Lipscomb University's LIFE on Living Your Best Life with Genma Holmes

Join Living Your Best Life with Genma Holmes as we profile organizations and leaders who lead by example. With extraordinary acts of kindness and charitable giving that help countless lives daily, these organizations and leaders embody "Be the change you want to see in the world".

Throughout 2013, listeners have heard from presidents of organizations who are global change agents. We will also hear from CEOs of social enterprise businesses who are changing communities and college educators who are taking their students out of the classroom and into surrounding neighborhoods to learn and serve others.

On Saturday, December 21, 2013 tune in to hear Dr. Richard Goode discuss Lipscomb University's LIFE  (Lipscomb Initiative For Education) recent graduation held at Tennessee Prison for Women (TPFW). Lipscomb recognized it's first associate degree earners.

Listen to Dr. Goode share about Lipscomb University's Associate of Arts degree offered exclusively for inmates at TPFW and is the only college degree in the region, and one of the few in the nation, offered to prison inmates. Listen to the journey of some of the inmates who started the program in 2007 and hear how Lipscomb's traditional students who took classes with the inmates lives were effected after completing the class. Each semester 15 on-campus students enroll in the LIFE course travel once a week to the prison, along with their professor, to study together with the inmates.

In an interview Dr. Goode stated, "Studies have shown that the percentage of prison inmates who return to prison with a new charge drops dramatically when the inmate has some college education, and drops to almost none if the inmate has a complete bachelor’s or master’s degree." Hear him discuss how LIFE helps not only the inmate get an education but the economy but reducing the repeat offender rates.

We will also hear the spiritual impact of LIFE on the faculty, staff, traditional and non-traditional students.

Living Your Best Life, a radio show that empowers, inspires, and motivates us to live our BEST life, is heard on 760AM The Gospel in the Middle-TN area, Tune In, Inspirational Networks, military bases and on Ustream.TV worldwide from 9:00-10:00am CST.

More About Dr. Goode

Dr. Richard Goode has taught at Lipscomb for nearly 25 years. He has also taught for the Vanderbilt Divinity School and the New Brunswick Theological Seminary. At Lipscomb he teaches such courses as U.S. History I, U.S. History II, Colonial America, Foundations of 20th Century America, the American Civil Rights Movement, Religion and American Culture, and Freshman Seminar. Additionally, Dr. Goode coordinates the Lipscomb Initiative for Education (LIFE) programs, which offers Lipscomb courses at Nashville area prisons and at Room in the Inn. He also enjoys research and writing, and has published three books with Will D. Campbell.

B.A., Lipscomb University M.A., Vanderbilt University Ph. D., Vanderbilt University

More About LIFE

Established in 2007, Lipscomb’s LIFE Program introduced an innovative education format that brought Lipscomb’s traditional students out to the prison each week to study with the inmates in for-credit classes. Faculty also travel to the prison to teach inmates face-to-face.

 

The LIFE Program strives to enhance the lives of the TPFW inmates – both in prison and when they are released – by helping them develop better self-confidence, expanded life experience and good study habits. Lipscomb’s traditional students are afforded an eye-opening experience to get to know and befriend the inmates, an encounter that many students say has affected their life choices well after completing the class.

 

The program began by offering an 18-credit hour slate of courses in the liberal arts arena. TPFW students have studied judicial process, art history, Christian ethics, negotiation and conflict management. In the last four years, LIFE inmate students have compiled three literary journals, held a theatrical production in the prison and are by far among the faculty’s most dedicated students.

 

More Lipscomb University

 

Lipscomb was founded in Nashville, Tenn., in 1891 by two individuals–David Lipscomb and James A. Harding–who believed that a truly educated individual of their time could not be so without attention given to spiritual growth as well as academics. So in addition to its role as the most important guidebook in a Christian’s life, the Bible was also given an academic position along with, we suppose, the works of Aristotle, Ovid and other hallmarks of a classical education.

The school opened with men, women and children attending (the beginnings of our 1,300-student pre-kindergarten through grade 12 campus school) and has grown into a consistently top-ranked university. Sure, things have changed from that October day in 1891, but what grounded the university then grows it to this day. The university is still a place of academic rigor and spiritual growth with more than 4,500 students enrolled at the university. Students can choose from eight bachelor’s degrees in 78 majors or 145 areas of undergraduate study, several pre-professional programs and an accelerated evening and online adult degree program for those who wish to complete their undergraduate degrees. Lipscomb also offers 25 master’s degrees, four education specialist degrees and three doctorate degrees in 58 fields of study.

 

Photos provided by Lipscomb University