Local residents earn four-year degrees in town

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

BUSH

Joe Eaton never thought he’d be able to earn a bachelor’s degree without leaving McMinnville, but he and 12 others accomplished just that earlier this month as a result of a joint venture between Motlow State Community College, Tennessee Tech University and Tennessee Technology Center at McMinnville.

The program, started during the fall semester of 2001, allowed the students who had completed associate’s degrees at Motlow to take upper-level classes on the campuses of Motlow and the Technology Center to earn a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies.

“If it had not been for this program, I don’t think I would have gotten my degree,” said graduate Amy Bush, who used her new degree to get a job at Nissan in Smyrna.

Janie Robbins, coordinator of Tennessee Tech’s McMinnville Center, said the program was geared toward individuals who, because of other responsibilities and commitments, did not have the opportunity to attend school.

To make the program work, classes were offered at night and on Saturdays. Because the degree offered was interdisciplinary studies, classes were offered in a number of subjects, including industrial psychology, business law and organizational behavior. They were taught by Motlow and Tennessee Tech instructors, the latter of whom would travel to McMinnville to teach the classes.

Group members never took more than eight semester hours per semester. In all, it took them three calendar years to compete the remaining four semesters of work to obtain their bachelor’s degrees.

In a celebration honoring the program and the graduates at Motlow Monday night, Tennessee Tech president Dr. Robert Bell praised the graduates as a “path-finding class.”

A new group of Motlow graduates will begin working toward bachelor’s degrees in January.