In the weeks and months leading up to the 2012 election, the University of Kentucky and the College of Arts and Sciences held events to help students become more engaged with the political process. One such event, as detailed in another article, was a collective viewing of the second of three Presidential debates this season.

Fall of 2012 was the perfect time to conduct a class about American electoral politics - so it was taken up as the topic for Currents, a class offered to incoming Freshmen. The course explores the 2012 election from a variety of academic perspectives - including, but not limited to, philosophy, economics, history, and, of course, political science. In this podcast, five Currents students shared their experiences with the class. 

Written texts, YouTube videos, podcasts - these are all means of communicating ideas to others. Craig Crowder is a graduate student in the Department of English and teaches Composition & Communication classes, WRD 110 & 111. In this podcast, Crowder discusses ways to engage students via multimedia projects, and his research, which examines social movement rhetoric in a society that uses multiple modes of communication.

In Wordcast #3, WRD 110 students Tyler Davenport and Elizabeth Kunnecke discuss the role Twitter plays in their reading and writing habits. Tyler and Elizabeth took their WRD 110 in the A&S Wired program, where all students use iPads in their courses. Yet, as they talk about in this brief interview, social media like Twitter can be useful for thinking about writing in lots of different ways.