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Police officer and history buff attends FBI Academy

Posted 10/5/2007

As a young nursing student at the University of Tennessee-Martin, Cathy Ryan took an elective course in forensics. “After that, I was hooked,” she says. Although she originally pursued a position with the FBI, she balked at agreeing to move every few years and took a position at Vanderbilt instead.

Now Ryan, a commander on the Vanderbilt University Police Department, has been in law enforcement at Vanderbilt for 20 years.

She’s done “just about every position at the department,” although she’s been primarily assigned to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center for the past few years. Ryan also recently returned from a stint at the FBI Academy, an honor only 300 officers around the world (and only four from Tennessee) do each year. The admission process is highly competitive.

“It was very intense,” says Ryan. “In addition to leadership, management and current topic classes, I took graduate level courses from the University of Virginia as part of the program. We also got to run the obstacle course the Marines use. That was the most challenging thing I’ve done in my life.”
While Ryan loves her job because “it’s something different every day,” she and her husband share a hobby that helps her de-stress: Civil War re-enacting.

Pulling in her original interest in nursing, Ryan often portrays a battlefield nurse.
“I’m not really a hoop-skirt type person,” she explains. “Most women really weren’t -- just the aristocracy.”

Ryan participates with a group based in Lebanon, Tenn., that focuses on educating people about history. Many of them staff the pioneer village each year at the Wilson County Fair as well as attending re-enactments throughout the year.

“I do it for the kids,” says Ryan. “To see the expression on their faces when they see history come alive is amazing.”

These days, some of the re-enacting has been put on hold as Ryan and her husband restore an 1830s “dog-trot” log cabin they bought on 10 acres in Eagleville, Tenn.

“It’s been fun to peel away the layers – sheetrock, wallboard, five layers of wallpaper, and beadboard – to get down to the amazing cedar logs,” says Ryan. She and her husband hope to move into the house sometime next summer.

“As history buffs, it’s been wonderful for us to be able to buy a house that is a piece of history,” says Ryan. “Now, I just need to come to terms with the snakes.”

Contact: Missy Pankake,  (615) 322-NEWS
                 missy.pankake@vanderbilt.edu

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