Dear Colleagues,

The Spring 2025 Academic Reminders contains information on the academic policies and rules set forth by the Administrative Regulation — Academic and Student Affairs (Interim), which can be viewed in its entirety here.

The Spring 2025 academic reminders can be found at the Academic Ombud website and contains information on the following topics:

• Course syllabi
• Academic integrity
• Assignments during Finals Week
• Attendance
• Disability Resource Center (DRC) Accommodations
• Prep Days
• Reading Days

Please share these Academic Reminders with your teaching assistants and other instructors, as appropriate.

Please contact us with any questions or issues you encounter. I look forward to working with you for a successful semester.

Sincerely,

Dr. Alice Turkington
Academic Ombud
ombud@uky.edu
859-257-3737

Campus Colleagues, 

We invite internal faculty to apply to be the next director of TEK. Candidates must hold a Ph.D. or other terminal degree in their field of study and must be tenured faculty members of any UK college. Candidates should demonstrate national recognition for scholarly achievement reflecting excellence in both research and teaching as well as a demonstrated record of transdisciplinary collaboration. Candidates should have some prior administrative experience (e.g., developing and managing budgets, leading/managing groups of faculty and/or staff). Find more information about TEK here.

We also want to thank Dr. Susan Cantrell. She has served as director of the Office of Transdisciplinary Educational approaches to advance Kentucky (TEK) — the university’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) and a requirement of reaffirmation through the Southern Association of College and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) — in the initial year of implementation. We want to recognize and thank Dr. Cantrell for her exemplary leadership and advocacy during this innovative and interdisciplinary opportunity that has impacted 24 faculty fellows and more than 4,000 students. Importantly, I want to congratulate Dr. Cantrell on her next step in her leadership journey as the acting associate dean for faculty advancement and affairs for the College of Education.

Application Process: To apply, please upload a letter of interest and a CV. All materials should be submitted here via Qualtrics. 

Applications are due by Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, at 5 p.m. EDT.

Thank you.

Brandi Frisby, Ph.D. 
Associate Provost for Academic Affairs

Dear Campus Colleagues,

The UK Core is a critical and foundational part of the education we provide to our students. The skills learned in these courses allow them to be prepared for lives of meaning and purpose at UK and after graduating, both personally and professionally. 

Last year a workgroup examined the UK Core utilizing input from faculty, students, staff, community members and employers. This workgroup proposed additional questions for our campus community to consider so that we can bolster and further support the UK Core. 

We will be dedicating additional time and thought into exploring those questions through the development of a collaborative UK Core Task Force comprised of faculty, students and staff. 

We are seeking nominations of faculty to serve on the UK Core Task Force, preferably those who have had experience teaching in the UK Core and who have an understanding of curriculum and assessment. Faculty members of any title series and rank are invited to join the task force. In addition, nominees should represent one of the four areas of UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry; Composition and Communication; Quantitative Reasoning; and Citizenship. 

The task force will meet biweekly through the academic year at 10-11 a.m. on Wednesdays.

To nominate yourself or someone else to serve on the UK Core Task Force, please click here. 

Nominations are due by Friday, Sept. 6 at 5 p.m.

Thank you in advance. We appreciate your consideration of nominees to assist in this important work. 

Brandi Frisby 
Associate Provost for Academic Affairs

Dear Colleagues:

The Fall 2024 Semester Academic Reminder contains information on the academic policies and rules set forth by the Administrative Regulation: Academic and Student Affairs. This AR was approved by the Board of Trustees on June 14 and can be viewed in its entirety here. 

The Fall 2024 Academic Reminder can be found at the Academic Ombud Services website and contains information on the following topics:

• Academic Integrity
• Assignments During Finals Week
• Attendance
• Guidance Regarding Syllabi
• Disability Resource Center (DRC) Accommodations
• Prep Days
• Reading Days

Please share the Academic Reminder with your teaching assistants and other instructors, as appropriate.

Please contact us with any questions or issues you encounter during the semester.  I look forward to working with you for a successful semester.

Sincerely,

Dr. Alice Turkington   
Academic Ombud 
ombud@uky.edu 
257-3737

Colleagues,

We hope you have had both a restful and productive summer. We are looking forward to your return to campus soon as we kick off the 2024-25 academic year.

To help with those efforts, the Fall 2024 Syllabus Guidance and Checklist details the essential elements for your class syllabi and what we hope is other helpful guidance as you make final preparations for your classes.

As an overriding principle, we sought to clarify needed elements as a checklist, while maximizing the autonomy of instructors’ expertise in crafting their syllabi. We included an additional section on classroom emergency preparedness and response to be helpful based on campus input and the importance of the safety and wellbeing of our campus community.

In short, the goal was to create clearer guidance, fewer mandatory requirements for inclusion and a helpful checklist of items that you can use as you are creating and finalizing syllabi for the fall. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Again, we hope you have had a time of both rest and renewal this summer. We look forward to working and engaging with you as we begin a new academic year.

Brandi Frisby, Ph.D. 
Associate Provost for Academic Affairs

The University of Kentucky seeks nominations and applications for the director of the Gaines Center for the Humanities (a 50% appointment). The Gaines Center was established in 1984 with a generous endowment gift by Joan and John Gaines. It provides an intensive educational experience in the humanities for students from various majors in the last two years of their undergraduate careers. It also serves as a collaborative home to a wide range of faculty from many academic units on campus and offers public programs with and for the university and the wider community, such as the Bale-Boone Symposium in the Humanities and the Lafayette Seminar in Public Issues. These functions require the Gaines director to be a scholar with considerable enthusiasm and a broad and lively interest in the humanities and community affairs.

The Gaines director will serve as a mentor to the Gaines Fellows and oversee the fellowship program. This includes supervising and overseeing the interdisciplinary humanities seminar for junior fellows and the senior fellows’ thesis projects (for 24 undergraduate student fellows). Alumni fellows of the two-year program have won many national and international awards, including scholarships such as Marshall, Truman, Jack Kent Cooke, Udall, Rhodes and Javits.

The director will oversee all Gaines-affiliated faculty. They will collaborate with faculty and staff from across campus and with community partners to maintain and advance the center’s mission.

The director will also supervise the Gaines Center associate director and administrative support staff members. Additionally, the director is responsible for fundraising, maintaining a strategic plan aligned with the university’s strategic plan, the UK-PURPOSE, and for overseeing the center’s three historic buildings. The annual operating budget for the Gaines Center is approximately $700,000. Please see the Gaines Center website for more information on the center, the fellowship program, humanities events and advocacy and more: https://gaines.uky.edu/.

The position of director also includes appointment as the John R. Gaines Endowed Chair in the Humanities and executive director of the Kentucky Humanities Foundation — a foundation affiliated with the university that provides support for programming and advises the Gaines Center on strategic issues.

Qualifications and expectations: The director of the Gaines Center must be a tenured associate professor or professor with national or international recognition for scholarly achievement in the humanities or a closely related discipline. They must also have a passionate commitment to excellence in undergraduate education. The ideal candidate should be able to articulate a sophisticated, creative and visionary understanding of the humanities, humanistic education and their role in a democratic society. The Gaines Center director will be expected to maintain an active research program and teach up to one course a semester in their home discipline. The director will hold an appointment in an academic department aligned with the appointee's scholarly background and research interests; they will meet the appointment, promotion and endowed chair requirements of the home college. The director will serve a six-year term, with the possibility of reappointment. The Gaines Center for the Humanities is administratively housed in the Office of the Provost.

Application process: To apply, please send a letter of interest that highlights related experience, including a statement that outlines the types of humanities courses and public programming the candidate proposes for the future of the Gaines Center. Along with the letter, the candidate should include a curriculum vitae and a list of three references. All materials should be submitted to Michelle Castro in the Office of the Provost at michelle.castro@uky.edu. Candidates selected as finalists will be asked to submit two additional letters of recommendation, including one from their department chair. Review of applications will begin January 22, 2024, and will continue until the position is filled. For questions regarding the search, please contact Dr. Katie Cardarelli at kathryn.cardarelli@uky.edu.

Kathryn M. Cardarelli, Ph.D. 
Senior Associate Provost for Academic Affairs

Dear Colleagues:

The Academic Reminder for the spring 2024 semester contains information on the following topics and rules set forth by the University Senate. This document can be found at the Academic Ombud Services website and contains information about:

·       Academic Integrity

·       Assignments During Finals Week

·       Attendance

·       Rules Regarding Syllabi

·       Disability Resource Center (DRC) Accommodations

·       Prep Week

·       Reading Days

Please review the recent Senate Rule (5.2.5.7.2) regarding assignments during Finals Week and share the Academic Reminders with your teaching assistants and others, as appropriate.

Please contact us with any questions or issues you encounter during the semester.  I look forward to working with you for a successful semester.

Sincerely,

Dr. Alice Turkington 

Academic Ombud

ombud@uky.edu

257-3737

The University of Kentucky seeks nominations and applications for the director of the Gaines Center for the Humanities (a 50% appointment). The Gaines Center was established in 1984 with a generous endowment gift by Joan and John Gaines. It provides an intensive educational experience in the humanities for students from various majors in the last two years of their undergraduate careers. It also serves as a collaborative home to a wide range of faculty from many academic units on campus and offers public programs with and for the university and the wider community, such as the Bale-Boone Symposium in the Humanities and the Lafayette Seminar in Public Issues. These functions require the Gaines director to be a scholar with considerable enthusiasm and a broad and lively interest in the humanities and community affairs.

The Gaines director will serve as a mentor to the Gaines Fellows and oversee the fellowship program. This includes supervising and overseeing the interdisciplinary humanities seminar for junior fellows and the senior fellows’ thesis projects (for 24 undergraduate student fellows). Alumni fellows of the two-year program have won many national and international awards, including scholarships such as Marshall, Truman, Jack Kent Cooke, Udall, Rhodes and Javits.

The director will oversee all Gaines-affiliated faculty. They will collaborate with faculty and staff from across campus and with community partners to maintain and advance the center’s mission.

The director will also supervise the Gaines Center associate director and administrative support staff members. Additionally, the director is responsible for fundraising, maintaining a strategic plan aligned with the university’s strategic plan, the UK-PURPOSE, and for overseeing the center’s three historic buildings. The annual operating budget for the Gaines Center is approximately $700,000. Please see the Gaines Center website for more information on the center, the fellowship program, humanities events and advocacy and more: https://gaines.uky.edu/.

The position of director also includes appointment as the John R. Gaines Endowed Chair in the Humanities and executive director of the Kentucky Humanities Foundation — a foundation affiliated with the university that provides support for programming and advises the Gaines Center on strategic issues.

Qualifications and expectations: The director of the Gaines Center must be a tenured associate professor or professor with national or international recognition for scholarly achievement in the humanities or a closely related discipline. They must also have a passionate commitment to excellence in undergraduate education. The ideal candidate should be able to articulate a sophisticated, creative and visionary understanding of the humanities, humanistic education and their role in a democratic society. The Gaines Center director will be expected to maintain an active research program and teach up to one course a semester in their home discipline. The director will hold an appointment in an academic department aligned with the appointee's scholarly background and research interests; they will meet the appointment, promotion and endowed chair requirements of the home college. The director will serve a six-year term, with the possibility of reappointment. The Gaines Center for the Humanities is administratively housed in the Office of the Provost.

Application process: To apply, please send a letter of interest that highlights related experience, including a statement that outlines the types of humanities courses and public programming the candidate proposes for the future of the Gaines Center. Along with the letter, the candidate should include a curriculum vitae and a list of three references. All materials should be submitted to Michelle Castro in the Office of the Provost at michelle.castro@uky.edu. Candidates selected as finalists will be asked to submit two additional letters of recommendation, including one from their department chair. Review of applications will begin January 22, 2024, and will continue until the position is filled. For questions regarding the search, please contact Dr. Katie Cardarelli at kathryn.cardarelli@uky.edu.

Kathryn M. Cardarelli, PhD
Senior Associate Provost for Academic Affairs

Dear colleagues,

I want to remind you of the application deadline for the position of Assistant Provost for Planning and Institutional Effectiveness. This position is a result of the re-envisioning of the Office for Strategic Planning and Institutional Effectiveness (OSPIE) that was performed during the past two months by an internal advisory committee with feedback from university stakeholders. This faculty leader position reports to the Senior Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and is responsible for academic planning and institutional effectiveness activities on behalf of the Office of the Provost. The position is vacant until filled, with an anticipated start date on or before Jan. 1, 2024.

The Assistant Provost for Planning and Institutional Effectiveness leads accreditation and state compliance activities. They serve as a resource for university, college and department level leaders who need support on strategic planning activities and implementation.

This is a full-time appointment; any faculty members on any assignment period are eligible to apply. If you are interested or know someone who would be a good candidate for this position, please review and forward the information found here. 

Applications must be submitted by Nov. 14, 2023 at 5 p.m. 

Thank you for all you do.

Sincerely, 

Katie Cardarelli, Ph.D.
Senior Associate Provost for Academic Affairs