Richard Mears
earns doctorate

Richard Mears graduated from Tennessee State University with a doctor of education degree (EdD) in August.
He is a 1990 graduate of Warren County Senior High, a 1995 graduate of UT-Martin with a bachelor of arts degree and a 2001 graduate of TSU with a master of education degree.
Richard is the son of John and Valerie Mears of Centertown and grandson of Mabel Pack of Smithville. He is currently a Spanish teacher at Greenbrier High School and an ESL teacher for Volunteer State Community College and lives in Hendersonville.

Long honored
with award

Dr. Leann Long, formerly Hamblen, was awarded a Young Investigator Award at the 2013 Joint Statistical Meetings in Montreal, Canada. She is the daughter of local residents Russell and Carol Hamblen.
She is a graduate of Boyd Christian School who received her bachelor of science degree in mathematics from Tennessee Wesleyan College and her master’s degree from Tennessee Tech.
In May 2013, she received her PhD in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently an assistant professor at West Virginia University.
In winning the Young Investigator Award, Dr. Long was recognized by the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics in Epidemiology for her research manuscript “A Marginalized Zero-Inflated Poison Regression Model with Overall Exposure Effects.”