UofL received the largest gift in its history: a $20 million donation to help recruit top-level physician-researchers to the James Graham Brown Cancer Center. The gift, announced in November, is from the James Graham Brown Foundation and will be paid over five years. In the last two decades, the foundation has given over $60 million to the cancer center.

A composer whose concerto pays homage to letter writing and a political scientist who has analyzed corruption are among the winners of the 2009 Grawemeyer Awards. The $200,000 international prizes, awarded annually by UofL and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, recognize outstanding works and ideas in music, world order, psychology, education and religion. The winners will visit Louisville in the spring to give free public talks.

With UofL basketball great Darrell Griffith as spokesperson, a local organization is holding a raffle to benefit autism. The Go Cards! Big East Basketball Tournament Raffle prize includes four tournament tickets, four seats on UofL President Jim Ramsey’s flight to New York, two rooms at the Marriott Marquis on Times Square and $1,000. Chances are $20. Proceeds support UofL's new Autism Center and the Families for Effective Autism Treatment (FEAT of Louisville) scholarship fund.

UofL will receive $1.6 million from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and a 20 percent match from the UofL Foundation to improve two of its parks on Third Street. The money will be used to build a pedestrian crosswalk intersecting Freedom Park and expand bike pathways, pedestrian cardiopaths and traffic-calming measures at Stansbury Park. But there’s more to the project than improvements. An educational component at Freedom Park will highlight Kentucky's role in civil rights.

UofL's first weROCK iMovie Fest ended Nov. 13 with an Academy Awards-like celebration at its Rauch Planetarium. The campuswide video competition charged teams of two to five students to create a film no longer than five minutes about UofL student life using iMovie software. "ULinMotions," a time-lapsed look at life around UofL’s Belknap Campus, received first place. Download the winning video.

UofL engineering students bested their competitors in a four-hour endurance race for mini-Baja vehicles Nov. 8. The UofL student chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) was host to the event called Midnight Mayhem. UofL’s No. 30 car topped the 16-car field, while the UofL No. 19 car placed within the top 10. Eleven universities took part in the event, which organizers think is the first nighttime race in the 30-year history of mini-Baja racing.