COLUMBIA — Nicholas Herrud's academic journey began the way many do in Maury County — at Columbia State Community College on Hampshire Pike, navigating the unfamiliar terrain of higher education as the first in his family to attend college. It has since taken him to Kraków, Vilnius, South Bend, and beyond. The Spring Hill native, a 2017 Tennessee Promise graduate of Columbia State, is now a Fulbright scholar conducting doctoral research in Eastern European history at Vilnius University in Lithuania — proof that big futures can begin on a small campus in the heart of Middle Tennessee.
Herrud has spoken openly about what Columbia State gave him beyond credits and a degree. He described the smaller environment as one where the personal connection with professors and staff made the difference, crediting Dr. James Senefeld, a retired Columbia State English professor, and Dr. Barry Gidcomb, the college's dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of history, as among the most influential figures in his academic formation. Gidcomb said the college has followed Herrud's career with great pride, calling him a young man who is making a difference in the world. After Columbia State, Herrud earned a bachelor's degree in history from Austin Peay State University in 2020, then spent three years at Jagiellonian University in Kraków studying Polish language and culture for his master's degree in Polish Studies.
The road to Notre Dame was hard-won. Herrud said that out of roughly 250 applicants to his doctoral program, only about 10 were admitted — and that hearing the news after five months of waiting moved him to tears. He called his parents immediately. Now in the third year of his doctorate, he was named a finalist for the 2025-26 Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which opened the door to studying 20th-century Eastern European history and border interaction at Vilnius University. The period he examines — the interwar years in the region between the two world wars — places him in a part of the world where history is not distant but layered into the very streets around him.
Herrud's story is a reminder of what Tennessee Promise and institutions like Columbia State are designed to do: give first-generation students a foundation solid enough to carry them anywhere. His advice, drawn from his own experience, is characteristically grounded — opportunity finds you, but you have to be ready to respond to it. Maury County can be proud that one of its own is representing Tennessee scholarship at the highest levels of international academic life.