high school juniors and seniors can take courses on campus, taught by Transy faculty, that can earn them college credit and potentially count toward their high school curriculum requirements. They will learn alongside current and entering Transylvania students and will get all the benefits of being a Pioneer, including personal attention from professors and access to the library and its resources. Students will pay approximately half the price of standard tuition rates, and those fees can be earned back in the form of a scholarship to Transylvania. “We look forward to working with some of the brightest young minds in the area, preparing them for success in their college careers while showing them the tremendous value of a Transylvania education,” said Laura Bryan, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the university. The Summer Academic Program has 10 classes available in its first year, with subjects including politics, public speaking, economics and environmental science. It is open to rising high school juniors and seniors, as well as current high school seniors who have been admitted to Transy, and students from other institutions. For class information and registration, which is open until May 15, go here.

The Places We Live: Social Practice Artworks

Lexington, Ky.— Transylvania University’s Morlan Gallery presents “The Places We Live,” an exhibition of artists working in social engagement from Feb. 21 through March 29. Six social intervention artists from across the U.S. will activate local and regional spaces while exhibiting tangible art objects from those programmed interventions. The artists include Meredith Knapp Brickell, Wes Janz and Sean Starowitz of Indianapolis; Maria Lind Blevins of Morehead, Ky.; Mark Menjivar of San Antonio, Texas; and Michael Strand of Fargo, N.D. Social practice artists embrace a variety of methods to engage with community, both directly and indirectly. Brickell is one the artists who decided to work directly with the Lexington community. Over the last six months, she has travelled frequently to meet with a group of girls from the Northside neighborhood. This group of 7-11 year-olds—called Busy Bees—has ventured into neighborhoods with cameras and notepads to document communities. The project, titled “Sidewalk Stories,” also has been facilitated by neighborhood resident Felice Salmon. It will culminate in a Busy Bee-created fanzine, which will be on display in the Morlan Gallery as part of a larger in-gallery installation documenting the project. A variety of other social interventions will be included in “The Places We Live”—including Menjivar’s “My Sadness Goes On and On…,” a listening station of collected sad songs submitted to him from contributors around the world. Also, Janz’s installation, “Crazy for Cages,” examines the U.S. prison industrial complex. Morlan Gallery, located in Transylvania’s

TransyPods: Interview with Dr. Kerri Hauman

Brandon Trapp 19 Interviews Dr. Kerri Hauman Listen on Soundcloud Transcript SPEAKER 1: Welcome to another campus conversation. Discussions with Transylvania University faculty, highlighting their interests, passions, and pursuits. Here is Brandon Trapp. BRANDON TRAPP: So I’m here with Dr. Kerri Hauman. And we’re going to talk today about the digital liberal arts. So first I want to ask, what is digital liberal arts? KERRI HAUMAN: It’s a loaded question. Of course, academics never like to give straightforward definitions of anything. When I think about the digital liberal arts, I sort of think about it as almost a silly thing, like a silly title, because the digital is already in the liberal arts. And we’re not, like when we’re just talking about liberal arts education without any sort of adjective or other word tacked on the front there, I think the digital is already there. But I think we name it that, because the technology is often sort of invisible, right? There are different course management systems, like Moodle and other things, that are being used. And so the digital is there. But they sort of blend into the background of the larger activity of higher education. And they’re not necessarily the focal point of it. And so I think that’s part of the reason why we give it that full label of digital liberal arts to sort of call to attention the digital that’s there already. I think also,

344 students named to Fall 2016 Dean’s List

Laura Bryan, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the university, is pleased to recognize 344 students on the Transylvania University Dean’s List for the Fall 2016 term. To be named to the Dean’s List, a student must achieve at least a 3.5 grade point average during the term. To see the full list of students who earned the recognition, visit the Dean’s List page.

Award-winning poet to deliver Transylvania’s Kenan Lecture

Renowned poet Claudia Rankine will present Transylvania University’s 2017 Kenan Lecture on Thursday, Feb. 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Carrick Theater. The event is free and open to the public, and tickets can be reserved here. Her five poetry collections include “Citizen: An American Lyric,” which is the only poetry book to make the non-fiction category of the New York Times bestseller list. At Transylvania she will discuss making the book and the question of creative imagination and race. Rankine—who also is a playwright, essayist and editor of several anthologies—is the Aerol Arnold Chair at the University of Southern California, the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. “Citizen” has won numerous honors, including the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014. It also was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry. “This collection of lyrical essays or poetic prose bears witness to the experience of everyday encounters with racism,” Transylvania professor Jeremy Paden said. “It moves in and through the feelings and thought processes of the person trying to understand the experience of these injustices. ‘Citizen’ names and narrates these experiences. And in reading and listening to the poems, in learning from them, our world is enlarged.” Transylvania’s William R. Kenan Jr. Lecture Series is funded by a grant from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. Previous speakers have included: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an