Monday Memo April 11, 2016

Message from the Dean

Dear Colleagues,

Today, as we join in the festivities announcing our partnership with many community organizations to bring Shakespeare’s First Folio to Louisville, it underscores how many truly special opportunities the College of Arts & Sciences provides to enrich the educational experiences of our students and to sustain our intellectual and professional lives.

This week we host prominent guests such as Grawemeyer winners in psychology, world order, and religion, the Bullitt lecturer in math, a visiting artist in printmaking, and a scholar in global humanities. We also celebrate our Spanish students’ collaboration with music school students, the final Theatre Arts production of the year, and the strong national finish of our Quiz Bowl team. Our faculty have supervised students with life-changing internship and service learning experiences, and facilitated their growth in understanding social justice, diversity, and community engagement.

As you know, these are only a handful of the ways in which our faculty’s commitment to liberal arts and sciences education has advanced the mission of the University of Louisville this semester. Particularly during this time of anti-intellectualism in state government, thank you for all you do; I am so very proud of all your work.

Sincerely,

Kimberly Kempf-Leonard
Dean

Announcements

Meeting with Interim Provost Pinto April 15
The meeting with President James Ramsey, Interim Provost Neville Pinto, and Associate VP for Finance & Business Affairs Susan Ingram Howarth has been moved to Friday, April 15, 2016 from 1:30-2:30pm in Strickler Hall 102. The Faculty Assembly will immediately follow the budget meeting (2:30-3:45pm). Please mark your calendars and make every effort to attend.

Teaching, Research, Service & Creative Activity

Prof. Omer-Sherman to deliver Klatch lecture
Prof. Ranen Omer-Sherman (Humanities, The Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies) will deliver the 8th Ben and Louise Klatch Jewish Arts Series Lecture/Presentation at Purdue in spring 2017.

Kudos & Congratulations

Four Arabic language students earn Critical Language Scholarships
Four of Prof. Khaldoun Almousily’s (CML) Arabic language students have been awarded Critical Language Scholarships (CLS). Christian Brawner will spend two months in Meknes, Morocco, followed by 9 months in Jordan on a Fulbright; Anna Pepper and Jeremy Ball will spend two months in Ibri, Oman; and Tanner Wright will spend two months in Tangier, Morocco. These fully funded scholarships, sponsored by the US State Department, were established to help American graduate and undergraduates master critical languages while they build relationships with citizens of other countries.

Liberal Studies alumna Hodge receives Fulbright to UK
Rae Hodge (‘13A) earned a prominent Fulbright Award to study at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. Hodge, who designed her own liberal studies undergrad degree at UofL, will begin a yearlong study at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies in the fall and take part in the university’s MSc Computational Journalism program, which is designed to prepare early-career journalists to lead data-driven news startups.

Quiz Bowl team leads the ACC in tournament
The UofL Quiz Bowl team finished in 14th place at the NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament this weekend, among the top 32 teams in the country. UofL competed Division I, which uses the most difficult question set and is limited to teams that have previously qualified for the ICT. In the preliminary round, the team defeated Duke (470-80), Central Oklahoma (385-50), Brown (345-185), and UC Berkeley B (330-165), with losses to Michigan A, Minnesota, and MIT A. After the prelims, the team defeated Brown (195-170) to advance to the second bracket in the afternoon. In the afternoon rounds, the team defeated Northwestern (285-150) and Illinois (275-175), and lost to Stanford B, UC Berkeley A, Harvard, and Washington University St. Louis. This is the highest U of L has ever finished in the Division I ICT and this was also the first time in program history that U of L has ever defeated Illinois, Northwestern, and Brown. Additionally, U of L was the highest finishing team from the ACC and finished ahead of fellow ACC members Duke (21st) and North Carolina (18th).

Team member Kurtis Droge was the tournament’s leading scorer in the preliminary rounds and ended up as the tournament’s 4th leading scorer. Kurtis’ excellent performance earned him a spot on the Division I All Star team. The U of L team consisted of Nick Conder (Urban Affairs PhD student) ,Kurtis Droge (MBA Student), Ramapriya Rangaraju (Computer Engineering and Computer Science graduate student), and Megan Seldon (English major). The team returns to action this weekend at the ACF National Championship at the University of Michigan. Congrats to the team on an outstanding performance.

Items of Note

Free memberships to the Kentucky Academy of Science for students and faculty
Faculty and students interested in science are encouraged to take advantage of free memberships which provide news, announcements, job and research opportunities from KAS; are eligible to apply for grants and publish in the Journal of the KAS; search the KAS database and connect with 3000 fellow scientists across Kentucky. To join for no cost go to: kyscience.org and click on the Membership tab. When you click on "Join and Pay on-line," no fee will be charged.

In the News

Privilege Check: A Conversation About Invisible Advantages (WFPL, 4/1/2016) – Profs. Kaila Story (Women’s & Gender Studies/Pan-African Studies; Host, Strange Fruit, WFPL), David Owen (Chair, Philosophy), Dawn Heinecken (Women’s & Gender Studies), and Elizabeth Jones (Pan-African Studies) participated in discussions for a series on WFPL 89.3 on privilege.

UofL’s Anne Braden Institute launches online Civil Rights collection about an event in Louisville’s history (Insider Louisville, 4/4/2016) – On the Braden Institute’s digitization of the exhibit, “Black Freedom, White Allies, Red Scare: Louisville, 1954.”

Study finds police fatally shoot unarmed black men at disproportionate rates (The Washington Post, 4/7/2016) – On a study, “Fatal Shootings By US Police Officers in 2015: A Bird’s Eye View,” conducted by Profs.  Justin Nix (Criminal Justice) and Bradley Campbell (Criminal Justice) from the University of Louisville, and researchers from the University of South Carolina.

David Buckley on the Demand for Clergy in Politics (Research on Religion podcast, Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, 4/10/2016) – Prof. David Buckley (Political Science) was the featured guest on the Research on Religion podcast series, talking about his recent Comparative Political Studies article on whether or not religious populations want clergy to be active in politics.

Meet Yosif Stalin, The Soviet-Born Black American From Kremlin, Virginia (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 4/11/2016) – Prof. Joy Carew on African-Americans that moved to Soviet-era Russia in the 1920s and 30s.

Shakespeare’s First Folio coming to Louisville

Learn about the history of the First Folio, and Shakespeare’s Fourth Folio (above), an edition of which is housed in Archives & Special Collections in Ekstrom Library.