Kevin Harrelson discovered the works of 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and early-19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel while an undergraduate philosophy major at Villanova University. 

Their writing—and their questions—captivated him. His readings of Hegel led to an interest in German Idealism in general, and led him to pursue his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Kentucky. 

“There were a lot of people at UK studying German Idealism, and it was a good place to pursue that,” said Harrelson, who completed his Ph.D. at UK in 2004.

Harrelson is now in his first year as visiting assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ball State University. 

His first book, “

At the end of every big chapter of our lives, we are faced with tough choices. As I was applying for graduate schools, I was overwhelmed by the opportunities that awaited... somehow in the jungle of choices, everyone finds one that seems most appropriate at the moment, chooses it, and hopes that it proves to be a good one for the future. These choices define us in some way. In case of graduate school, this choice defines us as mathematicians. In this sense, I have chosen the perfect department.

First of all, I came to graduate school torn between a few areas of mathematics and wasn't quite sure how to choose one. So I took classes in all of these areas during the first two years, and have had a chance to meet faculty that were happy to discuss research problems in each area. I was very happy with the choices I had! Also, during these first years I had a chance to read recent

Alumna Caroline Light says she feels like ending up at the University of Kentucky for her graduate studies “was the luckiest break.”

Light is now the Director of Studies in the Women, Gender and Sexuality program at Harvard University. The research and teaching skills she gained while at UK have helped her get to where she is now, she said.

The Virginia native had finished her undergraduate degree in history at Duke University in 1991 and was shopping around for graduate programs when UK caught her attention.

“One of my professors pulled me aside and asked if I had thought about UK,” Light said. “All I knew at that point was that they had a basketball team, but I learned that with people like Patricia Cooper and 

By all accounts, Allen Turner is a long way from home.

A University of Kentucky alumnus twice over, Turner is in Guadalajara, Mexico and about to complete a program that will allow him to teach English as a foreign language. When he is finished, Turner, 69, and his wife plan to move to Ecuador where they own a small sugar cane farm.

Once in Ecuador, Turner hopes to teach and to research how birds relate to culture.

Meanwhile, he is still serving as a legal consultant to the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians who are fighting to be recognized as a tribe by the U.S. government.

The anthropologist, lawyer and teacher has certainly kept busy since he left the College of Arts & Sciences in 1981.

“They’re all dimensions of what I’ve been able to do in my life so far,” Turner said. “You couldn’t put me in a box if you tried.”

Turner is

Graduate student

by Sara Cunningham

Rachel Dunnagan has always been as dedicated to the education of others as she is to her own education.

Teaching comes natural to the math and classics senior.

Her love of education began with creating pretend assignments for her younger sister when they played school as children and continued with Dunnagan’s devotion to helping her classmates with their studies in high school.

The Louisville native was scheduled to graduate summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in math and a second Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics this past spring, and plans to progress to a graduate program to continue preparing herself for a long career in teaching math and Latin to high

There is one 12 or 13-year-old female, with great dental work, that he can’t get out of his mind. This is a case that haunts him.

“I can’t ID her,” said Bill Bass, one of the world’s leading forensic anthropologists and alumnus of UK’s College of Arts and Sciences. “There are cold cases, but they are never really that cold. We are constantly talking about them and there are new techniques that are coming out all the time that may break the case.”

Originally from Stephens City, Va., Bass came to Kentucky in the early 50s after being drafted and stationed at Fort Knox. When his military career was up, he decided to come to UK and was admitted to the psychology program with a minor in anthropology.

“Half way through the fall semester I realized I didn’t want to spend my time talking to people about their problems all day,” he said.

It was then he

Susan (Camenisch) Eriksson started her studies at UK as a music major, with a focus on piano. But when she took an honors section of geology during her junior year, she was hooked.

“After one exam, I went up to the TA and said, I love this, I love, this, I love this!” she recalls. “I was so excited. I said I wished I had found geology as a freshman.”

Eventually, her UK professors—particularly Dr. Bill Blackburn—helped Eriksson make the switch to majoring in geology as a junior, and she was able to graduate with just one extra semester of work, in the summer of 1971.

“I was the only woman undergraduate in geology at UK when I was there,” she recalls. “That was quite a big thing. It’s traditionally a very male-dominated field.”

Professors and graduate students in the department, who became her colleagues and friends, encouraged her studies, and

Jason Cummins’ employer gave him a three-year, full-tuition college scholarship, sent him to flight school, paid him to attend one of the most prestigious MBA programs in the country, and asked him to teach economics at West Point. In May, the UK Class of 1993 alum returned to take up the leadership of the UK Army ROTC program; the same program from which he himself graduated 16 years ago.

Cummins’ office walls in Barker Hall display a scrapbook of his Army career: the tail rotor blade from an Apache helicopter, the flag of the 101st Airborne, his MBA diploma from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, a cavalry sabre, and unit pictures from Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, Cummins also brought with him a list of ambitious goals for the UK Army ROTC program that is matched only by his seemingly boundless energy.

A Lexington, Ky. native, Cummins followed

Was it destiny or some predisposition that led John Yozwiak to the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences? Or maybe it simply was a matter of finding a great opportunity.

Yozwiak, whose grandfather was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Youngstown State University, was born in Binghamton, N.Y., but found himself relocated with his family to Lexington, Ky., when he was six.

Upon graduating from Lexington Catholic High School in 1990, Yozwiak, who comes from a long line of college graduates, knew that college was certainly the next step. He used his experiences from visiting friends at UK as well as his desire to stay close to home in choosing his collegiate destination.

“My family has always valued education. Therefore, attending college was very important to me,” Yozwiak said. “In part, I decided to attend the University of

There is nothing pretentious or “prude” about UK Alumni Julie Sweet and Tom Riley. This husband and wife team – now history professors at Baylor University in Waco, Texas – say their formative years as Ph.D. candidates in the University of Kentucky’s Department of History, were crucial to their future success.

“Our professors were genuinely nice people who went out of their way to help us,” Riley said. “I wasn’t the best writer, but Dr. Eller understood that.” Riley, a retired naval officer from West Virginia, focused his dissertation on his home state during World War II, combining both his childhood and military experiences to write it. Serving as a teaching assistant under Dr. Ireland, Riley named this professor as a dynamic pedagogical

Andrew Bozio first got hooked on British literature as a junior at Louisville’s St. Xavier High School. He knew then and there he’d found his calling.

Having just finished his first year of studies in the English PhD program at the University of Michigan, Bozio credits his undergraduate experiences at UK with helping establish a foundation for his intended career in early modern literature.

A Gaines Fellow and member of the UK Honors Program, Bozio graduated from UK in December 2006 with a degree in English and minors in French and philosophy. His classes in Arts & Sciences, the Honors Program, and the Gaines Center for the Humanities program “absolutely” prepared him for his graduate level coursework, he says.

It was the combination of those three things, the skills that one program offered, another program was able to supplement and help develop,” he says

For over 100 years, the College of Arts & Sciences has been fertile ground for aspiring political leaders, from former Kentucky governors Edward T. Breathitt and Martha Layne Collins to current U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter, and even Lexington’s own mayor Jim Newberry.

In 1978, as a senior political science major, Newberry might not have known that he would lead Lexington, but seeing that he served as Student Government President and received a diverse Arts & Sciences education, he was certainly well-prepared for just such an endeavor.

“I am confronted on a daily basis with issues ranging from economic policy to social services to criminal justice to civil engineering,” Newberry began. “My political science degree and liberal arts education exposed me to a multitude of disciplines, and those broad experiences as a student prepared me well for the