News from Transy

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Members of Transylvania University’s Board of Regents are inviting Lexington residents and others in the central Kentucky area to view a brief film about Transylvania’s deep connections to the city. The free screening will be at the Kentucky Theatre Saturday, July 5, at 11 a.m. The three-minute film was produced by Bullhorn Creative, a Lexington marketing firm, and features several community members talking about the various ways Transylvania contributes to the cultural, intellectual, and economic vibrancy of the city. Billy Van Pelt and Marcia Cone, co-chairs of the board’s Friends Relations Committee and Transylvania graduates, will introduce the film. According to Van Pelt, “We collaborated with community stakeholders to create a positive message that gives the entire city ownership in making the university’s strategic plan, Transylvania 2020, a success. The video will be used to garner support and engagement from individuals across the country and to encourage connections with both Transylvania and Lexington.” Transylvania has been an academic and cultural hub in Lexington for more than 225 years. Many of its graduates choose to stay in Lexington and contribute to the economic vitality of the community as businesspeople, artists, educators, community leaders, parents and volunteers. Cone addressed Transylvania’s role in the community: “Transylvania University has been an integral part of the history of Lexington—and the state of Kentucky—and has influenced the history of our nation. It has remained a stable core of our inner city neighborhood for over two

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Let’s just call it an encore performance. Ben Hawkins, Transylvania University professor of music, was recently named music director of the Central Kentucky Concert Band. Hawkins succeeds Peter LaRue, director of bands at Georgetown College, who has served as the CKCB’s conductor for 20 years. This will be Hawkins’ second appointment with the CKCB. He served in the same position from 1985 to 1992. “I am not the same person that I was in 1985,” Hawkins said. “Then, I was barely into my 30s, and now I’m celebrating my 60th birthday.  I am interested to discover what will be the same about the experience, and what will be different. Mostly, though, I begin this new chapter with a much deeper appreciation of the centrality of human relationships to the act of music making.”   At Transylvania, Hawkins conducts the Concert Band and Chamber Orchestra and teaches courses in conducting, music theory and music education. The 2014–15 academic year will be his 30th as a member of the Transylvania faculty.  He lives in Lexington with his wife, Cyndee. They are the proud parents of two sons: Jay, a 2013 alumnus of Transylvania, and Turner, who recently completed his first year as a Transylvania student. The Central Kentucky Concert Band was founded in 1976 by then-Transylvania band director Peter Martin and Dennis Van Hoose. It has operated continuously since then, presenting an annual series of concerts on the Transylvania campus and

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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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