After tornado devastation, TSU rebuilds its agriculture campus from scratch

The morning sun is shining on brand-new classroom buildings, barns, and rows of greenhouses. Tennessee State University students, officials and construction workers pass out souvenir scissors for a ribbon cutting.

The university’s College of Agriculture maintains a working farm right in the middle of North Nashville. But the farm suffered a direct hit during the March 2020 tornadoes. Almost all of the farm buildings needed to be completely replaced.

Grace Colvin is a senior studying to become a veterinarian. For her whole time at TSU, she’s worked in a temporary trailer. She says the new buildings will have features like better climate control, which will make experiments much easier.

Char Daston WPLN

Grace Colvin (left) and Janae Terrell are seniors in TSU’s College of Agriculture. They say the newly rebuilt campus will make their research easier.

“We do a lot of heat tolerance and breeding stuff with the goats and with the bulls,” she said. “And so, having the new facilities, the new labs, we can do more efficient research.”

Janae Terrell, a senior who studies biotechnology, said she would be able to study the plants grown in the new greenhouse.

“We’re bringing them back to the lab to really break them down,” she said, “understanding the DNA sequences and things of that nature.”

Tennessee State University

Tennessee State University staff clean up rubble after the March 2020 tornado that destroyed the school’s agricultural campus.

The College of Agriculture’s dean, Chandra Reddy, said that before the tornado hit, farm buildings were constructed on an as-needed basis. Out of destruction came a chance to modernize the entire agricultural campus at once.