NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt University‘s chancellor and nearly 50 faculty and staff will load up on a bus August 16 and hit the road for destinations eastward with the university’s fifth annual Roads Scholars Tour.
“We live in the center of a dynamic, diverse and beautiful state. This annual trip gives us a chance to explore our region and meet more of our neighbors. It’s also a great opportunity for our faculty and staff to get to know one another – there’s nothing like a road trip to help people bond,” Chancellor Gordon Gee said. “We’re excited to be heading back to gorgeous East Tennessee and look forward to visiting our partners and friends in education, technology and the arts.”
Stops on this year’s tour include Lightning Source, a division of Ingram Industries Incorporated, in La Vergne; the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the Knoxville Museum of Art; the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Scripps Networks; Maryville High School; Tennessee Technological University‘s Appalachian Center for Craft and Vanderbilt’s Squirrel Camp, an outdoor freshman orientation program on Percy Priest Lake.
The Roads Scholars Tour was conceived in 2002 as a way to welcome new faculty to the university and to familiarize them and others in the Vanderbilt community with the university’s ties and partnerships in the region. Previous tours took participants to East and West Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama.
The trip has turned out to be a boon both for Vanderbilt and its hosts. Following the 2002 Roads Scholars Tour to East Tennessee, Vanderbilt developed a working partnership with the Oneida Special School District that includes teacher education through videoconferences with university experts and other K-12 schools. Stops at Rhodes College and the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital during the 2003 tour strengthened ongoing partnerships between Vanderbilt and these institutions. As a result of the 2004 trip, Vanderbilt’s senior information technology leaders formed a consortium with their counterparts from the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee and other colleges and universities to keep abreast of issues specific to information technology and higher education. And the university donated videoconferencing equipment to Whitwell Middle School in Marion County, Tenn., as part of the 2005 trip. The school is using the equipment to work with another school in New York to raise awareness about the Holocaust.
“It’s exciting that we’ve come to the fifth year of this adventure and have created so many new and lasting partnerships,” said Gail Williams, associate director of community engagement in Vanderbilt’s Office of Community, Neighborhood and Government Relations and co-organizer of the tour. “The tour has also helped create a tremendous sense of collegiality among the faculty, staff and students who have participated. It’s good to be a ‘roadie.'”
The bus will depart early the morning of Aug. 16 and make its first stop at Lightning Source in La Vergne. Participants will tour the facility and learn about the company, which provides services such as content management and storage, digital rights management to secure e-book delivery and distribution of printed “on demand” books.
From La Vergne, the group will head to the home of what’s said to be the greatest concentration of Ph.D.’s in the United States – Oak Ridge – for a tour of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Participants will learn about ORNL over lunch and then will tour several of the campus facilities, where scientists and engineers conduct basic and applied research and development with the goals of increasing the nation’s leadership in key areas of science, increasing the availability of clean, abundant energy, restoring and protecting the environment and contributing to national security.
The group will then travel to Knoxville and tour the Knoxville Museum of Art, a diverse, urban art museum with frequent traveling exhibits as well as a solid permanent collection and frequent film and musical events. The group will finish of the day visiting with their Volunteer friends over dinner at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
The trip will continue on Aug. 17 with a visit to Scripps Networks in Knoxville to learn about that company and its community outreach efforts, with tours of the facility led by local high school students. The E.W. Scripps Company is a diverse media concern with interests in national lifestyle cable networks, newspaper publishing, broadcast television stations, electronic commerce, interactive media and licensing and syndication.
Next up will be a visit to Maryville, where the participants will talk with Principal Ken Jarnagin and tour two of the school’s special programs – a boat building class and a student operated café.
From Maryville, the group will head to the Appalachian Center for Craft, where they will have the opportunity to talk with Tennessee Tech University President Robert Bell, before touring the facility, which includes a glass, wood, metal, pottery and other art studios.
The Roads Scholars Tour will wind up with a trip to Vanderbilt’s own Squirrel Camp in Antioch, Tenn. Squirrel Camp is a team-building program that brings together 160 first-year students for three days and nights of interactive outdoor activities prior to Move-In Day. The program has been designed to foster connections between the participants and the campus community, and to facilitate a seamless transition to Vanderbilt life.
Video of the Roads Scholars Tour will be available after the trip on VUCast, Vanderbilt’s news network, www.vanderbilt.edu.
Media contact: Melanie Moran, (615) 322-NEWS
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu