University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Chemistry Professor Marcelo Guzman was recently awarded a five year National Science Foundation (NSF) career grant to aid in his atmospheric chemistry research with students here at the University of Kentucky.

The grant will also enable Guzman to extend the reach of the university and chemistry department by strengthening and creating new connections with other institutions such as local high schools.

In this podcast, Professor Guzman discusses how the grant will be used, some potential applications for the research he’ll be conducting, and the joy he finds working with students in the laboratory.

Every year, Teach for America places thousands of college graduates and professionals in schools in inner cities and rural areas. Luke Glaser, a double major in English and Spanish, has been selected to teach Spanish in an Appalachian high school for the next two years through the program. In this podcast, Glaser talks about his connection to Teach for America and what he plans to do afterward.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.

Amanda Fickey, a University of Kentucky doctoral candidate was recently granted a year long research fellowship by the Central Appalachian Institute in Research and Development. The Institute, located in Pikeville, Kentucky, focuses heavily on improving educational access and issues of economic development in the Central Appalachian region.

Fickey, an instructor in the Department of Geography as well as in the Appalachian Studies Program while completing her doctoral studies, will spend 2013 as a fellow-in-residence at the institute. There she will focus her research around questions of regional identity and economic development throughout all of Appalachia. The fellowship is the first of its kind for CAIRD and Fickey hopes that her work this coming year will pave the way for other fellows and students to come.

This podcast was produced by Patrick O'Dowd.

During the Fall semester of 2013, University of Kentucky Philosophy Professor Stefan Bird-Pollan lead a class that hopes to expand the ways in which students interact with film. In the course, PHI 300: The Philosophy of Film, students will examine the aesthetics of film from the early 20th century through the 1970s. Through this aesthetic exploration, Bird-Pollan hopes to expose the ways in which our relationships with films directly impact the way we relate to the rest of the world around us.

In this podcast, Bird-Pollan discusses how the class will address a broad range of films both domestic and foreign; the processes of film creation that shape our interaction with them; and how he hopes to use the class to move past the "I like it or don't" binary.

This podcast was produced by Patrick O'Dowd.

When people think of UK basketball, they tend to think of Wildcats, not lab rats... except for students in Fall 2012's Psychology 450: Learning. In the class, students used clickers and treats to train rats to pick up and 'dunk' a small ball to demonstrate how learning occurs. In this podcast, we interviewed some students from the class and watched some rat basketball from the sidelines with Kristina Pattison, the instructor.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.

There is word on the page and then there is word given breath. This past April, students and faculty from the University of Kentucky brought words to life thanks to a 12-hour open air poetry reading. The event, organized by English professor and published author Julia Johnson, was held outside of the Student Center welcoming anyone and everyone to come read their favorite poems aloud. The reading itself was held in celebration of National Poetry Month and to raise awareness of UK’s growing creative writing community.

In this podcast, we sit down with Professor Julia Johnson who talks about her motivations behind holding the reading and how she hopes the event will help build an even stronger sense of community between the university's creative writers and faculty. Also joining are English department graduate students and editors at UK's literary journal Limestone, Jenna Goldsmith and Robin Rahija who give their thoughts on the poetry reading, Limestone, and the impact of hearing a few beautiful words each day.

Finally, we hear a few of those beautiful words from a UK student and from WRD professor Steven Alvarez who reads a poem of his own.

In November 2013, scholars and activists from around the world will gather at UK to attend the 5th Biennial Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Society. Arnold Farr, a philosopher and social theorist here at the University of Kentucky, is organizing the conference, which seeks to examine “Emancipation, New Sensibility, and the Challenge of a New Era.”

During the 2013 fall semester, University of Kentucky students had the opportunity to delve into questions that explore some of society's most deeply held beliefs. The ambitiously titled class, "A&S 300: The Meaning of Life - Psychology, Evolution, Religion, and Morality," will be led by Psychology Professor Will Gervais who has focused his research around this very topic.

In the class, students can expect to investigate the psychological and evolutionary underpinnings of religious and moral beliefs through studies of cognitive and evolutionary science. Gervais hopes to use this lens to encourage students to not ask questions around whether or not a higher power exists, but instead question why people believe what they do and the implications of that on society.

In this podcast, Gervais touches on these issues and how now more than ever, it's important that we use the tools of science to examine the roles of religion and morality.

This podcast was produced by Patrick O'Dowd.

Most of us associate mapping with cartography, but that's not always the case. The Committee on Social Theory was presenting a graduate-level course on mapping during Spring semester of 2013 and Jenny Rice, assistant professor in the Division of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Media, is one of its four instructors. Jeremy Crampton, Jeffrey Peters, and Susan Larson are also teaching sections of the class, each talking about a different aspect of mapping. In this interview, Rice talked about the ways we can 'map' ideas and arguments.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.

The University of Kentucky recently announced big upgrades to its supercomputing infrastructure. This means more power for researchers across the campus working on some of the questions that have puzzled us the longest.

One such researcher is Professor Gary Ferland of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Since the late 1970s, he’s been using computer modeling software to carry out experiments that would otherwise be impossible. With his widely used program Cloudy which simulates clouds of interstellar matter out in space and UK’s high-tech supercomputing infrastructure, Ferland and his students have been able to help answer some of the biggest questions facing astronomers as well as society.

This podcast was produced by Patrick O'Dowd.