Dr. Charles S. “Ted” Olson has been named the recipient of the 2003-04 Jewell Friend Lecture Award in the College of Arts and Sciences at East Tennessee State University.
As the award recipient, Olson will deliver the annual Jewell Friend Lecture to arts and sciences faculty during the college’s annual fall faculty meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 20, at 1:30 p.m. in the Ball Hall Auditorium.
Olson will speak on “The 1927 Bristol Recording Sessions: The Big Bang of Country Music.”
Olson currently serves as interim director of ETSU’s Center for Appalachian Studies and Services and as director of its Appalachian, Scottish and Irish Studies Program.
He teaches courses in ETSU’s Department of English and Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree program and frequently performs Scottish and Irish ballads.
Olson is the author of several works, including Blue Ridge Folklife, part of the Folklife in the South Series published by the University Press of Mississippi.
He edited From the Mountain, From the Valley: New and Collected Poems, a collection of the poetry of James Still, which was published by the University Press of Kentucky and named the Appalachian Book of the Year in 2002 by the Appalachian Writers Association.
Before coming to ETSU, Olson worked as a naturalist in West Virginia, as a ranger for the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and as a faculty member at Union College, Barbourville, Ky.
The lectureship was established in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1988 by Dr. Jewell Friend during her tenure as dean of the college.
Friend, who was also a professor of English before her retirement, “asked the Arts and Sciences Faculty Council (in 1986) to consider the idea of beginning the fall semester with a faculty speaker to ‘set the professional tone for the academic year,'” according to current Interim Dean Dr. Rebecca Pyles.
The speaker, chosen from nominations submitted by faculty, department chairs or members of the college’s Education Affairs Committee, receives a $100 honorarium and may lecture on a cross-disciplinary topic that is designed to “generate scholarly, academic interest.”
For more information, contact the College of Arts and Sciences at (423) 439-5671.

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