2015-2020 UK Strategic Plan

2015-2020 UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY STRATEGIC PLAN “Transforming Tomorrow” Year One Progress Report

Frank X Walker

SEEDTIME IN THE COMMONWEALTH “There is no vaccination against ignorance, but there is us. There is this university.

And we still have heavy doors to open, unmet obligations to the land and its people.

There are still leadership opportunities to advance the Commonwealth, this nation, and our world towards fulfilling its potential, towards meeting its lofty promises … Let men and women come here as seeds, let us invest in them until they form sufficient roots and leaves to obtain their food. Let them grow from here not just trees, but a fruit-bearing, deeply-rooted forest.”

Frank X Walker

Professor in the UK Department of English and 2015 Kentucky Poet Laureate Written for the University of Kentucky’s 150th Sesquicentennial Anniversary

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

University of Kentucky

MESSAGE FROM THE UNIVERSITY

MESSAGE FROM THE UNIVERSITY

Through the education we provide, the creative research we conduct, and the care and service we render, we are the University for Kentucky. We are the institution our Commonwealth has charged with confronting profound challenges – in education, economic development, health care, and cultural and societal advance.

The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees endorsed the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan in October 2015. The ambitious plan embraces the University’s historic mission as a public, flagship, and land-grant research institution, and calls us to: • Be the University of choice for aspiring undergraduate students within the Commonwealth and beyond, seeking a transformational education that promotes self-discovery, experiential learning, and life-long achievement.

diverse population of faculty, administrators, staff, and students, and by implementing initiatives that provide rich diversity-related experiences for all to help ensure their success in an interconnected world.

• Strengthen the quality and distinctiveness of our graduate programs to transform our students into accomplished scholars and professionals who contribute to the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world through their research and discovery, creative endeavors, teaching, and service.

• Expand our scholarship, creative endeavors, and research across the full range of disciplines to focus on the most important challenges of the Commonwealth, our nation, and the world.

• Enhance the diversity and inclusivity of our University community through recruitment, promotion, and retention of an increasingly

• Leverage leading-edge technology, scholarship, and research in innovative ways to advance the public good and to foster the development of citizen-scholars.

This institution and the members of the UK family boldly confront challenges, rise to meet new opportunities, and embrace the goals we set as the University for Kentucky. Now, in the year following the endorsement of the Strategic Plan, we made progress on its aspirational agenda. Here, we report our results to those we serve.

A university – by its design and the opportunities we have to teach, to share, to explore, to challenge, to question, and to comfort – is the place where we can, must, and will make progress in resolving the complex questions of our day. Our Strategic Plan supports and informs this work, and, as this report makes clear, guides us in advancing toward the bright future of the University of Kentucky.

Each day we are, together, grappling with how we continue to best fulfill this vision. We are working with a sense of common purpose, in a distinctive place. We are walking the path as the University for Kentucky, for today’s generation and those who will follow.

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This institution and the members of the UK family boldly confront challenges, rise to meet new opportunities, and embrace the goals we set as the University for Kentucky.

President Eli Capilouto and Provost Tim Tracy

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Strategic Objective One

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT SUCCESS Be the University of choice for aspiring undergraduate students within the Commonwealth and beyond, seeking a transformational education that promotes self-discovery, experiential learning, and life-long achievement.

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE ONE

We will make strategic investments in faculty recruitment, retention, and development, and in approaches that support innovative teaching and learning. In addition, we will advance student success through programs that provide high-quality curricular and co-curricular opportunities. UK will consistently produce outstanding graduates who complete their degrees in a timely manner, think creatively, communicate effectively, and are able to contribute as leaders to a diverse, global society.

Promises Made. Promises Kept.

Shared Success in Transforming Tomorrow

Undergraduate student support efforts are centered upon four pillars of student success: •

Academic success,

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Financial stability,

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Belonging/community, and

• Health/wellness.

To reach our goals, we must use these four pillars as our compass, while also thinking and acting differently and intentionally. To that end, UK is actively realigning the crucial student support services that report to the Office of the Provost.

The realignment is structured to allocate every available resource toward direct, frontline support for students.

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*Results reported from prior year

To that end, we are investing even more in crucial services like advising to better integrate the entire student experience. We also are providing more professional development opportunities; better integrating communication among advisors across campus; and expanding living-learning communities in new residence halls.

In addition, we are aggressively confronting the second pillar of student success: financial stability.

We know that one of the biggest barriers to student success – if not the biggest – is unmet financial need. At as little as $5,000 in unmet need, retention rates drop by 8 percent or more. Over the next several years, under the UK Leveraging Economic Affordability for Developing Success (UK LEADS) initiative, the University will move from awarding approximately 90 percent of its aid based on

academic merit, to awarding a majority of its aid based on financial need. This initiative is part of a holistic effort to focus intentionally and comprehensively on student success at all levels. We also have increased funding for the Provost Persistence Grant program, which encourages retention, progression, and graduation of UK undergraduate students by assisting students experiencing financial challenges.

To nurture the feeling of belonging and community on our campus, we have merged the critical efforts of the divisions of Student Affairs and Undergraduate Education, creating the Division of

Student and Academic Life. This alignment blends, in an intentional, coordinated way, the curricular, extra-curricular, and co-curricular. We also are strengthening the Office of Institutional Diversity by examining and aligning its structure to support student success and belonging.

Finally, we have significantly expanded our capacity to support students’ wellness, through aggressive investment in campus counseling services, including the hiring of eight additional counselors.

Through the UK Counseling Center, students are able to receive excellent care and treatment.

Year One Lessons Learned

Over the last year, we laid the groundwork for further success on our priorities. The University’s next steps include realigning parts of the campus to make greater progress on our goals, with a specific focus on bolstering student success and academic excellence.

To do so, the University must match money to mission and will allocate its resources in a way that provides the best environment for student success. Aligning these efforts also requires clarified definitions and purpose. Therefore, the University will continue its work to bring student support units and the colleges together with a common, collaborative vision for student success and academic excellence. Establishing continuity and coordination among units requires a clear implementation process.

Year Two Priorities The University will continue to thoroughly evaluate its approach to Enrollment Management in order to determine how we can better support and organize these crucial efforts on behalf of our students. Enrollment Management is critical to the financial health, mission, and vision of the institution; as with all areas, the University’s efforts will maximize our strengths while looking for opportunities to improve.

In addition, the campus will continue its efforts to build a new culture of success within the Division of Student and Academic Life. The new division will strive for continuous improvement, building upon the good work already underway, to be as student-centric as possible. The academic enterprise will continue to build a structure that supports the work of UK’s faculty and staff and fosters the culture of collaboration needed to help every student thrive.

UK also will continue to enhance advising and other student support services within the colleges by focusing its efforts on the four pillars of student success and through continued collaboration among the units and colleges.

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE ONE

Rachel Dixon

THE RHODES LESS TRAVELED

University of Kentucky senior Rachel Dixon, of Lexington, was named a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship in November 2016. An English and writing, rhetoric, and digital studies double-major and Hispanic studies minor, Dixon also is a Lewis Honors College member and former college ambassador. Rhodes Scholars are chosen not only for their outstanding scholarly achievements, but for their character; commitment to others and to the common good; and potential for leadership in their future careers.

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ixon is a Gaines Fellow who has worked on expanding our understanding of the Celtic culture, as part of the Lexington Oral History Research Project. She gave presentations on Kentucky’s coal rhetoric at the 2016 Rhetoric Society of America National Conference and on cultural rhetoric, assimilation, and acculturation at the 2014 National Conference for Undergraduate Research. She has had her work published in five journals, books, and reports, and served as an editorial assistant for manuscripts on collaboration, population health, and health policy in the College of Public Health.

Dixon is equally busy outside of UK’s classrooms and research facilities. She has held several leadership positions including director of partnerships for the UK Center for Community Outreach and director of For Unity and Service In Our Neighborhoods (FUSION).

She also volunteered teaching children English in Jinotega, Nicaragua, as part of UK Alternative Service Breaks.

In many ways, Dixon’s experience as a UK student exemplifies the opportunity to explore the intellectual and cultural diversity of the world, and to passionately pursue one’s interests. This is the type of high-quality undergraduate experience that will position our graduates to lead lives of meaning and purpose.

Transforming the Honors Experience at Kentucky In May 2016, the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees approved the creation of the new Lewis Honors College at UK. The college will attract top-quality students and improve access for under-represented minority students and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to educational environments otherwise reserved for students at expensive, independent institutions.

The creation of both an honors college and Lewis Hall, the living-learning facility where it will be housed, was made possible in October 2015 by UK alumnus Thomas W. Lewis and his family. Their commitment of $23.5 million to create one of the country’s leading honors colleges is the single-largest gift in UK’s history.

“Across the University of Kentucky campus are profound examples of people’s faith in our institution, the work we do, and the lives we shape,” President

Eli Capilouto said. “The Lewis family is investing in the University, and their investment will yield an extraordinary academic experience for students in the new Lewis Honors College.”

In the last five years, at the direction of President Capilouto and the Board of Trustees, participation in the University’s Honors Program has nearly doubled, growing from 750 students to nearly 1,400.

“I have a strong belief in the value of education and helping young people become the best they can be,” Lewis said during his gift announcement on October 22, 2015. “This gift is our way of helping University of Kentucky honors students reach their full potential as leaders who will create, shape, and influence people, ideas, and discoveries for this and generations yet to come.”

“Across the University of Kentucky campus are profound examples of people’s faith in our institution, the work we do, and the lives we shape.”

President Eli Capilouto

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Strategic Objective Two

GRADUATE STUDENT SUCCESS

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE TWO

Strengthen the quality and distinctiveness of our graduate programs to transform our students into accomplished scholars and professionals who contribute to the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world through their research and discovery, creative endeavors, teaching, and service.

We recognize that the scope of professional opportunities for our graduate students is changing in fundamental ways. So, too, is our approach to graduate education, as we closely examine course offerings, as well as graduate students’ teaching and research responsibilities throughout their degree programs. In addition, we are targeting financial support for graduate education in ways that will increase selectivity and expand and enhance programs that leverage UK’s existing and emerging areas of strength in research and creative work.

Promises Made. Promises Kept.

Shared Success in Transforming Tomorrow Our action steps are designed to transform the quality and distinctiveness of our graduate programs.

Over the last year, three action steps in particular have yielded the most promise.

The Graduate School is responsible for awarding multiple fellowships, many of which are intended for entering students. The process for awarding fellowships, though, held opportunities for improvement to help programs make offers and recruit the best and brightest graduate prospects earlier in the recruiting calendar. To address this, the Graduate School established the block funding initiative and piloted it in five programs that represented a range of disciplines and graduate support mechanisms (Integrated Biomedical Sciences, Psychology, Computer Science, English, and Plant Pathology). The approach involved Metric

Definition

Doctoral Program Selectivity Graduate Degrees Awarded*

Diversity of Graduate Student Enrollment

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*Results reported from prior year

providing funds to these programs at the very beginning of the recruiting cycle and applying few constraints on how the programs could use their funds in their recruitment efforts. Thus far, feedback from the programs has been uniformly positive.

At the same time, the professional development of our graduate students is key to their long-term success. To support both professional development and career planning opportunities, the Graduate School offers courses in preparing future faculty and professionals. In September 2016, more than 50 students attended the first Graduate Student Leaders Conference; this full-day event was specifically designed to improve their leadership skills. The recently launched GradDegree+ program involves a unique partnership between the Graduate School and UK Human Resources to help develop Baseline

2015-16

2016-17

2020 Goal

Percentage of doctoral applicants who receive offers of admission

25.0%

32.9%

29.8%

22.0%

Master’s, Education Specialist, and Doctoral degrees awarded

1,539

1,501

1,507

1,639

African American/Black

4.5%

4.6%

4.7%

7.7%

Hispanic/Latino

2.6%

2.4%

2.5%

2.7%

and refine the transferable skills highly sought by employers. Examples of short courses offered in this program include “Communicating across Cultures,” “Managing Conflict,” and “Leading Effective Teams.”

The third area of great promise relates to further enhancing diversity and inclusivity. As the Graduate School strives to increase the number of under-represented minority students enrolled, it also must do everything possible to ensure their subsequent academic success. To this end, the assistant dean of graduate academic services has been instrumental in developing a mentorship program, particularly for recipients of the Lyman T. Johnson Fellowship (LTJ) and Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Doctoral Scholars awards for under-represented minority students. The goal is to identify a faculty mentor for each scholar; to date, 54 of the more than 70 eligible students have been paired with mentors.

Year One Lessons Learned

Year Two Priorities

Our progress to date is a strong foundation for future success.

Critical to additional progress is the coordinated communication between the Graduate School and college departments to improve the application process for prospective graduate students. Our research indicates that a large number of applications for graduate study are started but never completed.

Coordinated communication across academic and administrative units responsible for recruitment and enrollment can assist applicants with the process and provide the necessary information to join their preferred program.

Under-represented minority graduate student mentoring enhances academic success. The mentorship program is in its infancy, but the discussion at the fall 2016 LTJ/SREB reception supported the concept that a greater sense of belonging and the ready availability of a close support structure for students will lead to greater academic success.

Though the Graduate School already is offering many professional development and career advising programs, more are needed. It is clear that in order to grow and flourish, these programs must also be offered, in partnership with the Graduate School, at the departmental or college level. At the same time, our surveys identified that the top three transferable skills graduate students want to develop in order to complement their scholarly training are project management, personnel management, and grant writing.

To build on the proven success over the last year, the Graduate School will, in partnership with the graduate programs, develop a new marketing and communication strategy to increase applications from, and ultimate enrollment of, high-performing domestic, international, and under-represented minority students.

The Graduate School developed a proposal to expand the block grant program, whereby the pools of flexible funds will be given to the colleges who, in turn, will provide support to their graduate programs.

We believe that the central administration of each college is in a better position to assess program recruitment needs than the Graduate School.

The Graduate School consistently competes for top international and domestic applicants to its programs; however, more can be done to maximize the recruitment of top students from UK’s undergraduate programs. The University Scholars Program (USP) allows undergraduate students to enroll in the Graduate School as seniors and count up to 12 credit hours of coursework toward both their undergraduate and graduate degrees. The clear benefit at the graduate level is that the degree can be completed in a shorter time; this is a key consideration at a time when growing student debt is a major national concern. There is potential in developing more interdisciplinary collaborations, like the recently established USP linking agricultural biotechnology undergraduate majors with the master’s degrees in medical science.

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE TWO

Carleigh Fedorka

YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES, GO! Over the last several years, the Three Minute Thesis competition has grown exponentially and given graduate students an opportunity to hone their communication skills and present their research to an audience of laypersons. Participants have one PowerPoint slide and three minutes to effectively communicate the goals of their ongoing dissertation or thesis research to public audiences.

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he most recent competition featured nine graduate student finalists from five colleges (Agriculture, Food, and Environment; Arts and Sciences; Education; Medicine; and Pharmacy), who competed for an all-expense-paid trip to the Southern Council of Graduate Schools regional competition. The winner, Carleigh Fedorka (representing the Department of Veterinary Sciences in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment) presented, “The Dirty Brood Mare…Cleaned Up.”

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UK Chemistry Graduate Student Receives NASA Fellowship

Alexis Eugene, a UK doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry, has been awarded the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship. More than 700 applications were submitted for the 2016 awards, and Eugene was one of only 73 who received a fellowship in earth science.

“I am honored to receive this prestigious fellowship, and I am grateful for this opportunity to work with NASA scientists to further NASA’s goals while making progress toward my degree from UK,” Eugene said.

Eugene will collaborate with members of NASA’s Langley Aerosol Research Group Experiment by analyzing the chemical composition of cloud water and aerosol samples collected during flights over the Atlantic Ocean. Specifically, she will study what chemicals are there and how they affect the properties of the atmosphere.

Looking to the Future of Humanities Graduate Education The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has launched a major initiative to transform the culture of graduate education and to implement changes that will broaden the career preparation of doctoral students. The University of Kentucky and 27 other colleges and universities received a total of $1.65 million in grants to facilitate the transformation.

UK’s program, Careers Beyond the Professoriate, will provide resources and support to humanities and social science graduate students who are interested in exploring diverse career paths. Careers Beyond the Professoriate is supported by the College of Arts and Sciences and an NEH Next Generation Humanities PhD Grant. Led by project director Sarah Lyon, UK’s planning grant will enable integration of multiple career outcomes early in a student’s experience

in graduate school; revisions to curriculum and degree requirements to better prepare students for a diverse array of future occupations; maximization of faculty buy-in for a transformed doctoral degree; identification of methods for supporting students beyond teaching-focused funding; initiation of partnerships with non-academic institutions; and development of an evaluation plan for future activities and implementation.

“The academic-focused future we are accustomed to training graduate students for is disappearing,” NEH Chairman William D. Adams said. “If graduate programs wish to make a case for the continuation of graduate education in the humanities, they are going to have to think about the professional futures of their students in entirely different ways.”

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Strategic Objective Three

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVITY

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE THREE

Enhance the diversity and inclusivity of our University community through recruitment and retention of an increasingly diverse population of faculty, administrators, staff, and students, and by implementing initiatives that provide rich diversity-related experiences for all to help ensure their success in an interconnected world.

We will achieve this objective by working collaboratively to create an environment where all members of the UK community live and work in an environment of openness and acceptance, and in which people of all backgrounds, identities, and perspectives can feel a sense of belonging.

We are committed to providing an enriching UK experience for all faculty, administrators, staff, and students by actively exploring and adopting new initiatives that will expand both the diversity and inclusivity of our campus community.

Promises Made. Promises Kept.

Shared Success in Transforming Tomorrow The Office of the Provost has seen great success with the Provost Persistence Grant program, which encourages undergraduate retention, progression, and graduation by assisting students experiencing financial challenges. Over the past year, 309 such grants were awarded, 52 percent of which supported under-represented minority students and 38 percent of which supported African-American students,

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specifically. Additionally, 57 percent of recipients were students from Kentucky.

Last year, UK awarded $15.2 million in William C. Parker Scholarships. Of these, 1,956 awards— or 86 percent — supported under-represented minority students; 47 percent supported AfricanAmerican students; and 71 percent supported students from Kentucky.

Based on a realignment of student activity fee funding, Inclusive Excellence Programming Grants became available as well. The University is soliciting proposals from student organizations and faculty and staff units to enhance inclusive excellence across the student population. The primary focus of this funding opportunity is on collaboration and innovation. Upon conclusion of the first year of implementation, benefits of exemplary programs will be communicated to the University community.

While recruiting a more diverse community of students, faculty, and staff, the University also has launched a variety of new initiatives to nurture a feeling of safety and belonging on campus. The Unconscious Bias Initiative (UBI) began in earnest in early 2016, with trainings and a formal assessment of the campus climate. Throughout fall 2016, campus leadership, areas within the Office of the Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration, UK HealthCare officials, smaller colleges, smaller academic units,

faculty search committees, and teaching assistants received UBI training. The University will continue this important work with additional training in the future, with an ultimate goal of reaching all UK faculty, staff, and students through training, e-learning, and other learning opportunities over the next 2-3 years.

To strengthen the impact of this training and foster continuous improvement, each college identified diversity and inclusion officers, for a total of 38 officials. Following training of those officials in September and October 2016, their charge is to work collaboratively with college leadership, the Office of the Provost, and the Office for Institutional Diversity to facilitate achievement of the diversity and inclusivity strategic initiatives. Focus areas for these officials include leading in the development of initiatives and programs that support equitable opportunities; enhancing recruitment and retention efforts; and tracking college-wide efforts through narrative and data collection.

Year One Lessons Learned

Year Two Priorities

Across our campus and our country, there is much that unites us. But, at the same time, deep divisions exist. As Kentucky’s flagship, land-grant institution, we must continue striving to be a community where our embrace of diversity and expression welcomes everyone — of every race and religion; identity and perspective; and background and ideology.

Therefore, the University must maintain an awareness of, and foster a sense of belonging for, all student populations that comprise our community through increased communication, programming opportunities, and services that contribute to success. UK must foster the same sense of community and belonging for all our faculty and staff, as well as those who visit us.

We know that building the infrastructure for diversity and inclusion that includes participation throughout campus is essential to accelerate student success; increase faculty and staff representation; provide cultural competency; and enhance growth of the University community.

Every member of the UK family shares the responsibility for sustaining a community of belonging for everyone, and each of us shares the commitment to continue our progress.

To do so, we must develop a UK diversity plan in compliance with the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s “Kentucky Public Postsecondary Education Policy for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” In addition, we must examine employment categories where underutilization exists, taking affirmative measures to attain continuous progress in the number and proportion of female and under-represented minority faculty and staff, including UK HealthCare enterprise goals.

We have seen great progress and results from our continued UBI training completed thus far. We must continue this initiative for all members of the University community.

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE THREE

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Terry Allen | Sonja Feist-Price

A CAMPUS-WIDE CONVERSATION

University of Kentucky administrators continue to work diligently to address five primary concerns that students presented to them in November 2015. One of the primary concerns was the lack of African-American professors and their retention on campus.

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K has initiated a variety of efforts regarding faculty recruitment and retention. Assessment of the Strategic Plan first-year employment data indicates an increase in both the number and proportion of female, AfricanAmerican, and Hispanic faculty.

For several months, under-represented minority faculty groups, including African-American, Hispanic, Muslim, LGBTQ*, Asian, and Native-American, engaged in conversation to discuss the benefits and challenges of university life. These discussions provided a foundation for developing initiatives and recommendations that support hiring and retaining under-represented minority faculty.

Early Hands-on Science Education Inspires a New Generation of Researchers Most high school students are exposed to history, biology, and algebra classes; but a fortunate group of students from Lexington’s Bryan Station High School (BSHS) had the unique opportunity to do much more.

Four BSHS students were chosen by their school educators to participate in a health sciences mentoring program for economically disadvantaged but ambitious African-American students. The program was developed by University of Kentucky undergraduate student Kevin Landwehr under the mentorship of Assistant Professor and Gill Heart Insitute faculty member Dr. Michael Winkler, with support from the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine.

The BSHS students have participated in a variety of activities such as human subjects researcher training; Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) training and certification; and library science training (through the medical library). They also attended a life sciences entrepreneurship lecture via

telecast from Rice University; toured and had lectures on hospital testing laboratories; attended an autopsy presentation; took part in simulation training via the simulation lab for ICU care; attended curriculum vitae sessions meant to prepare them to pursue hospital jobs in the future; and had many shadowing experiences in different departments from radiology and cardiology to neurosurgery.

Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and Medical Director of the Gill Heart Institute Dr. Susan Smyth points to a critical challenge for the practice of medicine and science in terms of achieving equity in health care delivery and diversity in the workforce.

“This is an incredibly exciting and much needed program,” she said. “We face very real inequities in the STEM workforce. As a university that embraces diversity of thought and strives to promote an inclusive environment, we will need to develop programs and processes to affect change.”

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Strategic Objective Four

RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP

Expand our scholarship, creative endeavors, and research across the full range of disciplines to focus on the most important challenges of the Commonwealth, our nation, and the world.

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE FOUR

Continuing our commitment of the past 150 years, we will pursue research and creative work that cross interdisciplinary boundaries to address challenges and disparities of our citizens.

Strategic support and investment will be directed toward scholarship that capitalizes on strengths and enriches the lives of those in the Commonwealth.

Promises Made. Promises Kept.

Shared Success in Transforming Tomorrow As a land-grant institution with 17 colleges and UK Libraries, research and creative scholarly activity span our campus – a place where excellence takes many forms. To recognize the breadth of research excellence by our faculty, the Office of the Vice President for Research restructured the Universitywide Research Professorship Program. Each college sets its own nomination criteria for excellence.

The one-year, $10,000 award for excellence in research and creative work by faculty is used to further the research, scholarship, and creative endeavors of the awardee.

The landscape for extramural research funding is highly competitive, and our ability to compete depends on the intellectual capital of our scholars.

Over the last year, UK researchers increased

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*Preliminary, unpublished data

extramural grants and contracts earned by 11 percent. In addition, multidisciplinary research that addresses complex questions continues to grow. Over the last year, the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) received a second Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) totaling more than $19 million. In addition, continued NIH funding for the Alzheimer’s Disease Center within the SandersBrown Center on Aging assures that important basic research and clinical trials for Alzheimer’s therapies will continue. The newly formed Institute for Bioinformatics received a $2.8 million Major Research Instrumentation Grant from the National Science Foundation to support the development of the Kentucky Research Informatics Cloud.

Over the last year, we have strengthened the research enterprise by recruiting new leadership for five of the 13 multidisciplinary research centers that serve as collaborative research environments crossing academic and disciplinary boundaries.

The University also welcomed a new director of the Office of Technology and Commercialization, and a new executive director of the Proposal Development Office following nationwide searches. Finally, cuttingedge imaging instrumentation was brought into revised research support core facilities to enhance research capabilities and competitiveness of faculty for extramural funding.

The $265 million multidisciplinary research building will bring together researchers across numerous fields including health care (both basic and clinical), public health, behavioral sciences, agriculture outreach and extension, economics, and engineering

to focus on cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke, drug abuse, and obesity and diabetes. Kentucky leads the nation in incident rates in these complex health conditions.

“To solve complex problems, you have to use a multi-pronged approach,” said Vice President for Research Lisa Cassis, who also is a researcher in pharmacology and nutritional sciences in the College of Medicine. “Some of my colleagues tell me that obesity is about economics. I am approaching the problem from a very basic, biomedical research perspective. This building will allow us to put people like me in close proximity to someone who is studying obesity from an economic perspective.

The real power of research is realized in bringing different groups of experts together. This building will give us a vehicle, and my job is to promote that culture here at UK.”

Year One Lessons Learned It has been a productive year for UK’s research enterprise — one that has yielded multiple accolades as a nationally competitive institution for creative scholarship and discovery. There is, however, opportunity to refine existing metrics in terms of their definition and source. This is a continuous process that requires considerable thought, evaluation, and benchmarking.

Year Two Priorities In the year ahead, UK’s Markey Cancer Center will compete for the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center status. Competing for Comprehensive Cancer Center status moves the Markey Cancer Center and UK’s research in this critical area of health care to the next level, by adding depth and breadth to the research enterprise. This effort is central to our function as the University for Kentucky, as cancer death rates in the Commonwealth are among the highest in the nation.

As our new research building opens, we must be ready to optimize the use of our stateof-the-art laboratories. Therefore, the Office of the Vice President for Research will develop policies and procedures that align the allocation of laboratory space in multidisciplinary research buildings with thematic goals to address health disparities through interdisciplinary research. This effort will include policies and procedures for financial support of new multidisciplinary research centers and institutes that perform research addressing problems of the Commonwealth.

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Light Microscopy Core Instruments, Staff Boost Research Capacity

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE FOUR

The Office of the Vice President for Research invested $1.3 million in two new microscopes for the Light Microscopy Core to support an array of research efforts across campus. Chris Richards, core director and assistant professor of chemistry, said these instruments and the hiring of manager Thomas Wilkop (an electronics engineer from the University of California, Davis), will enable UK researchers to utilize the most advanced imaging available.

“If we want to understand biological systems, ranging from neuroscience to physiology, or to apply imaging techniques for cutting-edge materials science, we really need to have the type of equipment that makes us competitive with other universities. These microscopes absolutely do it,” Richards said.

University Research Professors Represent Excellence Across Campus The Strategic Plan for research focuses on expanding scholarship, creative endeavors, and research across the full range of disciplines. Seventeen faculty were named University Research Professors for 2016-2017, including Diana Hallman and Brent Seales.

Hallman, an associate professor of musicology in the College of Fine Arts, is an internationally recognized scholar of 19th-century French opera. In 2003 Hallman wrote a New York Times article on the historical and contemporary meanings of La Juive (The Jewess) in the Met’s production of the opera. She has dedicated her scholarship to revising the history of French grand opera, which is haunted by anti-Semitic attacks on the genre and its composers.

Seales, chair of the Computer Science Department in the College of Engineering, is a pioneer in scanning

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and virtual unwrapping techniques. He was able to recover legible sections (compiled from 10,000 separate CT slices) of the Herculaneum scrolls buried by volcanic ash. Seales was featured in publications around the globe for unwrapping the En-Gedi scroll, a 1,700-year-old, badly burned text that includes part of the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible.

“The text revealed today from the En-Gedi scroll was possible only because of the collaboration of many different people and technologies,” Seales said. “The last step of virtual unwrapping, done at the University of Kentucky through the hard work of a team of talented students, is especially satisfying because it has produced readable, identifiable, biblical text from a scroll thought to be beyond rescue.”

Clinical and Translational Science Award Renewed, CCTS Continues to Bring Discoveries to Communities

The mission of UK Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) is to accelerate the translation of basic science discoveries into tangible improvements in public health.

Through funding, training, infrastructure, and community engagement, the center facilitates and supports innovative team science. CCTS provides critical research infrastructure and pilot funding for new ideas. Over the years the center has provided $4 million in awards, which have yielded $38.5 million in competitive extramural research funding.

“To catalyze early-stage, innovative team science, we have funded 100 multidisciplinary team science projects,” said Philip A. Kern, CCTS director. “The awards have yielded an 8-to-1 return on competitive extramural research funding to UK.” The center also supports a two-year career development program that provides funding, research training, conference travel support, and mentorship designed to help junior investigators obtain independent investigator awards. As the CTSA hub for Central Appalachia, CCTS focuses on addressing health disparities in the region and collaborates with universities and hospitals in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and Tennessee. Through the Community Leadership Institute of Kentucky, CCTS has provided grants and research training to 14 community-based health partners.

UK Entomologist Leads Zika Solution Effort A UK entomologist is leading an international effort to find long-term, sustainable control options to effectively manage a mosquito known to transport several potentially deadly viruses, including Zika virus.

Grayson Brown, entomologist in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, is a former president of the Entomological Society of America, the world’s largest entomological organization.

As the world confronts the dangers of Zika virus, another UK professor, Stephen Dobson, and his former doctoral student turned business partner, Jimmy Mains, developed technology that uses male mosquitoes to effectively sterilize females through a naturally occurring bacterium and without

using chemical pesticides that can negatively impact beneficial non-target insects like bees and butterflies. With the help of the National Institutes of Health, the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation, and the Gatton College of Business and Economics’ Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship, Dobson and Mains have commercialized their research and launched MosquitoMate, which is currently conducting field trials of their product. This critical discovery may hold a key to unlocking a solution to deadly diseases transmitted by mosquitos — not just Zika virus, but also diseases like yellow fever, dengue fever, and malaria, to name a few.

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Strategic Objective Five

OUTREACH AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Leverage leading-edge technology, scholarship, and research in innovative ways to advance the public good and to foster the development of citizen-scholars.

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE FIVE

Promises Made. Promises Kept.

Shared Success in Transforming Tomorrow Over the past year, UK faculty, staff, and students laid the groundwork for continued success in community engagement. We developed and adopted data systems to collect and recognize faculty and staff efforts related to outreach and community engagement. An additional module in Digital Measures, a system already used by half of UK’s colleges, was added. The group will continue its work to develop budget-neutral solutions.

Technology has allowed us to greatly expand how we connect with community partners, near and far. Our efforts are based in the disciplinary strengths of our 17 colleges, research centers, UK Libraries, our network of extension offices, and in the creative and innovative interdisciplinary work of our

Partnerships between University and community stakeholders

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students and staff in Student and Academic Life and other interdisciplinary academic units that are both curricular and co-curricular.

Our service extends across the breadth of our land-grant institution – from evolving Extension Service efforts that touch every county of the Commonwealth, to high-tech, high-touch healing that is expanding access to quality, complex care. UK faculty, staff, students, and alumni are engaged in their local communities, the Commonwealth, and abroad.

We must accelerate our efforts to enrich and improve lives in all of the communities in which we engage.

Also, we must use what we learn from those we serve to inform and augment learning and research at UK.

Year One Lessons Learned Aligning traditional scholarship with engaged scholarship is critical to achieving our goal with respect to outreach and community engagement. In addition, and underscoring our work to establish definitions, a common reporting language improves consistency and measurability of engagement efforts. We also must continue to remove structural barriers across all areas of outreach and community engagement.

Year Two Priorities The Community Engagement and Outreach Council was established as a consultative steering committee for UK’s engagement efforts. Its recommendations will advance and support policies, structures, and data collection for high-impact initiatives to further institutionalize community engagement in alignment with the University’s Strategic Plan. The council assists the Office of Community Engagement in mobilizing town-gown partnerships, community-based scholarship, and outreach efforts that lead to societal change in the Commonwealth, nation, and world.

We will continue our progress by outlining the council’s future goals and objectives. We also will identify the top three-to-five issues most important to our partners, to continue our collaborative efforts and shared progress.

Building upon our work with data reporting systems, we will continue to operationalize them using Digital Measures for faculty activity, course-tagging, and volunteer matching for student activity.

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE FIVE

Aisha Nwandu

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE A University of Kentucky senior from Nigeria, Aisha Nwandu, finds passion in her involvement with service groups on campus and around Lexington.

N

wandu has spent her time at UK balancing various service positions with FUSION, Alpha Phi Omega, Campus Kitchen, and the Kentucky Refugee Ministries. She also works at the UK Center for Community Outreach (CCO) as a director of the Wildcats for Service (WFS) program. Nwandu said that one thing she has realized coming from Nigeria is the universality of social problems.

“I think of all the problems we have back home, and then all the ones we have here. I can see now that every population has its own unique struggles,” Nwandu said. “And it is never too late to become a conscious citizen.”

Nwandu plans to return to Nigeria someday. With her experience at the CCO, she said she knows that she is able to make a difference when she returns home.

“I have learned a lot about dedication and service at UK,” she added. “I do not have to sit around and wait for another person to do it. I can do it myself.”

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Rebuilding Kentucky Communities

A passion to do good is inspiring one University of Kentucky professor’s work and shaping his students’ academic experience. Gregory Luhan, the John Russell Groves Endowed Professor of Architecture in the College of Design, has always been interested in giving his students opportunities to create solutions for realworld problems.

“Without a doubt, I love what I do. I have a great passion to do good for people,” Luhan said. “We have the opportunity to build our ideas and to implement them and to improve communities around Kentucky.”

Luhan’s work took him and his students into West Liberty, Kentucky, a town ravaged by tornadoes in 2012.

There, his studios helped design solutions for communities rebuilding after natural disasters. He dedicated three years to the project.

“We realized a lot of terrain in the area is very mountainous and hilly, so building on those types of sites is very expensive,” he said. “So, we have been working with the structural engineering folks in construction science to think about the building as a different type of system. There were 100 families that were displaced, and now we are actually going to be building new prototypes for living on these difficult sites.” photo credit: Shaun Ring

CEDIK Grants Fund Rural Health Care Projects A summer health careers camp and a project to strengthen the nursing care continuum in a rural hospital system recently received seed grants from the Kentucky Rural Community Health program.

Administered by the University of Kentucky’s Community and Economic Development Initiative of Kentucky (CEDIK), the Kentucky Office of Rural Health, and the Kentucky Hospital Association, the program provides funds to rural hospitals and health care coalitions. It assists them in addressing health issues and concerns that were identified when the hospitals completed their community health needs assessments, as required by the Affordable Care Act. Marcum and Wallace Memorial Hospital in Irvine will use its $5,000 grant to improve care coordination, which will lead to improved quality of care and patient outcomes. This, in turn, will result in a positive impact on the hospital’s financial picture.

Barbourville Appalachian Regional Hospital will use its $2,500 grant to team up with the Southern

Kentucky Area Health Education Center and Union College Nursing Program to host the Summer Rural Health Scholars, a three-day health careers camp for high school students. Participating students will be exposed to a variety of health care opportunities.

CEDIK, part of the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, has a history of working with rural hospitals, health coalitions, and networks throughout Kentucky. CEDIK Extension Specialist Melody Nall said local hospitals and doctors’ practices often have the largest economic impact in rural communities, by providing jobs and returning dollars to the local economy. Good health care is also vital to attracting employers to a region.

“They want a healthy workforce, and they also want to have health care available for their employees,” Nall said. “Having both of those components in a community is vital for strong economic development…At the heart of both projects is the desire to improve health care and economic stability in rural communities.”

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE FIVE

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Preparing UK Students for Interdisciplinary Practice and Teaching through Service-Learning Since 2014, a number of UK faculty, students, and community partners have spent their spring vacations participating in an international practicum in rural Mayasandra, India – a rural farming village south of Bangalore with a population of fewer than 4,000.

Designed to enhance students’ understanding of interdisciplinary and inter-professional services, the program allows students from interdisciplinary early childhood education, special education, physical therapy, and medical school to participate in the provision of services to children with disabilities and their families. Teams of students, faculty, families, therapists, and teachers assess and develop intervention plans, share their expertise, and collaborate while gaining an understanding of global service delivery for children with disabilities.

This annual service-learning experience has evolved to include all stakeholders in the children’s lives.

In 2014, students saw 100 children and families because there was a significant drought in the region; families were not working and had the opportunity to travel to the clinic. Traveling from

more than 100 miles away and using all forms of transportation, families came from surrounding villages and communities for assessment by the UK team. In 2015 and 2016, even when farmers were working in the fields, resulting in a reduction in the number of families who came to the clinic for interventions, the UK teams saw more than 50 children and families each year.

“This work is tremendously important for our students to understand the role of each team member in the assessment and intervention for children with disabilities and their families,” said Katherine McCormick, professor of interdisciplinary early childhood education, in the College of Education.

“We believe that students who participate in this intensive immersive experience will be better teachers, therapists, and health providers when they return to their own communities of practice. We hope to promote the understanding that complicated issues such as hunger, poverty, and health disparities are universal and global issues that require thoughtful and intentional interventions.”

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An Equal Opportunity University