Dr. Rod Handy, Dr. Andrew Herrmann, and Dr. Christy Lawson are set to present their Great Lectures on Feb. 7, 2025.

East Tennessee State University’s 2024-25 Great Lecture Series resumes on Friday, Feb. 7, with lectures by Drs. Rod Handy, Andrew Herrmann and Christy Lawson.

This lecture series celebrates and showcases the work of faculty recently promoted to full professor at ETSU. Faculty play an integral role in the mission of ETSU through their teaching, research and service, and this lecture series provides them an opportunity to share their work with the broader community.

The faculty will deliver their lectures at 2 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 7, in the East Tennessee Room on the second level of the D.P. Culp Student Center. It is free and open to the public.

Handy’s lecture is titled “The Professional Journey of an Environmental and Occupational Health Academician.” He joined the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety Sciences (formerly the Department of Environmental Health) as a full professor and chair in July 2023.  

His current research interests are in thermal stress assessment, real-time contaminant measurement and characterization and indoor environmental quality. Over the last decade, Handy’s funded research efforts have included such partners as the National Institute of Health, the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  

Herrmann serves as professor and associate chair in the Department of Communication Studies and Storytelling in the College of Arts and Sciences. His lecture is titled “Autoethnography as Applicable Critical Research.”

His work studies personal narrative and identity within organizational and popular culture contexts. He is co-editor (with Art Herbig) of the “Communication Perspectives on Popular Culture” book series for Lexington Press, which has published 13 books so far. In 2020, he edited the award-winning “Routledge International Handbook of Organizational Autoethnography.” Also in 2020, he launched the “Journal of Autoethnography” (with Tony Adams), published by University of California Press. In 2024, he and Tony Adams co-authored “Assessing Autoethnography,” a text to help explain critical storytelling to larger audiences. 

Lawson, a professor of Surgery at ETSU Quillen College of Medicine, is a trauma, critical care and acute care surgeon. Her lecture is titled “Ripples in Deep Water: The Impact of Mentorship in Medicine.”

Lawson’s mother went back to nursing school when she was in high school, and she remembers doing her homework during night school anatomy classes. This influence, a few key teachers and a strategically placed surgical mission project in Honduras inspired Lawson to work hard and opened the horizon of medical school. 

She obtained her bachelor’s degree at Berry College and then went to the Medical College of Georgia, before landing in surgical residency at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She trained there for residency and fellowship and spent the first several years of her surgical practice there prior to moving to Johnson City and finding her home at ETSU in 2018. 

For disability accommodations, call the ETSU Office of Disability Services at (423) 439-8346.


East Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 with a singular mission: to improve the quality of life for people in the region and beyond. Through its world-class health sciences programs and interprofessional approach to health care education, ETSU is a highly respected leader in rural health research and practices. The university also boasts nationally ranked programs in the arts, technology, computing, and media studies. ETSU serves approximately 14,000 students each year and is ranked among the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation for students graduating with the least amount of debt.

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