News from Transy

Transylvania opens Academic Center for Excellence to help students succeed

Posted on September 20, 2013July 14, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University has recently invested $350,000 in its library to turn a basement space that was previously home to periodical stacks into a contemporary, comfortable, modular space dedicated to tutoring, academic services, technology tools and student collaboration and group projects. The Academic Center for Excellence (ACE) provides a wide variety of services. Space has been designated for math and science tutoring, a satellite classroom for the university’s Writing Center, the Technology Learning Center, and the Learning Skills Program, which offers instruction in time management and studying and reading techniques, among other topics. The library also will staff a help desk for students in the evenings. In addition, ACE provides video equipment so students can record and play back presentations or practice interviews. It also features collaboration technology that allows up to four students to plug in tablets or laptops and view content from the devices on a large monitor. To further encourage teamwork, there is space for group discussion and rooms with video conferencing capability to connect students to others around the world. Additionally, the furniture is easily movable and can be combined in creative ways. “The goal of this is to bring together the academic support services that we have on campus,” library director Susan Brown said. “By working together we make each other stronger, and by making each other stronger, we make our students stronger.” With the creation of ACE, the university also will expand the range

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American Spiritual Ensemble to perform at Transylvania

Posted on September 17, 2013July 14, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

LEXINGTON, Ky.—The American Spiritual Ensemble, founded and directed by University of Kentucky professor Everett McCorvey, will perform at Transylvania University Sept. 22 at 3 p.m. in Haggin Auditorium of the Mitchell Fine Arts Center. The concert is free and open to the public. The ensemble, which includes celebrated vocalists from across the U.S., performs a varied repertoire, from Negro spirituals to classical works to Broadway tunes. Its members have sung in theaters and opera houses around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and abroad in Italy, Germany, Britain, Scotland, Spain and Japan. The ensemble’s performance at Transylvania is part of Still Overcoming: Striving for Inclusiveness, the university’s year-long celebration of 50 years of desegregation on campus and acknowledgment of the strides the university and society at large have yet to make. McCorvey, the director of UK’s Opera Theatre, returned to his alma mater, the University of Alabama, in June for the 50-year commemoration of its desegregation. In an article that appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader on June 30, 2013, McCorvey wrote: “Today in Tuscaloosa, and in many universities around the United States, we celebrate the success of education for all and the strides that we have made as a country in breaking the hold of segregation and providing access to all who desire it. “While acknowledging the complicated road ahead, we can still point to amazing progress since Kennedy’s address to the nation

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Transylvania once again ranked as one of nation’s best colleges by The Princeton Review

Posted on August 7, 2013July 14, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University is listed in The Princeton Review’s “The Best 378 Colleges,” a ranking that includes the top 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges. “Transylvania University offers outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our choice of schools for the book,” said Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s senior vice president and author of “The Best 378 Colleges.” The book’s two-page profile of Transylvania includes comments from students surveyed for the book. Students described Transylvania as an “extremely close-knit campus” with a “strong sense of community.” They said that Transylvania strives to provide “a holistic educational experience where one can grow intellectually and academically while participating in a vibrant social community.” Other students said that they work “ridiculously hard,” but that the professors let you stop by during their office hours and discuss just about anything. One Spanish and English double major affirmed, “It doesn’t matter whether a class is lecture or discussion based, because either way you’re guaranteed to learn something.” The schools’ evaluations are based on institutional data, feedback from current students, visits to the schools, opinions of independent college counselors and other factors. The Princeton Review is a New York-based education services company known for its education, admission and test-prep services. Transylvania, founded in 1780, is the nation’s sixteenth oldest institution of higher learning and is consistently ranked in national publications as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country.

Transylvania’s innovative August term for new students is much more than a typical orientation

Posted on August 5, 2013July 14, 2020 by Office of Marketing and Communications

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University’s pioneering August term is poised to introduce first-year students to the academic rigor of a liberal arts college. The Class of 2017 will arrive on campus on August 9—three weeks before upperclassmen—to learn what it will take to excel at Transylvania. Although Transylvania’s unusual August term includes elements of the typical college orientation—a multitude of social activities for the class of 2017 to get to know each other and bond as a group, educational programming related to making responsible choices as an independent adult and community service opportunities—it also incorporates a rigorous classroom experience: the First Engagements seminar. Classes of approximately 14 students meet daily with a faculty member to discuss two texts and become acquainted with the type of critical thinking and discussions that will be expected as part of their college academic experience. Participating faculty come from all academic areas, and students in different sections of the class may be exposed to widely varying perspectives on the First Engagements theme. This year’s theme is “Reading the World,” which captures two goals of a liberal arts education: learning to read critically and exploring the wider world. Over the summer, the first-year students read “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” by Mark Haddon, which will provide the jumping off point for initial discussions. Once on campus, students will also read “Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason” by Russell

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