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RELEASED: April 28, 2005
DANVILLE, KY—John R. Thelin, one of the foremost historians of American higher education, will deliver a presentation titled "Town and Gown in the Commonwealth: Campus and Community in Kentucky" on Wednesday, May 4. The lecture, which will take place at 7 p.m. in the Norton Center boardroom on the Centre College campus, is free and open to all.
Thelin will discuss the role campus and community relationships have played in the development of Kentucky's communities and in building an intellectual and cultural identity for the state. In a wide-ranging multimedia presentation, he will explore how the presence of a college affects such things as the appearance of a community, as well as local real estate, business and industry.
The Town and Gown project follows from Thelin's assignment as a guest columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in 2000, in which he wrote a year-long series of articles that discussed the campus and community relations of the University of Kentucky and Lexington in terms of national trends.
"Kentucky is home to a large number of institutions," says Thelin. "Their contribution and impact are substantial, but their legends and lore as part of the civic life and local history remain under-studied and under-appreciated."
Thelin, University Research Professor and a member of the Educational Policy Studies faculty at the University of Kentucky, is the author of six books, including A History of American Higher Education and Games Colleges Play: Scandal and Reform in Intercollegiate Athletics. He writes articles, book reviews and reviews manuscripts for such journals as the Review of Higher Education, Journal of Higher Education, History of Education Quarterly, Academe, and Change. In addition he has published essays in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
A 1969 alumnus of Brown University, Thelin earned an M.A. in American history and a Ph.D. in the history of education and was a Regents Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/
For news archives go to http://www.centre.edu/web/news/newsarchive.html.
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