If you call him Dr. Kevin Hamed and enjoy the celebration, then take the liberty and have your fun. He spent five hours successfully defending his dissertation today (28 Mar 2014) at the University of Tennessee Department of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries . For those who want to bite their tongues until the most official declaration has been carved in stone, that day will occur sometime in the next several weeks when the UT Registrar's office posts his Ph.D. to his official transcript. His dissertation in Natural Resources is "Impacts of Climate Change, Human Land Use, and Mercury Contamination of Southern Appalachian Plethodontid Salamanders." Among his committee are: David Buehler, Benjamin Fitzpatrick, John Drake and Matt Gray. Hamed, a former chief park naturalist and nature center manager at Steele Creek Park Nature Center in Bristol Tennessee, was accepted to graduate school at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2008. He is an assistant professor of biology at Virginia Highlands Community College in Abingdon. Kevin took the position as a fulltime member of the biology faculty at Virginia Highlands Community College in August 2003. He filled the biology faculty teaching position formerly held by Doug Ogle, a former long-time and prominent member of the college faculty. Wallace Coffey Bristol, TN