Vol State Livingston Celebrates 30 Years Of Student Learning

Faculty, students, and community members gathered at Vol State’s Livingston campus Thursday morning to celebrate its 30th year.

Mike Powell is the Upper Cumberland Senior Director and has been with Vol State Livingston since its beginning. He said looking back on how the community came together to make this higher education campus happen is truly something special.

“It makes me tear up just to think about all the good to come out of this campus because we only exist to help folks, and that’s all,” Powell said. “And our job is to teach, and that’s what we try to do our best at.”

Powell said that one of his goals was to make Vol State Livingston one of the best health training facilities in the Upper Cumberland. He said that 30 years later they are hopeful they can build out the programs to include respiratory health, physical therapy, and much more.

History Faculty Greg Pryor was one of the first to be hired at the campus. He said that it’s the students, the faculty, and the community that has inspired him to stay all these years.

“Our banner over the library says that Vol State Livingston is a place where every student matters most and that really is true,” Pryor said. “It’s not grammatically correct, but it’s really correct. When you come through the front door, you’re one of the top priorities for everybody in the school and everybody in the school will do their darndest to make sure you’re getting where you’re needing to go and you don’t find that kind of environment every day. And when you get to be a part of it, you want to ride that as far as you can.”