University of the Cumberlands offers a variety of graduate programs and online graduate programs.

Barry Aron Vann is a native of nearby Tennessee. An accomplished author, professor, speaker, and administrator, Dr. Vann came to University of the Cumberlands in 2008 as the founding Director of the Doctor of Education Program (Ed.D.) and Professor of Higher Education and Geography.

Vann holds two doctorates: a Doctor of Education degree in Adult Education with a focus in community development from the University of Arkansas, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree dually awarded by the Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences and the School of Theological and Religious at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. In addition, he also possesses a Master of Science degree in Geosciences from Western Kentucky University.

Vann has served as the chief academic officer for two colleges, division head and founding director of a dozen degree programs in such places as Delta State University in Mississippi and Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College. Before coming to the University of the Cumberlands, he served as the founding director of Lincoln Memorial University’s Appalachian Development Studies and geography programs.

As an author, Vann has published over twenty articles and six books with a seventh book entitled The Forces of Nature: Our Quest to Conquer the Planet due out in fall 2012. His articles have appeared in such publications as Human Resource Development Quarterly, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, Journal of East Tennessee History, Journal of Historical Sociology, Geography of Religions and Belief Systems, The Christian Observer, and UlsterHeritage.com. His book writings have been discussed in The Journal of American History, William and Mary Quarterly, Appalachian Journal, The Journal of British Studies, and the Journal of Historical Geography. These journals and his program-building experiences reflect his eclectic interests in education, community, economics, and organizational development, Appalachia, geography, history, religion, environmental issues, and sociology. Professor Vann is passionately interested in the role that educational institutions have in community and regional development. Vann is a member of the Association of American Geogrpahers (AAG) ad an active member in Phi Alpha Theta, a nationally recognized history honor society.

Barry Vann has spoken in a number of settings, including his lecture on the Scots-Irish in Appalachia that he delivered to the Appalachian Literature class at University of the Cumberlands, taught by English Department Chair Dr. Thomas Frazier. Of Vann’s visit, Frazier observed that Vann is “engaging, knowledgeable, and entertaining.” His sense of humor, according to some students, is a blend of Chevy Chase, Robin Williams, and Larry the Cable Guy without the vulgarities.

Despite his humanizing sense of humor and personal interest in each of his students, according to Gorgias Press, “Professor Vann is becoming known as an authority on population change, religion and secular society. Since 1998, he has published three books that connect real and imagined religious communities created by British policies on Northern Ireland to subsequent Protestant migrations to colonial North America where Irish Protestants helped form the theologically inspired and politically powerful region known as the Bible Belt.” Here are some published reviews of Dr. Vann’s In Search of Ulster Scots Land:

“Barry Vann takes us from the poverty of early-seventeenth century Scotland, via the Plantation of Ulster, to the American Bible Belt in search of the Ulster-Scots. This book provides exciting new perspectives on the geographies of religion and culture in the past. It is a challenging and thought-provoking work demonstrating the author’s sure grasp of geography as well as history.”
Ian D. Whyte, Professor of Geography, University of Lancaster, England, USC Press

“Geographers interested in the historical and cultural connections between Ulster and Appalachia will rejoice that a geographical analysis of the relationship between these two distant regions has finally come to fruition….this is a superb book that all students of British, Irish, and Appalachian history will find quite valuable.”
Todd Nesbitt, Lock Haven University, Pennsylvania, in Appalachian Journal

“Vann's interest goes beyond genealogy and geography. He argues that it is the religious thinking of the Ulster-Scots that shapes their unique culture. Diffused through their immigration to America, these beliefs have also left a significant cultural imprint on the South. Vann declares that the conservative belief system, political ideology, and landscapes of the Ulster-Scots are mirrored in the contemporary culture of the "Bible Belt."
David P King, Mercer University, Georgia, in the Journal of Southern Religion

“The book deals with both the movement of Scots to Ulster and then the movement of Ulster-Scots to America. Five of the book's six chapters deal with the seventeenth-century formation of an Ulster-Scots cultural community and the author examines population statistics and geographical features to argue that the sea between Ulster and Scotland served as a bridge rather than a barrier. This is a major contribution to the academic study of the Ulster-Scots and one that should be on the bookshelves of Ulster-Scots enthusiasts as well as libraries in Northern Ireland.”
Nelson McCausland, Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure for Northern Ireland, in “Nelson’s View”

“What the Mediterranean Sea was for Fernand Braudel and the Atlantic Ocean has been for a host of contemporary scholars, the north Irish Sea is for Barry Aron Vann. In the early modern world, bodies of water provided the most effective means of moving people, ideas, and institutions throughout large areas and defining the cultural space of distinct and important regions….The result was not only the creation of an “Irish Sea culture area” but also the forging of the Ulster Scots as a providential people. Vann’s familiarity with the sources for Presbyterian theology, the history of the Kirk, and the culture of Puritanism make for a strong argument about the historical integrity and regional coherence of an Ulster Scots Land and an identity for Ulster Scots more closely associated with the “geotheological imagings” of this land with any sense of Scottish, Irish, English, or British nationhood.”
Warren Hofstra, Professor of History, Shenandoah University, Virginia, in American Historical Review

"Hampered as geographers are today by excessive specialization, the geography of religion is all too often sidelined for being outside the mainstream interest of many. Nevertheless, because religious expression articulates with most dimensions of cultural and historical geography, it is a neglected theme that deserves scholarly attention. Barry Vann's new offering is a positive contribution toward that end."
Edward H. Davis, Emory and Henry College, Geographical Review

Scholars have also been receptive to Dr. Vann's 2011 book entitled Puritan Islam: The Geoexpansion of the Muslim World :

"In this must-read book, the author gives a fascinating and lucid picture of the rapid geoexpansion of the Muslim world, driven by high levels of fertility and a puritanicall theology."
Moorthy Muthuswamy, nuclear physicist and author of Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War

"Dr. Vann makes a strong case that secularists and liberals should be concerned about fundamentalism, whether preached by puritan Muslims, Jews, or Christians. Using a thorough review of demographics, he also offers an in-depth view of the potential negative impact of fundamentalist Muslims migrating to non-Muslim countries."
Edward H. Davis, Ph.D., professor of geography, Emory & Henry College