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From food and baby-supply drives to wildfire damage cleanup and repair, students across Tennessee are working on scores of community service projects as part of a statewide Martin Luther King Day of Service initiative planned by student leaders at Tennessee Board of Regents colleges and universities. In addition to helping people and communities in need, the project provides more focused opportunities for Tennessee Promise students to perform the eight hours of community service required per semester for the scholarship program.

Debbie Adams, a 30-year career staffer and administrator at Chattanooga State Community College, will serve as interim president of the college when President Flora Tydings leaves Feb. 1 to assume her new role as chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents. Adams, currently the college’s vice president of student affairs and workforce development, is being appointed today by TBR Chancellor David Gregory to lead Chattanooga State until the next president is appointed by the Board of Regents and arrives on campus later this year.

Dr. Tristan Denley, vice chancellor for academic affairs at the Tennessee Board of Regents, has been named one of five U.S. “higher education leaders to watch in 2017 (and beyond)” by the online publication Education Dive.

Denley is the only university system administrator on the list. 

The Tennessee Board of Regents voted unanimously today to appoint Dr. Flora Tydings as the next chancellor of the Board of Regents system – its ninth chief executive officer since the system’s creation in 1972. She has been president of Chattanooga State Community College since July 2015 and prior to that was a leader for 19 years in the public Technical College System of Georgia.

After the wildfires struck the Gatlinburg area and tornadoes struck elsewhere last month, staff and students at several Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology and Tennessee's community colleges from across the state swung into action to help with relief efforts. That work culminated Dec. 6 when a tractor-trailer rig from TCAT-Knoxville’s truck driving program pulled into a Red Cross donation center in Sevier County and unloaded 28,541 personal and household items for residents displaced by the fires.

The Tennessee Board of Regents will meet in a special called session Tuesday, Dec. 27, to consider a recommendation for the appointment of Dr. Flora Tydings as the next chancellor of the Board of Regents system. She has has been president of Chattanooga State Community College since July 2015, and was president of Athens Technical College in Athens, Ga., a campus of the public Technical College System of Georgia, from 2003 to 2015.

Susanne Cox, who has worked at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology – Morristown since 1990, will serve as interim director of the college from Jan. 1 until a successor to retiring Director Jerry M. Patton is named.

The Tennessee Board of Regents appointed Dr. Allana R. Hamilton as the fifth president of Jackson State Community College on Thursday.

Hamilton is currently vice president for academic affairs at Northeast State Community College in Blountville, Tenn., a position she has held since 2010. She will assume the presidency in Jackson on Jan. 10, 2017.

Tennessee Board of Regents Chancellor David Gregory will recommend Dr. Allana R. Hamilton as the next president of Jackson State Community College in a special called meeting of the Board on Dec. 15. She is currently vice president for academic affairs at Northeast State Community College in Blountville, Tenn., a position she has held since 2010.

The search committee for the next chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents system has recommended McKay, Sullivan and Tydings to the full Board to consider for the position

A contingent of 15 students descended upon the state capitol to participate in the 47th Annual Tennessee Intercollegiate State Legislature (TISL) forum.

The Tennessee Board of Regents approved new academic programs at several of its campuses and heard reports on enrollment trends and student success initiatives. Meeting in its regular quarterly December session in Nashville, the board also heard a report on satisfaction surveys of Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology alumni and their employers.

The National Science Foundation has awarded Pellissippi State Community College grant funding to support a scholarship program for students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Roane State’s Joshua Spurling has been appointed by Gov. Bill Haslam as the student regent on the Tennessee Board of Regents.

James King, Tennessee Board of Regents vice chancellor for the Colleges of Applied Technology, has been elected chairman of the Council on Occupational Education, the national accrediting agency for postsecondary occupational and technical career education institutions.

The Tennessee Board of Regents will hold its regular quarterly meeting on Thursday, Dec. 1, in Nashville, with an agenda that includes a panel discussion on enrollment trends and their impact on student completion, consideration of new legislative proposals for the 2017 session of the General Assembly, and budget revisions for the current academic year.

Industries ranging from manufacturing to health care are in great need of workers with automation and systems technology skills. Mechatronics is the engineering behind those systems.

Ten employees of Y-12 National Security Complex have completed three years of classroom training at Pellissippi State Community College as part of the second class of an apprenticeship program that grows talent from within Y-12.

Students at Volunteer State Community College took first place in a competition of Radiologic Technology knowledge recently. It was part of the annual meeting of the Tennessee Society of Radiologic Technologists. They’re the professionals who perform x-rays and other radiographic imaging of patients in hospitals and clinics. Teams of four students from across Tennessee competed in a single elimination student bowl. There were a total of ten teams participating.