Oliver "Buzz" Thomas, who on Thursday, Dec. 31, will be leaving as executive director of the Niswonger Foundation, looked back during a recent interview on his more than eight years at the helm of the Greeneville-based educational foundation.

Thomas has accepted the position of president of the Knoxville-based Great Schools Partnership.

The Great Schools Partnership is described by a Niswonger Foundation news release as a Knoxville-based organization whose mission is "to serve as a catalyst, think-tank, and incubator for making Knox County schools globally competitive."

Thomas said a major challenge of his new position is helping to wean the Great Schools Partnership from reliance on government funding while developing new, independent funding sources.

"That's going to be new and that's going to be hard," he said. "All I can say is that I'm up for the challenge and that I hope I will be as successful as I have been here."

Thomas also said his long-term goal is to start a scholarship and leadership program similar to the Niswonger Foundation's in Knoxville and to possibly collaborate with the Niswonger Foundation.

"I think we may be able to find some ways to help each other out," he said.

Thomas is modest about his own contributions to the success of the Niswonger Foundation during his tenure as its executive director.

Thomas said the Niswonger Foundation's success can be attributed to its founder, Scott M. Niswonger, the Greeneville business leader and philanthropist, and to the work of its board of directors and key staff members: Linda Irwin, who heads the school partnerships program, and Dr. Nancy Dishner, who heads the scholarship/leadership training program.

"It's not because of me," Thomas said. "Working with the board and staff here (the Niswonger Foundation) has been one of the joys of my life."

Thomas noted that he had practiced law in Washington, D.C., where he also represented leading religious organizations such as the National Council of Churches and the Southern Baptist Association.

But he said he has met few people like Niswonger, the Niswonger Foundation's founder.

"I've had interactions with outstanding people from Bishop Desmond Tutu to the Dalai Lama, but Scott Niswonger, from the first time I came up here, struck me as an unusual individual," Thomas said.

"As Jesus alludes to in the New Testament, wealth tends to affect people in a bad way. They tend to cling to their resources in an unhealthy way. As Jesus put it, it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.

"People who have that kind of wealth generally are not as generous as Scott is. I'm sure he has given away hundreds of millions of dollars. The neat thing is that after working eight-and-a-half years with Scott, I still think he is the same benevolent, generous guy that he has always been."

Thomas also told an anecdote about Niswonger's often anonymous philanthropy.

He recalled that Niswonger once asked him to go to lunch with an elementary school student who wanted to thank Niswonger for buying him a coat for Christmas.

In speaking with Niswonger, Thomas said, he learned that Niswonger had taken all the remaining names from an "Angel Tree" a few days before Christmas and had quietly purchased a coat and other items for each child.

"That was something no one would have ever known about if I hadn't asked about it," Thomas said. "I think Scott is the 'real deal'. And you can't talk about the Niswonger Foundation without talking about Scott."

Thomas said the Niswonger Foundation's stated mission is "to create opportunities for individual and community growth through education."

The Foundation's primary programs are the Scholarship/Leadership Training Program (also known as the Niswonger Scholars program) and the School Partnership Program.

The foundation's Scholarship/Leadeship Training Program has paid (or will pay) the college expenses of "Niswonger Scholars," talented Northeast Tennessee high school students who have completed the foundation's leadership training program and have agreed to return to work in Northeast Tennessee to work within seven years of completing college.

He noted that 57 students have either completed, or currently are participating in, the Niswonger Scholars scholarship/leadership training program.

Among the Niswonger Scholars, Thomas said, is Greeneville resident Joe Watson, who currently is the "number-one ranked" student at the University of Tennessee College of Law.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see Joe in Congress some day," Thomas said of Watson. "It's an incredibly talented group of kids."

He noted that another Niswonger Scholar will be studying engineering in China next year.

Rachel Mixon, he said, is a Cherokee High School graduate who currently is attending Purdue University.

"She will come back here one day," Thomas said. "That's the kind of talent that will be returning to our area. "That's got to put a smile on your face."

He said Patrick Brown, a GHS graduate, also is attending Purdue University as a Niswonger Scholar.

"Nobody has ever been deliberate about trying to hold on to the talent that comes from our region," Thomas said. "They end up in New York or Atlanta or Nashville. The Niswonger Foundation is going out and finding these kids and getting them committed to being a part of Northeast Tennessee, enabling them to reach their full potential and convincing them to return to Northeast Tennessee."

Niswonger Scholars "are chosen primarily for their leadership potential and commitment to the betterment of themselves and their home communities," Thomas said.

Scholarship recipients participate in leadership training through the Tusculum Institute for Public Leadership and Policy, and participate in monthly service-learning projects.

They receive varying amounts of financial aid, depending on what other scholarships they may have won. The students are assured of enough funding so that they will not need to borrow money to attend college.

Assuming the Niswonger Scholars maintain at least a B average and meet other requirements of the program, the scholarships may be renewed for each year of a student's college education.

After college, Niswonger Scholars may return to work in any of the 12 Northeast Tennessee counties served by Niswonger Foundation.

Thomas noted that the Niswonger Scholars program is exceptional in that it allows students to attend any college or university of their choosing, including Ivy League schools and prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In addition, Thomas recalled, the Niswonger Foundation has launched some 60 successful partnerships with Northeast Tennessee schools and school districts since 2001.

All those partnerships, he said, had been measurable and accountable.

"If we don't get results, we don't keep funding it," Thomas said. He added that all the partnerships entered into so far have been successful.

The first of the many partnerships, Thomas said, was a $1.1 million partnership, announced in 2001, between the Niswonger Foundation and the Greene County Board of Education that brought instrumental music (band) programs to the Greene County schools.

The partnership helped build band rooms at Chuckey-Doak High, Mosheim Middle School, West Greene High and other county schools.

In addition, Thomas said, the foundation employed former Greeneville High School band director Pete Hodges as a consultant to help get the band program at Mosheim Middle School off the ground.

Another Partnership with the Greene County Schools involved an effort to improve reading scores.

"We offered a million dollars to help the county schools upgrade their reading programs," Thomas said. "But they had to come up with $900,000 of their own and they did. In the first year of the partnership, the reading grades of every school in Greene County increased. So we know it got results."

"That's the way we tried to do philanthropy from the beginning," Thomas said. "That was different from the way anyone else was doing it. And it's interesting now to see the great foundations (of America) moving to where we were nine years ago."

Another recent partnership undertaken by the Niswonger Foundation involves an effort to improve ACT college-entrance exam scores in Hancock County, which is the state's poorest county, according to Thomas.

He noted that Hancock County High School received negative publicity in The New York Times several years ago because the school valedictorian achieved only a "19" on the ACT.

"That won't ever get you a Hope Scholarship to attend college," Thomas said. "That takes a score of at least 21 on the ACT exam."

The goal of the partnership with the Hancock County schools is to have the school's average ACT score improved to at least a score of 21, Thomas said.

An article in the November 2009 issue of "The School Administrator," a publication of the National Association of School Administrators, reported on perhaps the most famous of the foundation's partnerships.

Entitled "A Miracle in the Mountains," the article, which was written by Thomas, outlines how a Niswonger Foundation three-year partnership with Grassy Fork Elementary in Cocke County turned a failing school into "a model for rural elementary education.

By the time the three-year partnership, which focused on individual instruction and student achievement, ended, Gassy Fork had joined the "top 10 percent" of Tennessee's public schools, according to the article.

Even after the partnership ended, Thomas said, the school continued to improve.

Thomas said much of the credit for the school's improvement should go to the Niswonger Foundation's Linda Irwin, who formerly was principal of Sam Houston Elementary School in Maryville.

"We assigned Irwin to work with Grassy Fork Elementary's principal, Shannon Grooms, 28, to develop a schoolwide improvement plan," Thomas said.

Another partnership of which he is proud, Thomas said, entailed an effort to improve the state's "algebra Gateway exam" in Carter County.

That effort, Thomas noted, used Greeneville High School mathematics teachers as consultants who worked with Carter County teachers in an effort to improve math instruction and improve test scores.

Thomas said he also is proud of a partnership with the Johnson County Schools in which Johnson County High School students were trained in the building trades and then actually built houses for sale in a subdivision owned by the school system.

"When the students got out of school, they could get jobs that would pay $25 an hour," Thomas said.

He noted that his only regret in leaving the Niswonger Foundation is that the foundation, due to the economic downturn, had to cut its budget this year and was able to begin only one new partnership.

But he said he believes the Niswonger Foundation will come back stronger than ever as soon as the economy rebounds.