'Citizenship and Social Change' class undertakes variety of service projects

Students clear historic but nearly forgotten local cemetery

Thanks to the work of a recent Tusculum College class, above, a nearly lost, historic old cemetery in Greeneville is free of weeds and brush that had overgrown it, and a drop-rail fence is being put in place around it. The fencing was donated by Haskell and Linda Waddle, who live nearby the site. Above, students from the "Citizenship and Social Change: Theory and Practice" class taught during the spring semester by Ricki Kaplan, an adjunct sociology professor, gather beside the wooded cemetery near the intersection of Oak Grove roads and New Hope road. The cleanup was a service-learning project for the class. The cemetery is all that remains of an African-American congregation's church that once stood nearby, the New Hope Presbyterian Church. The project to preserve the cemetery grew out of a suggestion from Eleanor Mosca to the Tusculum College Museums Studies Department. (Tusculum College photo)

Donation made to soldier's family

The class members, below, also donated a $110 Wal-Mart gift certificate to the family of John S. Johnson, Jr., a staff sergeant in the Army, to help send items to the soldier. Johnson and his fianceé, Carrie Lauchmann, a helicopter mechanic, are both stationed in Iraq. The students raised the funds for the gift certificate through collecting cans for recycling and donations. In addition, the 37 students in the class donated between 200 and 300 pounds of clothes and shoes for Goodwill Industries and collected three-fourths of a gallon of can tabs to donate to the Ronald McDonald House in Johnson City. (Tusculum College photo)