Transylvania University’s Kissing Tree is a white ash tree estimated to be 270 years old—more than three decades older than the university itself. Alumni tell many stories about the customs surrounding the tree, which has made several lists of the “most romantic college traditions,” but the most prevalent seems to be that it functioned as a giant piece of mistletoe for the students. If you and your main squeeze found yourselves under its protective branches, college officials would look the other way while you stole a kiss.
Morehead State University’s central campus was designed by the Olmsted Brothers, a partnership of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and John C. Olmsted, two sons of the father of American landscape design, Frederick Law Olmsted. The elder Olmsted designed Central Park in New York City and the Louisville parks system.
Eastern Kentucky University offers Kentucky’s only four-year aviation program in which students can become pilots with the Professional Flight concentration. Unlike traditional flight schools, EKU offers a four-year degree while the students earn flight hours and can pursue private, instrument, commercial, multi-engine and/or flight instructor certifications.
Founded before the Civil War, Berea College was the first interracial and coeducational college in the South.
Why C-E-N-T-R-E? In 1819, when Centre College was founded in more or less the center of the state, American and British spellings had not yet diverged. The American spellings came about as the result of propagandizing on their behalf by Noah Webster, especially in the first edition of his (tellingly named) American Dictionary in 1828.
The Kentucky Community and Technical College System boasts a couple of unique study areas: the North American Racing Academy at Bluegrass Community and Technical College in Lexington and the School of Traditional and Bluegrass Music at Hazard Community and Technical College.
In 1954, Muhammad Ali first learned to box in a downtown Louisville building that is now part of Spalding University’s campus. The 12-year-old Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, attended an event at the building and parked his new red Schwinn bicycle outside. When he came back out, he discovered the bike had been stolen. An angry Ali found police officer Joe Martin, who coached boxing at the Columbia Gym downstairs, and told him about the theft, saying that he planned to “whup” whoever took the bike. Martin told Ali that before he tried to do that, he had better learn to fight, leading him to start training in the Columbia Gym and begin a storied amateur boxing career. Not long after Ali’s death in 2016, Spalding hung a replica of Ali’s red bicycle over the front entrance of the building to serve as a tribute to Ali and Martin’s first encounter. Spalding later changed the name of the building from the Spalding University Center back to Columbia Gym.
Thomas More University is home to the Monte Casino Chapel, which Robert Ripley of Ripley’s Believe It or Not proclaimed to be the “smallest church in the world.” Built in 1878 by Benedictine monks from a Covington monastery, the 8 feet tall by 4 feet wide stone building was moved by flatbed truck to the campus in 1965.
Dr. Phillip Allen Sharp, who graduated from Union College with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and chemistry in 1966, became a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1993, he was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his research on the structure of genes.
University of Louisville surgeons implanted the first fully self-contained artificial heart.
In March 2019, Murray State University announced a new Center for Agricultural Hemp, cementing its position as a leader in research, education, policy and innovation within the hemp industry.
Western Kentucky University’s mascot, Big Red, is a large, red, furry blob. Created in 1979, the character’s job is to inspire school spirit, which it does at gatherings and sporting events. The school’s team name is the Hilltoppers because the school sits high on a hill above Bowling Green, but since a “hilltopper” was difficult to personify, Big Red was created.
Bellarmine University is home to the Thomas Merton Center, a repository for written works by the Trappist monk who lived at the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani in nearby Bardstown. A theologian and social activist, Thomas Merton wrote more than 70 books and personally named Bellarmine as the home of his manuscripts, letters, journals and memorabilia in 1967, just one year before his death.
Brescia University was established by the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph in 1925 as Mount Saint Joseph Junior College for Women. The name later was changed to Brescia in honor of the Italian city where their original order was founded.
More than 45 years ago, one of Spalding University’s professors started The Running of the Rodents as a stress reliever during finals week. This tradition has been featured on international radio shows and was a question on the board game, Trivial Pursuit. Today, students still adopt, train and race rodents on a miniature track in a Kentucky Derby-style competition.
Asbury University is the only school in the world to send students as paid journalists to 12 straight Olympic Games.
The University of Pikeville is home to the only optometry college in the Commonwealth, the Kentucky College of Optometry. And UPIKE is the only private, liberal arts university in Kentucky with a medical college—the Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Northern Kentucky University ranks as a Military Friendly School, highlighted for creating a supportive environment for veterans. This is the ninth straight year NKU has received this designation from Viqtory, the media entity for military personnel transitioning to civilian life. The university also is highlighted as a Best for Vets school by Military Times.
Eastern Kentucky University once had an unofficial mascot—a dog named Mozart that roamed campus in the 1950s and ’60s. The beloved mutt, who lived to age 17, sat in on classes and attended concerts at the James E. Van Peursem Music Pavilion in the Ravine. He was cared for by not just one owner but the entire student body. Mozart died in 1964, but his spirit remains in his portrait and collar displayed at EKU Special Collections and Archives, his grave in the Ravine, and his influence on EKU’s history.
Centre College students do more than read about the world—they live it. Approximately 85 percent study abroad at least once, taking advantage of the college’s guarantee for international study. This emphasis on global learning is backed by a free passport for entering students.
Georgetown College was the first Baptist college west of the Allegheny Mountains.
Kentucky State University did not have a football season in 1943 due to the small number of men enrolled at the school during World War II.
Campbellsville University’s campus is home to three wooden carvings: a globe, a life-size tiger and a set of praying hands.
The R&B/funk band Midnight Star was formed at Kentucky State University in 1976. The group is best known for its dance hits “Freak-a-Zoid,” “No Parking (on the Dance Floor)” and “Operator.”
While Midway University is well-known for its Department of Equine Studies, it offers another unique area of study—a Bourbon Studies minor for undergraduate students interested in the tourism marketing segment of the bourbon industry. MBA students also can add the concentration courses as part of their degree.
The University of the Cumberlands lowered its on-campus tuition by 57 percent in 2018 to $9,875, making it the most affordable private university in the state.
Celebrating its centennial this year, Kentucky Christian University was founded on Dec. 1, 1919, as Christian Normal Institute in Grayson, offering a high school, a junior college and a training program for public school teachers. In the 1920s its focus turned to Christian ministry education.
On June 16, 1945 the SS Asbury Victory, a military freighter named for what then was Asbury College, was launched in Richmond, California. Asbury has produced more military chaplains than any school in the nation.
Kentucky Wesleyan College has a bell from the school’s original administration building on the Millersburg Campus. Known as the Millersburg Bell, it was found more than 100 years after the school relocated from the original campus site. In 2002, a new tradition began: The ringing of the Millersburg Bell is now the official closing of the annual commencement exercises.
Morehead State University offers one of only a handful of space systems engineering programs in the country.
Sullivan University’s Culinary School consistently ranks as one of the top 10 such programs in the country. The College of Hospitality Studies offers degrees in culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, hotel and restaurant management, and catering.
Sullivan University is Kentucky’s largest private university, with more than 6,600 students.
A recent survey showed that 87 percent of Murray State University graduates are employed within one year of graduation. Career Services hosts more than 250 events to guide students in their career exploration, with nearly 350 companies recruiting on campus annually.
Frontier Nursing University was founded by Mary Breckinridge, whose original log cabin home is now Wendover Bed & Breakfast and Retreat Center in southeastern Kentucky.
Lindsey Wilson College has a unique summer atmosphere due, in large part, to TheatreFest!, the summer theater series at the school and an extension of the its Theatre Program. TheatreFest! produces dramatic literature old and new, and entertains the communities of south-central Kentucky.
Founded in 1780, Transylvania University is Kentucky’s first and the nation’s 16th oldest university. Transylvania’s name, meaning “across the woods” in Latin, stems from the university’s founding in the heavily forested region of western Virginia known as the Transylvania Colony, which became most of Kentucky in 1792.
Frontier Nursing University was established in 1939, evolving as an educational branch of the Frontier Nursing Service, which began in 1925 with nurse-midwives traveling on horseback to visit patients in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.
Clay Hill Memorial Forest is a 305-acre educational and research woodland managed by Campbellsville University as a regional center for environmental education and research on Eastern deciduous forests. The site, less than 8 miles from Campbellsville’s campus, is used for field labs for courses such as ecology, entomology, ornithology and conservation biology.
The Kentucky Women Writers Conference, a program of the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences, is the longest running literary festival of women writers in the nation. Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, the conference is Sept. 19-22.
Western Kentucky University offers the first and largest meteorology program in Kentucky. The program meets all federal civil service requirements for employment by the National Weather Service. Students interested in a career in television can pursue the Certified Broadcast Meteorologist program of the American Meteorological Society upon graduation.
Students from 108 counties in Kentucky can attend Alice Lloyd College and pay nothing in tuition when they are awarded the Appalachian Leaders College Scholarship, which covers costs and includes the Student Work Program that requires students to work on campus.
Berea College students don’t pay tuition, which was abolished in 1892. Instead, those costs—more than $150,000 per student—are covered by other sources (donors, the endowment, etc.) so that no student or their family has to pay tuition. Plus students help operate nearly every aspect of the college by working 10-15 hours per week.
Beside the entrance to each building on Midway University’s campus is a boot scraper/cleaning brush. These are necessary because the school has a fully operational horse farm on its 200-acre campus and nearly 40 horses.
A Kentucky Wesleyan College tradition began in 1905 when the main college building in Winchester was destroyed by fire. One of the limestone ornaments that decorated the facade fell to the ground but remained intact. This bust of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, became a symbol of the Kentucky Wesleyan spirit. Today, it is mounted in a prominent place on the Owensboro campus and is a focal point for many student activities.
The University of Pikeville began a tradition known as The Climb in 2016 under the leadership of President Burton J. Webb. During The Climb each August, Webb and Provost Lori Werth lead first-year students on a track up the iconic 99 steps on campus. As they climb the last step, students receive a warm welcome from alumni, faculty and other members of the UPIKE family. In May 2020, the first group of students will descend the 99 steps on graduation day, marking the close of a successful experience at the university.
“The Thinker” statue that sits in front of Grawemeyer Hall at the University of Louisville is the first large-scale bronze cast of that famous sculpture by Auguste Rodin, who personally supervised the casting in Paris.
Northern Kentucky University physics professor Dr. Scott Nutter has a research experiment on the International Space Station. NASA launched the ISS-CREAM instrument (Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass for the International Space Station) into space in August 2018 to investigate and study cosmic ray particles.
The University of Kentucky Art Museum has a collection of more than 4,800 objects, including American and European paintings, drawings, photographs, prints and sculptures.
Alice Lloyd College was named for its founder, Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd, a journalist from Massachusetts. In 1920, she moved to Knott County to help improve the economic conditions in the area. She was given land to develop a school, which she named Pippa Passes, after a poem by Robert Browning. She opened Caney Junior College in 1923, a free school for students from the area, and worked at the school until she passed away in 1962.
Bellarmine University was founded in 1950 by John A. Floersh, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Louisville. It is named for Saint Robert Bellarmine, an Italian Jesuit priest who was canonized in 1930.
In January, Brescia University began offering a bachelor’s of science degree in agricultural business. It is designed for students who have earned their associate degree in applied science in agricultural studies from Owensboro Community and Technical College.
Originally located in downtown Covington and called Villa Madonna College, Thomas More University was moved to a new campus in Crestview Hills after years of growth. President Lyndon B. Johnson attended the dedication of what was then known as Thomas More College in September 1968.
The Georgetown College campus is built on land donated by Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister. Craig was credited with many firsts, including Georgetown’s first gristmill and lumber mill. Legend has it that he also is the inventor of Kentucky bourbon.
Students and alumni of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System contribute $2.3 billion to Kentucky’s economy.
Located in the far eastern part of the Commonwealth, Kentucky Christian University sits in the “Heart of the Parks” with three state parks within minutes of the campus.
Twenty-six percent of the University of the Cumberlands student body are first-generation college students.
The dome of the John B. Begley Chapel is incorporated in the Lindsey Wilson College logo. The chapel was designed in the 1990s by renowned architect E. Fay Jones, an apprentice of the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright.