The graduate programs that saw the largest growth are business administration, human resource and organization development, educational administration, law and nursing. More than 6,450 graduate students are enrolled for fall 2021.

Conversely, following , the preliminary number of first-time undergraduate degree-seeking students enrolled for fall dropped 6% to 2,693.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been life-altering for so many, and we are encouraged that more students are seeking post-graduate-level degrees,” said Neeli Bendapudi, UofL’s president. “It is such a thrill to see a vibrant campus once again, and we are confident of a bright future for all our students.”

For the incoming undergraduate class, the five most popular majors are engineering, business, education, biology and psychology. Enrollment in public health programs for both undergraduate and graduate students also continues to be strong with a 19% increase since 2019.

The incoming undergraduate class remains diverse, with almost 20% of students identifying as African American or multiracial, and 7% as Latino.

Here is a snapshot of the 2021 first-time freshman class:

• 47.6% have some college credits
• 20.24% are African American or identify as multiracial
• 7.06% are Hispanic/Latino
• 64.05% live on campus
• 33.05% are first-generation college students
• 25.64 is the average ACT score
• 3.63 is the average high school grade-point average, based on a 4.0 scale
• 23.72% are from outside Kentucky
• 38 states are represented
• 246 are part-time

The awards ceremony recognizes high achieving graduates based on their merit and contributions to the community. Each year, one alumna or alumnus of the year is selected along with 13 Alumni Fellows from each of the schools, colleges, libraries, and student affairs.��

Alumna of the Year

• Jenny L. Sawyer ’78,��executive director of��admissions��at the University of Louisville.

Alumni Fellows

• Brandeis School of Law
  Edwin S. Hopson, Sr. ’67, ’69, partner at��Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs.
• College of Arts and Sciences
  George Nichols, III ’85,��president and chief executive officer of the American College of Financial Services.
• College of Business
  Raymond E. Loyd ’68, founder of Derby Industries and Derby Fabricating.
• College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development
  Linda F. Hargan ’71, ’73, ’93,��founder, president, and chief executive officer emeritus of CTL.
• J. B. Speed School of Engineering
  Gerald G. Hubbs ’64, ’76, retired vice president and director of engineering at the Brown-Forman Corporation.��
• Kent School of Social Work
  Ruby Gordon ’66, ’72, former social worker with JCPS and Hillebrand House.
• School of Dentistry
  Karen L. Pierce-West ’77, ’82,��dean and professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Dental Medicine.
• School of Medicine
  Shawn C. Jones ’82, ’86, ’93,��founder of Purchase ENT, an ENT-otolaryngologist specialty group in Paducah, Kentucky.��
• School of Music
  John M. Hoover ’63, ’69, former director of bands at the University of Louisville.
• School of Nursing
  Flora Ponder ’87, former head nurse at the Louisville and Jefferson County Health Department and director of nurses at the Park-Duvalle Community Health Center.��
• School of Public Health and Information Sciences
  Lewatis D. McNeal ’16,��assistant dean of administration of inclusive excellence and special projects at Northern Kentucky University.
• Student Affairs
  Todd A. Schmiedeler ’97,��Trilogy Health Service’s senior vice president of Foundation & Workforce Development and founder and president of Thumbprint Consulting.
• University Libraries
  Morris M. Weiss Jr. ’58, cardiologist with Medical Center Cardiologists and clinical professor of medicine in cardiology at the University of Louisville.

This year’s awardees will be honored at the 2019 Alumni Awards ceremony October 24.

During his time at Brandeis School of Law, Smith was a 2008 scholarship recipient of the Louisville Black Law Students Association and taught “street law” at Central High School’s law magnet program, which earned him its 2009 Teacher Award.

Smith landed a Black Entertainment Television (BET) internship during school and volunteered with BET shortly after graduating. In August 2009, he was hired as a legal coordinator for BET’s “The Mo’Nique Show” in Atlanta.

Smith met industry celebrities including Kobe Bryant, Gabrielle Union and Beyoncé, and worked awards shows in Atlanta, Las Vegas and New York. After seven years at BET, Smith began working for MGM as a production attorney for “Paternity Court” and “Couples Court with the Cutlers.”

In October 2018, Smith’s efforts earned him the Brandeis School of Law Recent Alumnus Award, an honor recognizing graduates using their education to make an impact in their communities and industries.

“It means the world to me to be recognized for working hard,” Smith said. “I’m able to blend my legal education with what I love to do. It’s the best of both worlds.”

and stay connected with .

But, according to University of Louisville professor Mark Rothstein, those tests could also provide information for companies deciding, say, whether or not to issue you a mortgage or sell you life insurance.

“The information could include important risk factors,” said Rothstein, founding director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at UofL. He recently wrote about its use in life insurance underwriting in .

While federal law says employers and health insurers can’t discriminate based on genetic information, Rothstein said that the law doesn’t extend to disability, long-term care, life, or other insurance products.

And of those, he said, “life insurance is the huge gorilla in the room.”

According to the , 10.5 million individual life insurance policies were purchased in 2017. For long-term care and disability insurance, Rothstein says the respective number of policies is much smaller, about 100,000 and 550,000 respectively.

As of 2017, millions of people — possibly 1 in every 25 Americans — have used at-home genetics tests, according to . And, as it stands, home tests aren’t in your medical record (unless you put them there), so insurers don’t have access to that information anyway.

Rothstein said insurers are increasingly concerned that individuals will have more genetic information than they do, so they want access to tests performed in health care settings and might even seek to perform their own testing.

But if they did and could use the results to determine coverage, Rothstein said, people scared of losing life insurance may stop seeking DNA testing that could identify increased genetic risks for some serious conditions, such as genetic-based cancers.

“We know that a lot of people are not getting genetic testing who would benefit from it,” he said. “And my concern is that we’re missing an opportunity to save lives because individuals are worried about the economic consequences of genetic tests, and we need to figure out a way to prevent that from happening.”

Listen to Rothstein’s full interview on .��

She realized later that not everyone is that passionate about the right to cast a ballot but still thinks they should be. She and fellow UofL student Clara Wilson are bringing their zeal for the electoral process to campus life and encouraging others to join in – especially this week in the midterm elections.

“Midterms are coming up, you guys. We’ve really got to get in here to vote,” Wilson told students passing near their table on the Quad during National Voter Registration Day Sept. 25. Students checked out an information sheet about who’s up for election in Kentucky, literature about signing up to vote and an iPad with the Secretary of State site, along with stickers reminding “Midterms Matter” and “Friends Don’t Let Friends Miss Elections.”

Wilson and Greenwell are UofL ambassadors for Vote Everywhere, a nationwide, nonpartisan effort by the Andrew Goodman Foundation to encourage citizens to get involved in the democratic process. Their endeavors are part of a coalition of partners and programs that helped gain UofL a “voter-friendly campus” designation from the Campus Vote Project and NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher ����ֱ��.

Greenwell, a May political science graduate from Springfield who now is a first-year law student, and Wilson, a junior political science major from Elizabethtown, attended the foundation’s National Civic Leadership Training Summit in July at Ramapo College of New Jersey. There they learned about voter registration, nonpartisanship, leadership and alliance-building.

The nonpartisan alliance at UofL includes groups such as Student Government Association, National Pan-Hellenic Council, Campus YMCA and the Engage Lead Serve Board.

“They’ve been working really hard to get the information out,” said Kathy Meyer, ELSB adviser and the Office of Student Involvement’s student leadership coordinator. “Through Vote Everywhere we’re able to surpass the reach of those partnerships.”

Recently they targeted absentee voters, reminding them to mail their ballots to their home counties; at a campus party to address the mailings, Canon chipped in to cover their postage.

The students are urging registered Jefferson County voters in affiliated housing and Old Louisville to get to their nearby polling places Tuesday and are participating in “Stroll to the Polls” walks with volunteers at 9:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. from the Student Activities Center Ballroom. Student Government Association organized an election results TV watch party at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium from 7-10 p.m. after the polls close, according to Nicole Fielder, SGA governmental relations director.

“We’re trying to make any effort possible to (help students) vote any way they can,” Greenwell said. “It takes five minutes to register but it takes more commitment to go out and vote.”

So how do she and Wilson counter apathy?

“People tell me all the time their vote doesn’t matter,” Greenwell said. Her response: “Your vote is unique. People vote different ways for different reasons. No one else is going to vote the same way as me for the same reasons.”

As a student of political science and now law, Greenwell said she doesn’t regard politics negatively but rather as a mechanism for change.

“It’s all about the world you want to exist.”

Students from criminal justice, engineering, law and communications divided into four groups that presented curriculum at four secondary schools.��The topics varied from the dangers of online bullying and how water filtration works to building a solar oven to the International Declaration of Human Rights.

Another��14 third- and fourth-year dental students treated 172 patients during four days of service.��

Many students, like��Georgia Connally, a third-year law student graduating this spring, described the experience as life-altering.

In the , she wrote about her experience at a Taoist Temple.

“I placed my incense in the vase and dropped the stones asking the spirits only ‘Will I find a fulfilling life?’ As they hit the floor, I could feel the silence erupt around me. The echo of the stones contacting the floor resonated in the walls of the temple. Before me, a red, tangled dragon holding a gong quivered with the noise on the alter. The monk approached me. ‘Maybe,’ he said and smiled.”

She writes about being emersed in Cebu throughout the next four days, and meeting a little girl, whose obvious poverty drew tears to her eyes.��

“She welcomed me to Paril National High School and told me how much she loved her community, her school and me. In that moment I realized I didn’t know anything about happiness, or a fulfilling life. And I was not done learning.”

Connally detailed how she learned as much from the students as they learned from her,

maybe even more:

“From the outside looking in, it seemed like we, as Americans, had the better life. We have iPhones, indoor plumbing and electricity. But what we lack, they have in abundance: happiness and fulfillment. During a private interview with three students, I learned what these children understand, how they feel, about Cebu. We asked the students ‘If you could change one thing about Cebu, what would it be?’ They all responded ‘Nothing.’ I was stunned by their response. I wondered why they loved their home so much when they were so aware of the poverty and other issues. I asked them why. One student responded ‘It is my home, these people are my family. We help each other, and are always there for each other. I love it here. It has been good to me and my family. I may leave one day, but I will return, to continue to help my community.’ Again, I was speechless. I wondered how many Americans would say the same thing.”��

to read more or Connally’s experience in Cebu.

She was 5.��

Humphrey will graduate Saturday with her political science and English degrees from the University of Louisville, where she was a McConnell Scholar and part of the moot court team. She also spent her college years��volunteering at Kentucky Refugee Ministries for about 25 hours a week.��

In addition to her majors, Humphrey minored in Spanish, Latin American & Latino Studies. That work, and the work at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, inspired her to get involved in immigration law. The Paducah native will attend law school at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall.��

“I loved it. I felt like I was making an impact (with KRM),” she said.”I think��having a JD will allow me to be even more helpful to them.”��

Check out Humphrey’s story below:��

Video by Brad Knoop.

The university announced April 27 that will be the next dean.

He is currently the Robert C. Cudd Professor of Environment Law at Tulane University. He also directs Tulane’s International Development Studies in the School of Liberal Arts and the Payson Graduate Program in Global Development in the School of Law.

“I look forward to Colin’s arrival,” said Acting Provost Dale Billingsley. “His extensive research, global view and focus on finding solutions to important and current legal issues are a perfect fit for UofL.”

Until Crawford officially begins his new role, law professor Lars Smith will lead the school July 1 to Dec. 31, 2017, as interim dean. is associate dean for academic affairs and the Samuel J. Stallings Professor of Law for the school. He��received the Distinguished Faculty Award in 2011 and has traveled and taught widely, focusing on intellectual property law.��

Crawford, a native of Denver, joined Tulane in 2010. He previously taught at Georgia State University College of Law where he founded and co-directed the Center for the Comparative Study of Metropolitan Growth. He has been a visiting professor at many universities, including the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia; the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil; the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, also in Brazil; and the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

He was a Fulbright scholar at the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. During the current spring semester, he is visiting at the Carlos III University in Madrid, Spain, where he holds that university’s Santander Chair of Excellence.

“I am honored and delighted to be able to join the University of Louisville community as the next dean of the Brandeis School of Law. Louisville and Brandeis have long and impressive traditions, and I look forward to building upon the solid foundation laid by my predecessors,” Crawford said. “For me, this is a homecoming of sorts. My father was born and partly raised in western Kentucky and the state has always had a special place in my heart. So the chance to work with Louisville faculty, staff, students, alums and the larger community is an unparalleled and very special opportunity indeed.”

Crawford earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from University of Cambridge and a law degree from Harvard University.

He is an expert in international development and law and has lectured and written worldwide on environmental and urban issues and related topics. His teaching and research focus is on land-use issues, particularly comparative and cross-cultural environmental justice concerns, with an emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean.

In a note to the campus community that announced Crawford’s appointment, Billingsley thanked Susan Duncan who has served as interim dean of the law school for the past five years.

“Many changes and improvements were accomplished during her tenure as dean. We wish her the very best as she takes on a new challenge as dean of the University of Mississippi School of Law,” Billingsley said.