Lipscomb University is ramping up its four-year-old involvement with the Tennessee Prison for Women and growing an 18-credit hour slate of liberal arts courses into a full associate of arts degree. Since the launch of the LIFE program, TPW inmates have compiled three literary journals and staged a theatrical production.

Lipscomb's Associate of Arts degree will follow the Tennessee Board of Regents general education requirement of 63 credit hours. Unlike most of the college programs offered in prisons nationwide, Lipscomb's coursework is not offered by correspondence. Lipscomb faculty travel to the prison once a week to teach the courses. In addition, Lipscomb's traditional students travel to TPFW to attend classes with the inmates and also receive credit.

Stephanie Reevers, who this summer left the Tennessee Claims Commission after more than seven years, has been named staff attorney at Austin Peay State University. Reevers, who earlier in the decade threw her hat in the ring for the State Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, has since June been working at the Attorney General's office. She had held various positions there for more than a decade before joining the Claims Commission, which hears various lawsuits against the state.

In a seeming opposite juxtaposition, a major university is investigating its own law school for allegedly disseminating false median grade point average numbers and related information for its incoming freshman class to the general public.

Click here for the National Law Journal coverage of The University of Illinois’ investigation into the accuracy of information about the median grade point average and LSAT scores disseminated by its College of Law.

It seems the core concern for law school officials are the coveted and critical U.S. News and World Report rankings and the across-the-board rankings hit law schools are taking given that '11-'12 law school applications are down 10 percent — all of this according to the Law School Admissions Council.

The number of students hitting the books at Lipscomb University now tops 4,000 for the first time thanks to the introduction of a number of programs, including the College of Pharmacy and four new master's, as well as influx of future teachers. All in all, the growth between Belmont Boulevard and Granny White has been pretty darn impressive in recent years.

2005 was a milestone for Lipscomb when the university’s board of trustees approved a five-year investment initiative that pumped an average of $1 million a month into the campus and academic programs for almost five years. The plan resulted in a renovated campus landscape, 38 new programs of study, 79 new full-time faculty hired and an increase in graduate enrollment from 221 in 2005 to 1,316 so far this fall.

Rush Hicks, a longtime sole practitioner on the Music Row scene, has been named chairman of the Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business at Belmont. Hicks has been an assistant professor at the college since 2005.

The Curb College also announced a number of other personnel moves, including three new professors. MusicRow has the details.