1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Kentucky Secretary of State to hold civic health roundtable at Transylvania Jan. 8 at 12:30 p.m.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes will hold a Civic Health Initiative roundtable at Transylvania University’s William T. Young Campus Center on Tuesday, Jan. 8, from 12:30-1:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, with a meet and greet session from 12:15-12:30 p.m. In November, Grimes kicked off the Civic Health Initiative, a statewide series of roundtable discussions at Kentucky’s universities and colleges to improve Kentucky’s overall civic health. “Earlier this year, my office released Kentucky’s first ever Civic Health Index, which unfortunately shows that civic engagement in Kentucky is generally declining,” said Grimes in a press release from her office in 2012. “Kentucky is at its best when everyone is engaged,” Grimes continued. “The Civic Health Initiative is the first step toward establishing new partnerships and formulating fresh strategies that will bridge existing participation gaps.” The event is sponsored by Transylvania’s Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement and the Kentucky League of Women Voters in Lexington, Ky.

The Future of Higher Education: Rose Bowl or Ethics Bowl

The following originally appeared in The Huffington Post. In the coming weeks, there will be 35 college football bowl games played in the United States. Advertising prices for television ads during the national championship game are expected to surpass last year’s Super Bowl. Students, parents, alumni and even fans with little connection to schools will spend freely to purchase their favorite college team’s jersey, hat or pendant. Enthusiastic college students will display faces and chests painted with their school colors and wave their finger at television cameras to indicate that their team is number one. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal noted that the rising cost of college athletics has led to an alliance between Division I football schools and television: “TV has agreed to pump about $25.5 billion in rights fees into college conferences and their member schools over the next 15 years.” The hope is that the investment will save both the networks and the schools. Cal Berkeley reportedly invested $321 million in a football stadium renovation, and the University of Michigan spent $226 million to do the same.

Morlan Gallery opens new year with haunting exhibition Jan. 16-Feb. 15, accompanied by musical and spoken word performance Jan. 23

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University’s Morlan Gallery presents “The Thirteen,” a visual art exhibition and live musical/spoken word performance paying homage to 13 black women and girls who were lynched or otherwise violently murdered in Kentucky. The exhibition opens Wednesday, Jan. 16, at noon, and runs through February 15. The performance takes place on Wednesday, Jan. 23, from 7:30-9 p.m., in the Carrick Theater, in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center. It is free and open to the public. “The Thirteen” exhibition seeks to enshrine the shared history of the 13 women and girls and will feature photographs and video by Angel Clark as well as pieces by Transylvania graduate Bianca Spriggs, including original poetry, pen and ink drawings and resin skulls. “The Thirteen” production, made possible in part by the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, will feature performances by an ensemble of 12 Kentucky musicians and vocalists paired with spoken word poetry by Spriggs. Spriggs is an Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow. A multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Lexington, Ky., Spriggs is currently a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky. She holds degrees from Transylvania University and the University of Wisconsin. Named one of the Top 30 Black Performance Poets in the U.S. by TheRoot.com, she is a 2013 recipient of an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, a Pushcart Prize nominee and a recipient of three Artist Enrichment Grants from the Kentucky

Junior invited to Washington, D.C. by the White House Office of Public Engagement

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Junior Michael Case knew he would have to miss two days of classes the week before finals, but when you’re personally invited to the White House by the Office of Public Engagement, you figure out how to make it work. Case, a political science and international affairs double major and president of Transylvania University’s College Democrats, received an invitation to tour the White House and attend an issues briefing about averting the fiscal cliff. He was selected after gaining the attention of the Obama campaign leadership in Kentucky for organizing a trip to go to Cincinnati and go door to door for President Obama’s re-election campaign. “I did not realize how much Kentucky has to lose in the budget debates,” said Case. “Kentucky is one of those states that collects more from the federal government than it pays in. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid contribute 23.6 billion dollars to our state’s economy, annually.” While in Washington, Case had breakfast at The Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank, and listened to presentations about the fiscal cliff and how it should be handled. He heard briefings about how Kentuckians would be impacted if no agreement is reached before December 31, including one by Jon Carson, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Case worked alongside other Kentuckians to formulate a plan of action for motivating fellow Kentuckians to contact their representatives in Congress before the end of

Transylvania partners with the University of Kentucky for a new pre-engineering program for Transylvania students

Deans Jagger and Walz playfully display a giant slide rule, now an old-fashioned symbol of engineering, that was used as a demonstration model to teach Transylvania science students how to use normal slide rules to perform calculations. Slide rules were used by engineers before calculators became smaller and cheaper. LEXINGTON, Ky.—To prepare students who want to work in an engineering field, Transylvania University has announced a new partnership with the University of Kentucky. Transylvania students can now take up to six courses at the University of Kentucky College of Engineering as part of their undergraduate work and be fully prepared to enter a master’s or doctoral engineering program upon graduation. “This innovative partnership between Transylvania and the UK College of Engineering provides our students an extraordinary opportunity,” said Kathleen Jagger, Transylvania’s interim vice president and dean of the college. “The liberal arts promotes the critical reading, imaginative thinking and engagement with big ideas that will serve engineers well in their future careers. Taking foundational engineering courses alongside liberal arts courses will engage students more purposefully in the future they see for themselves and prepare them optimally for graduate studies in engineering.” This new partnership with UK allows the students to remain on Transylvania’s campus for their entire four-year undergraduate career. Previously, the only option was a 3-2 arrangement, where students earn a B.A. in physics or liberal studies from Transylvania in three years, then a B.S. in engineering from UK