The Louisville native was even more ecstatic six months later when the humanitarian organization won the for its work in combating hunger and creating better conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas around the globe.

“The Nobel Peace Prize was definitely just phenomenal,” Grantz said.

Although the award was announced when people were working remotely because of COVID-19, one plus was that Grantz and all the other WFP employees who shared in the honor were able to “attend” the virtual ceremony in Oslo, Norway, via Microsoft Teams and hear the acceptance speech of their World Food Programme executive director.

“It makes you in your core want to work even harder and do more,” Grantz said. “It brought goose bumps to your skin…This is why I joined this organization.”

As a liaison between the partners and the offices in the affected countries, Grantz said she works to ensure everyone’s on the same page in seeking and providing critical aid.

When a disaster or conflict happens somewhere, that country’s office sends in information and writes a proposal about what’s needed to help the area deal and recover. Grantz or another officer reviews the proposal to see it meets all requirements of donors, usually government agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Grantz negotiates with donors to ensure the need is met with as much money as possible. And then she might work with the country’s office again to make sure the aid goes to meet the true needs resulting from the emergency. Each situation requires special logistics for WFP to get the food where it’s needed – and that process might be complicated by the emergency at hand.

Her UofL graduate education provided a helpful launching pad for the challenging, rewarding mission.

Interested “to understand the science behind all of it,” Grantz was attracted to the then-new interdisciplinary master’s degree with the sustainability concentration to build on her undergraduate interests in international relations, sustainability and global health.

Several courses then relate to her work now, she said. In an urban farming class, she learned about the importance of good soil and food equity, particularly the importance of access to nutrient-dense food. In an agriculture class, students talked to farmers and got their hands dirty in planting. An environmental law class helped her learn to unravel and understand the essence of thick legal documents. In an anthropology class centered on ecology and politics, she learned how to interview people, evaluate a situation’s pros and cons and apply what she gleaned from case studies.

While at UofL, she even had a hand back then in food distribution, volunteering on the Health Sciences Center’s “green team” that worked with Starbucks to collect food left over at the day’s end and to give to Louisville nonprofits to share with people in need.

Also while a graduate student, Grantz co-organized the Louisville Solar Tour, a bus tour of homes, businesses and other facilities to demonstrate the advantages of the alternative source. “That helped me with my grants management and partnerships,” she said.

“I’m lucky that UofL was a part of my journey because without it I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Grantz said, also describing sustainability studies as “so versatile, you can go into so many different pathways from there.”

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At first it was that simple text without context from someone that puzzled Michael Lindenberger that surprising day, but the unexpected message soon was reinforced by an excited call from his boss. He was working from home, as were several other co-workers, when the journalists learned they were Pulitzer Prize winners.

They scrambled back into the Houston Chronicle office to share in their victory, small-scale and COVID-era style, as the four 2022 winners for for 2021 pieces about voter suppression in Texas. The series, called “The Big Lie,” detailed tactics to restrict voting, rejected claims of widespread voter fraud and advocated for voting reforms.

The UofL alumnus, 51, called the achievement “super affirming.”

“It was fun not just to win myself but to see my team and others win,” Lindenberger said, adding that the work of the editorial board and other staff members also elevated that of the winning four. “It was a real team success.”

As deputy opinion editor, Lindenberger directs the day-to-day editorial operation and edited much of the submitted copy along with his boss. He also wrote some of the entries, including one installment that gave a nod to his home state under the headline “The Big Lie: What happens when a GOP state tells the truth about voter fraud? Ask Kentucky.”

Lindenberger already knew whom to ask in Kentucky, and his experience likely gave him an advantage in securing the high-level interviews. He figures he has interviewed nearly every Kentucky governor since Wallace Wilkinson in the early 1990s, so he was able to add Andy Beshear to the list that already included Beshear’s father and former Gov. Steve Beshear. And he also knew from his UofL days fellow student Michael Adams, the Kentucky secretary of state who worked with Beshear on a bipartisan approach to expanding voting options in the state during the pandemic.

“We try to do our own research and our own reporting when we can, and I think that makes a difference,” he said about the Chronicle’s editorial operation.

Louisville readers may recall Lindenberger’s byline from the Courier Journal, where he served as a bureau chief, and LEO, for which he was chief political writer, or before that, from the Louisville Cardinal student newspaper, where he wrote and served two terms as its top editor in the mid-1990s.

“The Cardinal was fantastic training for journalists like me,” he said. The staff grew and the paper sent reporters throughout the country to report on some stories. Lindenberger recalled that lessons he learned while working there – “leadership, management and just journalism” – helped shape his career. “It was a truly great time.”

Then-Cardinal adviser Bob Schulman later became a good friend and served as an important mentor, teaching about fairness, the connection of the press to a community and the role of the press in a free society, Lindenberger recalled.

“All that was extraordinarily useful,” he said.

He also credited several faculty members, in particular, Charles Breslin, Paul Weber and Phil Laemmle, as meaningful influences.

The student wrote some UofL Magazine stories then and did research for some historical markers on campus, including the one that shows the resting spot of the ashes of Louis Brandeis beneath the portico of the law school that is now named for the Supreme Court associate justice.

The Louisville native wrapped up his bachelor’s degree in political science in 2003, having returned home after a reporting stint at the Dallas Morning News.

“I was deeply interested in the law,” he said. So he kept going, working on his law degree at night while writing for the Courier Journal. Lindenberger decided to finish it up full time, ultimately in 2006, after the newspaper closed some bureaus and made him rethink and expand his career options.

Although he interviewed with some law firms as he was winding up his second degree, he felt the pull back to his newsroom roots.

“My heart was still in journalism,” he said.

Lindenberger returned to the Dallas Morning News in 2007 as a senior reporter, enjoyed the honor and “great experience” of a Knight journalism fellowship in 2012-13 at Stanford University and was promoted to a Washington, D.C., correspondent for the paper. He was recruited back to work in Dallas, this time on the editorial staff, all the while relying on his legal experience.

“The law degree did two things for me,” he said.

Starting with contract work while he was still in school, Lindenberger contributed to Time magazine and Time.com more than 100 articles for almost a decade “writing for a very international audience about legal affairs for one of the most prestigious publications in the country,” he said.

And when he returned to Dallas after UofL, he was covering areas he described as “very political and policy heavy,” particularly about transportation issues in high-growth areas of Texas. “These were hugely important stories.”

“I was equipped with a legal education that allowed me to not ever be intimidated by anybody,” Lindenberger said. “That context and that capacity proved extraordinarily important as I became more and more an investigative reporter.”

After his varied roles at the Dallas paper, the Houston Chronicle hired him for its opinion team four years ago.

“We definitely had a goal of doing the kind of work that the best of our peers do,” he said.

Lindenberger said the editorials in the Pulitzer-winning series showed that widespread voter fraud in Texas “just doesn’t exist,” despite claims, and that voter suppression tactics were not new, dating back to Jim Crow-era efforts to limit minority votes. One part of the series called for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to resign, and others were critical of the Texas Legislature.

“We really do believe…  that the work we do changes lives. We change opinions and that changes lives because it changes conditions in the state,” Lindenberger said, adding that effort takes a long time.

“You don’t write one editorial and suddenly everyone starts taking climate change seriously. It’s time and time again. It’s honest recording or use of the facts – and writing that makes people care about it.”

And the good news of the Pulitzer arrived after some personal losses and challenges for Lindenberger and for colleagues during the pandemic.

“All that together, and then to realize that the work we did in spite of all that stuff, to know that the work we were able to accomplish was judged to be the best in the country that year was really, really gratifying,” he said.

The summa cum laude graduate became a second lieutenant with the Army ROTC commissioning ceremony in May that preceded commencement. He was an honors scholar who wrote a timely thesis in addition to the several other research papers that admittedly left him “typed out” by semester’s end. But what really got to him was the commencement moment recognizing first-generation college students.

“This matters to me,” he said. “You don’t need to be a legacy to pull off some great things.”

But tenacity helps, as does the willingness to seek answers from good advisers. Not to mention time management.

While studying to earn his UofL undergraduate degree in four years in political science with a minor in Russian, Payne also served in the Army National Guard, having joined in 2019.

“We made it work. It was a struggle,” Payne said. “Doing ROTC and the National Guard and academics is difficult.”

But the balancing act paid off and he plans to further his educational journey with a graduate or law degree, having an interest in immigration law or even a “dream” of working for the State Department.

Before that, however, he will spend four months working in recruitment at Fort Knox and later will report to Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona to train as a military intelligence officer.

Payne credits some critical internships in political science as good preparation for that intelligence officer role. While working with government officials on Louisville Metro Council and in the Kentucky General Assembly through the Legislative Research Commission, he learned to gather and distill critical information, research issues and present facts and even recommendations to decision-makers to use.

The Louisville native was always intrigued by watching the news and learning about current events, which ultimately led him to the political science department and its faculty members who opened his eyes to career opportunities.

His choice of Russian studies also became “very timely,” he admits.

“I always wanted to choose a language that was critical and impactful,” Payne said. Russian, he decided, was “more relevant in the world and underused in the west.”

The combination of major and minor led him to the also timely honors thesis topic about the Russian diaspora, although the swiftly shifting current conflict in Ukraine made it more stressful to write.

He cannot believe the changes in world affairs that have occurred in his time at UofL, especially this last year, and within his National Guard service. “It’s been a heck of a ride.”

A week before his classes started last year, he was in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when the capital city of Kabul fell and he suddenly was helping a unit prepare to deploy to Afghanistan.

As a Guardsman stateside, he has worked with an engineering battalion and spent the past year supporting the 101^st Airborne Division. “I had a blast doing that,” he said. Other assignments have included helping to run COVID-testing centers and polling places.

And Payne’s face is familiar around the American Legion Jeffersontown GI Joe Post 244, where he has volunteered and became a district officer, believing he may be the youngest member in Kentucky. Bolstering such civic organizations is important to society, in his estimation, and he says they need new blood to support them.

Whether it be drawing attention to military service through the veterans work or continuing his Guard tenure, Payne said he hopes to continue building the force.

“I take the most pride in recruiting,” Payne said.

UofL student-led teams are endeavoring to help some Louisville neighborhoods access understandable, useful information that might affect their health, specifically as it relates to air quality.

The project is one for the Public Health Literacy Group, a coalition of academic scholars, community leaders and activists focused on making the science of public health more accessible. The work recently got a $250,000 boost from the Humana Foundation as part of its ongoing Community Partners Program.

The team includes three UofL scholars – Megan Poole from English, Shavonnie Carthens from law and Abigail Koenig from business – who, with their students, have banded with District 3 Metro Councilwoman Keisha Dorsey, grassroots organization Rubbertown Emergency Action (REACT) and the nonprofit Kristy Love Foundation.

Dorsey’s western Louisville district includes several neighborhoods involved in environmental justice efforts related to air conditions stemming from large chemical plants and other industries in an area locally referred to as Rubbertown, named after tire and synthetic rubber plants built there during World War II.

The project began when Poole was invited to a western Louisville organization’s board meeting to explain how she has her students work with nonprofits and community groups on their writing projects to gain useful experience.

“I believe you learn best by doing, so I try to give them real-world assignments and real-world prompts,” Poole said. “And that’s also how you kind of learn the messiness of business.”

In the audience was Dorsey, who approached her afterward seeking help to translate information that comes out about air pollution into something that her constituents can potentially care about and understand.

Poole, still in her first year at UofL, turned the issue over to her “Writing for Social Change” class last spring. Her students decided there needed to be a website where this material could be housed, and they created infographics to make information more comprehensible. 

“They discovered there was no central hub to talk about the science of air pollution or file complaints or ask questions,” she said.

So now student workers under the direction of Koenig in the College of Business will be working on a website, testing with the community and handling the data analytics, trying to see how people engage with the material and how to increase their engagement.

Through Carthens, a legal writing intern from the Brandeis School of Law is helping work on the language of announcements and information in hopes of making legal notices more easily comprehendible as public health notices.

The Kristy Love Foundation, a survivor-led organization that helps women suffering from traumas including human trafficking and abuse, will help with community focus groups. Women there will be hired to help the team choose locations for the group meetings and to spread the word through canvassing the affected neighborhoods.

The team will rely on neighborhood involvement and serious listening to direct the way citizens want to receive their information, whether it be digitally, on paper or via other ways.

“It really is a community project. What do you know about air pollution? What do you want to know? How do you currently receive this information, if at all,” Poole said. “We feel like before you create information for a specific audience, you have to find out how they want the information.”

The team also will be relying on the longtime, justice advocacy work and knowledge of the REACT group.

At UofL Poole and the other faculty members involved let the students try new things and see what works best to meet community needs.

“They are using the skills they learn to really make a difference now, as opposed to hypothetically one day,” Poole said. “It helps them grapple with what work looks like in the real world. I’m excited about it.”

Criminal justice faculty and students joined Louisville native and College of Arts and Sciences supporter Sam Lord Nov. 30 in celebrating his gift for a renovated Justice Laboratory in Brigman Hall.

The first-floor space includes a light-filled laboratory with enhanced technology that enables instructors to teach students and community members online and in-person at the same time and even asynchronously to allow access at a different time. The criminal justice department and the College of Arts and Sciences also would be able to hold a conference, record and-or stream it live.

The improvements would leverage the technology to reach a broader student base and even a global audience.

“It gives us a lot of capabilities that we didn’t have before,” said Tad Hughes, criminal justice department chair. “I promise you we will use this all the time.”

Hughes explained that the multi-chair work stations, each with one of six screens, would allow students to work more collaboratively, interacting with their cellphones and laptops or tablets — plus the teachers can pull from each station for class discussion using a larger central screen at the front of the room.  

The laboratory opens onto a newly painted hallway wall with the words “On a journey to be better together” along with “Community-engaged, Future-focused, Policy-oriented.”

“Justice is equally important in government as safety, and it intersects with safety a great deal. We don’t know enough about justice, and we don’t know enough about systems and how they work,” Lord said. “My investment in this classroom and in all of your and the students’ work is to help you bring better knowledge of criminal justice and to experiment.”

A plaque in the space is dedicated to Lord’s brother, chaplain Nathan Macauley Lord, and in memory of his parents and native Louisvillians Nathan Shrewsbury Lord, a longtime UofL law professor, and Rachel Macauley Smith Lord.

Cherie Dawson-Edwards, former chair and a criminal justice faculty member who also serves as the college’s associate dean for diversity, engagement, culture and climate, recalled taking classes in the formerly outdated space as a student and shared that she was excited about teaching her social and restorative justice class there in the spring.

She envisions encouraging the campus and community to think beyond the words “criminal justice” and use the space “to engage in justice work. It can be about equality; it can be about social and racial justice.”

President Neeli Bendapudi drew from her experience as a professor of consumer behavior in remarking about the transformative impact that space has people, both functionally and symbolically.

“I can just imagine the students who are going to benefit,” she said. “This benefits the institution and the learning they are going to get.”

Bendapudi expressed gratitude to Lord’s longtime generosity to UofL, dubbing the Louisville philanthropist a Renaissance man for his interest in several aspects of university life.

“We are so grateful you’re ours. Thank you so much,” she said.

Lord previously funded a mathematics laboratory and a physics and astronomy computing platform and technology-enabled classroom, also in memory of his parents. He also has supported the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Brigman Hall, a large brick building along the Oval at Belknap Campus’ west entrance, was erected in 1893 and later named in 1949 for Bennett Brigman ’18, a College of Arts and Sciences teacher who became the first dean of Speed Scientific School (now J.B. Speed School of Engineering) at its 1925 inception. After serving as part of the engineering school, the building was home to the business school and then the public administration program before currently housing the criminal justice department and some Kent School of Social Work offices.

During the annual day of giving, which occurs during Homecoming week, more than 2,450 donors contributed to the 2021 total of $2,932,603. The number of donors surpassed the initial goal of 2,021 and the previous record of 2,206 donors set in 2019 as alumni, employees, students, friends and organizations gave to their favorite UofL areas where they wanted to make an impact.

“As a national metropolitan research university, the University of Louisville is thrilled that donors from all 50 states support us,” said UofL President Neeli Bendapudi. “We can’t achieve success without the aid of our donors, and again this year, they have come forward from throughout the United States to fund the programs, projects and initiatives we execute. I thank them, one and all.”

 A highlight among several large gifts was Delta Dental’s commitment of $1.07 million to the UofL School of Dentistry, celebrated by the campaign Oct. 20 at the Health Sciences Center with a live social media segment. Other gifts included $400,000 to the UofL Health Brown Cancer Center from the Thomas Dunbar family, $112,000 to the College of Business from Yum! Brands (parent company of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut) and $100,000 to the College of Arts and Sciences from alumna Monica Pearson ’75. 

The HSC and Belknap Campus each had a special campus headquarters during the fundraising period where students who donated at least $10 could snag a pair of Cardinal socks and where donors could commemorate their giving spirit with a selfie taken against a giant “I Raised Some L” backdrop.

The fundraising site featured more than 560 initiatives, including individual colleges and schools, student scholarships and student-led organizations.

“Once again, our Cardinal Family stepped up to give back to our university and the areas they believe in,” said Jasmine Farrier, vice president of university advancement. “This record-breaking support shows that the University of Louisville is vitally connected to our alumni, the community, commonwealth and beyond.  We are grateful to our alumni, staff and faculty ambassadors who spent countless hours sharing updates about our programs across Belknap and Health Sciences to inspire Cardinals to learn more about student success, research innovation and community engagement at UofL.”

The Raise Some L campaign ran for 1,798 minutes, starting at 6:02 p.m. Oct. 19, in honor of the university’s founding year of 1798.

There, at a table labeled “Therapists for Protester Wellness,” marchers likely found Millicent Cahoon, a UofL counseling psychology doctoral student, or Cheryl Ades ’92, a Kent School of Social Work alumna, among the volunteers.

Their alliance began the June day after a photographer documenting protests at their downtown core was killed by civilian gunfire, devastating other protesters.

Cahoon knew she had to do something. So she appealed to fellow mental health professionals via Facebook to join her there to help. Ultimately, about 50 people offered aid. 

“It was those who felt very strongly about the movement and wanted to advocate for the clients,” Cahoon said. “This group is just awesome. It shows therapy is not just a job for most of them. They feel strongly about helping other people.”

Counselors rotated in to listen and offer onsite encouragement, wellness exercises, educational materials and referral lists noting therapists of color and others offering services – many at reduced rates or free to those protesting. Cahoon credited Ades with helping to quickly compile resources, some for people who might be seeking emotional care for the first time.

“More than ever mental health has had a huge platform,” Cahoon said. “I really do think it’s starting to take down some of that stigma.”

Coming from an outpatient therapy job and aspiring to a private practice and research in Black mental health, the new student said she sought out the College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development doctorate in part because of UofL’s Cardinal Success Program. The program, at the Nia Center, is a partnership to make counseling services more accessible to West Louisville.

“I’m very thankful UofL has been so open to supporting a Black student,” Cahoon said. “They’ve been reaching out to me and being super supportive.”

A trauma specialist, Ades said she’s mindful of the protesters’ concerns, understanding that they may be experiencing ongoing trauma every day.

“I’ve wanted to give back more,” Ades said. When not working the table, Ades often joined with protesters to march, knowing the movement has sparked more attention to societal issues.

“I’ve never been prouder to be a social worker,” Ades said. “I think actually a lot more people are going to go into social work. Law, criminal justice and social work are going to explode.”

Their efforts, including “to remind people to take care of themselves during this movement,” after the height of the protests last summer.

This story was initially published in the Fall/Winter 2020 edition of UofL Magazine. 

The vice provost with a can-do attitude has worked in many forms of UofL academic affairs and services throughout the 35-year tenure that ended with her June 30 retirement. In recent years, Rhodes had the additional title of executive director of the Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning.

“People knew if you gave me something, it got done – and I enjoy that reputation,” Rhodes said.

“She has grown a small Delphi Center program into a juggernaut that offers expertise including instructional design, pedagogy/college teaching, higher education administration, IT, disability services, program and administrative support, conference and events services and sales, enrollment counseling, marketing and finance,” Provost Lori Stewart Gonzalez said. “The most recent addition to the Delphi Center is Military and Online Initiatives, an area that was created to lead institutional efforts to support on-campus and online military-connected students.”

Rhodes is quick to credit her staff members, who number close to 60 and who share her viewpoint that “at the end of the day, we need to do excellent work,” she said. She is proud of what they’ve accomplished together.

“The beauty of my unit is we are a service unit, and my staff thoroughly understands that,” she said.

When Rhodes arrived at UofL, she established and coordinated the freshman orientation course and soon served as director of academic services, earning her UofL doctorate along the way in counseling and college student personnel in 1994. She also had responsibility for UofL’s Quality Enhancement Plan meant to enhance critical thinking skills to address real-world problems.

Over the years Rhodes assumed more and more responsibilities and assignments in the evolving areas of professional, distance and continuing education and, ultimately, the burgeoning field of online education.

And, although the processes were well in place beforehand, at no time was the importance of online education more important or visible than when UofL needed to shift to remote learning mid-spring semester 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I knew our staff and I knew we were structured in such a way we could turn on a dime,” Rhodes said. Her message to her team was simple: “We’ve got to bring our faculty online for our students.”

“This is our opportunity,” Rhodes recalled saying to a team leader. “This training has to be outstanding.”

Rhodes said the unit also assessed along the way to ensure it was meeting faculty needs and ultimately the learning outcomes for students.

“I think we rose to the occasion,” she said. “People saw the value of what we have to offer them.”

The Delphi Center also has concentrated on working with faculty within their colleges or academic departments for better coordination of ways to deliver their subjects as peers. “You make a difference with people one at a time,” she said.

Most gratifying for her has been the reaction of some professors who’ve relied on the Delphi Center expertise in refining their approach to reaching their students, not only during the pandemic shift.

“The number of people who’ve said they’ve changed the way they teach….,” Rhodes said. “Working with my staff has made them better teachers. That’s been wonderful.”

She praised the “faculty who are willing to grow and learn,” adding that most people are most comfortable with teaching the way they were taught.

“I am grateful to those who are open to learning new ways to deliver education,” she said.

Delivering online education now can even mean offering entire graduate programs that way. Rhodes credits deans and other administrators who show leadership and understanding of what it takes to market to adult students who might have some college credits but lack a full degree or who need more education through an advanced degree. Those adults often are juggling families, full-time jobs and locations outside Louisville with their need for coursework – and for them, online is the way to a brighter future and more opportunity.

Rhodes cited the online master of business administration degree and the university’s new, first fully online doctorate in social work as examples of ways UofL is trying to reach different populations and bring them to the university through online curriculum in a stiffly competitive market.

Rhodes leaves the university proud of what she has accomplished with her staff and hopeful about the future.

“I think the university is really poised to move forward, and for me that’s really exciting,” she said.

Not long after graduating in 2017 and 2018, the group founded and funded a women’s scholarship to be awarded annually to an outstanding rising senior in the graphic design program.

Benefiting from taking classes together in a tightknit cohort, the graduates developed strong friendships and wanted to keep in touch after earning their degrees while also staying connected intellectually. Most remained in Louisville initially, so they started monthly gatherings called the Dezine Book Club, named after an inside joke based on their graphic design experience.

Later, as some were moving away to other jobs, they decided to establish a scholarship, which they branded Dezine for that sense of fun and camaraderie and which they intended to encourage other female students to benefit from a collaborative experience like theirs. That sense of the design community hearkened back in part to Leslie Friesen, the Power Agency designer-in-residence at UofL’s Hite Art Institute, according to Deryn Greer Walker ’18.

“She encouraged collaboration and critique, in the sense of ‘I want to do well and help others to do better,’” said Walker, now an experience designer for Humana in the Boston area. “We were all constantly working together.”

The women crafted the criteria for the scholarship to specifically speak to that, seeking a recipient who is “preeminently collaborative, perpetuates constructive feedback and transcends design by … fostering an attitude of fearless idea-sharing, not afraid to risk their personal advantage, and …. by investing in cross-disciplinary skills and interests to improve themselves and the communities they move in.”

“Particularly in the creative field, it’s typical to hold onto your idea,” Walker said, but added that it can be more valuable to take risk, move out of a “silo,” gain other perspectives and build on ideas with others. “When you make your idea available to other people, you invite the good.”

The seven alumnae cooperate on the selection process, dividing up the interviews with applicants, using an evaluation rubric and discussing the conversations with the candidates. The first recipient was Arry Schofield ’21; a second recipient of the $1,000-$1,500 scholarship will to be chosen this summer for the fall semester.

“They were great,” Schofield said. The freelance design contractor said she enjoyed the interview process and the opportunity to talk to women who had gone through her same experiences. Like them, Schofield said, she appreciated the bonding with other graphic design students that results from the cohort approach of taking all the same classes and working together.

“Another huge plus of the graphic design program is all of the alums are really empathetic toward people going through the program,” Schofield said. “I really hope I can pay that forward.”

Four Dezine founders have kept the Louisville area as home: Emi Johnson Jones ’18 with GE Appliances’ Giddy online startup program, Cait Bender ’18 with INgrid Design, Amber Kleitz Cox ’18 with Humana and Kylar Ware ’18, a freelance illustrator and designer whose “Our Home” and “Raise Your L” murals adorn UofL’s Swain Student Activities Center.

Ann Wood ’17 is a brand designer for Pharma at Johnson & Johnson in New York, while Rachel Suding ’18 is a graphic designer for the Miami Marlins.

Through the graphic design program the sports-minded Suding was able to find a school internship with the Louisville Bats baseball team and accept a full-time job there after graduation.

“That paved the way for me to major league baseball,” Suding said. “Now I’m in my dream career. I think our design program gave me a really strong foundation.”

Even though the seven designers have pursued somewhat different career paths, they still share ideas and realize they are fortunate to sustain their UofL-born connection though scattered geographically.

“We were looking to give back to the program that gave us so much,” Suding said.

There the is creating her heart out with fellow contestants for its “Master Maker” title and a $100,000 prize, which would come in handy for investing in her own store featuring her work and that of other creatives.

Each of the six episodes has themed and timed contests: a three-hour Faster Craft and a longer Master Craft, which will determine weekly winners who earn craft patches and also which contestant goes home. The quirky competition occurs in a supply-stocked barn studio and features two judges plus executive producers, hosts and comedians Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman.

In the first episode June 24 of its third season, Ravi crafted a yak pull-toy with layers of textured yarn fur, gold-leafing and a sari blanket for the quicker challenge of making a toy that reveals something about the maker.

The longer challenge focused on techniques or materials meaningful to the contestant in creating a new take on a family portrait. For that one, the Louisville textile artist embroidered, sewed, beaded and stuffed shaped pillows that represented her and her husband, Guru, plus their dogs Zorro and Spock.  

Ravi explained to the judges that when she was growing up in India, women were often in the background and encountered many boundaries, which are “out the window now.” She was blessed to marry someone who believed in her artistic dreams, she said, and encouraged her to study what she wanted, even though she had been trained as a biochemist.

“My husband saw in me what I didn’t see in myself,” Ravi said. When they moved to Louisville 15 years ago, he supported her in her quest to pursue her UofL fine arts degree focused on interior architecture.

works as a window display coordinator for Anthropologie and also has an independent online business, Khromo+philia, offering bright textiles, jewelry and mixed media items with the motto “unapologetically colorful.”

“Making things and creativity bring color to this world, and all of us need color,” she explained on the show.

A co-worked nudged her to consider competing on TV, and she flew to Universal Studios in Los Angeles after she was accepted.

“Until I entered that barn and I started doing my first challenge, it was so surreal,” she told NBC local affiliate .

“I’m speaking from my own experience (which) might be different for every other Southeast Asian brown woman out there,” she told WAVE. “I don’t see people like me on the DIY-making community stage. It’s so rare. I’m hoping that by seeing me on TV to try, experiment and use those tools to learn, maybe there is another Kaviya that wants to be in the creative field.”

The hourlong airs Thursdays at 8 p.m.