University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky is a public, land grant university dedicated to improving people’s lives through excellence in education, research and creative work, service, and health care. As Kentucky’s flagship institution, the University plays a critical leadership role by promoting diversity, inclusion, economic development, and human well-being.
The University of Kentucky has a broad range of resources centered on a single campus in the heart of the Bluegrass. Our wide array of programs allows us to excel in multidisciplinary studies and fosters an environment of cooperative engagement across all colleges, programs, and research endeavors.
Because of the lives we touch and teach, we remain anchored in our mission to Kentucky– to educate, innovate, heal, and serve. To be sure, our complex, multi-faceted mission looks different today in many ways than it did in 1865. However, our sense of responsibility to our communities on campus and across the region is resolute. The mission has evolved and grown. The vision of service to our Commonwealth and the world beyond remains the same. They remain our compass – the soul of the University of Kentucky.
UK has a strong faculty core that supports more than 200 academic programs spread across 16 degree-granting colleges, the Lewis Honors College, Graduate School, and the UK Library system. In the last several years, UK has received nearly 100 national rankings for excellence in academics, research, health care, and economic development. U.S. News and World Report ranks several of UK’s graduate programs among the nation’s best: the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration is ranked fourth in the category of public finance and budgeting, and the College of Pharmacy is ranked sixth. The University of Kentucky earned 28 Top 10 rankings and 50 Top 25 rankings over the last several years.
The University of Kentucky Athletics Department is a 22-sport program dedicated to competing at the highest level nationally and in the Southeastern Conference, while enriching the lives of its nearly 500 student-athletes – both during and after their time at UK – and honoring the deep connections it shares with its fans, the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the university it represents. With a rich tradition that dates back to 1881, UK Athletics seeks to live out its core values of character, integrity, knowledge, stewardship and competiveness every day. Those core values serve as the foundation for the pursuit of the current goals set forth in Elite 1-3-5: for every UK team to win a conference or national championship by 2022, to continue an ongoing streak of 12 straight semesters with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.0 and to finish in the top five of the national all-sports standings by 2022.