NATIONAL NEWS

Tenn. No. 2 in job-competitiveness Tennessee’s business climate as well as the number of new job creation and business expansion projects has prompted Site Selection magazine to give the state a second place ranking on its list of the most job-competitive states in the nation. In the publication’s May edition, Tennessee climbed back up the list, jumping from No. 7 in 2005 to No. 2 this year among the magazine’s annual ranking of “Top Ten Competitive States.” The magazine’s editors included job creation and capital investment in their calculations, but also looked at how many local metropolitan areas and small towns from a given state made the annual rankings of Site Selection’s top 100 communities. Tennessee’s efforts were rated just behind those of North Carolina and ahead of Alabama, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, Virginia and Illinois. For more information on Site Selection’s “Top Ten Competitive States” ranking, visit the magazine online at www.siteselection.com. Wilderness rescue training offered Seventeen students in the Wilderness First Responders course at East Tennessee State University will know what to do. The class involves 80 hours of intensive training packed into nine days, with time spent in the field increasing daily. The capstone project provides another dimension: nighttime exercises. Those who complete the course and pass written and practical exams will earn certification as Wilderness First Responders. , Leisure and Sport Sciences is proud of the course, which his department is sponsoring. “Wilderness First Responders are asked to do far more, and take greater responsibility, than individuals taught in a regular first aid class, said Dr. Tom Coates of ETSU’s Department of Kinesiology. The class instructor, Todd Merrill, designs disaster scenarios in which students must determine what is wrong with each “victim” and improvise with any materials at hand to treat the medical problems presented. ETSU fundraising at $44.5M The Reaching Higher capital campaign initiative through the East Tennessee State University Foundation, which was officially launched at the organization’s 2005 Annual Meeting by university President Dr. Paul E. Stanton Jr., has reached 27 percent of its $224 million goal. Private giving now exceeds $44.5 million just one year after Stanton’s public announcement about the campaign. The goal for Reaching Higher is centered on facilities and academic programs featuring quality education, endowment growth in the Foundation, the health sciences, and intercollegiate athletics. Facilities already under way in the Reaching Higher campaign include the soccer stadium, the museum, research and visitors center complex at the Gray Fossil Site, the College of Nursing’s new home in the renovated old library, and the Center for Experiential Learning.