When Kyle Longley applied to doctoral programs in history, he narrowed the choice down to two schools: the University of Kentucky and one other. But a visit to Lexington and Billy’s Bar-B-Q, where he had lunch with George Herring, the professor who would become his mentor, made UK the place to go.

“I started looking at southern Jewish race identity,” Caroline Light said. “It was the perfect way to merge my interests in race and gender. There is a real gap in the historiography of the United States as it relates to southern Jewish identity.”

There is nothing pretentious or “prude” about UK Alumni Julie Sweet and Tom Riley. This husband and wife team – now history professors at Baylor University in Waco, Texas – say their formative years as Ph.D. candidates in the University of Kentucky’s Department of History, were crucial to their future success.

“Our professors were genuinely nice people who went out of their way to help us,” Riley said. “I wasn’t the best writer, but Dr. Eller understood that.” Riley, a retired naval officer from West Virginia, focused his dissertation on his home state during World War II, combining both his childhood and military experiences to write it. Serving as a teaching assistant under Dr. Ireland, Riley named this professor as a dynamic pedagogical mentor from his graduate experience.