Class Notes
Class News {alumni and friends} Hassan Alwan (Biochemistry, ’15) is attending the Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Nashville.
Brandon Armstrong (Foreign Languages, ’05) and his band, the California Feetwarmers, were nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award in the Americana Roots category for the song “Old Me Better,” a single by singer/ songwriter Keb’ Mo’. It was Armstrong’s second Grammy nomination. A music minor, Brandon wrote an Honors thesis called “Musicolor: A Translation of Heinrich Ullrich’s MusikFarbenSpiel.” He received a Fulbright to study in Germany in 2008. Taylor A. Barnes (Physics and Chemistry, ’09) was first author for the feature article “Ab Initio Characterization of the Electrochemical Stability and Solvation Properties of CondensedPhase Ethylene Carbonate and Dimethyl Carbonate Mixtures” in the January 2015 issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry. He recently completed his Ph.D. at California Institute of Technology and began working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in July. Earlier this year, he received the National Energy Research Scientific Computer Center 2015 Innovative Use of HighPerformance Computing Award.
Jacob Basham (Mathematics and
Meg Davis (Speech and Theatre, ’11)
Science, ’13) won a research fellowship from Howard Hughes Medical Institute that allowed him to take a year off from medical school and conduct research on treating cancer using genetically engineered cells at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Jacob is the first University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine student to receive a Howard Hughes award.
is in the second year of her doctoral program in theatre at Texas Tech, where she is a graduate part-time instructor. She is working with a federal Promise Neighborhood grant that sends her to underfunded and underserved schools to help them foster creativity in the classrooms and establish after-school theatre sessions.
Troy Berry (Mass Communication, ’12) was named head coach of Middle Tennessee Christian School’s volleyball program this spring.
Bridget Carlson (English, ’15) is seeking an M.A. in English at MTSU.
Beth Chitwood (Music, ’15) accepted a summer internship in the legal department of SoundExchange in Washington, D.C. She was accepted at the law schools of Case Western Reserve University, George Washington University, the University of Richmond, and Vanderbilt University. She chose Vanderbilt, where she received a Chancellor’s Law Scholarship and a Dean’s Leadership Award.
Cathy Crabtree (History, ’05) has, for the last five years, been teaching as an adjunct in the MTSU History Department. The Honors graduate, who completed a creative thesis project called “The History of Quilting” in 2005, has lectured on the history of quilts and the lives of women during the Civil War. Cathy received an M.A. from the University of Nebraska– Lincoln in textile and quilt studies. Joan Corinne Crenshaw (Anthropology, ’15) is working with the French Ministry of Education and the French Embassy in Rouen, France, for a year.
Tyler Whitaker
Danielle Dye (Exercise Science, ’15) is working as a physical therapy technician and plans to continue her physical therapy education. Garrett Ewers (Accounting, ’14) interned at an accounting firm in Kingsport before beginning work on a Master of Accountancy degree at MTSU this fall.
Andrew Goldstein (Computer Science and Political Science, ’15) is attending Belmont University College of Law, where he received a 100-percenttuition Bruin Scholarship. Nathaniel Greene (Political Science and Economics, ’11) graduated summa cum laude from the University of Tennessee College of Law, where he was an articles editor for the Tennessee Law Review and a research editor for Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law. He has passed the bar and is now working as an associate for Harwell Howard Hyne Gabbert & Manner’s corporate law group in Nashville, where he assists clients with secured and unsecured financing transactions; leasing, acquisition, disposition, and financing of real estate and commercial properties; and general contract negotiation. continued on page 66
Tyler Whitaker (Anthropology, ’14), who has completed her first year of studying linguistic anthropology at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, researched the revitalization of the American Indian language Tunica in Louisiana this summer.
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