Press Releases

The Tennessee Board of Regents’ Committee on Finance and Business Operations will meet Tuesday, Feb. 7, to discuss various aspects of fees levied by TBR colleges and universities and a draft policy on how TBR will consider university budgets under the FOCUS Act. No votes are scheduled but the discussion launches consideration of mandatory and incidental fee requests by TBR campuses for the 2017-18 academic year.

The Tennessee Board of Regents today approved criteria for the next president of Chattanooga State Community College and identified a 19-member Search Advisory Committee to review candidates and recommend finalists for the office.

The agenda for Friday’s special called meeting of the Tennessee Board of Regents has been amended to include two additional items, including a proposal that would retain outgoing Chancellor David Gregory as a TBR employee for one month as a transition advisor for his successor, Dr. Flora Tydings.

Gov. Bill Haslam, chairman of the Board of Regents, has called a special telephone meeting of the board for 3 p.m. CST, Jan. 27, to consider search criteria for the next president of Chattanooga State Community College. Approval of the criteria is the first step in the search for a successor to Dr. Flora Tydings, who becomes chancellor of the Board of Regents system Feb. 1.

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.