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D.      President's Report to the Trustees (PR 1)
President Todd said that there were some outstanding items in PR 1. He pointed out the following items:
• UK wins a $10 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to fight effects of Superfund wastes. The grants are very hard to win with the NIH budget as it is today. It has a far reaching opportunity from trying to solve environmentally difficult issues to driving some economic development opportunities.
• Presidents of the University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, Centre College, and Berea College met recently to discuss what the four institutions can do to have some impact on the state. The presidents chose energy as the topic and committed to three energy conferences. The first conference was held in Louisville, and Sandra Meyer, Duke Power Company's vice president for Kentucky and Ohio, did an outstanding job as the evening speaker. The second conference is scheduled for September. The topic at that conference will be governmental policies, and the keynote speaker will be Thomas Friedman who wrote The World is Flat. He is publishing a book on energy. The presidents feel that energy is an area that can touch a lot of things.
• Everett McCorvey has been elected as a faculty representative to the Board of Trustees.
• UK's College of Medicine joins Georgetown College to recruit minorities. Georgetown College will identify prospective "partnership students" as early as sixth grade and nurture these students through their college careers. UK's College of Medicine will provide special opportunities for them to observe, shadow, and be mentored by medical professionals with the hope that they will go into medical school.
• UK reports the highest six-year graduation rates in its history. The African-American graduation rates have exceeded 50 percent at UK.
• Twenty UK HealthCare physicians are named in two of the latest America's Top Doctors lists. Due to Dr. Karpf s leadership and the team that he has put together, the awards keep accumulating for the hospital and the individuals.
• The NCAA released its fourth annual Academic Progress Rate report which showed that all 22 of the UK sports teams surpassed the NCAA target score, and 13 of the 22 squads exceeded the national average for public universities in their sports. It is a pretty stringent requirement, and it is really influencing the counseling and the course taking for all athletes.