A look at what’s going on in the field of education.

WKU’s CTC receives national recognition

Western Kentucky University’s Counseling and Testing Center has received top 10 national rankings for two of its screening events.

The center ranked eighth of 1,700 sites offering the Depression Screening Day on Oct. 8. The center screened 400 students that day as part of a national effort.

The center also ranked sixth of 470 colleges participating in the National Eating Disorders Screening Program from Feb. 24 to March 1. The CTC screened more than 270 individuals, referring more than 20 for further counseling.

Western students back from Colombia

Faculty and students from Western Kentucky University’s Department of Geography and Geology returned recently from 10 days in Colombia studying community change in Medell’n.

Department Head Dr. David Keeling is the lead investigator for the American Geographical Society’s Bowman Expedition to Colombia, now ending its first full year of analysis.

The AGS Bowman Expeditions were established in 2005 as part of the society’s broader goal of combating geographic ignorance. The Bowman Expedition to Colombia is the third of these projects, following research in Mexico and the Antilles.

With full funding, the AGS would send a geography professor and graduate students to every country for a semester each year, with teams rotating on a five-year cycle so that each country could be understood by five separate teams.

The goal of the Medell’n project is to create a virtual geographic and historical atlas of Comuna 13, a neighborhood in the city afflicted by violence over the past 20 years. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period when narcotic traffickers such as the infamous Pablo Escobar terrorized the city, murder rates in the neighborhood of Comuna 13 soared past 400 per 100,000 inhabitants. The world average is eight per 100,000.

After Escobar’s death in 1993, paramilitary gangs and guerilla groups seized control of the community and murder rates again soared. An alliance of national police, military and local security forces finally broke these groups’ stranglehold on the neighborhood.

Since 2003, the neighborhood of Comuna 13 in Medell’n has enjoyed a minor renaissance, with enhanced security through local policing, new schools and medical clinics, a community library and other infrastructure improvements. The WKU-led AGS project in Medell’n will assess these changes in the context of the neighborhood’s geography and history, with the goal of producing the virtual atlas and several academic journal articles.

— For more information about the project, go to at www.amergeog.org/bowman-colombia.htm.

Teachers involved in state reading project

A group of teachers from Cumberland Trace, Dishman-McGinnis, Parker-Bennett-Curry and Natcher elementary schools took part in the Kentucky Reading Project from June 12 to June 25.

The two-week professional development training was hosted by Western Kentucky University and focused on strategies for literacy instruction. The local teachers participating were Karen Craig, Jessica Foster, Julie Grim-Hale, Ashley Hurt, Sarah Marcum, Shellie Marnalse, Wendy McClure and Melissa Zimmer.

They were part of a larger group of 19 teachers from kindergarten through fifth grade who will continue to meet throughout the school year, learning and sharing teaching techniques.

The group will join teachers from other universities across the state in Lexington in April to complete the program.

The Kentucky Reading Project is in its 10th year, providing professional development for more than 2,500 teachers since 1998.

Kelli Rae Hepner makes Samford list

Bowling Green’s Kelli Rae Hepner was named to the dean’s list for the spring semester at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala.