OUR ROOTS

The Bonner Scholar Program at Carson-Newman College is rooted a place of great natural beauty but also environmental struggle—that part of Appalachia in the Upper Tennessee Valley where heavy industry and coal-fired power plants produce some of the dirtiest air and highest rates of respiratory illness in the country, and giant machines grind through forests and mountain tops disrupting wildlife and local community life alike.  We are rooted in a place of abundant natural resources but also enduring poverty among the people—where children live in four of Tennessee’s 10 poorest counties within a 30-minute drive of campus and African-Americans experience poverty rates approaching twice the national average for all Americans.  We are rooted in a bioregion where a hiker can meditate in a remote, peaceful spot, listening to the wind, falling water, and hawk’s call, but also where nuclear bomb components are produced in a never-ending war economy.  We are rooted in a people of abiding religious faith, patriotism, and neighborliness, but also where traditions of fundamentalism and individualism predominate—with consequent resistance to social change and lack of acceptance of those who are Other in ethnicity, belief, or nationality.  We are rooted in traditions that have nurtured generations of creative folk artists who expressed themselves and preserved community through Appalachian music, art, and story-telling, but also in a culture that devalues or distorts that which is rural and organic to the region.  

This is where we do our Bonner work.  It makes it especially challenging but also especially important, even essential, that we are here.