Gallatin

A new grant provides funding for a Gallatin greenway segment that will include part of the campus at Volunteer State Community College. The twelve foot wide path will run across the front of campus near Nashville Pike and eventually be the middle portion of a greenway from downtown Gallatin to Station Camp, where it will connect to the Sumner County greenway. The Tennessee Department of Transportation is providing $950,000 for the grant. The project is expected to take several years to complete.

Volunteer State Community College celebrated the graduation of the second class of Nursing students today with a pinning ceremony in Caudill Hall. Thirty-eight students from the Gallatin and Livingston groups are graduating this year with an Associate of Applied Science degree in Nursing. The program prepares students to apply to sit for licensure as a Registered Nurse.

Volunteer State Community College is reopening all campuses starting July 20: Gallatin, Springfield, Cookeville, and Livingston. It will be a safe reopening with masks and social distancing required for everyone on campus and an online screening form filled out before people come to campus. The goal is to get students and people considering college ready for fall classes. Safety is a primary consideration for the fall semester.

Sumner County Middle College High School students were finally able to gather for a graduation ceremony at Volunteer State Community College Saturday. The event was held with appropriate COVID-19 precautions. It was the largest graduating class ever for the Middle College with forty-five students awarded high school diplomas. Thirty-one of those students also received associate degrees from Vol State during the college virtual ceremony in May. Middle College High School students take Vol State classes, earning high school and college credit at the same time.

Planning a crime isn’t easy. There is plenty to consider. Metro Nashville Police Lieutenant Frank Ragains is an instructor at Volunteer State Community College. He designs mock crime scenes so that students can collect evidence and document the scene with a critical eye. Effective evidence processing is important in a criminal investigation. Mishandled evidence could be lost or found inadmissible in court. Vol State students now have more room, and more time, to investigate mock crime scenes thanks to a new Criminal Justice lab building at the college.

Volunteer State Community College students will celebrate the season with two nights of Christmas favorites. “Christmas Past and Present” will feature several groups from the Performing Arts Department: the Commercial Music Ensemble, the Jazz Music Ensemble, and the Vol State Showstoppers. The concerts also mark the release of a CD of Vol State student work. This year’s CD will be on sale at the shows.

The drawings of Nashville artist Marilyn Murphy will be on display at the Volunteer State Community College Art Gallery in October. The professor of Art emerita at Vanderbilt University has been shown in 390 exhibitions nationally and abroad.

The works of wife and husband artists, Heather Jones and Jeffrey Cortland Jones, will be on display at the Volunteer State Community College Art Gallery in August and September, opening the fall season for the gallery. The Ohio couple have shown their pieces nationally and internationally. They both make extensive use of colors with his pieces often paint on panels and her creations in fabric