Winter is coming

Learn a new language through ETSU Rosetta Stone language instruction

In 2010, East Tennessee State University’s Honors College and Office of Professional Development began a program that offered online language-learning courses available in 25 languages through Rosetta Stone, a leading provider of technology-based, language-learning solutions.

A 2011 user satisfaction survey gave Rosetta Stone® Classroom high marks for being accessible, convenient and user-friendly. Among the most popular of the 25 languages available are Italian, English, Japanese, Latin, French, Spanish and Greek.

The non-credit professional development instruction is available to the community and does not require formal admission to ETSU. For a registration fee of $60, users receive two months of independent study in one language, available at all proficiency levels.

For more information, contact Angela McFall of the ETSU Office of Professional Development at (800) 222-3878, or register online at https://etsuaw.etsu.edu/.

ETSU honors its first African American students

A new fountain will recognize those five pioneers.  From The Johnson City Press.

Fountain to be constructed to honor first five black students at ETSC

When East Tennessee State College was desegregated in the 1950s there was no violence, no protests, no blocking of doors, nothing that made the news like at other Southern colleges and universities where black students were beginning to seek higher education.  

That lack of conflict is likely why there is little record of the enrollment of Eugene Caruthers in ETSC’s graduate school in January 1956, or the enrollments of undergraduates Elizabeth Watkins Crawford, Clarence McKinney, George L. Nichols and Mary Luellen Owens Wagner in August 1958.  

“None of that type of action was exhibited when Dr. Caruthers came and when those other students followed behind him in 1958,” said Angela Radford Lewis, associate dean for ETSU’s College of Education. “It was perfect history but got hid because it was not sensational history. And that’s one of the things that ETSU prides itself on, that, you know, these students were able to enroll without any violence or hostility.”  

There may not have been much of a record at the time, but soon there will be a permanent memorial to those five students. Preston Construction is building a water fountain at the plaza in front of the Charles C. Sherrod Library intended to commemorate the university’s desegregation. ETSC became a university in 1963.  

The fountain is scheduled to be completed in October.