Latest news with #TreveccaNazareneUniversity
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Extreme rainfall brings potentially deadly flooding to parts of central US already slammed by storms
As communities in the central US grapple with widespread devastation from a line of deadly storms that spawned dozens of tornadoes this week, forecasters are warning of another grave threat to the region: relentless rain into the weekend, with the potential to trigger 'generational' flooding. The flooding threat comes on the heels of seven deaths across Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana after the violent system moved into the region Wednesday. As the tornado threat from the storm ended, the Mississippi Valley, including parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi, braced for a three-day stretch of extreme flood risk – an occurrence almost unheard-of outside hurricane season. In hard-hit Selmer, Tennessee, a town about 90 miles east of Memphis, the tornado outbreak claimed at least three lives. Residents of a newly built apartment complex there scrambled to take shelter as the storm struck. 'Most people took shelter in their laundry rooms inside of the apartments,' said resident Justin West, whose unit survived while the front of the complex was 'almost gone.' West witnessed cars destroyed in the parking lot, piles of debris, and sections of the roof torn away. The complex opened less than a year ago, West pointed out. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee urged residents to stay alert, saying, 'Don't let your guard down.' 'There's been a lot of damage, there's been a lot of tornadoes, there's been loss of life and real devastation across the state, but this storm is going to continue,' Lee said on Thursday. At least five deaths had been reported in the state, according to Patrick Sheehan, director of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. And there were more than 4,000 customers without power in the state early Friday, according to As the cleanup of tornado damage begins, the same system is forecast to trigger 'life-threatening flash flooding' and severe weather through Sunday across the Ohio Valley, the Mid-South, and the Mississippi Valley, with the greatest impact expected in the Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas region, the National Weather Service warned. From Arkansas to Kentucky, historic rainfall could bring once-in-a-generation flooding. While flooding has already begun in some areas, conditions are expected to worsen significantly through Saturday, according to forecasters. Rainfall totals are projected to be so extreme that forecasters are using statistical terms, such as 1-in-25-year, 1-in-100-year, and even 1-in-1000-year events, to describe their rarity. A recent study highlights the role of climate change in extreme weather events, noting that hourly rainfall rates have intensified in nearly 90% of large US cities since 1970. For this system, federal and local agencies have mobilized water rescue teams and emergency supplies, including food and water, to brace for the worst. In Nashville, over a dozen water rescues took place on Thursday as relentless rain battered the city. Near Trevecca Nazarene University, first responders pulled a driver from a partially submerged vehicle, guiding him through a window and onto a rescue raft. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency for the western part of the state, warning of record rainfall in areas unaccustomed to flooding. At least 25 state highways, primarily in the west, were submerged by floodwaters, according to the governor's office. This comes after other recent flooding events in Kentucky. In February, a deadly winter storm claimed several lives, and in 2021, the state faced another large-scale flash-flooding disaster. CNN's Meteorologists Mary Gilbert and Brandon Miller and CNN's Sara Smart, Taylor Romine, Jillian Sykes and Chris Youd contributed to this report.
CNN
04-04-2025
- Climate
- CNN
Extreme rainfall brings potentially deadly flooding to parts of central US already slammed by storms
As communities in the central US grapple with widespread devastation from a line of deadly storms that spawned dozens of tornadoes this week, forecasters are warning of another grave threat to the region: relentless rain into the weekend, with the potential to trigger 'generational' flooding. The flooding threat comes on the heels of seven deaths across Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana after the violent system moved into the region Wednesday. As the tornado threat from the storm ended, the Mississippi Valley, including parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi, braced for a three-day stretch of extreme flood risk – an occurrence almost unheard-of outside hurricane season. In hard-hit Selmer, Tennessee, a town about 90 miles east of Memphis, the tornado outbreak claimed at least three lives. Residents of a newly built apartment complex there scrambled to take shelter as the storm struck. 'Most people took shelter in their laundry rooms inside of the apartments,' said resident Justin West, whose unit survived while the front of the complex was 'almost gone.' West witnessed cars destroyed in the parking lot, piles of debris, and sections of the roof torn away. The complex opened less than a year ago, West pointed out. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee urged residents to stay alert, saying, 'Don't let your guard down.' 'There's been a lot of damage, there's been a lot of tornadoes, there's been loss of life and real devastation across the state, but this storm is going to continue,' Lee said on Thursday. At least five deaths had been reported in the state, according to Patrick Sheehan, director of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. And there were more than 4,000 customers without power in the state early Friday, according to As the cleanup of tornado damage begins, the same system is forecast to trigger 'life-threatening flash flooding' and severe weather through Sunday across the Ohio Valley, the Mid-South, and the Mississippi Valley, with the greatest impact expected in the Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas region, the National Weather Service warned. From Arkansas to Kentucky, historic rainfall could bring once-in-a-generation flooding. While flooding has already begun in some areas, conditions are expected to worsen significantly through Saturday, according to forecasters. Rainfall totals are projected to be so extreme that forecasters are using statistical terms, such as 1-in-25-year, 1-in-100-year, and even 1-in-1000-year events, to describe their rarity. A recent study highlights the role of climate change in extreme weather events, noting that hourly rainfall rates have intensified in nearly 90% of large US cities since 1970. For this system, federal and local agencies have mobilized water rescue teams and emergency supplies, including food and water, to brace for the worst. In Nashville, over a dozen water rescues took place on Thursday as relentless rain battered the city. Near Trevecca Nazarene University, first responders pulled a driver from a partially submerged vehicle, guiding him through a window and onto a rescue raft. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency for the western part of the state, warning of record rainfall in areas unaccustomed to flooding. At least 25 state highways, primarily in the west, were submerged by floodwaters, according to the governor's office. This comes after other recent flooding events in Kentucky. In February, a deadly winter storm claimed several lives, and in 2021, the state faced another large-scale flash-flooding disaster. CNN's Meteorologists Mary Gilbert and Brandon Miller and CNN's Sara Smart, Taylor Romine, Jillian Sykes and Chris Youd contributed to this report.
CNN
04-04-2025
- Climate
- CNN
Extreme rainfall brings potentially deadly flooding to parts of central US already slammed by storms
As communities in the central US grapple with widespread devastation from a line of deadly storms that spawned dozens of tornadoes this week, forecasters are warning of another grave threat to the region: relentless rain into the weekend, with the potential to trigger 'generational' flooding. The flooding threat comes on the heels of seven deaths across Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana after the violent system moved into the region Wednesday. As the tornado threat from the storm ended, the Mississippi Valley, including parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi, braced for a three-day stretch of extreme flood risk – an occurrence almost unheard-of outside hurricane season. In hard-hit Selmer, Tennessee, a town about 90 miles east of Memphis, the tornado outbreak claimed at least three lives. Residents of a newly built apartment complex there scrambled to take shelter as the storm struck. 'Most people took shelter in their laundry rooms inside of the apartments,' said resident Justin West, whose unit survived while the front of the complex was 'almost gone.' West witnessed cars destroyed in the parking lot, piles of debris, and sections of the roof torn away. The complex opened less than a year ago, West pointed out. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee urged residents to stay alert, saying, 'Don't let your guard down.' 'There's been a lot of damage, there's been a lot of tornadoes, there's been loss of life and real devastation across the state, but this storm is going to continue,' Lee said on Thursday. At least five deaths had been reported in the state, according to Patrick Sheehan, director of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. And there were more than 4,000 customers without power in the state early Friday, according to As the cleanup of tornado damage begins, the same system is forecast to trigger 'life-threatening flash flooding' and severe weather through Sunday across the Ohio Valley, the Mid-South, and the Mississippi Valley, with the greatest impact expected in the Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas region, the National Weather Service warned. From Arkansas to Kentucky, historic rainfall could bring once-in-a-generation flooding. While flooding has already begun in some areas, conditions are expected to worsen significantly through Saturday, according to forecasters. Rainfall totals are projected to be so extreme that forecasters are using statistical terms, such as 1-in-25-year, 1-in-100-year, and even 1-in-1000-year events, to describe their rarity. A recent study highlights the role of climate change in extreme weather events, noting that hourly rainfall rates have intensified in nearly 90% of large US cities since 1970. For this system, federal and local agencies have mobilized water rescue teams and emergency supplies, including food and water, to brace for the worst. In Nashville, over a dozen water rescues took place on Thursday as relentless rain battered the city. Near Trevecca Nazarene University, first responders pulled a driver from a partially submerged vehicle, guiding him through a window and onto a rescue raft. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency for the western part of the state, warning of record rainfall in areas unaccustomed to flooding. At least 25 state highways, primarily in the west, were submerged by floodwaters, according to the governor's office. This comes after other recent flooding events in Kentucky. In February, a deadly winter storm claimed several lives, and in 2021, the state faced another large-scale flash-flooding disaster. CNN's Meteorologists Mary Gilbert and Brandon Miller and CNN's Sara Smart, Taylor Romine, Jillian Sykes and Chris Youd contributed to this report.
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The Tennessean's Andy Humbles talks Pickett Chapel, baseball, a decades-long love of news
In his newest piece for The Tennessean, Wilson County Reporter Andy Humbles took a deep, long look at Pickett Chapel, a Lebanon church with plenty of history and ties to the Civil Rights Movement in Middle Tennessee. Mary Harris, chair of the Wilson County Black History Committee, and her husband, Harry, are working to restore the chapel, which Humbles learned during his reporting has the fingerprints of the enslaved who built the church permanently etched into the building's outer bricks. It's just one of the many stories Humbles has had the privilege to tell during his nearly 40-year career with the newspaper. Originally from Wheaton, Illinois, Humbles came to Middle Tennessee in 1983 to play baseball at Trevecca Nazarene University. He says he stumbled into his role as a journalist while aspiring to make it as a pitcher in professional baseball. He has served in his current role as the Wilson County reporter for almost 13 years now. We talked to Humbles more about his job and journalism. Humbles: Honestly, I didn't pursue a career in journalism ... When I realized I wasn't going to be a pro player, I thought coaching or writing about sports would be my plan. I got a job taking high school scores and stats at The Tennessean in 1985 while still in college needing an extra year to graduate after my baseball eligibility ran out. I kept showing up and grew to love it, and after 39 years, I'm still here. Humbles: There was an opening in news, and I asked an editor about it, and I was quickly encouraged to think about it. I was initially told I could try it with an understanding I could go back to sports. I tried it, and despite feeling nearly completely lost, I enjoyed doing something new and felt it opened up a new world for me. That said, it was challenging. I didn't understand the lingo nor much of the basic terminology of so many news topics. But I always remember former Managing Editor Dave Green telling me it's okay not to understand all these topics – we're entering these foreign worlds with their experts, and we need to make them understandable. Humbles: Obviously the 2020 tornado that included the deaths of Jim and Donna Eaton side-by-side on their mattress, thrown from their home, and a couple I knew from church. Stories that involved the journey of Lawrence McKinney, who spent 31 years in prison before being cleared of crimes based on DNA evidence, leading to a $1M award. And, of course, the stories I know could or should have been better or better-directed. Like games you lose as an athlete, sometimes those stick out more than the wins. Humbles: I would probably have to revert back to my sports days and say Michael Jordan. (It's) the dominance he had as a player, and all the things he experienced from living a life with that much celebrity, baseball, gambling (and) his father's death. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How Andy Humbles turned baseball into 39-plus years at The Tennessean
USA Today
06-02-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Trevecca's president on growth, immigration and the challenges facing Christian higher ed
Dan Boone, president of Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, transitioned off leadership role with Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) as board chairman over two years. At least five CCCU-member institutions closed or merged in past couple years amid enrollment and revenue decline. Meanwhile, Trevecca enrollment losses stabilized. Boone discusses Trevecca's approach to holding in tension different opinions amid broader divisions in Christian higher ed over LGBTQ+ rights, diversity in hiring and admissions, and immigration. Dan Boone, who leads Nashville's Trevecca Nazarene University, just transitioned off his leadership role with the nation's top consortium for evangelical Christian colleges during an especially tumultuous season. For the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities – a nonprofit for which Boone served as the board chair for the past two years – at least five governing member institutions closed or merged due to enrollment losses and revenue declines, according to an analysis of news reports. Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit and a congressional fight over legislation sparked renewed debate about Christian colleges' treatment of LGBTQ+ students, faculty and staff versus those institution's religious freedoms. That fight is part of a broader trend in which social issues on these religiously conservative campuses are increasingly politicized as many evangelicals deepen their loyalty to the Republican Party and President Donald Trump. But Boone's job as Trevecca's president is less black-and-white. For one, he said he has sought for the university to balance different opinions on these highly charged social disputes. 'We (Trevecca) live more in a messy middle where people on both sides of an issue might be a part of the same community, and we think it's quite healthy to come together in our covenant communities and work on these things together,' Boone said in an interview. Also, Trevecca's enrollment has meant the university hasn't faced the type of financial challenges that some peer schools have. The university has repeatedly touted record new student enrollment. Its full-time undergraduate fall enrollment, despite steadily declining year-over-year between 2019-2023 from 1,679 students to 1,328, according to most recently available data reported by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. But the rate of those enrollment losses have lessened in the years after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to precipitous rates of enrollment decline across higher education. In a Q&A, Boone shared more about his observations about Christian higher education broadly and how it compares to Trevecca's own experience. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Other recent Trevecca news:Trevecca Nazarene University is taking students from a closed sister school. Here's why. What has the past couple years of leadership with the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities taught you about the present state of Christian higher education? Dan Boone: It's how critically necessary Christian higher education is for the kind of citizenship we will have in the future. It is in the Christian universities that the community rooted in Jesus Christ gives us the greatest possibility to have the most difficult conversations between people who disagree vehemently with each other. So, I believe the Christian university may be succeeding at raising up a generation of students who know how to enter the public dialogue on very divisive issues but do so with levels of educational training, rationality, human respect and regard, kindness, neighborliness. Boone related:How a new effort aims to reclaim evangelical Christian label and bridge partisan divides The CCCU and its member institutions have been front and center on a series of politically charged debates within higher education, whether that's about LGBTQ+ rights, diversity in hiring and admissions, and serving students from immigrant families. How have you seen these divisions play out within Christian higher education broadly and how has Trevecca specifically approached it? Boone: I think there are two movements that are colliding. One of those movements is among parents who want their children to have moral footing. At the same time, there's a turn toward a more conservative bent in our nation. Both of those groups come to a college, and you take an issue like human sexuality, and you've got folk over here and over there. At CCCU schools, different faith tribes approach the divisive social issues differently from each other. For us, it's these covenant relationships so the community becomes more important so the way that God guides the community to reconcile it and help it to be a witness and servant in the middle of the world. We believe we have something significant to offer in Christian higher education and we really want our Christian faith to determine how we carry out our mission, instead of a political party. Neighboring faith-based higher ed:Why Nashville's Belmont University is hiring non-Christian faculty and staff Immigration is among the highly contentious and politicized issues facing Christian colleges. Talk more about Trevecca's efforts to serve students from immigrant families and how other Christian colleges have struggled with this question. Boone: We try to serve a lot of different groups. But for a lot of universities, serving DACA students or even undocumented students is a political issue. We are part of a denomination that is global. The DACA students have been the most hardworking and the most serious about their education as any group of students that I've seen come through. For someone to try to lead away to expel them from the country and have something of a federal government mandate behind them, that's a very hard context in which to lead a university. The minute Christian colleges and churches and schools start getting raided (by immigration enforcement), that's going to be a really sad day in America. Amid these social and political debates, Christian colleges are wrestling with a concurrent crisis of decreasing enrollment and revenue loss. In which ways has Trevecca struggled and how does that differ from other struggling CCCU-member institutions? Boone: COVID separated the pack of CCCU schools into ones that were on solid financial footing and the ones that were not. Some of our small and struggling schools received enough federal money through COVID that they were functioning at a better financial level than they were normally. But it kicked the can down the road of whether they could make it. Once the federal cap closed, you began to see that domino effect of a lot closing. The ones that were strong before COVID came through COVID and we took it on the chin. We lost revenue in some of those years. Especially those that have significant adult student pipelines. Trevecca lost 800 adult students during COVID and that's a $6 million revenue line. The reason we're doing better than the average CCCU school is Nashville is growing, it is a buckle of the Bible belt, we have been able to get beyond the denomination that we serve to be the servant of broader Christianity. We've moved from about a 7% diversity to 44% diversity in our student body. So, we've learned to pay attention to the students that are graduating, and we've done well with growing Hispanic, African American, and Coptic Christian student populations. During your tenure as CCCU board chairman, the consortium hired a new chief executive, David Hoag, to succeed longtime CCCU President Shirley Hoogstra. What's Hoag's vision for helping CCCU member institutions in this financially difficult season – especially with an encroaching demographic cliff? Boone: For the new CCCU president, David Hoag, one of the four pillars he's establishing is we really need to create wiser business models for our schools that are failing. We need to have metrics a whole lot earlier to show the trajectory is headed in the wrong way. We need to enhance the possibilities of mergers for them. Maybe as an association we need to create services that are very expensive for colleges that the cost might be shared instead of born with an individual vendor. So, he is really paying attention to the business models to try and help strengthen the weaker among our schools. Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at ladams@ or on social media @liamsadams.
