March 2026 Volume 9 Issue 8

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Leadership Clarksville’s Class of 2026 spent March 5 exploring the depth and diversity of higher education opportunities in the region during a visit to the Nashville State Community College (NSCC) Clarksville Campus.

The visit opened with a tour of NSCC’s new campus, with the highlight being the Nursing Simulation Labs, where participants saw how advanced technology is used to train future healthcare professionals.  The visit also included a tour of our state-of-the-art Biology lab, where guests participated‑ in hands-on demonstrations led by Nashville State faculty member and biologist, Amelia Rinehart.

Following the tour, representatives from four key institutions—Herzing University, TCAT Clarksville & Dickson, Nashville State Community College, and Austin Peay State University shared insights during a joint presentation and Q&A session. Speakers included Steve Conklin (Herzing), Dr. Corie Choate (TCAT), Kathleen Akers, and Saxton Keitt (NSCC), and Dr. Karen Meisch and Dr. Dlynn Williams (APSU).

Each institution highlighted its role in supporting workforce development, expanding educational access, and meeting the needs of a rapidly growing community. Leadership Clarksville participants engaged in thoughtful discussion about enrollment trends, career pathways, and collaborative efforts shaping Clarksville’s future.

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Recruiting is one of the most enjoyable parts of my role. It gives me the opportunity to connect with prospective students and showcase just how great Nashville State is. Maplewood High School recently invited Nashville State’s Culinary Arts Team to their college fair, and Chef Morgan and Chef Cochrane did an outstanding job representing the program!

They engaged with students, shared their passion for the culinary field, and gave a glimpse into the hands-on experiences our program offers. It was exciting to see students light up with interest and curiosity about their future possibilities. Moments like these remind me why I love what I do, helping students discover opportunities and envision their path forward!

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Join the Push to Personalize Your Teams Profile!
Making real human connections these days can sometimes feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Emails, Teams, Zooms — it’s easy to forget there are actual people on the other end of those messages. Especially if all you see is that dreary default of your coworker’s initials scattered across their various internal platforms.

This is where the humble profile photo comes in. Like a mini superhero, the profile pic swoops in to save the day, giving faces back to all the people we interact with day to day. Seeing your colleagues’ friendly faces is a great reminder that you are part of a larger group making a real difference for real people.

The Challenge
The Employee Engagement Committee is encouraging everyone to upload a professional-quality headshot into your Teams profile by the end of April. Replace those initials! Swap out the cartoon avatar! Upgrade low-quality or casual/action/full-body shots! The photo should be a clear, well-lit photo of just your face.

How to Upgrade
Use a high-quality photo that you already have or take a new photo for free using in one of these two ways:

• Iris Photo Booth at White Bridge. The Iris Photo Booth is the giant white machine located just outside the Bookstore. The digital display guides users through taking three photos and then emailing the selected photo directly to your work email address. You can then upload the photo to your profile.  Get the photobooth instructions here! 
  
• ID Photos. Employees at extended campuses may request a downloaded copy of their ID photo from the person at their campus who handles the ID camera. Or you can use the Iris Photo Booth the next time you come to White Bridge.

The Payoff
As relationships and familiarity grow, barriers lower and people feel more comfortable reaching out to collaborate, give feedback, and have richer discussions.

We hope to SEE you soon!

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At the TBR annual Statewide Outstanding Achievement Recognition (SOAR) awards in March, each college had an opportunity to showcase a high impact practice via a poster, and the Nashville State poster on our NSCC 1010 First Year Experience course received the ‘Gold’ Award.

Fall – Purpose

• FYE Course welcomes over 1000 first-time college students each fall.
• In 2016 FYE course is required for all first-time college students to find their purpose via a college degree.
• Over 12,000 students have successfully completed the FYE course since 2016.
• First-year retention rates have increased for full-time students from 45% (fall 2017) to 49% (fall 2024).
• TBR matched Motivate Lab and Nashville State in 2018 to translate learning mindset research into an impactful FYE reflection activity.
• The collaboration led to a class discussion and written reflection in the students’ first week of college.
• Instructors participate in the reflection building community and a sense of belonging for students. This activity is the template for making personal connections to Nashville State degrees, courses, and resources in the FYE class.
• Motivate Lab now uses the activity to promote post-secondary education.
• FYE Course Student Comment: “Changing the narrative is my value. I feel Nashville State will help me learn who I am and show me how to get there. Attending Nashville State proves to me that school does matter you just have to find your purpose, even if you need a little help. The narrative is what you want it to be, not what others tell you.”

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Winter – Support

As the work begins to accumulate for our students in the winter season, we tell them we have good news and bad news for their college journey. The bad news is the progress towards a college degree can take a few curves. The good news is they are not the first and only college students trying to reach graduation. The key to college success is building their college support network.

In 2021, Nashville State received a TBR grant to write an Open Educational Resource (OER) for our FYE course.  This text shows students that we are here for them: from academic supports like tutoring and advisors to well-being supports like our food pantry, laundry service, and transportation assistance. The OER text is filled with links, images and videos made for our students.

Other FYE OER Benefits:

• Saved our students over $80,000 each year in textbook costs. 
• FYE course is only five weeks long. All students have the textbook day one and can keep the text as an updated resource beyond the course.
• FYE course enrollee success increased 3% using the OER (68% Spring 2021 to 71% Spring 2022).
• FYE Course Student Comment: “Nashville State has helped me step outside my comfort zone with support from my new family of friends, professor, and advisor. “
• FYE Course Instructor Comment: “Students shared some things they are managing and others stepped up as supports. They shared phone numbers and emails. One even offered to give another a laptop they no longer need. That is why we do this class. We want students to be successful and build community. They are.”

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Spring – Growth

Spring is the time to remind students that they can’t help but grow while in college.  We ask them to reflect on the skills they grow as students that they value and that are also valued by future employers such as

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Time Management Skills

We tell them to seek classes with TBR’s High Impact Practices (HIPs ) such as:

• Honors and Research Projects
• Study Abroad
• Service Learning and Certifications

Ultimately, the FYE course grows students’ connection to our college’s mission – growing economic mobility through college success.

• FYE Course Student Comment: “My experiences at Nashville State will help me grow my people skills. Connecting and talking with my peers has already helped me step out of my shell and open up and genuinely connect with others. I’ve made many friends so far and I’m honestly very proud of myself.”
• FYE Course Instructor Comment: “I have to tell you what an amazing class I had last night! I have quite a few older students, and they shared their stories. It was so inspirational that I don’t think any of us wanted to disconnect from the Zoom call at the scheduled 9:00 pm end. It was amazing!”

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Summer – Direction

As their first year in college draws to a close, we want to make sure they have a road map to graduation. The linchpin of the FYE course is a student developed Academic Plan that outlines each course they will take to obtain a degree and when they will take it.

• In 2022-23 FYE students earned 20 credits, while students that did not take FYE earned 9 credits towards their college degree.
• We want students to know that their college degree aligns with their career aptitudes and interests.
• We utilize YouScience in partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools who also uses YouScience.
• Students reflect on the match of their Nashville State degree to their YouScience results.
• Students see the intersection of their personal goals and their career’s outlook and education requirements.
• FYE Course Student Comment: “Nashville State reinforces my independence by allowing me to take responsibility for my future, manage my own success, and work toward building a meaningful career through hard work and dedication.
• FYE Course Student Comment: “Attending Nashville State shows me to appreciate every opportunity that is presented to me, not everyone has the capabilities to attend school or even access the internet to try to attend school. Ultimately, the experience has instilled in me a profound sense of gratitude and a commitment to making the most of the educational opportunities available to me.”

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So there I was, in a room full of people, holding a shoe over my head.  That’s weird enough, but it wasn’t even my shoe.  That was the really weird part. And no, it wasn’t a dream.  I was actually in Doug Godwin’s Introduction to Psychology PSYC 1030 class.

Oh, it started off innocently enough.  Doug asked everyone to stand up.  And we did.  Then he asked us to rub our tummy and pat our heads, which is apparently a skill like riding a bike: once you learn how to do it, you never forget (I hadn’t rubbed my tummy and patted my head in… let’s just say it had been a few years). 

Okay. Fine.  I’m rubbing my tummy and patting my head in a room full of students.  It wasn’t a dream, but it felt like one.  A semi-surreal but not unpleasant one.  Then we were asked to take a shoe off.  I wasn’t super comfortable with this, but I did it.  Then we were asked to hand our shoe to someone else, which I really wasn’t comfortable with.  But we’d been told to do it by the teacher, and everyone else was doing it, so I did too.  Then we held that other person’s shoe aloft over our heads.  Again, because we were told to do it by the teacher (those who know me well can imagine how desperately I wanted to wash my hands after holding someone else’s shoe, but I didn’t do that.  I wasn’t told to by the teacher).

Now, as weird as that was, it really wasn’t that weird – from a psychology perspective, anyway. I’m not suggesting that psychologists are weird, or that people who are drawn to teaching psychology are weird.   No, from a psychology and teaching perspective, what Professor Godwin was having us do was an active learning exercise where we engaged with the idea of just how far we would be willing to go if we were told to do something by an authority figure.  We were acting out the ideas behind the Stanley Milgram experiment.  Mercifully, we weren’t asked to shock anybody, although I probably would have done it if I thought the electricity might have disinfected my hands after handling someone else’s shoe.  But I digress.  

After that, class proceeded relatively normally.  Professor Godwin discussed the Milgram experiment and showed some videos of it.  Then time was given to consider, in groups, if it would be possible to do the Milgram experiment in a more ethical way, where participants didn’t think they were hurting another person.  Then class segued into discussing authority in general and how we tend to obey authority figures.  We looked at some variations on experiments exploring obeying and authority, such as the difference in results between the authority figure wearing a lab coat versus not wearing a lab, and the impact of having the authority figure in the room versus not in the room.  And what we really learned is that we, as human beings, are probably far more acculturated to responding to authority than we would like to think we are.   Or as Kurt Vonnegut might point out, free will isn’t really that free and the concepts only exists in the entire universe on planet earth.

That aside, other than holding someone else’s shoe over my head and really, really wanting to wash my hands afterwards, it was a thoroughly enjoyable class.

One thing that Doug did that I really liked was the way he extracted knowledge from his students when asking a question.  Instead of directly asking for a definition of a term, he said, “Remind me of the definition of _______.”   It was a really nice technique to review that information without it sounding like an interrogation – it was like doing a favor that your teacher asked you for, kind of like rubbing your tummy and patting your head.  

Another thing that stood out, and this might seem like a minor – and obvious – thing to some of you, was that Doug had set his own desktop on the class computer that was completely clear of distractions.  It only had the icons he needed, which is something I’m definitely going to start doing.  The nice, clean appearance combined with Professor Godwin having all of his videos and material being prepared to go really created an orderly flow without having to click around and look for stuff.  Which, for someone like me, who is routinely disorganized in as many ways as possible, would be extra helpful.  Maybe somebody can stop by my class while wearing a lab coat, tell me to get organized, and I will obey.   

All in all, as always, I really wish I could take the class.  It was a pleasure to observe, both from a teaching perspective and also from a learner perspective.  And, as always, visiting a peer’s class gives me things to think about in regard to teaching.  If you haven’t visited a colleague’s class to observe, I highly recommend doing so.   

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In January of this year, Dean Ferguson contacted me regarding an assignment I have been giving to my Introduction to Psychology classes named “Music is my life.” Students list three songs that describe their lives today. The emotional and sincere responses I have received from the students have been overwhelming.

I have been studying Music Therapy for a few years, and I knew the healing powers of music. Dr. Ferguson introduced me to Joseph Johnson, Executive Director of the Center for Workforce Development and Continuing Education. He agreed to allow me the opportunity to create the course. Megan Murray, also with WDCE, assisted me with the logistics of building the course and getting it ready to offer to the public.

The results are in: The class starts May 17th!

Plans have been developed to expand this opportunity to corporate Nashville for team building and breakout sessions during events they have scheduled.

I have witnessed the power of sound healing while caring for both my parents; each passed away recently from Alzheimer’s /Dementia disease.  A simple song took them back to better days and memories by soothing their souls.

For more information about the course, please scan the QR code in the flyer which also contains my contact information.

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Human Resources Update

By Connie Daniel, Senior Administrative Assistant, Human Resources

March 2026

Please join us in extending a warm welcome to Nashville State’s newest employees!

New Hires
Samantha Bauer	Student Success Advisor	Office of Student Success Center
Teresa Lewis	Accounts Payable Associate	Office of Accounting & External Reporting
Willie Pollard	Maintenance Technician	Office Of Facilities Management
Ian West	Network Technician	Office of Technology Services
Alexander Yates	Computer Technician	Office of Technology Services

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Please join us in congratulating Nashville State’s employees who are in a new role!

New Roles
Laurie Coleman	Student Services Specialist I	Dickson and Humphreys Campuses
Justina Rogers	Director	North Davidson Campus
Samuel Stringfellow	Systems Administrator	Office of Technology Services

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Please join us in saying farewell to these NSCC employees!

Separations
Jenna Thompson	Access Services Coordinator	Office of the Access Center

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Greetings Nashville State!

A sincere thank you to everyone who assisted with these events.

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The Center for Workforce Development and Continuing Education is excited to announce several new programs designed to meet emerging industry needs and expand opportunities for learners across our region. As we continue to strengthen pathways that connect education to highdemand‑ careers, two programs in particular reflect our commitment to innovation and workforce relevance.

This year, we are launching Commercial Drone (UAS) Certification Training, providing learners with the skills and credentials required to enter the rapidly growing field of unmanned aircraft operations. In addition, we are introducing EntryLevel Surveying, a ‑handson‑ program built to equip participants with foundational surveying skills that support careers in construction, engineering, land development, and geospatial technologies.

Both programs reflect our goal of creating accessible, industry aligned training that prepares individuals for sustainable, high‑ ‑growth careers.

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