News from Transy Archives

Kentucky author receives 2018 Judy Gaines Young Book Award

Posted on March 7, 2018July 14, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Kentucky author Kathleen Driskell has won Transylvania University’s 2018 Judy Gaines Young Book Award for her collection of poems, ‘Next Door to the Dead.’ Driskell will give a reading and receive her award on March 21 at 5 p.m. in Transylvania’s Cowgill Center, Room 102. The event will be free and open to the public. Now in its fourth year, the Judy Gaines Young Book Award recognizes recent works by writers in the Appalachian region. Driskell found inspiration for her book while visiting a cemetery next to a former country church where she lives outside Louisville. Transylvania professor Jeremy Paden praised her work. “In ‘Next Door to the Dead’ Kathleen has written eloquent, gripping, tender and even humorous poems that explore loss and longing,” he said. “This is a wonderful collection of poems that have much wisdom and art to teach the reader. Death can pull us apart; it can bring us together.” According to the book’s publisher, University Press of Kentucky, Driskell often strolls through the cemetery, imagining the lives and loves of those buried there. “’Next Door to the Dead’ transcends time and place, linking the often disconnected worlds of the living and the deceased. Just as examining the tombstones forces the author to look more closely at her own life, Driskell’s poems and their muses compel us to examine our own mortality, as well as how we impact the finite lives of those around us.” Driskell is

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Princeton Review puts Transy in top 7 percent of colleges for Bang for Your Buck

Posted on February 9, 2018July 14, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

Transylvania University has been named in The Princeton Review’s 2018 edition of “Colleges That Pay You Back: The 200 Schools That Give You the Best Bang for Your Tuition Buck.” Transylvania has long aimed to keep its tuition and fees competitive with the top colleges in the nation—currently it costs almost $10,000 less than the average top-100 private liberal arts college. Students graduate with 15 percent less debt than the average private school borrower. This annual guidebook, now in its fourth year, is the education services company’s resource for college-bound students and their parents shopping for affordable, academically outstanding colleges that graduate their students to successful, rewarding careers. The full lists, profiles and information on the project methodology are accessible at www.princetonreview.com/colleges-pay-you-back. The Princeton Review chose the 200 schools for this edition based on a comprehensive analysis of data from its surveys of administrators at more than 650 colleges in 2016-17. Survey topics broadly covered academics, cost, financial aid, career services, graduation rates, student debt and alumni support. The company also factored in data from PayScale.com surveys of alumni of the schools about their starting and mid-career salaries and job satisfaction. In all, more than 40+ data points were crunched to select the 200 schools for the book and tally its seven ranking lists. Only 7 percent of the nation’s four-year colleges made it into this book, noted Robert Franek, its lead author and The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief. These schools were bona fide standouts

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Kiplinger ranks Transylvania among country’s top values

Posted on December 22, 2017July 14, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Kiplinger’s Personal Finance today once again named Transylvania University as one of the nation’s Best College Values. The magazine’s ranking recognizes schools for both academic quality and affordability, specifically measuring factors such as four-year graduation rate, total cost and financial aid. “I think families are surprised when they hear how affordable a Transylvania education is—even compared to the cost of a public university,” said Holly Sheilley, vice president for enrollment and student life. “Our students, who come from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, are prepared to pursue higher degrees or start great careers after they graduate without being overburdened with debt.” In fact, student loan debt is lower at Transylvania than at the average state public university. Also, the typical financial aid package for incoming students was $26,643 last year, and 98 percent of students received gift-aid they didn’t have to pay back. These savings are on top of the fact Transylvania costs about $10,000 less than the average top-100 liberal arts college. In addition to today’s Kiplinger ranking, Transylvania has earned many similar recognitions for providing a quality education at an affordable price. For example, the university made the nation’s top 10 in the USA Today/College Factual’s Best Colleges for the Money. Transylvania also recently was named one of U.S. News & World Report’s Best Value Schools among liberal arts universities and Money’s Best Colleges for Your Money. Kiplinger ranks Transylvania 104th among all colleges and 54th among liberal

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Recalibrating

Posted on December 20, 2017June 19, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

Lives of Generosity What do you do when the person seeking help in your hospital is the one who maimed your cousin? What if you live next door to a woman whose husband is incarcerated for taking part in the genocide that killed your husband? What if you grew up in a family devoted to one political value system and find yourself studying next to someone whose beliefs seem inexplicably, even offensively, the opposite? You treat him. You form a women’s co-op. You listen respectfully. “You meet them where they are,” says Riley Bresnahan ’18, a religion major and Transy’s first national debate champion. A recipient of the U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, Bresnahan studied the reconciliation process in post-genocide Rwanda, listening to the stories of survivors and marveling at the human capacity for forgiveness in the midst of the most grievous atrocities perpetrated by neighbors, friends and family members. These stories represent lives of generosity, capable of recognizing a greater good, setting the self aside, trawling the soul to find a way forward. How much easier would it be to lash out with self-righteous fervor? Last spring, in the midst of deepening political discord and fractured civility in our nation, Transylvania’s faculty members came together to consider a way to help the campus community “move beyond this moral impasse,” as Spanish professor Jeremy Paden describes it. Taking inspiration from French philosopher Simone Weil—“Attention is the

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Transylvania receives $800,000 to help combine liberal arts, digital technology

Posted on November 2, 2017July 14, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

LEXINGTON, Ky.— Transylvania University is working to build a national reputation for applying digital technology to a liberal arts curriculum. The Bingham Fund for Excellence in Teaching at Transylvania University has awarded two grants totaling $800,000 as part of the Transylvania Initiative for Digital Technology, Research, and Creativity (DTRC). The Bingham Fund was established to promote excellence and dedication among the school’s faculty who demonstrate exceptional teaching qualities. The grants will fund the expansion of digital tools in classrooms and laboratories and will help train faculty and students to incorporate digital pedagogies into their courses and scholarly activities. In addition to financing travel to conferences and on-campus speakers, the funds will allow the university to hire a full-time digital content specialist with expertise in instructional technology. This initiative comes at an opportune time, as Transylvania prepares to open its Carpenter Academic Center. The classroom building will integrate cutting-edge technologies, such as Mondopad collaborative touchscreens. Professors Kerri Hauman and Tim Polashek (pictured) serve as co-directors of the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative, which received the DTRC grants. They are experts in digital education and extensively apply digital technology in their research and creative work. “Like any medium that has such a pervasive role in human affairs, modern technology needs to be understood from many different perspectives,” said Transylvania President Seamus Carey. “Providing such perspective is one of the great benefits of liberal education.”