Message from the Dean

Dear Alumni and Friends.

After a year of hiatus, we are bringing this new issue of AgLINK to you. To put it mildly, this past year hasn’t been easy for any of us, and I hope 2021 will be better! The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) imprisoned most of the world population at one time or other during this past year. A deadly tornado outbreak affected West and Middle Tennessee on the night of March 2 and into the morning of March 3, 2020, which erased the entire infrastructure of the Agricultural Research and Education Center located on the Main Campus of Tennessee State University. If these challenges were not enough, the Capitol Insurrection events of January 6, 2021 have shaken everyone who believes in democracy and the rule of law.

However, thanks to the resiliency of our students, faculty, and staff, we have continued our teaching, research, and Extension operations, although with some changes. The College of Agriculture offered 85 percent of our courses online, and research and Extension operations Dr. Chandra Reddy, Dean continued with staggered staff workplace schedules and adjustments by our faculty and staff to College of Agriculture perform their jobs mostly from home.

Faculty and staff quickly learned new ways to operate effectively and efficiently and they certainly had a productive year. In the middle of all these challenges, we offered two brand new scholarship programs to our undergraduate students, the Farm Bill Scholarships and SunTrust (Truist) Scholarships. We started two new graduate programs, an M.S. in Environmental Sciences and an MS in Food and Animal Sciences.

For the first time in the history of TSU, dozens of our research and Extension faculty earned tenure based on the Research and Extension Faculty Governance Policy adopted in 2014. This is a historic achievement not only for Tennessee State University, but also for setting a standard for faculty working at other 1890 universities. I am extremely thankful to President Glover for her enthusiastic support to make this change to the Faculty Promotion and Tenure Policy of the university.

TSU is one of the few universities in the country that were awarded emergency funding under a program for COVID-19 research and education. Our faculty quickly began to educate the public on COVID-19 prevention measures and conduct research to control COVID-19. Our Food Engineering Laboratory has developed techniques to control COVID-19 on surfaces using ultraviolet light, and our virology labs have published data providing new understanding about the virus.

College of Agriculture faculty made great use of stay-at-home directives to submit grant proposals that secured $15 million of federal funding in six months. This is a historical record for the College and am very thankful to the faculty and thrilled with this achievement! Our Extension agents located in fifty counties of the state continued their public education effort albeit with limited physical meetings.

During this pandemic, we have also completed the design and bidding process for the construction of a new Food Science Building. We are working with the State of Tennessee and its insurance company to rebuild the tornado-erased infrastructure on our Main Campus Agricultural Research and Education Center. While this process has been tedious, and at times frustrating, all players involved have been motivated to get this job done as quickly as possible. I am very optimistic that we will have our facilities back this year.

MESSAGE, Continued on page 3 Dr. Glenda Glover, TSU president (left), and Dr. Chandra Reddy, dean of TSU’s College of Agriculture (right), speak to legislators at the Land-Grant Institution Funding Committee meeting on Jan. 11, 2020 at the Cordell Hull Building in Nashville, Tennessee.