From Hampshire Pike to Lithuania: Columbia State Alumnus Named Fulbright Scholar

COLUMBIA — Nicholas Herrud's higher education journey began on Hampshire Pike, the same road thousands of Maury County students have traveled to Columbia State Community College. He was a first-generation college student, a Tennessee Promise graduate, and — by his own admission — not entirely sure where the path was leading. It led to Notre Dame. And then to Lithuania.

Herrud, a Spring Hill native and 2017 Columbia State alumnus, has been named a finalist for the 2025-26 Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The prestigious award placed him at Vilnius University in Lithuania's capital, where he is researching 20th-century Eastern European history and border interactions — work that grew directly out of a master's program in Polish Studies he completed at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He credits Columbia State with teaching him the most important lesson of his academic life: that you only get out of something what you put into it.

Herrud pointed specifically to Columbia State professors Dr. James Senefeld, a retired English professor, and Dr. Barry Gidcomb, dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, as foundational figures in his development. Gidcomb, who has followed Herrud's career closely, said the former student is making a difference in the world and called his success well-deserved. After Columbia State, Herrud earned a bachelor's degree in history from Austin Peay State University in 2020 before heading to Poland. In 2023, out of roughly 250 applicants, he secured one of approximately 10 spots in Notre Dame's doctoral history program — a moment he described as one that moved him to tears.

His story is a reminder of what Columbia State, tucked along Hampshire Pike in a county better known for mules and manufacturing, quietly produces year after year: students who go on to do extraordinary things. For every young person in Maury County who wonders whether a community college is a real starting point, Nicholas Herrud is a compelling answer. Opportunity, he said, finds you — but you have to be ready to respond to it.