[506] MTSU professor launches ‘self-reliance’ column for Washington Times

MURFREESBORO — The newest columnist in the Washington Times has an MTSU pedigree.

Alongside widely read conservative commentators like Monica Crowley and Cal Thomas, Colby Jubenville will contribute his views on self-reliance in both column and blog formats.

Jubenville’s first writing in the conservative-leaning publication was posted at www.washingtontimes.com June 17 with future online postings slated for two to three times a week and in hard copy editions on occasion.

In his initial offering, which is available at http://tinyurl.com/ov9weks, the sports management professor in the Department of Health and Human Performance advises readers to “go your own way.”

He writes, “While you should always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, nobody can help you like you can help yourself. And when you develop a firm enough sense of self-reliance, at that point, you’ll have found your own lane and be able to stay there.”

Jubenville realizes that his philosophy is at variance with what is practiced in much of corporate America, but he insists that there is increasing momentum for change toward a culture than empowers employees and respects their autonomy.

“I do think that if you hire the right people and build the right culture that you can, in fact, run a business that way,” he said. “We live in this world where people are taught to go by way of the herd, and I’ve never done that.”

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce will present Jubenville with the YP Nashville Impact Award at the Nashville Emerging Leader Awards ceremony July 30 at Lipscomb University.

The award honors an individual dedicated to community leadership and professional development. Jubenville said the award represents what education should be about.

“My whole focus at MTSU over the last 15 years is really about helping kids find their voice, and voice is the intersection of talent, passion, conscience and need in the world,” he said.

In his role as special assistant to the dean for student success and strategic partnerships, Jubenville will have even more opportunities to put his philosophy into practice. He will assist Harold “Terry” Whiteside, dean of the College of Behavioral and Health Sciences, in “collecting intellectual capital and unleashing it to industry.”

Toward that end, Jubenville sees himself as a mentor who will work to instill confidence in students so they will be able to achieve their goals.

“If I look back on my life, the greatest time period when I saw myself develop as an adult was from 20 to 30,” Jubenville said. “Well, we’re taught that, from 20 to 30, you’ve got all the time in the world. You know as well as I do you’re going to blink and be 40.”

Jubenville can be contacted at Colby.Jubenville@mtsu.edu or at his business, Red Herring Innovation and Design, at 615-498-6802.