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News: Roane State’s Kinnunen has decades of experience, passion for education

Roane State’s Fran Kinnunen is shown in her office in the college's Cumberland County campus, located on Cook Road on the outskirts of Crossville.

June 7, 2017

By Bob Fowler
Roane State staff writer

CROSSVILLE, Tenn. – She’s been teaching for 51 years, and she has no plans to stop.

“What else am I going to do?” asks Fran Kinnunen, seated in her office in a corner of Roane State Community College’s large campus on the outskirts of Crossville in Cumberland County.

Kinnunen is an assistant professor of speech with a background in both speech and the theatre. At 75, she’s one of the oldest educators – if not the oldest – among Roane State’s faculty.

“I want to keep teaching as long as I’m a viable professor where the students can learn and enjoy public speaking and sharing ideas,” she said.

It was fortunate happenstance that brought Kinnunen to Roane State.

After decades of teaching at universities in Michigan and the University of Miami, along with 20 years at her high school alma mater in Michigan, Kinnunen and her husband, John, relocated to Cumberland County.

While moving into a log cabin next to a Fairfield Glade golf course, a friend of her husband casually remarked that he’d found a job for her at Roane State.

She said she went to the college’s main campus in Harriman, interviewed, and was hired on the spot in 1996 for a part-time job.

She and her spouse later took five invaluable years off to travel before she returned to a full-time job at the college.

Her world unraveled some 18 months ago when her husband died. “John died on a Sunday, and I was in class on Monday,” she said, tears welling. “I needed something to keep me going.”

That’s when her students and fellow faculty members came to her emotional rescue. “The students rallied and were very supportive,” she said. “I owe them a great deal.”

“I never could have come out of that hole,” she said of her grief, “without the support of the staff and students.”

Kinnunen’s influence as an educator has lasted through the decades. She was recently feted with a 50th anniversary of her career in education with a celebration organized by more than 50 students she taught in Kettering High School in Waterford, Mi., in the mid-1960s.

Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in arts and science and a master’s degree in theatre from University of Miami, where she taught speech part-time while also directing plays and designing costumes.

Kinnunen is an eloquent advocate for speech classes, required for most Roane State students.

“Students struggle, struggle and struggle, and all of a sudden they bloom. It’s amazing what speech classes can do,” she said.

She said the course typically imbues her students with more self-confidence while they also learn.

“About 90 percent of the students are at first scared to death to get up and talk,” she said. “Most of them end up enjoying the class – except for the research.”

To learn more about academic programs at the Cumberland County campus, call (931) 456-9880.

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