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Roots Radio Rockin’
WMOT-FM Roots Radio 89.5 continues gathering 1,500 of its closest friends and fellow music lovers for its Roots on the Rivers fundraising music festival at Nashville’s Two Rivers Mansion each June. Marking its third year in 2024, the festival includes a Family String Band Circle, where kids and adults can try out a variety of instruments. WMOT, the Nashville region’s only 100,000-watt Americana music station, broadcasts from MTSU’s Bragg Media and Entertainment Building.
mtsunews.com/wmot-roots-riverfestival-2023
Crisis and Mental Health Help
Shamender Talwar, a British crisis and social psychologist who assisted families following the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, also spoke to MTSU’s and the wider community at Dean Beverly Keel’s request. Cofounder of The Unity of Faiths Foundation (TUFF), Talwar and TUFF leaders were joined by PLA Media’s Pamela L. Lewis and Mark Logsdon, an MTSU graduate. Lewis introduced Keel to Talwar during The Road to Nashville songwriting contest, a global project promoting mental health that MTSU joined.
mtsunews.com/crisis-socialpsychologist-talwar
Digital Landscape Literacy
The world is at their fingertips thanks to their phones, tablets, and computers, so it made sense for 20 young members of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Rutherford County to gain hands-on experience in podcasting and digital media literacy at an annual MTSU camp. “Come to Voice,” launched by School of Journalism and Strategic Media professors Jennifer Woodard and Ken Blake in 2021, teaches communications skills such as audio, video, internet usage, and media literacy.
mtsunews.com/digital-literacy-campsummer2023
Confidence Boosting
Media graduate and TV production guru Nic Dugger (’00), who began building a nationally recognized business when he was 12, told graduates at his alma mater last year: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Dugger, founder and owner of TNDV: Television and chief marketing officer for Live Media Group, joked that he’d missed his own graduation in his haste to head cross-country for a job.
mtsunews.com/springcommencement-2023
Chronicling Country Music
MTSU’s Center for Popular Music (CPM) partnered with other organizations to present the works of legendary country music photojournalist Alan L. Mayor last fall at Bobby Nashville hotel in historic Printers Alley. Mayor’s extensive archive of images, housed in the CPM after his death in 2015, chronicles iconic country musicians over decades of the everchanging industry. The College of Media and Entertainment research center is devoted to studying American folk and popular music since the early 18th century.
mtsunews.com/mtsus-center-popularmusic-alan-mayor
“Dream” Recording Session
Nashville gospel artist Brenda Ivey Robertson, who has battled kidney disease for years, just couldn’t stop smiling after being treated to a special recording session at MTSU. It had been decades since she’d been in such a studio setting. Robertson was invited to campus to preserve her musical gifts after contacting Dean Beverly Keel about donating some of her albums, DVDs, and scrapbooks to MTSU’s Center for Popular Music and perhaps talking to students.
