New UofL students on Belknap Campus during orientation.
In January 2022, the University of Louisville introduced a brand marketing campaign that had been years in the making. The “Here & Beyond” campaign celebrates the resilience, passion and innovation that makes UofL the premier metropolitan university in the state.
The rest of the year was definitely “on brand.” Here are some top 2022 UofLNews highlights:
Schatzel greets SGA President Dorian Brown during the Nov. 30 presidential announcement.
1. UofL named the 19th president of the university to keep the focus on the future. On Nov. 30, UofL announced Towson University’s (TU) Kim Schatzel was chosen to lead UofL after a national search that took nearly a year.
Schatzel has been president of TU, part of the University System of Maryland, since 2016 and is a professor of marketing. She starts Feb. 1, 2023. Interim President Lori Stewart Gonzalez will return to the position of provost.
2. In keeping with the excitement, Jeff Brohm, one of the most accomplished signal callers in school history, returns to his alma mater to lead the UofL football program. Brohm’s No. 11 jersey is one of 26 to be honored by the program throughout its history. The announcement was made Dec. 8.
Kenny Payne named head coach of UofL Men’s Basketball. 3. Another high-profile position was filled when former Cardinal basketball player Kenny Payne was named the new head men’s basketball coach March 18.
A former NBA assistant coach who was on the coaching staff at the universities of Oregon and Kentucky, Payne was a member of the 1986 UofL NCAA Championship team under legendary UofL men’s basketball coach Denny Crum.
4. Regarding Denny Crum, in the fall of 2022, UofL opened a new residence hall named in his honor. Denny Crum Hall officially opened with an event featuring the legendary coach cutting the ceremonial ribbon.
Crum participated in the ribbon-cutting for the facility, which houses student- athletes from men’s and women’s basketball and women’s lacrosse, as well as other UofL students.
New residence halls seemed to be all the rage on UofL Belknap Campus in fall 2022 demonstrating the importance UofL places on the student experience both in and out of the classroom.
5. The second of two halls for first-year students opened in August, a year after its twin debuted a year earlier. Both halls let students live directly in the heart of Belknap Campus, close to the Swain Student Activities Center, Ekstrom Library, the Interfaith Center, classroom buildings and relaxing green spaces.
The two halls were named Belknap Village North and Belknap Village South later in the year. They replaced Miller and Threlkeld halls, which had been home to first-year students for close to six decades and were demolished.
The new housing has arrived just in time.
6. UofL announced its highest-on-record first-year enrollment in the fall 2022 semester at 2,944, led by increases in Black and Latino/Hispanic students and students from outside Kentucky.
UofL continued to be a research and innovation powerhouse in 2022 focusing efforts on discoveries that impact lives.
7. In February, UofL announced it had once again been named a top U.S. research institution by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. UofL is one of only 146 universities to receive this designation and one of only 79 universities to earn both Research 1 and Community Engaged recognition.
8. Early in 2022, UofL launched the Health Equity Innovation Hub, a collaboration between UofL, The Humana Foundation and Humana, Inc. to research ways to close health equity gaps for marginalized communities. The Hub awarded its first grants in February.
9. Around the same time, neurosurgeon Ajmal Zemmar and colleagues published a study in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience that explored what happens in our brains when we die. They recorded the activity of a dying human brain for the first time and discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of death that are similar to those occurring during dreaming, memory recall and meditation.
10. About 90 of UofL’s top researchers were honored March 29 at the inaugural Research and Scholarship Awards ceremony for researchers, scholars and research administrators.
11. In May, UofL announced it was creating a new campus in the downtown area to be called the UofL Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute-New Vision of Health Campus. In this space UofL researchers will work to increase understanding of the many aspects of the environment that contribute to optimum health for everyone. It embodies UofL’s commitment to health equity. Research there focuses on health as a shared community resource, incorporating environmental and cultural factors.
12. Research is also the hallmark of the UofL Health academic health system affiliated with the School of Medicine. Among UofL Health’s 2022 highlights were:
An announcement in March that UofL Health will embark on a $144 million expansion and upgrade to the UofL Health-UofL Hospital facilities in downtown Louisville.
In May, the UofL Health – Brown Cancer Center celebrated 40 years of conducting groundbreaking research and providing care to hundreds of thousands of patients.
An announcement in August that UofL Health-Heart Hospital at Jewish Hospital has become the region’s only hospital exclusively focused on comprehensive and innovative heart care.
13. Another addition to Belknap Campus in 2022 was the 2020 Pavilion, which officially opened in October.
Students use the 2020 Pavilion in the quad area surrounded by Lutz Hall, Schneider Hall, Shumaker Research Building and the Belknap Academic Building
The Pavilion near the center of Belknap Campus is a place for reflection that was built in honor of the Class of 2020, whose members saw an abrupt end to their time at UofL when the COVID-19 pandemic upended the world.
14. The Center for Engaged Learning (CEL) opened on Belknap Campus in October in the new Belknap Village South residence hall. Celebrating UofL’s strong ties to the community, the center is a first stop for students to learn about internships, study abroad opportunities, research and community service projects and employment at the university and beyond.
15. As part of the institution’s connection with the city and community, UofL announced in September that it will house an estimated 3 million images from The Courier Journal newspaper’s archive.
A photo from the Barry Bingham Jr. Courier-Journal Photo Collection at UofL showcases a young boy jumping with joy in the pouring rain in 1971. The photo is by Pam Spaulding of The Courier-Journal.
The newspaper, winner of 11 Pulitzer Prizes, and its parent company Gannett transferred its library of photographs and negatives to UofL Archives and Special Collections.
Members of Louisville’s Bingham family, which owned the newspaper from 1918 to 1986, made a separate donation to support the collection.
16. The Trager Family also helped UofL commit to community improvement in 2022 with the announcement in November that it was pledging $1 million to establish the Trager Micro-Forest Project downtown in Founders Square.
Louisville’s Founders Square is bound by South Fifth Street, West Muhammad Ali Boulevard and Armory Place in Downtown Louisville. Directly across South Fifth, the building at left is part of the University of Louisville’s New Vision of Health Campus. (UofL Photo)
The Micro-Forest will be a place for researchers to study the impact of intense urban greening on human health, economic vitality and the natural environment.
Louisville’s Founders Square is bound by South Fifth Street, West Muhammad Ali Boulevard and Armory Place in Downtown Louisville. Directly across South Fifth, the building at left is part of the University of Louisville’s New Vision of Health Campus. The area will become an urban micro-forest to be used for research.
In the new year, UofL looks forward to making even more strides that unleash students’ potential, elevate society through research and innovation and build connections with our city that lead to transformation here and beyond.
