Suzann Lafferty is an Assistant Professor and Program Director of Criminal Justice at Cumberland University. Prior to coming to Cumberland, Ms. Lafferty served as a Special Agent Forensic Scientist with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) for seventeen years. During this time, she was a member of the Violent Crime Response Team and processed complex crime scenes throughout the state of Tennessee, specializing in microanalysis and latent prints. As a forensic scientist in TBI’s Nashville crime laboratory, she was assigned to the latent print unit where she processed evidence for the presence of latent prints and compared submitted and developed latent prints to known impressions. Ms. Lafferty has been accepted in the state of Tennessee as an expert witness. 

During her last six years at TBI, Ms. Lafferty was assigned to the Training Division. In this capacity, she instructed in the TBI State Academy, TBI Special Agent Academy, and at the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy. She additionally instructed courses for the TN Department of Children Services, TN Department of Human Services, Comptroller’s Office, and the Office of the Inspector General. She also led a multi-agency team to develop the curriculum for Just and Fair Policing, which was a mandatory four-hour course for law enforcement in Tennessee. Ms. Lafferty was also instrumental in implementing and developing TBI LEARN (Law Enforcement Access Right Now), an online platform that delivers training courses to law enforcement and other state agencies. 

During her time at TBI, she attended numerous training courses and conferences. Ms. Lafferty is a life-time member of the Tennessee Division of the International Association for Identification (TN IAI). She also previously served as president, vice-president, conference chair, and treasurer for the TN IAI. 

Prior to joining as full-time faculty, Ms. Lafferty also served as an adjunct instructor in Criminal Justice at Cumberland University for four years.

Wyatt Keener began teaching at Cumberland University as an adjunct instructor in 2018 before being appointed to a full-time position in 2019. He has previously taught at the University of Tennessee, Pellissippi State Community College, and Volunteer State Community College. Mr. Keener holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Tennessee. He specializes in Old English Literature and First-Year Composition.

Mr. Keener’s teaching responsibilities include Composition, Sophomore Literature, and Writing Workshop courses. In addition to his work at Cumberland, Mr. Keener volunteers as a mentor with tnAchieves. His favorite aspect of teaching is helping students navigate the transition to post-secondary education. He resides in Wilson County with his wife and their dog.

Dr. Natalie Inman joined Cumberland University in 2010 after receiving her doctorate from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Inman is the author of Brothers and Friends: Kinship in Early America (University of Georgia Press), articles in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly and Journal of East Tennessee History, as well as a chapter in Before the Volunteer State: New Thoughts on Early Tennessee History, 1690-1800 (University of Tennessee Press). Her current research is on the cultural change and power dynamics within cross-cultural marriages between American Indians and Anglo-Americans in Early America. She serves as a consultant for the American Indian Rights event within the Nashville Public Library series on Civil Rights Activism led by Dr. André Churchwell of Vanderbilt University. She has a forthcoming chapter in the book, New Directions in Family History. Dr. Inman maintains a non-profit, Haiti Heart Books, that promotes reading and celebrates Haitian culture. She is also active with organizations that support Haitian education. 

Born in Eschenbach, Germany, Jaclyn Jennings was raised in southern Tennessee on the Alabama state line. Mrs. Jennings grew up with a nursery behind her home, playing ball with her twin sister against a backdrop filled with blue-green, rolling hillsides, and visiting a neighbor across the field who split his time between Old Salem, Tennessee, and Paris, France, capturing a young girl’s imagination. Nothing beats the sound of that gray gravel driveway coming home.

Jennings came back to Cumberland in the fall of 2016 when she was hired as an adjunct instructor of English and became fulltime in August of 2017.

After graduating with an undergraduate degree in English from Cumberland University, Mrs. Jennings began her teaching career at a small, private Christian school in Robertson County. Three years later, she had a crisis of belief and switched fields opting for a job in customer service and perhaps a career with a different passion -travel. While working in an office setting at a travel agency with very memorable colleagues evoked memories of growing up playing on sports teams, Jaclyn missed the classroom. She especially missed the connections with her students.

So, Jennings pursued her master’s degree first online and then on ground in night classes. Working two part time jobs and going to school she relates to the student population today who are largely not ‘traditional’ university college students.

As a full-time instructor at Cumberland, Mrs. Jennings teaches Composition I, Composition II, Introduction to Literature, and FSL. Her activities at CU include sponsoring Sigma Tau Delta, meeting bi-weekly with Table of Comments, a book club for all, supporting any English Department events, and trying to catch her student-athletes outside the classroom in action on the field or court.

Mrs. Jennings’s interests include reading, writing, traveling, hiking, skiing, baking, and cooking as long as she doesn’t have to do the dishes. She is a novice rower, fiddler, and gardener (containers and planters count, right?). A dream day is waking up in a tent or hammock outside, fishing or sunbathing all day, and then sitting around the campfire with hotdogs and marshmallows as the sun sets, geese fly home, crickets serenade, and bullfrogs croak. Or…just sitting on the front porch of Memaw’s house on Neal Street in Huntland, Tennessee, swinging, sipping sweet tea, breakin’ beans into an old metal bowl, and watching the world go by again would be nice.

Jaclyn is a graduate of Huntland High School, holds a BA from CU, and an MA from WKU. She is an alumna of Sigma Tau Delta. Jaclyn is married to Drew Jennings, a CU alum.

Ever since reading Lauren Slater’s Lying in a writing class with Dale Rigby, Jaclyn has been largely stuck on reading nonfiction, but still manages to reread a few classics like Wide Sargasso Sea, The Awakening, and a little Hemingway on summer breaks. Mrs. Jennings’s latest kick is food writing which she discovered during her pregnancy when she was unable to eat much that agreed with her, finding comfort in words about food instead. Having recently discovered poets Frank O’Hara on YouTube and Jericho Brown in a Garden & Gun article during her Covid-19 quarantine Mrs. Jennings’s 2020 summer reading list is looking promising.

Jaclyn’s humble abode is in Portland, Tennessee, home of the Middle Tennessee Strawberry Festive, but that’s not why she and her husband live there. It is Drew’s hometown. She lives with him, their two dogs, and two daughters on a quiet cul-de-sac off the 8^th green of the local, municipal course. It’s not Sun-Drop country, but she’s not north of the state line either. They’re members and attend services at First Baptist Church where Mrs. Jennings prefers to sit on the back row.

After teaching ENG 216 Topics in Literature over Travel Literature last fall and reminiscing over her travels to the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Ireland, and Iceland, Mrs. Jennings looks forward to the opportunity of teaching the class again. Maybe food writing will be chosen as the next topic.