Christopher Tucker joined Cumberland University in the Spring of 2018 as an online adjunct instructor of history. His research interests include American social, cultural, and political history. His first article “Melody and Mirth on Washington Street: John Ordway and Blackface Minstrelsy in Antebellum Boston|” was published in The Historian in 2012; his second article, “I Will Pay That Price as a Poet to Speak My Truth: Feminism, Activism, and the Historical Memory of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls|” was featured in the Moravian Journal of Literature and Film in 2013. Currently, he is working on an article on police brutality and black social spaces in 1960s Springfield, Massachusetts. He has also published numerous book reviews for the North Carolina Historical Review; Journal of Popular Culture; Civil War Monitor; and Civil War History| among others.

Mr. Tucker holds a BA degree in history from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as graduate degrees from Dartmouth College (MA, Liberal Studies) and Clark University (MA, History). He has presented at academic conferences in Tennessee; Florida; throughout New England; and Birmingham, England. He has previously taught at Brandeis University; Eastern Nazarene College; and Newbury College, all in Massachusetts. He was also an employee of the Boston Red Sox from 2013-2017. He received the 2014 Boston Red Sox employee of the year for his service to the Fenway Park Tours department. A native of New England, he now lives in Florida, where he teaches full-time at the highly ranked Florida Southwestern Collegiate High School.

Special Agent Joel F. Wade is a sixteen-year Law Enforcement veteran with fifteen of those years spent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation as a Special Agent Criminal Investigator assigned to the Technical Services Unit as a Digital Forensics Examiner.

Special Agent Wade is assigned to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Mr. Wade’s current area of research is in small scale digital devices, reverse engineering applications, and malware on smartphones. Special Agent Wade has taught at the National Forensics Academy, TBI Special Agent Academy, TBI State and Local Academy, TBI Forensic Science Academy and TN-ICAC Conference in the area of Digital Forensics.

Special Agent Wade developed and teaches Digital Forensics, Mobile Forensics, and Introduction to Cyber Security as an Adjunct Instructor at Cumberland University in Lebanon Tennessee. Special Agent Wade received his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Tennessee Technological University, with a Minor in Sociology in May of 1999. He received his Master of Science in Criminal Justice Administration from the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga in August of 2002.

Prior to joining Cumberland University’s faculty in 2019, Mr. Espenshade enjoyed a 24 year career as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  In his last assignment, Mr. Espenshade led the FBI’s Nashville office. In this executive leadership position, Mr. Espenshade directed the operations, intelligence, and administrative activity of approximately 100 employees throughout middle Tennessee.  

During his career in the FBI, Mr. Espenshade served as Legal Attaché in Budapest, Hungary and Nairobi, Kenya where he had responsibility for seven countries in east Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Republic of the Congo).  In these positions, he was part of the Ambassador’s senior staff and the liaison officer to each country’s national police force. Over the course of his career, Mr. Espenshade responded to dozens of terrorism attacks including the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya in 2013 and the kidnapping of American citizens in Somalia.  Mr. Espenshade’s foreign assignments include a counterterrorism deployment to Afghanistan in 2003. 

Mr. Espenshade’s other FBI assignments include supervisory and investigative positions in Texas and New York City.  These experiences encompassed investigations of international terrorism, violent crime, public corruption, narcotics trafficking, organized crime, civil rights, and sophisticated fraud schemes.  He was a primary investigator in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which led to the indictment of Usama bin Laden. Over the course of his career, Mr. Espenshade was awarded the FBI Director’s Award for Excellence in International Operations, the National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation for outstanding performance in the investigation and ultimate recovery of a kidnapped hostage in Somalia, and the Brigadier General Richard T. Ellis Award for Excellence in collaboration within the U.S. intelligence community.  Mr. Espenshade was also the recipient of numerous other awards for exceptional investigative and leadership accomplishments over the course of his career with the FBI and military that exceeded a 30-year period of time.   

Prior to joining the FBI, Mr. Espenshade served as a Military Intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.  He earned a B.S. from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA and a M.S. in Organizational Leadership from Norwich University in Northfield, VT.   Mr. Espenshade is married to Lisa Espenshade, an educator with a 20 year career of teaching both science and special education in schools throughout the United States and international schools in Africa and Europe.  They have four school-aged children, Matalyn, Ava, Ella, and Seth. Mr. Espenshade is an elder at the Journey Church in Lebanon, TN where he teaches children’s classes and leads an adult small group bible study.  

Weslea Bell began her career in 1995 as a secondary English and gifted education instructor in Mississippi public schools. After moving to Tennessee in 1998, she moved to the college level and has been teaching both in online and traditional classroom settings since then. She spent several years writing professionally for newspapers, marketing companies, magazines and curriculum publishers in order to broaden her experience in the writing and publishing industry. This professional perspective has been beneficial in the classroom for teaching with sharper vision and with a deeper understanding of the way writing impacts society. Weslea looks forward to many more years interacting with students and continuing to learn as much from them as they do from her.