awards/recognition
■ The Family Resource and Youth Services Center for Cassidy Elementary and Morton Middle schools recently received a Harry J. Cowherd Award for Center Excellence. It's the first time a resource center in Fayette County Public Schools has earned this statewide honor. Center coordinator Jill Blackman, who is in her fifth year working at Cassidy and Morton, will accept the award at a Tuesday luncheon at the Galt House in Louisville.
The center is meant to help students address any issue that can impair them academically, from self-esteem and social issues to school supplies and groceries at home.
Cowherd Family Resource Center Awards honor excellence in three categories:
• Providing a comprehensive array of services and support for pre-K-12 students and their families.
• For a center that serves elementary school children, providing a variety of services including, but not limited to, out-of-school time referrals or services, family-skills training, parent and child education, and health services and referrals.
• For a center serving middle/high school students, providing services that include health and social services referral, career exploration and development, summer and part-time job development, substance abuse counseling and education, and family crisis and mental health counseling.
■ Kelly Price, Central Kentucky's Youth Salute Leader of the Year, recently received an all-expense paid trip to the Town Meeting on Tomorrow, The National Council on Youth Leadership, at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
She also was named one of seven Bluegrass RECC Youth Leaders of the Year and was part of the Washington Youth Tour. She received a trip to Washington, D.C., in June and met with Sens. Jim Bunning and Mitch McConell, as well as U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler.
Price is the secretary of the Executive Council on Student Government at East Jessamine High School in Nicholasville. She is a member of the National Society of High School Scholars, Who's Who Among American High School Students and Outstanding Students of America.
■ Tiffany Patrick, the daughter of Fred Patrick and Wanda Thompson of Irvine, was recently accepted to the Phi Sigma Theta National Leadership and Honor Society at the University of Kentucky.
■ Diane Shuffett, a special-education administrator at Fayette County Public Schools, recently received a Best Practice Award in the area of counseling from the Kentucky Association for Psychology in Schools. Her work with a homebound student was particularly noted.
■ Heidi Victoria Farrell was recently inducted into the Alpha Phi Kappa Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa at Bluegrass Community & Technical College. Farrell, from Lexington, is majoring in nursing.
Established in 1918 by two-year college presidents, Phi Theta Kappa is the oldest and most prestigious honor society serving two-year colleges around the world.
■ Laura Menard of Lexington toured the southeastern United States with the St. Olaf Orchestra, conducted by Steven Amundson, during this year's tour by the 92-member ensemble. The students performed six concerts in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida last week. The final performance of the tour, a home concert at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 5, can be viewed during and after the concert at http://www.stolaf.edu/multimedia.
■ These people recently received 2009 Outstanding Staff Awards from the UK College of Agriculture:
• Gene Olson, a research specialist from Lexington, manages one of the most extensive forage variety testing programs in the Southeastern United States and serves as the lead contact with company plant breeders and researchers on the procurement of seed for testing. He maintains, collects data, analyzes and writes reports on more than 5,000 variety plots.
• Bobby Orange, a research farm technician, works closely with researchers who appreciate his willingness to be on call at all times for farm and motor pool emergencies at UK's Research and Education Center in Princeton.
• Suzann Smith, an office manager is responsible for information technology and software support, bookings and billings, and financial records with numerous groups, each with separate accounting and treasurers. She is responsible for all inventoried items and insurance records for the Fayette County Cooperative Extension Service.
• Ludmila Lapchyk, a research analyst, oversees two labs, maintains a major growth facility and conducts independent research in the Department of Plant Pathology.
• Cindy Stidham of Lexington is an administrative staff associate who provides assistance to the UK Department of Animal and Food Sciences chair and budget officer. She works with the faculty database, personnel and payroll, budget issues and reports and assists with UK policy and procedures.
• Yvonne Thompson has primarily research-related responsibilities within the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, but a major aspect of her position is also service-oriented, consisting of soil characterization analyses. For more than 20 years, she has provided physical, chemical and mineralogical data to scientists working on National Cooperative Soil Survey projects throughout Kentucky.
■ The Paul Laurence Dunbar High School marching band recently earned the Grand Champion trophy at the 19th annual Bluegrass Pageant of Bands. Dunbar also won for Best Overall Music, Best Overall Visual, Best Overall Effect and Best in Class for its color guard. Tates Creek High finished third in Class 5A, and Henry Clay was fourth. A dozen bands from Central Kentucky gathered for the Oct. 24 competition at Bryan Station High School.
■ Jake Metz and Jordan Wilson, members of the UK student chapter of the co-ed business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi, were awarded international honors during the fraternity's biennial conference earlier this year.
Metz, a junior management major from Louisville was awarded Innovator of the Year for his work as professional chair of the Omicron Psi chapter.
Wilson, a senior finance major from Fort Wright, was named Brother of the Year for his dedication to the chapter as a whole since joining in fall 2005.
In addition to these individual honors, the UK chapter, Omicron Psi, was awarded a "First Place Fraternity Standing," along with four other chapters, for its achievements in academics and recruitment.
■ The UK College of Health Sciences inducted two outstanding alumni, Mike Funk and Mark Hunt, into its Hall of Fame at a dinner ceremony Oct. 8.
Funk is a 1981 graduate of the community health program and has spent 29 years in heath care, 28 of them at the executive level. He lives in Louisville and is the corporate director of national provider networks for Humana, overseeing more than 500,000 contracted providers across the country.
Hunt, who lives in Atlanta, is a 1985 graduate of the college's health administration program. His health care experience spans more than 20 years and includes stints with several of the leading proprietary national public and private companies including National Medical Enterprises/Tenet, HCA, Integrated Health Services and, most recently, Genoa Healthcare Group.
■ UK's S•KY BLUE House placed ninth out of 20 university-led teams in the 2009 Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This was UK's first time participating in the Solar Decathlon. The competition lasted a week, with the prototype home designs open to the public through Sunday.
Next year, the UK S•KY BLUE House will be exhibited at the 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games, scheduled to begin Sept. 25, in Lexington. The house will serve as the Visitor's Center and the entry threshold to the Kentucky Experience exhibitions at the events.
scholarships/grants
■ Kristyn Mickley, a sophomore studying nursing at UK, has been awarded one of 40 Tylenol Scholarships presented by the company. The $5,000 scholarship is given to students with outstanding leadership qualities and academic performance.
Mickley has earned her Certified Nursing Assistant certification, which allows her to serve as a nurse assistant. Outside the classroom and research labs, Mickley keeps busy as a Chellgren Fellow, a group leader for Christian Student Fellowship and a member of the KCrew.
miscellaneous
A group of 20 alumni from Campbellsville University recently organized a Bluegrass Alumni Chapter for graduates in the Central Kentucky region. Alumni gathered for the inaugural meeting at deSha's in downtown Lexington.
Shannon Clark, director of alumni relations at Cumberland, established the chapter to increase alumni participation in events and keep them connected to their alma mater.
The Bluegrass Alumni Chapter is the second to have been organized in conjunction with the Office of Alumni Relations at Cumblerland.
