NEWS & CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS

Thomas J. Garland was named to the Tusculum College Board of Trustees on Friday, February 5. This will be a return for Garland, who previously served as a Trustee and former chairman of the Board.

Garland was born in Kingsport, was educated in the Kingsport and Oak Ridge school systems and graduated from East Tennessee State University with a bachelor’s degree.  He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1952-56.

Garland served as a Republican Tennessee Senator from 1964 through 1985, 17 of those years as Senate minority leader.

He was honored with the ETSU Outstanding Alumnus Award in 1973.

His positions in business, education and government have included chairmanship of the board of Commerce Union Bank, chancellorship of the Tennessee Board of Regents and the interim presidency of Tusculum College (1999-2000), where he served as a member of the Board of Trustees and a former Chairman of the Board.

In 1986 he received an honorary doctor of law degree from Tusculum College and has received the College’s Distinguished Service Award.

He has also served on numerous civic and corporate boards and served as senior advisor to the Niswonger Foundation, as chairman of the Tusculum Institute for Public Leadership and Policy and as director of Atmos Energy Corporation.

Garland has served on the Tennessee Ethics Committee and has previously served as its chairman.

The renovated Tusculum College library, the Thomas J. Garland Library, was named for Garland in 2008 in recognition to the service, dedication and support Garland has provided to the institution throughout his life.

He and his wife, Pat, reside near Tusculum College. They have been Greeneville residents for many years. The Garlands have four children and seven grandchildren.

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Dr. Greg Hawkins has been named assistant vice president for academic affairs at Tusculum College, officials announced today.

 According to Dr. Kim Estep, provost and vice president of academics, in this position, Hawkins will coordinate strategic planning and assessment activities of the College, coordinate accreditation activities, manage institutional data reporting and analysis and gather data to support the development of new academic programs.

He will also coordinate grant writing to support new and existing academic programs. Hawkins will oversee the Office of Institutional Research and play a fundamental role in enhancing the College’s ability to develop sound policies and data-driven decisions in support of the institution’s mission and strategic goals, said Estep.

“Dr. Hawkins skill sets compliment the mission and the direction that Tusculum College is going in concert with the strategic plan approved in May 2009,” said Dr. Nancy B. Moody, president of Tusculum College. “We are very pleased to have him join us in moving the College forward.”

 Hawkins is currently the associate director for institutional assessment and effectiveness at Clemson University, where he was integral in the development of a new institution-wide institutional effectiveness reporting process. In addition, he has been involved in the design and implementation of special research projects, retention analyses, student engagement and academic progress data analyses, and success and equity issues.

Prior to his current position, Hawkins served as the director of the Jim Self Center on the Future for the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs at Clemson University. In that role, he developed and managed grants, contracts and endowments, supervised research activities and programs administered by the center, supervised staff and led strategic planning for the center.

Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in natural resource policy, as well as a master’s of science degree in natural resource management and a bachelor’s of science in parks, recreation and tourism management from Clemson University. He has taught courses, including research methods for social sciences, recreation resource policy and introduction to environmental science and policy at Clemson.

He has authored numerous research reports, technical reports and manuals and has given presentations at a number of national and regional conferences, including a presentation on “Online Assessment Management Systems: Best Practices and Biggest Challenges for Effective Implementation” at the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools-Commission on Colleges’ annual meeting this past December. He has authored or co-authored fourteen grants totaling more than $4 million to support youth, environmental, and education projects.

He and his wife, Melissa, have two children, Savannah, 10, and Joshua, 8.

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Classes at the Tri-Cities Tusculum College site in Gray have been cancelled for Tuesday, April 6, due to a power outage in the area.

Classes will continue as normal at all other sites and will resume in the Tri-Cities on Wednesday, April 7.

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Performance artist Dr. Al Staggs will provide a unique view of various aspects of theology during the 2010 Theologian-in-Residence lecture series in February at Tusculum College.

Dr. Staggs will explore a range of topics from the legacy of Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the role of laughter in life as part of the annual lecture series, co-sponsored by the Holston Presbytery and Tusculum College. The lecture series includes sessions on each Tuesday in February – Feb. 2, Feb. 9, Feb. 16 and Feb. 23. Sessions will be in the Chalmers Conference Center inside the Niswonger Commons on the Tusculum campus.

This year’s series will be led by Dr. Staggs, who brings notable theologians and theological ideas to life as a performance artist. He served for 24 years as a Baptist minister before turning his energies full-time to performance as his ministry.

Dr. Staggs discovered his performing abilities in high school when he began to impersonate famous comedians for his classmates and teachers. After serving in the U.S. Army, he turned his attention to obtaining the necessary education to serve others as a minister.

During his post-graduate studies, Dr. Staggs was increasingly drawn to individuals in recent history who had devoted their lives to justice and peace concerns. After two decades of serving as a parish minister, he came to terms with the fact that his real passions related to performing and to working for peace and justice.

Twenty years ago, Dr. Staggs combined his two passions by writing and performing a one-person play that takes his audience into the prison cell of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer after he was imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II.

A few years later after he made the decision to begin his performance ministry, Dr. Staggs added characterizations of Clarence Jordan, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Thomas Merton and Walter Rauschenbusch to his repertoire of programs. He finds great satisfaction in bringing these notable figures to life and sharing their relevant messages with audiences throughout the world.

Dr. Staggs also enjoys bringing joy through laughter to people’s lives in a program designed for business, civic and medical organizations and church groups.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Hardin-Simmons University, a master’s degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a master of theology degree from Harvard Divinity School and a doctor of ministry degree from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Dr. Staggs was honored as a Charles E. Merrill Fellow at Harvard in 1983 with major emphasis in applied theology. He also completed a year internship in clinical pastoral education at Baylor University Medical Center.

On Feb. 2, Dr. Staggs’ program will be  “A View from the Underside: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”  It will feature his one-person play that brings the life of one of the great heroes of the 20th century to the stage. The audience is brought into the prison cell where Bonhoeffer awaits execution and listens to his struggles with evil, injustice and God.

The program for Feb. 9 will be “Clarence Jordan and the God Movement.” Jordan was a farmer, Baptist minister and Biblical scholar who, in 1942, founded the interracial community of Koinonia in southern Georgia. The concept that grew into Habitat for Humanity International was born at Koinonia. Jordan and Habitat’s co-founder Millard Fuller developed a concept of “partnership housing,” in which those in need of adequate housing worked side by side with volunteers to build simple, decent houses. Jordan’s life and theology were a radical embodiment of the teachings of Jesus, especially those from the Sermon on the Mount.

Feb. 16’s program will be “Laughter for Life,” in which audiences will discover that Staggs is a character. In fact, he is 30 or more characters in this program. Through the medium of his many zany comedic impressions, Staggs will demonstrate the importance of humor in aiding spiritual, emotional and physical health.

The series will conclude on Feb. 23 with “William Sloane Coffin: a Priestly Prophet.” Coffin, an American Protestant social activist who was greatly influenced by the social philosophy of Reinhold Nebuhr, became a leader in the Civil Rights and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s when he was chaplain at Yale University. He continued his involvement in social concerns such as nuclear disarmament and the plight of war refugees in the following decades.

Each session will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude at about 1:30 p.m. Lunch is included. There is no admission fee to the sessions but reservations are required.

To make reservations or for more information about the series, please contact Angie Dean in the Office of Church Relations at 423-636-7319 or e-mail her at adean@tusculum.edu.

This event is approved for Arts and Lecture credit for students.

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Tusculum College’s Thomas J. Garland Library staff recently announced that given the success of the November event, they would offer another children’s event, themed around Valentine’s Day. 

“Big Hearts and Little Readers: Children’s Story Hour 2,” will take place on Thursday, February 11, at 6 p.m. in Room 206 of the Garland Library. The event is being coordinated by Kathy Hipps, information literacy librarian and assistant cataloger; Carolyn Parker, coordinator of library technical services, and Bonner Leader students Mara Rutherford and Scott Lucky.

The session is free and open to all Tusculum College family members ages eight and under. Tusculum College faculty, staff and students are encouraged to bring their children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and young friends for a fun night of stories, crafts and refreshments. 

Please RSVP to Hipps at ext. 5123 by Tuesday, February 9, if you plan to attend. 

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Questions about God’s presence in a world of injustice and evil, God’s favored people and the responsibility of Christians to their fellow man were among the issues explored during the first session of the Theologian-in-Residence lecture series Tuesday at Tusculum College.

The questions were among the themes of  “A View from the Underside: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” a one-man play performed by Dr. Al Staggs at the beginning of the session of the 2010 Theologian-in-Residence series, co-sponsored by the Holston Presbytery and Tusculum College.  The annual series includes sessions each Tuesday in February.

Staggs, who has more than 20 years in service as a pastor and hospital chaplain, told the audience of about 115 ministers, lay leaders and church members as well as Tusculum students, faculty and staff that he felt led into ministry as a performance artist as a way to raise issues that can not be addressed safely from a pastoral role.

“The plays are mostly to reach people to think about issues,” he said. “It is not to lead people to a particular opinion, but to get them to think. … My role is to ask questions, and sometimes, asking a question is as important or more important than the answer.”

In the play, Staggs portrayed Bonhoeffer in a cell inside a Nazi prison during World War II. Bonhoeffer was arrested and later executed for involvement in a resistance movement, including his involvement in a conspiracy among German military intelligence to assassinate Adolph Hitler. The play’s dialogue gives voice to Bonhoeffer’s moral outrage of the Nazi treatment of the Jews and other people groups and the German Christian church’s lack of reaction to the Holocaust. Bonhoeffer believed that German churches had sold out because they either supported Hitler or said nothing about the atrocities that were committed at his command.

Another primary theme of the one-man drama is Bonhoeffer’s assertion that it is the responsibility of Christians and the church to speak up for victims of injustice, to come to the aid of those victims and “jam a spoke in the wheel of the state” when it is committing injustices to a people group. He also said the church should sell all it has and give it to the poor.

When asked what he thought Bonhoeffer’s assessment of the church today, Dr. Staggs said he thought that Bonhoeffer would not like what he would see in the public face of Christianity, particularly the prominence in the media of the “health and wealth” gospel in which people are told that the Christian life brings blessings of wealth and good health.

Bonhoeffer’s life was a contrast to this ideal as he was from a privileged background, the son of the leading psychiatrist in Germany who had the connections to obtain a pastorate of a large church and live comfortably. However, he left that life of privilege to speak out against the Nazis and eventually lost his life for expressing his beliefs.

In the play, Staggs also brings out Bonhoeffer’s struggles with such questions as where is God in a time when might seemed to make right and insidious evil led to the victimization of the Jews and others and who are God’s people when the Jews were being systematically murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust in a nation that called itself Christian. The play expresses Bonhoeffer’s view that if the Jews were removed from the western world, it would be removing Jesus as well since he was a Jew.

The drama also shows Bonhoeffer as more than just a theologian wrestling with these questions, it illustrates a man struggling with the confines of a lonely jail cell. He wonders if he will ever be able to marry his fiancée and battles his feelings of confinement by remembering his past experiences such as his friendship in seminary with a student from Harlem and his discovery of a new perspective on history and the Bible through the view of those who have suffered after worshipping in a church in Harlem.

The one-man drama also explores Bonhoeffer’s ideas of how the German Christian church had ended up in such an ethical quagmire. Bonhoeffer described how the German people were taken with Hitler’s promises to restore a battered economy, rebuild the reputation of Germany to once again be a world leader, fight the Bolsheviks and restore traditional moral values and the security of the nation.

The drama about Bonhoeffer is the first that Staggs wrote and performed. In his studies at Harvard, he recalled that he had read all of Bonhoeffer’s works and felt that he raised issues that were as relevant for the Christian church today as they were in the time that they were written.

Staggs had also found an interest in liberation theology while a student and that the various versions of liberation theology all shared a focus on the poor and marginalized in society. “I felt the (Holy) Spirit leading me to some unfamiliar and uncomfortable areas,” he said.

He noted that in studying the entire Bible, one finds that God does have a preferential concern for the oppressed and the poor. “The more that I saw that, the more I saw a disconnect from that principal in my own life and in the church.” As he struggled with these issues, Dr. Staggs said he found that performance was the way he could share these issues with the Christian community.

While a major theme in the Bonhoeffer drama concerns the responsibility of churches to be advocates for the poor and oppressed and its failing to do so, Dr. Staggs said it should not interpreted as a condemnation of churches. Much good comes from churches, he said, for example, the ministry to individuals facing a difficulty whether an illness, loss of a loved one, broken family relationships or financial hardship.

However, a church’s ministry should be “both/and” rather than “either/or” in a focus on ministering to individual needs and addressing social issues such as poverty.

When asked about how a church and Christians can become more open and active in advocating for the poor and oppressed, Dr. Staggs said there is not a single formula that can work for all because each church and its members are different. However, he said, the pastor cannot do it by himself, there has to be church members interested and willing to help make it a priority in ministry.

The series will continue next Tuesday, February 9, as Dr. Staggs performs his play, “Clarence Jordan and the God Movement.” The session begins at 10 a.m., continuing through 1:30 p.m. Lunch is provided. There is no admission fee for the series, but reservations are required. For more information or to make reservations, please call 423-636-7319 or e-mail adean@tusculum.edu.

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Suzanne Richey, director of college communications for Tusculum College, was recently notified that she was named the recipient of a New2CASE scholarship presented by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE.)

The New2CASE scholarship award includes a waiver of the registration fee for the CASE District III annual conference to be held in Tampa, Fla., February 20-24, as well as assistance with transportation costs.

Richey will attend the CASE District III annual conference to learn ways Tusculum College can improve its communication efforts both externally and internally while generously promoting the mission and stories of the College. While at the conference, Richey will also be hosting a roundtable discussion group on utilizing social media for college communications.

“I am honored and thrilled to receive the CASE Scholarship,” said Richey.  In these difficult economic times, we are weighing every dollar spent. With the scholarship assistance I will be able to invest in my professional development and take advantage of opportunities to learn and improve in ways that will make the Communications Department, the Office of Institutional Advancement and the College stronger.”

“Suzanne, although very experienced in communications and public relations, is a newcomer to the field of advancement and to higher education,” said Susan D. Vance ‘91, interim vice president for institutional advancement. “I know that the CASE Conference experience is one of the most valuable professional development opportunities in our field, and I believe she is a staff member who is deserving of the investment.”

Richey joined the College in November 2008 and oversees the communications staff tasked with maintaining a public presence for the College through campus-wide communication, marketing and branding efforts, managing media relations, maintaining the College’s Web presence and exploring, developing and implementing innovative communication approaches.

Richey is a graduate of the University of Tennessee with a major in journalism and a minor in English.

She and her family live in Greeneville. She is married to Steve Richey and they have two daughters: Lane, a sophomore at Greeneville High School; and Emily, a seventh grader at Greeneville Middle School. Her parents are Tusculum College alumni, Howard and Mary Jo Slagle ‘61 ‘60 who reside in Greeneville.

CASE helps its members build stronger relationships with their alumni and donors, raise funds for campus projects, produce recruitment materials, market their institutions to prospective students, diversify the profession, and foster public support of education. CASE also offers a variety of advancement products and services, provides standards and an ethical framework for the profession, and works with other organizations to respond to public issues of concern, while promoting the importance of education worldwide.

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The faculty and staff of the Knoxville Regional Center will be participating in a Relay For Life event in April.  In order to raise dollars and awareness, the Tusculum College administration has given approval for the KRC Relay for Life team to host “Denim Fridays.” On the designated Fridays, Tusculum College personnel who make a $5 donation will earn the right to wear denim on a Friday. 

The first “Denim Friday” was held Friday, January 29, and they will be held each Friday through Friday, April 30. A $5 donation must be made each week in order to participate by wearing denim.  Persons making a $50 donation receive the opportunity to wear denim on all Fridays during the campaign.

Donations can be made online at www.relayforlife.org/westknoxville can be sent to Cliff Gjertson, director of the Knoxville Regional Center. Checks should be made to “Tusculum-Knoxville Team.”

According to Gjertson, the team has currently raised $660 toward their goal of $3,000.

For more information, contact Gjertson at Ext. 5008.

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