Govs senior linebacker Ricky Thomas was charged with a DUI in Clarksville on Tuesday, July 27. The number 25 football player is from Acworth, Ga. and as today, Thursday, July 29, is still on the football team roster according to APSU Sports Information. Check back for more updates.

By MARLON SCOTT | Senior Staff Writer

The Morgan University Center Plaza was filled with APSU students, faculty and staff as well as prominent alumni and members of the Clarksville community including Mayor Johnny Piper and County Mayor Caroline Bowers Monday, Nov. 16, 2009.

The crowd was streaked with red in support of APSU and the milestone being celebrated. APSU, Tennessee’s fastest growing public university, has reached enrollment of over 10,000 students.

APSU began in 1929 with only 158 students. As of Monday morning Nov. 16, it was revealed enrollment was up to 10,188 students. President Timothy Hall acted as the host of the event. In his introduction Hall said in the last nine years the university has grown over 40 percent. He also spoke about the significance of the enrollment number and what it means.

“This number that we are going to pull up here in a moment is all about those individual students who stand behind it, who are living their lives out here at Austin Peay and we are so happy to have them here,” Hall said. “This number not only represents the lives of those individual students. It represents our place in history and in the present.” After the number was revealed, Hall introduced Piper and Bowers.

“It is truly an honor for me to be here as a graduate of Austin Peay,” Bowers said. “It is also a pleasure to be representing all the citizens of Montgomery County as I say congratulations, Austin Peay. This is a well deserved marker, milestone and benchmark for us.” State Representatives Joe Pitts and Curtis Johnson offered brief congratulations before Hall introduced APSU Provost Tristan Denley.

Denley noted that APSU was not only the fastest growing public university in Tennessee but could also carry the title of having the fastest growing graduate program in Tennessee.

He attributed the milestone and success to team work.“These initiatives can only be achieved by us all working together,” Denley said. “Today’s milestone is a testimony to the hard work of our staff and our faculty and our students and the Austin Peay family all working together. I want to thank you for that.”

SGA President Chris Drew finished the ceremony by acknowledging the growth of APSU despite the current economic distress and the long winding line of people waiting to get free T-shirts. He also expressed his excitement to graduate with this years class and become an alumni of APSU.
His last words were the famous cheer heard at all of APSU’s sports events: “Let’s go Peay.”

By MARLON SCOTT | Senior Staff Writer

When it comes to achievements and setting goals, Carrie Burggraf sets the bar high and then vaults over it, literally. It is a skill she has mastered over four years at APSU as both an athlete and student. As a result of her stellar collegiate career, Burggraf was awarded an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship.

Burggraf is a six-time Ohio Valley Conference pole vault champion. She graduated from APSU with a 4.0 GPA in May.

She has earned a long list of awards including the Female Legends Award as APSU’s Most Valuable Senior Athlete and the Steve Hamilton Sportsmanship Award.

According to APSU Sports Information, Burggraf learned she had earned the award Friday, April 30, while competing in the OVC Outdoor Track Championships.

“It was two hours before my event, so I checked the NCAA website award. It just started off my day great and I was on a high and it just kept going,” Burggraf said. “I am so grateful for everything that I have received at Austin Peay. The [university] has put me out there and taken the time to nominate me for so many different awards. This award, the Legends Award and the Steve Hamilton Award are the three awards I am really most proud of.”

Burggraf went on to win her sixth championship with a 13’05” pole vault. The vault broke the OVC championship record, which she already held.

She was the first pole vaulter in the OVC to clear 13 feet. Burggraf holds the Indoor Track Championship record as well.

Burggraf’s scholarship is one of 174 postgraduate scholarships the NCAA awards annually. They are given to student athletes in their final year of competition who excel both academically and athletically.

The scholarship was created in 1964 and is used to encourage postgraduate education. In addition to athletic and academic achievements, community service, campus involvement and demonstrated leadership are evaluated.

The scholarship is a one-time $7,500 non-renewable grant. Burggraf plans to pursue her postgraduate career at the University of Pittsburgh in the field of global international studies.

Since graduating as one of APSU’s most prolific track stars and taking her last pole vault in competition for the Lady Govs in the NCAA East Regional at North Carolina A&T University Thursday, May 27, Burggraf has earned several more awards in addition to the postgraduate scholarship.

Lady Govs track and field coach Doug Molnar has watched Burggraf work hard and earn accolades for four years and is not surprised she continues to do so.
“This is a culmination of the long line of awards Carrie has garnered. She is an outstanding student and an outstanding athlete who has proven that hard work does pay off,” Molnar said. “We couldn’t be more proud of her accomplishments.”

By LEILA SCHOEPKE | Guest Writer

APSU has been hosting the Science and Math Academy (SAMA), under the direction of Biology professor Willodean Burton, for three years. The program was designed to give a selected number of high schools students from across Tennessee a two-week university experience through which they get a college-level taste of two important subjects they generally take as freshmen: science and math. This year, the SAMA took place from Monday, June 7, through Friday, June 18.

The University of Memphis organized the first Math Academy and that served as a template, Burton said. The second year, Tennessee Board of Regents asked Tennessee State University and APSU to be part of the program. TSU decided to do the math because the template was already there, and Burton decided that APSU should do both science and math.

“I have not regretted that. I think it’s a good combination that I know the students can link the two together and that is two of the courses that whenever you’re talking about education, math and science are right there in the mix,” she said.

Students are chosen to participate in the SAMA through identification by their teachers. The process starts by sending out advertisements to all the high schools in Tennessee. Students get to learn about the program through their high school counselors who would give them the information and connections they need. Individuals who are interested in the program would contact Burton, who would then send them the application materials.

Burton said what is unique about the 2010 SAMA is that APSU was able to hit capacity for the program.

“TBR asked us to accommodate 50 students. The first year they were 30, the second year 35 and this year we actually had over 60 applications. We chose 50 students. Only one did not come, so we have 49 that we’ve been working with in the last two weeks,” she said.

Through the SAMA, Burton hopes high school students will begin to think about a higher education. She also hopes that they choose to go to APSU.

During their two weeks on APSU’s campus, the 49 SAMA students attended math and science classes. They had three math professors and three science professors, all from APSU. There were also teachers from different Montgomery County High Schools who were in the classrooms with the professors.

“They have a mentor and a professor and then the students are there so that the high school teachers can relate to the high school students and they help the professors make a nice smooth transition and distribute the information carefully,” Burton said.

Besides the math and science classes, the students attended a physics session where they had a lecture and activities just as they would do if they went to a college class. They went to the library and learned how to use the computers and how to access information from their home computers. Additionally, they went to a nursing home as a community service activity and spent two evenings there interacting with the residents. On their second visit to the nursing home, they served ice cream and played games. They also had a field trip to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

For the last day in the academy, the students were scheduled to take a post-science test in the morning, as an evaluation tool, as well as attend a reception and a closing ceremony where they would receive gift bags and $150, which is part of the TBR stipulations, for attending and staying throughout the program, Burton said.

APSU biology graduate Scarlett Spurgeon and pre-med student Krystle Irizarry were two of nine group leaders in charge of five or six high school students each. Their role was to teach the students a little bit about what college and on-campus life are like, coordinate some of the activities such as going to the nursing home, help students with their homework, play games and make sure they got where they needed to be throughout the day such as classes, meals and bed on time.

“We got to play a crucial role in how they spent their week, which is pretty interesting because when I first got the job I thought we were just going to watch … but we actually got to plan out the activities, plan out what they were gonna eat, plan what they wanted to watch,” Irizarry said.

Spurgeon said her responsibility as a group leader is very important because “high school students can be very stubborn in some ways but can be easily led sometimes.” Spurgeon considers her role during the academy significant and so, she said, she does her best so her life is “above reproach in any way” and so that she can be someone the younger students can look up to.

“Just basically being leaders to them and being good role models for “them, because a lot of these kids — for example, in the nursing home, they might not have been before and so how do you interact with somebody that’s in a nursing home or how do you act in a college classroom setting,” Spurgeon said.

The group leaders said the experience of being mentors to the SAMA students taught them a lot about responsibility, relationships and helping younger students become acquainted with college life and learn about the many opportunities and possibilities they can have by choosing to further their education.

“It’s very much getting involved with them on a personal level and showing them this is what you wanna do because it’s a better way of handling yourself, it’s a better way of living your life, it’s about going further than what you can do because you know you wanna be successful in the future,” Irizarry said.

Group leaders are chosen through submitting an application that is reviewed by Burton and the coordinator who then make the decision of hiring those best suited to lead the students and assist them during the two-week Science and Math Academy, according to Spurgeon.

The fact the students had a very set and busy schedule which did not give them a lot of free time to do whatever they wanted was frustrating for them at times, Spurgeon said.

Some of the students might have liked being away from home and being on their own for a while. A lot of them loved the hands on experiments in the science classes because they had access to more resources than they normally have in high schools.

They enjoyed the community service of going to the nursing home and interacting with the residents. They also liked some of the math teachers and what they learned through them, the group leaders said.

“It was kind of different from what they learned in high school and it really made them think; and so it was hard, and at that time they didn’t like it, but when they got out of class you would often hear them remark, ‘That was really hard but that was really interesting,’ so I think that they enjoyed it even if they weren’t sure that they did at first,” Spurgeon said.

By BRIAN BIGELOW | Staff Writer

It all started with a sugar shortage.

When Johnny Meeks opened Johnny’s in 1969, honey buns cost 10 cents each and weren‘t selling, but when the sugar shortage hit in the 1970s and donuts quintupled in price to a quarter, honey buns stayed 10 cents. They made financial sense, but they needed a hook.

It happened, “by accident,” Meeks said, crediting a former a chef with the invention. One of the cooks threw a honey bun on the grill and “we added ice cream,” Meeks said.

After that, he said, “we never sold another donut.”

The “honey bun and ice cream” was born — a delicious concoction not quite like anything else and more than the sum of its parts.

“I’ve tried cooking them at home and you just can’t do it,” said Jeff Bugg, a longtime Clarksville resident and regular customer of Johnny’s for the past 15 years.

“My kids try to get me to cook [the honey bun and ice cream] at home, but it’s never as good as it is as Johnny’s,” Bugg said.

The honey bun is warmed on the grill just enough to become soft and gently melt the ice cream on top. The “bun ‘n’ cream,” as it’s sometimes called, is vaguely reminiscent of hot apple pie with cream — minus the apples — but all such descriptions will fall short. You just have to try it for yourself.

In the same location for over 40 years, Johnny’s is a local favorite and an APSU tradition that has survived without advertising, relying only on word of mouth to bring in customers and the quality of its food to keep them coming back.

Johnny’s is a fast-food restaurant of the type seen before the advent of monolithic franchises, drive-thrus and frozen meat.

Sitting at the lunch counter, watching Meeks at the grill filling orders as they come in, one sometimes overhears onetime regular customers — former APSU students and locals alike — having returned after many years to revisit their favorite foods, praising it as they pay their bills.

Meeks’s deftness at the grill calls to mind an ever-shifting clockwork, undoubtedly the product of decades at the same grill making the same foods.

Off to one side are booths for groups of two or more and a “Ms. Pac-Man” arcade machine.

“There are kids that come in here now whose grandparents went to Austin Peay and ate here,” Bugg said.

“Before they built the food court,” Meeks said, there were more APSU students coming into his restaurant. Even with the meal plan-related decline, APSU students still account for 35 to 40 percent of his business, Meeks said, and the restaurant remains busy. “For 37 years I stayed open 24 hours,” Meeks, now 66-years-old, said.

The restaurant has transitioned to “semi-retirement hours,” closing each night at 11 p.m. and reopening for breakfast at 5 a.m., mainly due to difficulty finding cooks.

“Cooks don’t know how to cook fresh hamburger meat anymore,” Meeks said, lamenting that their experience is limited to the frozen patties found at fast-food chains.

Johnny’s goes through between three and four cases of honey buns per week. At 50 buns per case, that’s a lot of “bun ‘n’ creams.”

The “bun ‘n’ cream” may be the most famous item on their menu — even garnering its own Facebook page — but Meeks said his favorite is the cheeseburger. For Bugg, it’s the cheeseburger steak.

“You get your money’s worth,” Bugg said, who eats at Johnny’s three or four times per week. “It’s all good. I’ve never had anything bad.”

Meeks opened Johnny’s “to make a living,” having worked in restaurants since high school, but after all these years Meeks’s favorite part of running his restaurant is the people.

“I like the students and everything. There’s constantly new people,” Meeks said. “Honestly, that’s the best part.”

By PATRICK ARMSTRONG | Editor in Chief

Leonard Fulcher, former police officer; Georgenna Genther, police supervisor; Susana Milton, police officer; Charlie Struckel, assistant director of public safety, and Kristie Winters, police officer, have all filed federal lawsuits against APSU and Lantz Biles, chief of police and director of public safety. The five plaintiffs are accusing that both retaliated against officers who reported sexual discrimination in campus police department. Robert J. Martin is the attorney for the five plaintiffs. Check back for more updates.