The Bluegrass and Beyond

In their new book, “The Embattled Wilderness,” Erik Reece and James Krupa write this: “To look out over the forest’s steep ridges — slopes that novelist James Still called ‘a river of earth’ — is to understand that Robinson Forest is simultaneously one of the most biologically diverse landscapes in North America and one of the most threatened.” Photos by Tom Eblen  

JACKSON — As we hike uphill through beech and yellow poplar trees, a wild turkey flies out of the woods and across the trail in front of us. A few hundred yards higher, Erik Reece stops suddenly and points at a scarlet tanager foraging among the oaks.

At the crest of the ridge, we climb an old fire tower and are rewarded with a spectacular view of Robinson Forest. On this clear, spring morning, the forest looks like a rolling “river of earth,” as James Still described the natural landscape of Eastern Kentucky in his classic 1940 novel, River of Earth.

The green waves roll out in every direction until they suddenly stop at Robinson Forest’s boundary. Beyond the boundary are huge, gray scars from surface mining and the flattened, denuded remnants of “reclaimed” coal-mine land, now struggling to support foreign grasses and scrubby trees.

“We hope more people will go to Robinson Forest, but a lot of Kentuckians won’t, so we wanted them to experience it vicariously,” said Reece, co-author with James J. Krupa of the new book,The Embattled Wilderness: The Natural and Human History of Robinson Forest and the Fight for Its Future (University of Georgia Press, $24.95).

Reece will sign copies of the book from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Friday at The Morris Book Shop, 882 E. High St.

Erik Reece on Lewis Fork creek in Robinson Forest.

Reece is a UK English professor best known for his award-winning 2006 book, Lost Mountain: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia. Like Lost Mountain, this book has a forward by renowned Kentucky author Wendell Berry.

Krupa is a UK biology professor who over decades of study has explored every ridge and valley of the main 10,000-acre block of the 14,786-acre forest, which contains some of the state’s cleanest streams.

“It is one of the last and largest examples of the oldest, most biologically diverse ecosystem in North America — the mixed mesophytic,” the authors write in their introduction.

“Unfortunately, industrial development has churned under the mountains surrounding these 14,000 acres, turning Robinson Forest into an island of biological diversity surrounded by an ever-expanding desert,” they write, adding that there is every reason to believe that coal and timber interests want to plunder this land, too.

Reece and Krupa are both fine writers. In this small, engaging book, they alternate chapters, explaining the natural and human history of this unique corner of Breathitt, Perry and Knott counties and making a case to preserve it.

Krupa describes the geological history of Robinson Forest and the surrounding Cumberland Plateau, which was formed before there were dinosaurs, mammals or even flowering plants. These mountains were once covered by a shallow inland sea and then swamps. Dead ferns and trees sank to the bottom for thousands of years, forming peat and eventually bituminous coal.

Krupa also discusses his research into the ecological diversity of the current forest. Who knew lichens and wood rats could be so fascinating?

Reece’s chapters describe the forest’s human history, from settlement to the early 20th century, when Cincinnati business partners F.W. Mobray and E.O. Robinson bought the forest and cut virtually all of its timber.

In 1923, Robinson gave the wasted land to the University of Kentucky for research to “tend to the betterment of the people of the mountain region of Kentucky.” Under UK’s stewardship, most of the land has regenerated over the past 90 years into a second-growth version of the biologically diverse, native forest.

But coal operators, who wield considerable clout, have periodically pressured UK to allow mining in the forest. Reece said he and Krupa decided to write this book after the UK Board of Trustees’ controversial 2007 decision to clear-cut 800 acres of the main forest.

Although the forest recovered from clear-cutting a century ago, critics doubt that can happen again because of the extensive surface mining on surrounding land and the planting of invasive species as part of mine “reclamation.”

Reece said he and Krupa hope their book will prompt UK officials to rethink their management strategy for Robinson Forest and embrace a broader ecological research mission. A part of such a mission could be helping Kentucky adapt to climate change.

Specifically, the authors urge broader input into decision-making about the forest. Currently, Robinson Forest is managed by UK’s Forestry Department. Also, they want UK to separate research and revenue goals, so that there is not periodic temptation to log or mine Robinson Forest to make money for the university.

Reece is up for tenure this year, and he acknowledges this book won’t be popular in some corners of the university. But he thinks Robinson Forest is worth fighting to preserve.

He said the book was inspired by The Unforeseen Wilderness, which UK commissioned Berry to write in 1971. It advocated for preservation of the Red River Gorge at a time when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wanted to destroy it with a flood-control dam.

“We want to give readers a sense of why Robinson Forest is worth saving,” Reece said. “If you can convince people to love something, they won’t destroy it.”

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Excerpts from the final chapter of The Embattled Wilderness

“Robinson Forest is many things: it is one of the most important eco-systems in Appalachia, it is a laboratory for crucial research and teaching, and it is a gift held in trust for future generations of Kentuckians. But it is also a model for how we must proceed in our habitation of the natural world. In fact, Robinson Forest represents a model for an entirely new definition of “economy,” whereby our American systems of exchange, both of wealth and energy, are brought in line with the most important and inescapable economy of nature.”

“What we as 21st century Americans must finally come to understand is that the economy of consumption operates in direct opposition to, and at the peril of, the economy of nature. … Kentucky should look to Robinson Forest as a model for a sustainable, post-coal economy. We must replace the industrial logic of the strip mine with the much more ancient wisdom of the forest.”

“To abandon wilderness places like Robinson Forest would be to abandon ourselves. To ignore the natural laws of its watersheds for the logic of our own industrial imagination would be to abandon our better selves — to abandon a sustainable future for the sake of short-term avarice and indulgence. But to preserve the world will mean learning the lessons of Robinson Forest, and in doing so learning to preserve that embattled wilderness.”

Holmes Hall on Euclid Avenue was built by the University of Kentucky in 1956-1958 and designed by Ernst V. Johnson. Its most distinguishing feature is a covered walkway of stone, brick and concrete canopy. Photo by Tom Eblen

When local architects started emailing me about preliminary plans to demolish several Modernist-style buildings on the University of Kentucky campus, my first reaction was to roll my eyes.

Like many people, I have always struggled to appreciate, much less like, a lot of mid-20th century architecture. It seems so plain, boxy, cold and, in the hands of some architects, just plain ugly.

To try to understand why so many professionals consider these buildings important and worth saving, I decided to take a closer look and learn more about them.

Nearly 30 percent of UK’s structures date from the 1950s and 1960s, and many academic buildings and residence halls have been neglected for years. To his credit, UK President Eli Capilouto is trying to catch up, initiating construction and renovation projects all over campus.

Initial plans included demolishing as many as seven of the 13 campus buildings designed between the 1930s and 1950s by noted Lexington architect Ernst V. Johnson: Jewell (1938), Holmes (1956) and Donovan (1955) residence halls, the Engineering Quadrangle (1938), the Wenner-Gren Aeronautical Research Laboratory (1941), the Funkhouser Biological Science Building (1942) and the Mineral Industries Building (1951).

The wrecking ball may also be aimed at the Kirwan-Blanding residential complex (1967), designed by Edward Durrell Stone. He was one of America’s best-known and most prolific Modernist architects, and his work has always been widely loved — and hated.

“It’s easy to see why most people don’t turn on to it,” said Graham Pohl, a Lexington architect with Pohl Rosa Pohl.

Modernism was the first architectural style in centuries that didn’t reference the past. Modernism began in Europe nearly a century ago, but didn’t catch on in this country until after World War II. Then it was everywhere.

“People felt free to be expressive and experiment with forms and new materials that felt right to them,” Pohl said. “It was a product of economic growth and national optimism about the future.”

But Pohl acknowledges that the style was widely abused. When so-called Urban Renewal reshaped America’s cities into concrete jungles built around the automobile, it included a lot of slap-dash architecture that was called “modern.”

“One of the reasons people don’t like Modernism is that it has been used as an excuse to do shoddy work,” Pohl said. “It’s more difficult to do good Modernism than good traditional work.”

Pohl said most of the buildings UK has considered tearing down are anything but shoddy. As an example, he cited Holmes Hall, an International-style building with an elegant stone and concrete stair-step canopy and interesting brick work.

Johnson’s buildings all have elegant brick work, perhaps because he was the son of a Swedish mason and worked his way through Yale as a union bricklayer.

“It’s more than decorative,” Pohl said of Johnson’s brick patterns on Holmes Hall. “It speaks to aspects of the building and the relationship between walls and openings. There’s a lot about that building that suggests someone thought deeply about it.”

Pohl also likes Stone’s Kirwan-Blanding complex, with its 23-story towers surrounded by smaller buildings arranged in a park-like setting. He likes the relationship of the vertical towers to the “incredibly elegant” horizontal canopies that connect the buildings.

“A lot of people see those forms as being part of their parents’ generation and they intentionally don’t want to relate to them,” said Pohl, adding that these buildings have much more architectural merit than anything that is likely to replace them in this era of budget-cutting austerity.

I grew up around the corner from Holmes Hall, on the block where UK is now building a massive dormitory complex. I have always admired Holmes Hall’s stair- step canopy, if not the rest of the building.

But I never liked Kirwan-Blanding — until, that is, I went to photograph it for this column on a beautiful evening last week. The moon was rising between the towers, which were bathed in the glow of the setting sun. Students were all around the buildings, studying among the trees and flowers or throwing Frisbees and footballs. I appreciated those buildings for the first time.

Architecture, like art, is often subjective, said Sarah Tate, an architect and founder of the Lexington firm Tate Hill Jacobs. She greatly admires Johnson’s work, for example, yet has never liked Stone’s. But that is not the point, she emphasized.

“Architecture is a reflection of history and culture, and that campus is a little museum of modern architecture,” Tate said. “Johnson’s buildings give us an architectural handbook of the influences that got us from the late 19th century to the late 20th century. I don’t think (UK officials) know what they have here.

“These mid-century buildings are part of our DNA,” she added. “You don’t want to take them all away. They are important links in our history and culture.”

Sasaki Associates, the Boston planning firm that UK hired to develop a new campus master plan, recently recommended as its first scenario renovating and reusing these historic Modernist buildings. UK officials should take that advice.

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The University of Kentucky officials have scheduled two public forums to gather opinions as they decide whether to outsource food service operations. I wrote about the issue in my column Sunday.

The first forum will be 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. tomorrow evening (Tuesday, April 9) in the Worsham Theater at the Student Center. The second forum will be 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. on April 18 at the William T. Young Library’s  UK Athletics Auditorium.

To read my Sunday column, click here. To read more about UK’s goals and process, click here.

The University of Kentucky raised eyebrows last year when it decided to outsource housing to a private company. Now, it is considering doing the same with food service.

These are tough questions, but, after years of declining state support, UK needs to be asking them. What are the right answers?

By all accounts, UK Dining Services is well-managed. It pays for itself and provides good food and jobs. So why consider outsourcing? It is not about saving money, UK spokesman Jay Blanton said.

As with the decision to outsource housing in a 50-year deal with Memphis-based Education Realty Trust, this possible deal is more about raising capital. Lots of it.

“A business partner potentially could pop tens of millions of dollars into infrastructure improvements,” Blanton said.

UK needs capital because it has a lot of catching up to do on infrastructure. The General Assembly has always been stingy about letting UK borrow money for new and improved buildings, even when it could generate revenues to repay the debt.

But there are other considerations, too, Blanton said. Might a giant food service corporation be able to offer more variety and convenience at less cost?

“The question becomes what are the core competencies we have?” he said. “What are the things we do best as an institution, and then what are the things that need to be done as services to students that might be best facilitated with a partner?

“We’re not going to give up course delivery and instruction; we do that better than anybody else,” he added. “But are we the best entity to build a residence hall? Are we the best entity to provide food service? Or is that better facilitated through a partner? It’s worthwhile to at least ask the question.”

There are other issues, too. Dining Services has become a key player in supporting Kentucky’s budding local food movement. This year it will buy more than $1 million worth of “Kentucky Proud” products.

UK Dining Services is just the kind of partner UK’s College of Agriculture needs to help Kentucky farmers develop more sustainable production methods that in the long run will provide the state with more healthy food and stronger local economies.

As a land-grant university, UK’s mission extends beyond the classroom. The university has a responsibility to help show Kentucky the way forward by supporting innovation that will improve quality of life. That is a big reason some students, faculty and citizens have objected to outsourcing.

UK officials said last week that they will consider proposals from food service corporations, hold public meetings and make a decision by the end of the year about whether or not to outsource.

But, in response to the concerns, UK officials said that if they do outsource, they will protect current employees’ jobs and set criteria for vendors. That would include a mandatory commitment to partner with the Kentucky Proud program to buy locally produced food.

Those assurances are commendable, but are they good enough? That depends on how the criteria are set, and how well UK officials follow through during the decades this contract is likely to last.

Tens of millions of dollars in up-front capital is a powerful incentive. But any company offering that kind of capital to UK will want to find ways to get its money back, plus a healthy profit.

In many ways, UK’s outsourcing of housing made sense. UK will quickly get a more adequate supply of good, on-campus housing. But some critics worry that the housing will be too expensive for students. Others worry about the quality of the new residence halls.

Those critics say UK should have negotiated for more durable and energy-efficient construction, which would then have saved money in the long run through lower operating costs. Plus, at the end of the contract, UK would inherit buildings with more potential for future use.

Whichever way UK decides to go on food service, a real commitment to supporting local, healthy and sustainable food production is critical for Kentucky’s future.

As UK officials consider all of the implications of this long-term decision, they should keep this question in mind: Will a corporation care more about what is best for Kentucky or what is best for its shareholders?

Spindletop’s double staircase when the mansion was new in the late 1930s.  Photo Provided

Pansy Yount wanted only the best for herself and her daughter. So when Texas oilman Frank Yount’s widow decided in 1935 to buy a Kentucky horse farm and build a mansion, the result was jaw-dropping.

This month, Spindletop Hall celebrates the 75th anniversary of its completion and the 50th anniversary of its conversion into a country club for University of Kentucky faculty, staff, alumni and friends.

The Club at Spindletop Hall is hosting three anniversary events: a Texas barbecue on Oct. 19, a gala dinner dance on Oct. 20 and a horse and carriage brunch on Oct. 21. (Some tickets are available to the public; call (859) 255-2777 for more information.)

The 1,050-member club hopes to use the celebration to attract a couple hundred new members and raise money to continue restoring the mansion and improving the club.

“She’s a beautiful lady, but there are some things we need to address for the future,” club manager Gerald Marvel said of Spindletop Hall.

Among those attending the events will be Kathryn Haider of suburban Chicago, who has her own name for Spindletop: Grandma’s house. In a telephone interview, Haider recalled idyllic summers spent at Spindletop: fishing, riding ponies and spending time with her grandmother.

“She was an absolutely wonderful woman,” Haider recalled. “I just adored her. She was a great mentor to me.”

Spindletop is named for the salt dome near Beaumont, Texas, that became a fabulously rich oilfield after Anthony Lucas drilled the first “gusher” in 1901. Initial reserves played out within a few years. But Miles Franklin Yount, a mechanically inclined Arkansas farm boy who moved to Texas to seek his fortune, thought there was more oil to be had if only he could drill deep enough. In 1925, he did.

Yount died in 1933. When his Yount-Lee Oil Co. was sold in 1935, his widow and teenage daughter, Mildred, received a fortune that today would be worth about $208 million. Pansy Yount decided to move to Lexington and indulge her passion for American Standardbred horses.

She bought Shoshone Stud and several surrounding parcels off Ironworks Pike north of Lexington and renamed it Spindletop. As the centerpiece of the 1,066-acre farm, she built a 45,000-square-foot mansion that cost the equivalent of about $17 million today.

Durability was a priority: a massive foundation and steel beams supported the brick-and-stone building, which even had “fireproof” concrete decking in the attic and roof.

“It’s almost built like a bomb shelter,” said David Graham, a recent club president.

Yount imported craftsmen from Europe to carve woodwork, mold plaster and paint art on the walls. In the entrance hall, there were enormous curved staircases. The huge Gothic library had a hammerbeam roof and a mantel salvaged from an English castle. Yount built a music room for her talented daughter, whose instrument collection included a concert harp and two Stradivarius violins.

The music room also housed the console for a Kimball reproducing organ, which could be played manually or with paper rolls of “recorded” music. It sent music throughout the mansion, which was literally designed around it. The club has begun restoring the organ.

Pansy Yount was a strong-willed woman who could be both demanding and generous. Lexingtonians were shocked in October 1942 when she donated Frank’s Duesenberg, one of the most expensive automobiles of the time, to a World War II scrap drive.

Haider recalled the time her grandmother went Christmas shopping at Woolworth’s on Lexington’s Main Street. She was especially well treated by the sales ladies, so she invited them all out for dinner at Spindletop.

“Grandma treated them just like royalty,” she said.

Yount was too independent and egalitarian to get along with some of the wealthy elite of Beaumont and Lexington. Although she had little formal education, she developed excellent taste and a voracious appetite for books.

“She was extremely independent, and a very savvy business woman,” Haider said. “She thought out everything she did. If some people didn’t like it, she didn’t care.”

In 1949, Young married her farm manager, horse trainer William Capers “Cape” Grant. They divorced a decade later, and she had decided to move back to Texas.

When Yount decided to sell Spindletop, she called Lexington friend Fred Wachs, then publisher of the Herald and Leader, for advice. He suggested she donate it to the university. UK President Frank Dickey flew to Texas and negotiated the sale of the farm and mansion for the gift price of $850,000, payable over 10 years.

Yount died in 1962, the year UK converted her mansion and 50 surrounding acres into a private club with a dining room, tennis courts, swimming pools and other amenities. Over the years, other land has been used for offices and facilities for UK agriculture and energy research.

UK owns the mansion, which is operated by the club. They both contribute to maintenance and improvements. Haider said she is pleased with the interest they are now showing in preserving Spindletop Hall.

“Everyone is so devoted to the place,” she said. “That home is truly a gift to Kentucky.”

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Alltech announced a job-creation competition Tuesday for business students at the University of Kentucky, University of Louisville and University of Pikeville, with a $20,000 prize for the winning school.

Pearse Lyons, president and founder of the Nicholasville-based animal nutrition company, said the business plan competition is focused on fostering innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development in nine Eastern Kentucky counties: Bell, Floyd, Harlan, Johnson, Knott, Letcher, Magoffin, Martin and Pike.

“It’s time to balance the scales and cultivate a Kentucky that leads the nation not just in college sports but in employment as well,” Lyons said, noting that many of the targeted counties have unemployment rates twice the national average.

“With its hardworking people, vibrant culture, picturesque landscape and abundance of natural resources, Kentucky is ripe for the right idea,” Lyons said. “What we need is innovation and inspiration — sparks that will kindle the economic flame.”

Lyons announced the competition during a free seminar on entrepreneurship in the state that he and veteran Kentucky entrepreneur Jim Host put on at Lexington Center. It attracted a capacity crowd of more than 400 people, including many Central Kentucky business leaders.

The seminar was held in conjunction with Alltech’s 28th annual International Symposium, which each spring brings a couple thousand of the company’s customers here from all over the world.

Officials at each university will choose a competition team from among master’s in business administration students and some undergraduates. The competition will run from November through January 2013, when students will present their final plans to a panel of business leaders, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

The winning plan will be the one that best fosters economic development in the nine-county region and appeals to investors interested in funding it. The winning team will receive $20,000 from Alltech for their university’s business school.

When the University of Kentucky beat Louisville and Kansas to win the NCAA championship last week, the media spotlight focused on more than the basketball team’s talent and Kentucky fans’ pride.

The nation got a vivid look at how far Lexington and UK still have to go in overcoming decades of neglect in some neighborhoods surrounding campus.

What should have been celebrations turned into near riots in the Elizabeth Street neighborhood off South Limestone. There were dozens of injuries and arrests as fires were set and vehicles damaged amid a hail of flying beer bottles.

Things could have been much worse, had not Lexington police and firefighters handled the situation with such skill and professionalism. And after the first and worst night of trouble, new UK President Eli Capilouto issued a stern statement. He urged students to “not be stupid,” and he warned that illegal behavior would result in criminal prosecution and university sanctions.

Some of the troublemakers weren’t UK students or even Lexington residents. Still, the national reputations of both UK and Lexington were tarnished. Will parents of prospective students wonder if UK is a safe environment for their children? Will people interested in moving their families or companies to Lexington wonder about the city’s quality of life?

Last week’s mayhem was a wake-up call to both UK and Lexington officials. They must redouble their efforts to clean up neighborhoods around campus that have been allowed to become little more than student-rental slums.

The problems began in the 1970s, when UK dormitory construction and maintenance began falling behind enrollment growth. About the same time, longtime residents of some nearby neighborhoods built between the early 1800s and early 1900s began dying off or moving away.

Many homes were sold to the university for campus expansion. Others were sold to student-rental entrepreneurs, who either cut up old homes into rental rooms or knocked them down to build boxy apartment complexes.

Once-lovely neighborhoods where many faculty and staff used to live fell into disrepair, as fewer and fewer homes were occupied by their owners. UK’s hands-off attitude reached its zenith in 1998 when officials banned alcohol from campus, which pushed student parties into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Landlords used zoning loopholes to build large dorm-like additions to bungalows and pave over yards, overwhelming those areas with people, cars, garbage and storm-water runoff. Those neighborhoods were not designed for such density.

Diane Lawless, the Urban County Council member who represents those neighborhoods, said the problems have been made worse by spot rezoning and years of building inspection that was “way beyond lax.”

City officials and neighborhood leaders have spent more than a decade trying to catch up to the problem. Studies by the Town-Gown Commission and Student Housing Task Force helped lead to new laws limiting off-campus parties, tightening zoning regulations and halting construction of the “vinyl box” additions. Mayor Jim Newberry’s administration launched a crackdown on code violations.

Still, about 75 percent of UK’s 28,000 students now live off-campus. That compares with only 25 percent of the 1,100 students at Transylvania University, where surrounding neighborhoods have experienced few student-rental problems.

Since Capilouto took office last June, he has made housing and neighborhood issues a priority. UK has launched an ambitious partnership with a private company to replace 6,000 aging dormitory beds and build 3,000 more.

“UK has been working much closer with us on neighborhood issues,” said Derek Paulsen, the city’s new planning commissioner. “But we’re going to be playing catch-up with this legacy for awhile.”

Paulsen’s appointment is another positive sign. For the first time, all city planning, zoning and building regulation will be under one department. Paulsen, an academic, has written several books about designing socially sustainable communities that deter crime.

New apartment complexes west of campus, built on sites once occupied by tobacco warehouses, have taken some of the pressure off older neighborhoods. But those developments bear watching, too. Any area dominated by transient rental property will be less stable than one that includes a good mix of owner-occupied housing.

The upcoming move of the Bluegrass Community and Technical College to the former Eastern State Hospital site could take pressure off the Elizabeth Street neighborhood. But without good planning, zoning, building inspection and code enforcement, Lexington risks the same pattern being repeated in older Northside neighborhoods.

In addition to better planning and zoning and more aggressive enforcement, city officials must clean up the damaged neighborhoods around UK. That will include significant investment in long-ignored infrastructure and more support for owner-occupied homes.

“It’s an economic development issue, because this is what visitors see when they see Lexington,” Lawless said. “What’s good for these neighborhoods and downtown is good for Lexington and the university.”

UK President Eli Capilouto at Richardsville Elementary School in Warren County last month. Photo by Joe Imel/Bowling Green Daily News

When I interviewed Eli Capilouto recently about his first eight months as president of the University of Kentucky, he described a visit to an elementary school in Bowling Green as “my best day in Kentucky.”

The Alabama native went to Richardsville Elementary after receiving a handwritten invitation from second-grader Emma McGuffey. Capilouto said he was impressed by the students and teachers, and by the building where they learn.

That building, which opened in August 2010, was the nation’s first school designed to generate more energy than it uses. Thanks to innovative design and materials, it requires 75 percent less energy than a typical school.

Power consumption also is kept down by geothermal heating and cooling, plus elimination of power-hungry appliances such as deep fryers in the cafeteria kitchen. (That change prompted dieticians to develop healthier school lunches.)

The overall construction cost was about the same as a typical school, except for the addition of solar panels that generate power for the school and local utility grid.

Capilouto said the students gave him a tour of the building and proudly explained the science behind it. “I came back on a high after that visit,” he said. “I’ve never seen a building teach so effectively.”

His ambitious plans for UK include a lot of construction. He wants to renovate or replace many aging academic buildings, renovate 6,000 beds of dormitory space and add 3,000 more beds.

UK has a contract with Memphis-based Education Realty Trust to build and operate a 600-bed dorm. The deal is planned as the first step toward privatizing all student housing as a way to raise construction capital.

I asked Capilouto whether Richardsville Elementary had inspired him to attempt similar energy-efficiency with UK’s new buildings. “We have the same architect,” he replied, referring to the Lexington firm Sherman Carter Barnhart, which is designing the new dormitory.

The dorm will have geothermal systems and will meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards. But initial plans indicate much more could be done to reduce energy consumption and long-term operating costs.

If Capilouto wants to embrace what he saw at Richardsville, much more must be done with this and future buildings. And that process must start soon, before UK negotiates terms of its long-term relationship with Education Realty Trust.

Thanks to projects such as Richardsville Elementary, Kentucky has become the national leader in energy-efficient school construction. Other examples have been built in Warren, Fayette and Kenton counties, and many more are planned.

Berea College has made strides in this area. UK has made a start with the new Davis Marksbury Building. There is plenty of Kentucky expertise on which to draw, including some on UK’s campus.

But people who have been involved with energy-efficient school projects say it is not a process to be entered into lightly. It requires new ways of thinking at each step — from how a building is planned, designed and financed to how it is managed and used after completion.

Highly energy-efficient buildings cost a little more on the front end, although that money is recovered quickly through lower operating costs. Still, it’s a different mind-set.

“There must be a change in culture at all levels,” said architect Mark Ryles, who was a key player in energy-efficient school construction as facilities director for the Kentucky Department of Education. “It will take real leadership and collaboration to make it happen.”

Ryles said the most successful projects have been built in counties where the school board and superintendents were committed to the process and put students’ needs first. The key is to figure out a vision and goals for construction, then shape the business model to accomplish them.

As Capilouto saw at Richardsville, energy efficiency is about much more than cost savings. “The educational benefit is fabulous,” Ryles said. “We now have third-graders going around talking about geothermal.”

If Capilouto and the Board of Trustees were to decide to rebuild UK’s campus as the “greenest” in the nation, it would make a bold statement, create a unique learning laboratory and save a lot of green for Kentucky taxpayers.

It also could make UK more attractive to Emma McGuffey and her fellow college students of the future. They will expect their university’s campus to be at least as advanced as what they had in elementary school.

Hurricane Katrina almost wiped out Tulane University. Then, the disaster gave the 178-year-old New Orleans institution an exciting new vision.

That was the story that Tulane provost Michael Bernstein told last week, when he came to Lexington to speak as the guest of the University of Kentucky’s Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching.

Before the August 2005 storm, Bernstein said, Tulane’s engagement with the surrounding community “was haphazard at best.” Now, he said, “it is part of the DNA of the institution.”

Making the university more a part of the community — and the community more a part of the university — was a valuable lesson for Tulane. UK could learn that lesson, too, and it doesn’t require a cataclysmic disaster.

Before Katrina, Bernstein said, “It used to be study and then go into the city to have fun.” When the storm almost destroyed New Orleans, Tulane included, university officials canceled the fall semester and fled to Houston to regroup, reorganize and refocus the university around its most successful academic programs.

With Tulane’s campus and finances either literally or figuratively under water, officials were forced to take a fresh look at the school’s core mission — its very reason for existing.

“Instead of running from what the storm did to us, we have embraced it, and we’re leveraging it in a powerful way,” Bernstein said. “Now we are more focused on how the community can be used in learning and service for students.”

The university has rebranded itself around the motto “Tulane Empowers: Helping People Build a Better World.” Academic programs and learning activities have been refocused around themes of public service, public education, disaster response, urban redevelopment, public health and community medicine.

Unlike Tulane, a private institution, UK and similar state land-grant universities have had public engagement as part of their mission since Abraham Lincoln signed legislation during the Civil War that led to their creation.

Former President Lee T. Todd Jr. focused on revitalizing UK’s land-grant mission statewide, especially in the areas of economic development and health care.

When Eli Capilouto became UK’s 12th president last summer, he took on two long-simmering issues of town-gown relations. How he deals with them could well set the tone for UK’s relationship with Lexington during his tenure.

Just a year ago, UK athletics officials were pushing for a new basketball venue to replace the 35-year-old Rupp Arena that anchors Lexington’s downtown convention center.

Mayor Jim Gray sought to refocus the conversation in broader terms: renovating Rupp Arena and redeveloping the convention center and acres of underused surface parking as an economic engine for Lexington.

Gray created a task force that came up with a visionary and generally popular plan for doing that over the next decade or two. Capilouto has seemed somewhat cool to the idea, though, saying he doesn’t want to jeopardize state funding that UK desperately needs to improve its campus.

With state resources scarce, Capilouto said, UK’s priority needs to be renovating substandard academic buildings and building more and better housing for students. For years, UK students have either lived in scarce, neglected dormitories or been pushed off campus, largely to the detriment of surrounding neighborhoods.

Capilouto’s stand hasn’t pleased everyone, but it is the right approach.

The Arena, Arts and Entertainment Task Force’s visionary plan for Rupp Arena and its surroundings will happen eventually. Few forces are more powerful in Kentucky than the love of UK basketball, so Rupp Arena is hardly in danger of falling into neglect.

On the other hand, UK’s housing and academic structures have been neglected for years — in some cases, decades. So has the university’s relationship with many of the neighborhoods surrounding campus. It is long past time that UK acknowledged and addressed those responsibilities.

Tulane’s decision to embrace New Orleans and their shared fate was not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. Bernstein said community engagement has improved life in New Orleans and Tulane’s educational potential. It even has helped attract students hungry for such real-world learning experiences.

UK already has many community-engagement efforts. But, as Tulane discovered, much more could be done. A closer relationship between UK and Lexington would pay huge dividends to both. Simply becoming a better neighbor is a good way for UK to start.

As University of Kentucky diplomacy students follow Egypt’s attempt to transition from dictatorship to democracy, they can get some behind-the-scenes perspective from one of their teachers.

Stacy Closson, below, a visiting lecturer at UK’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, spent eight days in Egypt last month as an official observer during recently completed parliamentary elections.

An academic with years of international field experience, Closson found the experience fascinating, inspiring and, at one point, frightening. She left with a better understanding of the Middle East’s new political complexities — and why her fellow Americans should pay attention.

“Even after 30-plus years of dictatorship under (Hosni) Mubarak, people don’t lose their taste for freedom,” Closson said. “They seem very excited about the future prospects for their country.”

Closson is a Truman National Security fellow who worked six years for the U.S. Defense Department. She was among 33 observers from the National Democratic Institute who watched the second of three rounds of parliamentary voting Dec. 14 and 15.

Other observers were there from two more U.S.-based organizations, the International Republican Institute and the Carter Center. (Despite their names, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute are non-partisan.)

Closson and another American woman — a congressional staffer — went to 25 polling stations in the Beni Suef region with an interpreter. Voting seemed to be orderly, with each polling station run by a “judge.” Each political party also had poll observers.

Because election turnout was low during Mubarak’s reign, voting was a new experience for many Egyptians.

“There was this initial excitement and pride that they could vote and know their vote could count,” she said, adding that the main issues for most voters were freedom, dignity and jobs.

New liberal parties were much less organized than the Muslim Brotherhood, which is expected to end up with a majority of seats in parliament, Closson said. But one surprise was the strength of a more conservative Islamic party, Salafi al-Nour. It seemed highly organized, with plenty of cars, computers, cellphones and operating funds, reportedly from Islamic interests in neighboring gulf states.

When the polls closed, Closson and other observers followed election officials as they transported ballot boxes through busy city streets to a central counting center. There, they found perhaps 200 rowdy Salafi partisans creating a chaotic scene.

Only a few international observers were able to get inside the center to witness the counting. Closson wasn’t among them.

“I still regret it,” she said. “I think we would have gotten pushed and shoved, but we would have gotten in. But when the two-star general said he couldn’t guarantee our safety, we decided not to push it.”

The third and final round of parliamentary voting was last week, and results could be announced this week. “There are a lot of mathematical shell games in how they’re going to allocate seats,” she said. “I think it’s going to be a political decision as much as a mathematical decision.”

Egypt has scheduled a presidential election for June. But without a constitution, it remains unclear how the president and parliament will function and relate to powerful military officials.

Egypt is likely to end up with a government dominated by Islamists, but the faction that comes out on top will have a big influence not only on foreign relations but on internal economic recovery.

Tourism is one of Egypt’s biggest industries, and last year’s revolution has all but brought it to a halt.

“The hotels were empty except for us,” Closson said. “You have more people in downtown Lexington than at the Giza pyramids. Even the camels where bored.”

If Islamists carry through with threats to ban alcohol sales to foreigners and require tourists to dress conservatively, Egyptian tourism might not recover.

Once all the voting is done, Closson said, “The question now is how they’re going to govern.”

Why should Americans care? Egypt’s transition could affect oil prices, Closson said. It also could have a big effect on Israel’s security and what happens in other unstable Arab countries, especially Libya, Yemen and Syria. But she is hopeful.

“Egyptians are pretty steadfast people,” Closson said. “They see this as the first step of a long process of getting more freedom.”

A loved one is in surgery, and all you can do is worry and wait. Unless, that is, you are at the University of Kentucky’s Albert B. Chandler Hospital.

In that case, you can soothe yourself by admiring original works by some of Kentucky’s best painters, sculptors, photographers and other visual artists.

In the surgery waiting room alone, there are equine paintings by Andre Pater and Peter Williams; blown-glass vessels by Stephen Rolfe Powell of Danville; a wood carving by Wolfe County native Edgar Tolson; interactive three-dimensional works by Steve Armstrong of Versailles; fiber art by UK professor Arturo Sandoval; a sculpture by John Tuska; Lexington painter Robert Tharsing’s fascinating landscape, A Natural History of Kentucky; and much more.

The huge room has just a sample of the more than 300 pieces of art that fill the 1.2 million-square-foot hospital addition, which opened in May. The medical center has become, in effect, one of Kentucky’s notable art museums.

“We wanted to make the public spaces empathetic and relaxing,” said Dr. Michael Karpf, UK’s executive vice president for health affairs. “And we wanted to make it uniquely Kentucky. It’s not all from Kentucky, but most of it is.”

UK has raised about $5 million in private donations to purchase art. The idea is about much more than making the new $532 million building pretty. Art can have a transformative effect on the human spirit. It makes people feel better, from reducing stress to inspiring hope.

“There’s a fair amount of research that shows art will improve moods and make people heal faster,” Karpf said. “So it makes financial sense for us to do this. People feel better and get out of the hospital faster.”

It is common in many cities for major new buildings to invest 1 percent of the construction budget on art. With this huge project, the results are impressive.

As soon as visitors enter the covered walkway over South Limestone from the parking garage, they see glass cases displaying folk art sculptures. Outdoors beneath the walkway is a landscape and water feature with curving fences made from traditional Kentucky dry stone.

Also outside is Second Breath, a bronze figure by Maurice Blik, a Holocaust and cancer survivor. “It ended up being controversial because it’s a nude,” said Jacqueline Hamilton, who coordinates the hospital’s art program.

At the end of the walkway is the education center, where patients and the public can research medical information. It is decorated with cityscapes by Louisville folk artist Anthony Mulligan, other paintings and a case of folk-art sculpture.

Ginkgo, a stainless-steel and fabric sculpture by Warren Seelig, is a focal point in the long lobby that connects the hospital’s wings. Elevator bays feature mosaics of paintings by Versailles glass artist Guy Kemper.

On the lobby’s second floor is the 90-foot-long Celebrate Kentucky wall. Tim Broekema, a Western Kentucky University photojournalism professor, created the wall using photographs and videos of Kentucky scenes taken by dozens of photographers. The wall is constantly changing with images that reflect the current season.

Karpf said the wall has been extremely popular, perhaps because it offers glimpses of home. About 40 percent of the hospital’s patients come from small-town and rural Kentucky.

There are landscape photographs in patient rooms, and paintings and sculpture in halls and reception areas throughout the hospital. Near the emergency room is a video installation called Mine-Control that changes shape as the viewer interacts with it. The pediatric emergency room has art that appeals to children.

The hospital tried to buy at least three pieces from each Kentucky artist it selected. “We’ve done a lot to stabilize the Kentucky art community during the recession,” Karpf said.

Two long corridors have become galleries for temporary exhibits. One now has drawings by Alabama’s Thornton Dial, and the other displays cut-and-paste photographic panoramas of Lexington and New York City by Albert Moser.

The UK hospital is a busy place, but only one piece of art has been damaged — a canvas was accidently ripped but is being repaired. “If you present it as art, people tend to respect it,” Hamilton said.

The Lucille Caudill Little Performing Arts in HealthCare Program and an endowment by Dr. Ronald Saykaly will sponsor performances by UK music students and faculty, as well as other performing artists. Performances can be in the hospital lobby or a new high-tech auditorium. When the violinist Midori was in town in September to perform with the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, she also played for hospital patients.

“What has been rewarding is that as we tried to humanize the building for patients, we also humanized it for staff,” Karpf said. Physicians have been big donors to the art program, and nurses have helped choose pieces for areas where they work.

When a pipe burst several months ago, filling an emergency room hall with water, doctors and nurses first made sure there were no patients in danger. “Then they started grabbing art off the walls and putting it on gurneys to take it to safety,” Karpf said. “They saw it as their art.”

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Does this sound familiar?

An energy industry is controversial because of its environmental impact. So a company tries to buy public goodwill by donating money to the state university’s most popular athletic program.

I’m not talking about the Wildcat Coal Lodge, the new on-campus luxury dormitory for the University of Kentucky’s basketball team. The lodge’s name — plus a shrine to the coal industry that will be in its front lobby — were requirements of an $8 million donation from coal industry executives.

The university’s 2009 decision to accept the donation with those strings attached created controversy. That is because surface coal mining has caused extensive damage to Appalachian Kentucky’s land, air and water.

I’m also not talking about the $85,000 the industry group Friends of Coal is spending to sponsor three athletic events, including the UK-University of Louisville football game and Big Blue Madness.

No, the scenario I am referring to played out recently in Nebraska. That is where TransCanada is trying to build a pipeline across that state and several others to carry oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

The pipeline is controversial in Nebraska because the company insists on building it through the porous soil of the state’s Sandhills region and the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides water to large areas of Nebraska and parts of seven other Western states. A pipeline leak in those areas could create an environmental disaster.

TransCanada has refused to change the pipeline route. On Monday, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman called a special legislative session for Nov. 1 to address the issue.

University of Nebraska football is a religious experience in that state, similar to UK basketball in Kentucky. But the Lincoln Journal-Star reported that cheering turned to boos when a highlights video of the Cornhuskers’ 1978 conference championship team began showing on Memorial Stadium’s huge HuskerVision screen during the Sept. 10 game against Fresno State.

The video was titled “Husker Pipeline” and seemed to be as much an advertisement for TransCanada as a tribute to the team. Four days later, after fans complained, the university ended TransCanada’s football sponsorship.

“I want to make it clear that the athletic department has no position, either pro or con, regarding the proposed TransCanada Pipeline,” Athletic Director Tom Osborne, a former Republican congressman and Nebraska head football coach, said in a statement.

The university explained that IMG College — the same marketing firm that works with UK Athletics — had signed the deal before the pipeline controversy erupted.

“Our athletic events are intended to entertain and unify our fan base by providing an experience that is not divisive,” Osborne said in his statement.

It is unclear what the TransCanada football sponsorship was worth to the university. Pipeline opponents estimate the company has spent several hundred thousand dollars on pro-pipeline advertising in Nebraska.

The Nebraska and Kentucky situations make for interesting comparisons.

In both states, the essential debate is about whether creating short-term jobs is worth the potential for long-term environmental damage. But the situations get more complicated from there.

TransCanada has had a presence in Nebraska for only about three decades. King Coal has ruled Kentucky politics for more than a century. Few Kentucky elected officials are brave enough to buck the cash-rich coal industry.

In Nebraska, the pipeline would be an environmental threat only if it leaks. (Building it would have some environmental impact, but, in the long run, that impact would be less than trucking millions of barrels of oil cross-country.)

In Kentucky, though, coal’s environmental damage has been real and apparent for decades, especially as surface mines have gotten bigger and more destructive. The beautifully reclaimed meadows and real estate developments the coal industry likes to brag about represent only a tiny fraction of mined land. Mine-related air pollution and water pollution have been significant.

You could argue that it was easy for the University of Nebraska to take a principled stand. The thousands of dollars it stood to gain from the TransCanada sponsorship paled in comparison to the millions the coal industry gave UK for its tribute lodge.

But that brings us to a question: Is the issue one of principle, or merely price?

The University of Kentucky Art Department was created in 1918, the same year the state high school basketball tournament began and only 15 years after UK launched its basketball program.

“UK was slightly ahead of the curve,” said Art Department chairman Ben Withers, noting that many other universities didn’t create visual art departments until years later. “But sports has been able to actively engage Kentucky’s public imagination in ways that the arts have not.”

He isn’t being critical of Kentucky, or of basketball. After all, Withers is from Cynthiana, the hometown of former UK basketball Coach Joe B. Hall.

But Withers said he wasn’t exposed to visual arts much until he went to college in Minnesota.

“It opened the world to me,” said the art historian, whose research focuses on early medieval art.

If anything, Withers said, artists and academics haven’t done enough to make participating in the visual arts appeal to average Kentuckians in ways that build public enthusiasm and support.

“There’s not that disdain for the Sunday afternoon basketball player like too many art departments have for the Sunday afternoon painter,” he said. “Part of what we have to do is find a way to engage the community similar to — but not in competition with — sports. We have to show that art is not just for the snobbish elite.”

UK’s Art Department is trying to do that in a couple of ways — one focused on the community, the other on UK undergraduates.

The department’s Fine Arts Institute offers non-credit art instruction to the public. The classes are taught by UK faculty, graduates and local artists, and they attract about 100 people each term.

Classes are offered in drawing, painting, ceramics, fabric art, metalworking and woodworking, and digital photography software. The institute also has workshops in beginning drawing and painting, and in digital photography and metalworking.

This fall’s classes begin Monday. For more information, and to register, go to Uky.edu/finearts/art/fineartsinstitute.

The department also is offering new classes to UK students who are not majoring in art. As part of changes to UK’s general education requirements, undergraduates must take courses that teach hands-on creativity. One option is visual art.

To help teach those classes, the Art Department recently hired seven non- tenure track faculty from among more than 100 applicants compiled in a nationwide search, Withers said.

“With these new faculty, it will bring a new set of artists into Lexington who will get involved in things all over town,” Withers said.

The Art Department has about 300 undergraduate majors and 30 graduate students, and over the years it has been able to attract some outstanding artists as faculty members, including Arturo Alonzo Sandoval and the late John Tuska.

But the program wasn’t accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design until 2008, largely because of its shabby facilities, Withers said. For all of the Reynolds Building’s large, well-lit spaces, the converted tobacco warehouse on South Broadway was a dump. The building is finally getting some long-needed safety renovations.

But because a proper renovation of the Reynolds Building would be so expensive, UK hopes to renovate another former tobacco warehouse around the corner on Bolivar Street and move the art department there. Renovating that building, which developer Rob McGoodwin converted into the University Lofts several years ago, would be about $2 million cheaper than a Reynolds Building rehab for about the same amount of space.

If the General Assembly approves the project this winter, Withers hopes the new building can be ready for classes by fall 2013. The building is more conveniently located, and in addition to providing much-improved studio space, it would give the Art Department a more visible public profile.

“We’re misleading our children when we tell them it’s all about computer technology and rote learning,” Withers said of education. He said research shows the value of creativity in business success and the increasing importance of visual literacy in society.

“People get more information from images these days than they do from language,” he said. “That’s what we have to prepare the next generations of citizens for.”

Lee T. Todd Jr. steps down next week after a decade as president of the University of Kentucky — a decade of big ambitions, tough challenges, notable accomplishments, a few controversies and much left unfinished.

The Hopkins County native had been a UK engineering professor, then he spent 17 years as a technology entrepreneur. After selling a couple of companies he had started, Todd returned in July 2001 to become UK’s 11th president.

Todd was told by the General Assembly to make UK a Top 20 public research university. But when the economy hit the skids, legislators’ willingness to finance that mandate waned. That led to dramatic tuition increases and economizing in parts of the university that couldn’t generate their own money.

I sat down with Todd for an exit interview recently and asked him to reflect on his tenure.

Lee T. Todd Jr. Photo by David Perry

“I think we have changed the attitude of the place,” Todd said when I asked what he was most proud of. “When I came and you talked about the Top 20 plan, it was an eye-rolling, not us, never-happen-here attitude. Writing that plan was one step that exceeded my expectations.”

That ambitious plan — yet to be fully funded — attracted some talented faculty, staff and students. “We’ve grown quite a bit in size, but the quality has not diminished,” he said.

Todd pointed to the growth and statewide focus of the medical campus under Dr. Michael Karpf, whom he hired from the University of California at Los Angeles. “Our payroll went up $350 million since 2003 on the medical side, and that doesn’t include the construction workers,” he said, noting that the hospital’s huge expansion is paying its own way.

UK’s research funding has grown from $211 million to $367 million, Todd said, and more of that research is focused on improving life in Kentucky. Nearly 50 “Commonwealth Collaboratives” programs are working on a diverse set of projects, from smoking cessation to helping Lake Cumberland houseboat factories retool to build affordable housing.

Todd said he brought renewed focus to the university’s statewide economic development mission, including expanding the roles of county extension agents and helping faculty and students start new companies. “We’re a much more functional university as far as the state is concerned,” he said.

Although primarily a science and math guy, Todd said he also is impressed with the progress of arts programs such as UK Opera Theatre and the music school. “The quality of our performances — Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center — is just spectacular for a school this size,” he said.

Academics vs. athletics

Todd said he also is proud of UK Athletics, which has become competitive across the board and avoided major NCAA rules violations on his watch. “Our athletic program is one of the few that’s self-supporting,” he said. “It really gives money back. They pay for everything they get now.”

Early in his presidency, Todd hired Mitch Barnhart as athletics director after forcing out his predecessor, Larry Ivy, who had been given a raise and a one-year contract extension by former President Charles Wethington on Wethington’s way out the door.

Many people were surprised when, after announcing his retirement, Todd extended Barnhart’s contract to 2019 and gave him a $125,000 annual raise. Should that have been a decision for President-elect Eli Capilouto to make?

“In my mind it shouldn’t be, because we have had nine years of outstanding progress since he’s been here, integrity since he’s been here, competitiveness since he’s been here,” Todd said of Barnhart.

“I should have done it earlier than I did,” he said. “I did it too close to the end. We could have communicated it better to people that I was going to do it. But I think I did a service for the next president, and the more he gets to know Mitch, the more he will believe that. I don’t have any problem with having done that.”

Barnhart’s big raise fueled faculty criticism that Todd has focused too much on athletics and the medical school to the detriment of core academics. His response?

“I think there’s a subset of the faculty that will always say that,” Todd said. “Athletics is a reality of major universities. As long as it’s clean, and you hope it’s competitive and you hope it doesn’t drain money from the university, I think it does good things for us. I wish the country as a whole wasn’t as crazy as it is about athletics. It’s out of whack. But it’s a reality that you have to deal with in this position.”

Then he said: “I think those who think we haven’t paid attention to academics are not paying attention themselves. They need to look deeper to see what’s happening with our engineering enrollment, our ACT improvements, our undergraduate education.”

Creative financing

As state support has failed to keep up with UK’s needs, Todd said, the university has tried to be more creative in finding money elsewhere, including hospital revenues, research grants, alumni giving and unpopular, double-digit tuition increases.

“I would love to have had more money to put into academics,” he said. “The challenge you have is that the hospital can drive its own revenue, athletics can drive its own revenue. The only way you drive revenue in the middle of campus is tuition/general fund dollars. I have taken a pretty good set of bullets for raising tuition. If we hadn’t done that, we really would have had difficulty.”

Todd and the Board of Trustees received a lot of criticism for accepting $8 million from coal operators to build a new dormitory for the basketball team in return for naming it Wildcat Coal Lodge. Author Wendell Berry pulled his papers from UK, and others complained that the university is too beholden to an industry that denies climate change and resists calls to become more environmentally responsible.

If he had it to do over, would Todd handle Wildcat Coal Lodge differently?

“I tried to handle it differently,” he said. “We had some other suggested names. You have donors who … want to name it what they want to name it. They are good donors for us across the whole university and they are capable of giving more. We discussed other names, but when it came down to it, it was a decision to take the donation.

“I would be glad to build a Wildcat Green Lodge,” he added, if donors would give UK the money to pay for it.

Does Todd retire with any regrets?

“I have regretted some of the salary issues,” he said. “We had planned to catch up on salaries for our folks and we have not been able to do that. But we haven’t had any furloughs, and we haven’t had any major layoffs. I’m very, very proud of the progress we’ve made in tough times.”

Todd’s next steps, legacy

Next month, Todd will begin a one-year leave of absence to travel and spend time with his family. Then he will return to UK as an engineering professor and mentor for technology entrepreneurs.

Todd said he hopes to spend time working to improve K-12 math and science education, both by traveling the state to talk with teachers and students and by continuing to serve on the advisory boards of several organizations, including the National Science Foundation.

He also plans to continue raising money for UK and working on his primary passion — bringing together education and business to find innovative ways to make Kentucky a better place to live.

“I believe very strongly that if we can keep our graduates here in a productive way, when they start their companies, they’ll want to go back to where they came from,” he said. “With telecommunications the way it is, they can do that nowadays.”

How would Todd like his presidency to be remembered? “We have gone through some transformation, but there’s more to be done,” he said.

Then he mentioned a plaque on a statue of James K. Patterson, UK’s first president, outside of UK’s Main Building. The plaque says: “He saved the seed for the next generation.”

Todd said if his tenure were summed up on a plaque today, it might say: A lot of stuff he helped start will be productive in the future.

One professor likened it to the awkward first meeting of a couple in an arranged marriage: Everyone was rushing to figure out whether their new partner was a good match, even though the deal already had been done.

Not only had the deal been done, but the flowers were on their way and the organist was warming up.

On Sunday afternoon, after a secret search, University of Kentucky trustees unveiled Eli Capilouto, the provost of the University of Alabama- Birmingham, as their unanimous choice to be UK’s next president.

Eli Capilouto took questions from faculty, staff and students at forums Monday. Photo by Charles Bertram

Before the trustees confirmed his hiring less than 48 hours later, Capilouto had a whirlwind series of meetings with UK administrators, legislative leaders and the mayor; a reception with alumni; dinner with the governor; and one-hour public forums with faculty, staff and students.

It seemed like a strange way for Kentucky to choose a public official with almost as much influence as the governor and a salary several times larger.

I spoke briefly with Capilouto on Monday and attended the three public forums. My impression was similar to those of many others I talked with: He seemed like a good, smart man with solid credentials and a willingness to listen.

Capilouto didn’t make any missteps. He wisely didn’t try to be a know-it-all. But I heard little from his answers (and non-answers) to a variety of questions that gave me much insight into what kind of UK president he will make.

Like others, I would have liked more time for a thorough vetting. Maybe Capilouto has become a better listener since 2007, when a UAB faculty survey found he was “autocratic rather than democratic and opinionated rather than receptive to new ideas,” according to the Birmingham News. I wonder why several UAB professors contacted by Herald-Leader reporters didn’t want to comment on him. That might be significant — or not — but it would have been a good area for further examination.

Capilouto certainly impressed UK search committee members, several of whom attended the forums Monday. “He’s the complete package,” said Hollie Swanson, president of UK’s Faculty Senate and a search committee member.

He impressed many at the forums by avoiding the lectern and walking the floor below the stage with a lavalier microphone, interacting comfortably with questioners. Students especially seemed to like him, and a couple dozen stayed after their forum to meet him.

Capilouto’s story of flying to Kentucky on his own last week to walk UK’s campus incognito for six hours charmed many people. His measured tone and Alabama drawl were engaging, if not especially inspiring. “I promise you I think faster than I talk,” he told students.

Capilouto seemed to have a good sense of humor and a self-deprecating manner, which should wear well with some of the big-ego lawmakers from whom he must cajole resources for the university.

But Capilouto’s vague responses to questions about his views on major UK issues left many people at the forums wanting more. Nobody expected him to be up to speed on every issue and have all the answers, but he seemed reluctant to tackle many of them, or to convey a vision with any specifics.

Questioners expressed concern that UK’s core academic mission is being shortchanged in comparison with athletics and medicine. They worried aloud that the humanities are becoming a stepchild to science, math and business-oriented programs. They warned of antiquated laboratories and a brain drain caused by stagnant salaries.

They also questioned the university’s cozy relationship with the coal industry, town-gown relationships and the campus’ impact on surrounding neighborhoods. They wanted to know where the new president plans to find money to achieve the lofty UK goals he said he admires.

“There’s no doubt he understands the medical side,” said Carey Cavanaugh, director of the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. The test, Cavanaugh said, will be how Capilouto handles issues and areas where he doesn’t have experience.

“I think this is just the beginning of the journey,” Cavanaugh said.

It would have been good to have more people asking those questions of Capilouto and other finalists for a longer period before this marriage was consummated. Even so, the questions must be answered.

Imaging software to unlock secrets from ancient texts. Virtual combat training environments for soldiers. Rear-projection stage sets for operas.

Since its creation seven years ago, the University of Kentucky’s Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments has been developing all kinds of cutting-edge audio and visual technology. Now, it has a cutting-edge building in which to do that work.

The VisCenter recently moved into the new $18.6 million Davis Marksbury Building near Rose and Maxwell streets. It is UK’s first new building to be certified under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standards.

The 45,000-square-foot building includes the latest in research facilities, as well an environmentally friendly design and systems that will do everything from manage rainfall runoff to reduce power consumption. Solar panels on the roof will provide about 10 percent of its electricity.

In addition to the VisCenter, the building houses two other departments of the College of Engineering: computer science, and electrical and computer engineering. It is next door to the James F. Hardymon Building, which houses advanced networking research, creating a “digital village” that will make collaboration easier among faculty and students.

“I’m now running into people every day that I wanted to interact with for years, but I never saw them,” said Brent Seales, director of the VisCenter, which previously was downtown in two rented floors of the Kentucky Utilities building.

Collaboration is at the heart of the VisCenter mission. It works throughout the university to help other departments create and commercialize new audio-visual technology that can help train students, improve Kentucky’s economy and generate money for the university.

It has more than a dozen active faculty and about that many staff members. At any given time, it works with about 50 students, from doctoral candidates to a couple of local high schoolers. Its research has ranged far and wide.

Perhaps the most visible project was its collaboration with UK Opera Theatre this winter to create vivid, rear-projection stage set technology for a production of Porgy and Bess. The sets then were rented by The Atlanta Opera for its sold-out production.

Further commercializing that technology could become a financial winner for the university. But Seales also would like to see it used in Kentucky schools to improve student productions.

The center has developed technology to create high-resolution copies of ancient manuscripts, and Seales is hoping to improve on that enough to read Roman papyrus scrolls damaged when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. and buried the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

That work has led to discussions with Israeli authorities about a project to create high-tech scans of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a system that would allow scholars to compare previous images of them to see how the scrolls have changed over time.

The VisCenter created virtual training environments for the Army, so, for example, soldiers could practice walking down a dark village street in Afghanistan before they faced the real thing.

The center also has an FBI contract to develop microphone beam technology, which would allow sound to be isolated and amplified without a microphone actually having to be close to a subject.

While obviously helpful for surveillance, such technology could have significant commercial applications. For example, it could be used for actors onstage or question-and-answer sessions in an auditorium.

The VisCenter is working on three-dimensional fingerprinting technology for the Department of Homeland Security. It would provide much more accurate biometric information than the old mashed-inky-fingers-on-paper method.

The center’s staff also has produced several highly regarded documentary films, including Coal in Kentucky and Imaging the Iliad.

One major project seeks to create audio-visual technology that would make it easier for surgeons to see body parts they are operating on, as well as to consult long-distances with other physicians. Another project is trying to minimize distractions surgeons face in the operating room. Still another hopes to create visual images of the human vocal system for more accurate diagnosis of voice problems.

“We’ve built a certain niche,” Seales said, which helps the center attract projects from both the academic and business worlds, plus outstanding faculty members and students. “A big part of our mission is to engage the community and, hopefully, inspire innovation.”

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Central Kentucky has more public art than most people realize, from edgy new murals and sculpture to historical architecture that has become so much a part of the landscape that we take it for granted.

Finding and learning more about this art has never been easier, thanks to a new, free tool that is as close as the palm of your hand.

The Kentucky Museum Without Walls project will soon release an Android version of its TakeItArtside! application, which was launched in November for Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iTouch.

The app is the brainchild of faculty and students at the University of Kentucky’s Art Department and Gaines Center for the Humanities and was developed by Lexington’s APAX Software. You may download it free from Apple’s App Store or the project’s Web site, Kentuckymuseumwithoutwalls.com.

The application uses GPS mapping technology to direct users to art in public places in Fayette and surrounding counties. There is a photograph of and information about each piece. Users may search for public art in the region and make a gallery of favorites.

But that is just the beginning, said Christine Huskisson, the project’s co-founder and a part-time UK art professor. “It has the ability to engage people in public art who haven’t been engaged before,” she said.

Users may send feedback and information to project developers, such as whether a piece of art has been vandalized. Soon, they will be able to add additional artwork to the database, along with photographs and background information.

“We’re using the community to help us build the content,” Huskisson said, adding that submitted information will be edited and verified by project volunteers.

Interdisciplinary lesson plans for middle school and high school students are available on the app and the Web site, and discussions are under way about using them in local school systems. The app also has a calendar of events.

The app will soon launch an interactive game — ArtFit — that will help users count calories they burn while walking to visit artwork. Streaming video interviews with local artists will be added soon.

Eventually, Huskisson said, the project hopes to grow into its name and expand statewide, perhaps with help from UK’s network of county extension agents.

Georgetown College, where art department chair Juilee Decker has been active in public art projects, has joined as a partner in the Kentucky Museum Without Walls. Discussions are under way to bring in Transylvania University, too.

“It kind of has this life of its own,” Huskisson said. The collaborative nature of the project has allowed it to come a long way in less than a year. It recently won a regional award from the Association for Continuing Higher Education.

The project began when Marnie Holoubek asked Huskisson and her museum-studies students to help develop a public-art master plan for the Legacy Trail. As that project progressed, ambitions grew.

Huskisson discovered that Lisa Broome-Price, associate director of the Gaines Center, wanted to create a public-art database for the region. After receiving a $10,000 Commonwealth Collaborative grant from UK to develop their vision, they attended a professional conference in Baltimore and were inspired by mobile apps in New York and Portland, Ore., and an online public-art database in Philadelphia.

They and their students visualized the user experience — including games and lesson plans — and APAX Software figured out how to turn it into reality. Subsequent funding has come from the Gaines Center and private donations.

UK and Georgetown College students have collected information about artwork for the database — taking photos, writing descriptions and plotting GPS locations. The process has led to some interesting discussions about what is public art.

Huskisson said TakeItArtside! is including any painting, sculpture, mural or other work that is outside or in a building accessible to the general public. But project leaders are taking a broad view. Many historical homes were added to the database because they are architectural works of art, Broome-Price said.

By increasing awareness of public art, the project hopes to develop more appreciation for the art Kentucky has — and an appetite to create more.

“It’s about cultural assets in public places,” Huskisson said. “And we have a lot more of them than many people realize.”

America has a tragically bad track record when it comes to understanding the political dynamics of the Middle East.

So what should we make of the popular uprisings now sweeping the region? How will they affect the United States? What about oil?

I posed those questions to John Stempel, a career foreign service officer who is now a senior professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, which he directed from 1993 until 2003.

Stempel’s 24-year diplomatic career included a dozen years overseas, five of which were at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran just before the 1979 hostage crisis. He wrote a book, Inside the Iranian Revolution, based on the experience. A former naval officer, he also held senior Middle East policy jobs with the Defense and State departments.

While the turmoil is likely to continue for some time, Stempel is hopeful that change could be good for America — if we play our cards right. “Understanding how the Muslim world functions politically is our basic problem,” he said.

The Internet-enabled uprisings point to an age divide in the Middle East. Young, educated people there tend to be more sympathetic to American ideals, such as democracy. Still, there is less separation between church and state than in Western societies. “Whatever comes out of the governments will involve a religious element,” Stempel said.

Those are just some of the things Americans must keep in mind, he said. Another is the distinct cultural and political differences among nations in the Middle East, which are the results of unique histories of tribal, religious and political strife.

The king of Jordan will likely be able to pacify unrest, because that nation has a political system in which many people feel they have a voice. On the other hand, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi is probably on his way out.

Iran remains “a serious problem,” Stempel said, “But we should back off and let China and the European countries deal with Iran.” China could be especially influential because it has a multibillion-dollar oil deal with that nation.

Stempel thinks America would be wise to maintain good working relationships with all factions in the Middle East as societies change and new governments emerge.

“It doesn’t have to be perfectly democratic, as long as you don’t have ayatollahs screaming ‘death to the infidels,’” he said. “If you see people who want reasonable popular participation dominating the dialogue over the fundamentalists, then things will be going our way, I think.”

The best thing American government and business leaders can do is try to create partnerships that are mutually beneficial, Stempel said. That is especially true with oil. The United States has 4.5 percent of the world’s population, but consumes 40 percent of its gasoline.

“There’s always going to be a shortage of oil,” he said. “The demand is growing so much in India and China, we’re never going to be in a soft market.”

There’s no way America’s domestic oil production can be increased enough to make more than a dent in the increasingly international market, despite what the “drill baby, drill” crowd thinks. America needs oil from the Middle East, but those nations need Western technology and expertise to maximize the value for their oil reserves, Stempel said.

That creates fertile ground for consortiums of American and international oil companies to do business in a reshaped Middle East. Stempel thinks deals could eventually be done with some of the biggest producers: Iraq, Algeria, Iran and Libya.

He also sees opportunities for America in helping the region develop agriculture and, perhaps, even nuclear energy, with proper safeguards.

Stempel, who was very critical of the Bush administration’s disastrous Middle East policies at that time, gives good marks so far to the Obama administration for keeping dialogue open with all factions in the region. He thinks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is doing an especially good job.

A self-described “radical moderate,” Stempel said he fears that the right-wing elements that have seized control of the Republican Party will make it harder for America to forge good working relationships with these new and changing Middle East governments.

“The important thing is to get people to understand these countries,” Stempel said. “We do have people who understand the Middle East, if they’re allowed to function properly. That’s been a problem since 9/11.”

The University of Kentucky is racing to complete its new Albert B. Chandler Hospital. A curved atrium lobby connects the new hospital with two existing buildings. A water feature with Kentucky stone fences and native trees and plants is being built, above, where Rose Street used to be.

The hospital is scheduled to open with a ribbon-cutting May 15. The first patients will move in on May 22.

“We have not missed a single deadline and we will not miss this one,” said Dr. Michael Karpf, UK’s executive vice president for health affairs, who gave media tours of the construction project Wednesday.

The $532 million project is on time and 1 percent under budget, Karpf said. The project is being paid for by money generated from hospital operations, bonding and private philanthropy. “There is not a single nickel of federal money” in the project, he said. “There’s not a single nickel of state money.”

The 650-bed hospital is being designed with the idea that it will be used for 100 years. Additional sections will be built over the next 30 to 50 years, eventually replacing the older Chandler Medical Center.

“This is a world-class facility, but it will be uniquely Kentucky in the art and landscaping,” Karpf said. The hospital will display a wide variety of original work by Kentucky artists, and a 305-seat auditorium with a studio-quality sound system will feature performance art that can be televised in patients’ rooms.

“This is a serious collection of Kentucky art,” Karpf said, as well as some pieces by artists from elsewhere. The idea is that art will help patients and their families feel more comfortable.

(Click on photos to enlarge them.)

Dr. Michael Karpf, right, shows the atrium construction to Ed Lane, left, and Mark Green of The Lane Report magazine. Photos by Tom Eblen

Rendering of what the proposed Wildcat Coal Lodge may look like.

Not only will the University of Kentucky’s proposed Wildcat Coal Lodge honor the mining industry, it apparently must praise it.

UK has agreed to create an exhibit in the new basketball dormitory’s main lobby to serve as “discussion of and tribute to the importance of the coal industry to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”

Who must approve the tribute’s content? Joseph W. Craft III, the head of Alliance Coal Co., who organized the donors who gave UK at least $7 million to build the lodge. Craft also was a major donor to the Joe Craft Center, which houses UK’s basketball practice facility and athletics offices.

The Wildcat Coal Lodge has stirred controversy ever since UK’s Board of Trustees agreed in 2009 to accept the donations and the strings attached to them. (The name itself is ironic: in addition to being UK’s mascot, “wildcat” is an old nickname for irresponsible mining.)

Critics have accused UK of selling out to the coal industry to create an even more lavish athletics program, which often seems to overshadow the university’s academic mission. The writer Wendell Berry, a retired UK English professor and critic of mountaintop-removal coal mining, withdrew his academic papers in protest.

But the public learned this latest wrinkle in the deal only last week, after Herald-Leader reporter Linda Blackford used the state Open Records Act to obtain a copy of the agreement between UK and the Craft group.

It made me wonder: assuming this tribute provides less than a complete picture of Kentucky’s coal industry, how does UK plan to tell the rest of the story? Should a second exhibit be planned elsewhere on campus to provide balance?

Perhaps UK could memorialize Kentuckians who have died in mining accidents by putting each of their names on a seat in Rupp Arena. Or it could dedicate a wing of the new UK Hospital to miners who have suffered and died from black lung disease.

Water in one of UK’s fountains could be made to run orange occasionally, to remind people of what surface mining sometimes does to Eastern Kentucky’s streams.

E-mail me any suggestions you have, although I’ll say up front that I don’t think it would be a good idea to strip-mine The Arboretum.

Seriously, UK’s apparent willingness to cuddle up to the coal industry in return for money — as it did years ago with the tobacco industry — raises questions of intellectual honesty and independence, which is something a university should care about.

Kentucky has an old and complex relationship with coal and the industry that mines it. It is a story complicated by tradeoffs.

Coal really does “keep the lights on,” as the industry says. Mining provides many good-paying jobs in poor mountain counties, although the number has been declining for years. Because we have never accounted for coal’s true costs, cheap electricity rates have enabled Kentucky to develop important manufacturing industries.

But coal mining also has damaged Kentucky’s land, water and people — often irreparably so. The industry has created some multi-millionaires, but it also has contributed to some of the nation’s worst pockets of poverty.

Can UK tell a balanced story of coal? It can, and it has. One of the best summaries of this complex story is a documentary film, Coal in Kentucky, produced last year by UK’s College of Engineering and the Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments. If you haven’t seen it, you should, no matter which side you are on.

Somehow, though, I don’t think this is the kind of “tribute” the coal industry has in mind.

Pork futures

It is ironic, and in an odd way reassuring, that the Kentucky Republican known as the “Prince of Pork” has become chairman of the House Appropriations Committee at this moment in time.

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers

The GOP’s Tea Party wing in Congress seems to want to all but eliminate taxes, spending and government regulation to create some kind of Ayn Rand fantasy land of right-wing economic theory. Their pledge to immediately slash $100 billion in federal spending, if enacted, would wreck the country.

Rogers’ new job is ironic because his skill over the years at securing earmarks for his southeast Kentucky district is just the sort of thing GOP hotheads are now vilifying — with some justification. Still, Rogers also knows how important much of the government’s spending actually is to public well-being.

Here’s hoping Rogers can give the Tea Partiers some much-needed adult supervision.