Research
Read MoreLooking for in-depth research?
The answer is always yes! Our WKU Journalism students conduct and write research on a variety of subjects.
Women carve out a place in STEM at WKU
By Laurel Deppen Women make up just 37 percent of the students in the Ogden College of Science and Engineering, as opposed to Western Kentucky University as a whole, where 59 percent of undergraduate students are female, according to the WKU Fact Book 2018. The...
Making limestone a lifestyle at Mammoth Cave
By Miles Schroader According to the U.S. National Park Service, more than 318 million people visited the 58 national parks across the country in 2018. But only about 20,000 get the pleasure of making a career out of the National Park Service. People who get a job in...
The ‘Principal’ Of Wrestling
In God’s house, powerslams and piledrivers are the mission for promoter and school leader Tortorello. Story by Drake Kizer Photos by Basil Mahmud In a dimly lit venue about 30 miles south of Chicago, 800 professional wrestling fans cry out to their favorite, and least...
A night of a thousand dollys
This fall, Dolly Parton celebrated her 50th anniversary as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. The impersonator Carla Jean Morgan is keeping Dolly’s image — and legacy in country music — alive on the party-town streets of Nashville. Story by Sara Krog Photos by Sofie...
Dangerous steps when ‘walking the grain’
By Jeremy Chisenhall Temperatures reached 91 degrees in Mount Carroll, Illinois, on the day rescuers pulled Alejandro “Alex” Pacas and Wyatt Whitebread’s dead bodies from a grain bin. The heat started it all. Whitebread fainted while “walking the grain,” in which a...
Fast (food) Friends
The McDonald’s Man thinks you deserve a break today. By Manny Dixon-Peralta Monday. 3:30 a.m.: Jimmy Smith, 54, rises to the sound of a blaring alarm. His joints pop as he stretches out his arms to silence the electronic yell. To most, it is still the middle of the...
From death ’till we part
The embalmer’s story is a tale of art and heart. By Annalee Hubbs Kevin Kirby, a Bowling Green funeral director, leads his life knowing the moment we breathe we start taking our last breath. He reckons we’re all just a blip in the grand scheme of things. But Kirby has...
Wounded Soldier
Story by Sara Krog Photos by Sofie Skødt Mortensen Megan Karr, 36, walks back and forth in her bedroom in Louisville, Kentucky, on a Friday in November 2019 looking for her hat in a pile of clothes.It does not hang on the wall with the rest of her neatly sorted hats —...
Save the republic for Ralph Smeed
A chance meeting leads to a strong 'tie'. By Annalee Hubbs It was Sept. 7, 2010, and several men wearing fitted black suits tucked one-of-a-kind bolo ties neatly beneath their button-down collars before lining up as honorary pallbearers for the funeral of a man who...
Being Jerry Wayne
Leading a full life under the radar. By Manny Dixon-Peralta Burdine Street. Late July. The sun has fallen. All is quiet, bar the tunes of the crickets and cicadas drifting aimlessly into the warm summer dark. In his humble home, along this modest street in Somerset,...