Students benefit by completing six years of study in five years.

“We continue to see a growing demand for a more highly educated workforce throughout the Commonwealth,” said UofL’s Interim President Greg Postel, MD. “This collaborative effort will expose underrepresented groups to graduate education in a degree that will lead to high-demand, high-paying jobs and help Kentucky continue to move forward in an ever more competitive economy.”

“We are pleased to partner with a great institution like the University of Louisville, and I thank the KSU and UofL faculty for their innovative and creative thinking; our aim is to build a strong P-20 pipeline to serve Kentucky and this initiative helps meet that goal,” said KSU Interim President Aaron Thompson, PhD.

Interested students are identified in the early stages of their study at KSU and are mentored for the graduate program. They must take the GRE and apply for admission to UofL. Upon admission, students study the spring semester of their senior year at UofL and take courses that count toward a bachelor’s degree in math at KSU and the master’s degree in biostatistics at UofL. The balance of the master level courses are completed in the fifth year toward the MS degree in biostatistics.

State Senator Gerald A. Neal, 33^rd District, is an alumnus of both KSU and UofL and says the initiative is a significant inter-institutional collaboration.

“This is what Kentucky needs. It not only connects the dots between institutions, but connects a students’ course of study to promising careers. I look forward to assisting this effort, and strongly encourage others to help generate the scholarships that will ensure its success,” Neal said.

“The degree collaborative helps to fulfill the need of quantitatively trained professionals who are always in demand in the pharmaceutical, biomedical and insurance industries, as well as in government and academia,” said Craig Blakely, PhD, MPH, dean of the UofL School of Public Health and Information Sciences. “We plan to connect these students to state industries via practicum and internship opportunities.”

“This partnership provides students opportunities to pursue both research and a high-demand, specialized degree. Not only are we preparing Kentucky State University students for workforce development in the Commonwealth, but we also are preparing our students to compete in a global workforce,” said KSU’s Interim Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs, Candice Love Jackson, PhD.

Blakely and Love Jackson credit UofL Chair and Professor of the Department of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics K.B. Kulasekera, PhD, and KSU Associate Professor of Mathematics and Chairperson of the Division of Mathematics and Sciences Fariba Bigdeli-Jahed, PhD, for their effort and leadership in developing the program for KSU students.

Kulasekera, who originated the idea, says he hopes to eventually grow the relationship, allowing for teaching and research collaborations between UofL and KSU faculty.

The initiative is pending notification of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).

University of California-Irvine professor Svetlana Jitomirskaya will speak at 6:30 p.m. in Room 112, Natural Sciences Building. Her free, public talk is the annual Bullitt lecture sponsored by the UofL mathematics department. The Bullitt family endowed the general-interest lecture series to honor former U.S. Solicitor General William Marshall Bullitt’s interest in mathematics.

The Ukraine native works in the field of mathematical physics and dynamic systems and has been on the UC-Irvine faculty since 1994 except for a 1996 stint at California Institute of Technology.

The American Mathematical Society awarded her its 2005 Satter Prize to recognize outstanding contribution to mathematics research by a woman. She has been a Sloan Fellow, vice president of the International Association of Mathematical Physics and a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematics. She earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Moscow State University.