12 minute read
Midpoints
A look at recent awards, events, and accomplishments at MTSU
compiled by Stephanie Barrette, Gina E. Fann, Jimmy Hart, Gina K. Logue, Drew Ruble, and Randy Weiler
Rollover Relief
MTSU will reinstate untapped academic scholarships awarded to new freshmen and transfer students for Fall 2020 who paused their educations because of the pandemic or who chose another college or university and are reconsidering their choice.
“We believed in you and wanted to recognize your academic record as new students joining the MTSU family for Fall 2020, and we still believe in you now,” President Sidney A. McPhee announced. “We want to provide a strong financial incentive to get you back on track toward your goal of completing your bachelor’s degree.”
Thought to be the only such program in the state, MTSU’s “Bridging the Gap” campaign offers scholarship reinstatement for qualifying students who are ready to join MTSU in the Spring 2021 or Fall 2021 term.
A Band of Blue social-distance performance at 2020 Homecoming
Home Sweet Home
Because of COVID-19, a lot was different about MTSU Homecoming 2020. Tailgating was not allowed. The pregame Homecoming Parade became an “MTShUbox Parade,” with dozens of homemade shoebox entries showcased virtually. The limited crowd of 6,500 at Floyd Stadium also socially distanced and wore face coverings to maintain Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health protocols.
But the Band of Blue played on from the stands, and the Homecoming Court was recognized on a stadium concourse on a beautiful fall afternoon. Drew Carpenter, a senior Community and Public Health major from Kingsport, and Micah Pruitt, a Business Administration major from Murfreesboro, were crowned 2020 Homecoming king and queen, respectively.
An entry in the 2020 Homecoming virtual shoebox parade, held in lieu of the usual parade due to the pandemic
Joining the Good Fight
With federal funding, MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services (CHHS) will tackle the opioid epidemic in rural Wilson County communities. The center will use a $200,000 planning grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Partners in the 18-month endeavor include Wilson County’s DrugFree WilCo, MTSU’s Department of Health and Human Performance, and MTSU’s Data Science Institute, among others.
DrugFree WilCo, a nonprofit organization, was formed in 2018 when Lisa Tapley contacted local officials following the death of her son, Thomas. After suffering a work injury, Thomas Tapley began taking pills laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that the National Institute on Drug Abuse says is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.
“A” in the Classroom
MTSU’s in-the-field training offered through its undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program has been ranked among the nation’s best by the National Council on Teacher Quality. MTSU’s clinical practice program stands out as among only 33 traditional elementary programs out of more than the 1,100 evaluated to earn an “A” grade in the NCTQ’s 2020 Teacher Prep Review. The MTSU College of Education works to build strong relationships with its 42 partner school districts to improve appropriate mentor teacher selection.
Hanna Terletska
Physics Is Her Business
Hanna Terletska, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, experienced a special opportunity to share her research experiences along with nearly 60 of the world’s leading physics scholars. The group gathered, albeit virtually because of COVID-19, for the late summer international conference Localisation 2020 in honor of Philip W. “Phil” Anderson. Anderson, a 1977 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, died March 29 at age 96.
“Gold Standard” Status
Terrapin Beer Co., in the Skyowned by Molson Coors Beverage Co., is partnering with MTSU Fermentation Science to offer an annual $10,000 scholarship to underrepresented undergraduate students wanting to pursue a degree in this program.
Molson Coors, which acquired the Athens, Georgia-based brewery in 2016, recently established a $25,000 endowment with MTSU and similar partnerships with Colorado State and Oregon State University.
“Corporate-funded scholarships are the gold standard of academic program endorsement,” said Tony Johnston, director of MTSU’s Fermentation Science undergraduate and graduate programs, which have grown considerably since their launch in 2017 and 2019, respectively.
Like a Diamond
The Department of Aerospace received delivery of six new Diamond Aircraft 2020 DA 40 XLT airplanes to its student training fleet, and the Austria-based manufacturer also refurbished 13 aircraft in MTSU’s existing fleet. MTSU Aerospace has grown into one of the most respected aviation programs in the U.S. It now has a fleet of 27 Diamond aircraft.
A Most-Useful Education
MTSU’s Center for Economic Education (CEE), housed in the Jones College of Business, received the 2019–20 Albert Beekhuis Award from the New York-based Council for Economic Education. The award, named after a lifelong proponent of economic literacy, carries a $1,000 honorarium.
The MTSU center equips K–12 students with tools and knowledge of personal finance and economics to learn how to make better decisions for themselves, their families, and their communities. CEE will soon become the Tennessee Council on Economic and Free Enterprise Education at MTSU, reflecting the center’s relationship to the Council for Economic Education.
Rural Support
MTSU’s Business and Economic Research Center (BERC) is partnering with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to help improve access to financial relief for distressed communities in east Tennessee.
In an effort to connect community needs to federal funding, BERC will develop technical assistance and training programs for grant and funding application processes. The BERC/USDA project is intended to serve distressed communities with a population under 10,000 and median household income less than 75% of the state's non-metro median household income. The grant will target USDA service regions out of Knoxville and Greenville offices.
Real-World Accolades
A team from an MTSU public relations course is celebrating two 2020 Parthenon Awards earned for a “shoestring budget” campaign to educate their peers about the First Amendment. Using a $2,000 national grant from MTSU’s Free Speech Center, which directs the nonpartisan, nonprofit 1 for All educational project, students created the multifacted “1 for All @ MTSU: Freedom Comes First” project in Fall 2019.
The experiential learning campaign was part of the Public Relations Campaign course of Hanna Park, a School of Journalism and Strategic Media professor. Class members recognized by the Public Relations Society of America at its 34th annual Parthenon Awards ceremony are: Katelyn Compton, Nolensville; Delaney Johnson, Smithville; Shelbyville native Grant Thompson, Antioch; Kintea Webster, Nashville; Jacob West, Gallatin; and Ashley Carman, Hannah Field, Donivous Odom, and James Whitaker, all of Murfreesboro.
“The Perfect Classroom”
Teamwork by two MTSU professors on a project to help indigenous filmmakers tell their stories and share their efforts to save their Amazon rainforest earned recognition and funding for the artists from the National Geographic Society.
Paul Chilsen, a Media Arts associate professor, travels with students to work alongside the Kayapó people, who live along the Xingu River in Brazil amid more than 27 million acres of rainforest. Once there, they conduct workshops in writing for film, operating cameras, designing sets and costumes, and acting. Richard Pace, an Anthropology professor, co-wrote the grant request with Purdue University’s Laura Zanotti, Kayapó filmmaker Pat-i, and a team of indigenous and international filmmakers.
National Geographic awarded almost $70,000 for Pat-i and colleagues to move ahead on their project, “Indigenous Filmmaker Warriors in Defense of Biocultural Conservation.”
So far, the MTSU and Kayapó crews have worked on one film, Nhakpokti. “You might say it was the perfect classroom, where the exchange was multidirectional, multifaceted, and deeply impactful for all of us,” Chilsen said.
More than Mere Chicken Feed
Anyone who wants to study poultry science knows it takes more than mere chicken feed to pay for the education necessary to make it a career. That’s why MTSU alumnus Joseph Gulizia is fortunate to be one of 58 recipients of a fellowship from Phi Kappa Phi, the nation’s oldest and most selective collegiate honor society.
His stipend of $8,500 will help pay for his pursuit of graduate degrees in Poultry Science at Auburn University. Gulizia graduated from MTSU in December 2019 with a bachelor’s in Animal Science. Gulizia, who intends to pursue both master’s and doctorate degrees, said he wants to improve the birds’ nutrition while cutting expenses for farmers. Since feed costs can represent 60%–70% of total broiler production costs, Gulizia’s research could be quite beneficial.
Cross-discipline Conservation
MTSU and University of Mississippi faculty and student researchers are collaborating on a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant project involving climate change, conservation practices, and training the next generation of environmental scientists and engineers.
The three-year, $272,555 USDA grant is a research effort for Environmental Science students from MTSU’s Department of Geosciences and engineering majors from Mississippi to study the role and potential effects of climate change on conservation practices and future 21st-century agricultural challenges.
Racha El Kadiri, a Geosciences assistant professor at MTSU, is the project director. She is an environmental scientist who applies machine learning, remote sensing, geographical information systems, and computational methods to address a wide range of hydrological and environmental problems.
While there are many studies focusing on the effects of climate change on crop yield in regard to the observed and projected temperature changes in the 21st century, El Kadiri said there have not been enough studies on how effective the conservation being implemented today will be in the future. Answering those questions would be a step toward an adaptation to climate change, improving food security in this century, and preserving national water and soil resources.
“Environmental science students and engineers are traditionally not trained in agronomy, and agronomists are traditionally not environmental scientists and engineers,” El Kadiri said. “This will act to bridge the gap between these two fields at our institutions, accomplishing this through research, curriculum development, and experiential learning experiences.”
Translating Health Care
A new academic concentration at MTSU is helping students promote greater understanding of health and health care. Beginning in the Fall 2020 semester, Communication majors now have the option of pursuing a special concentration in Health Communication.
In addition to taking the core communication classes, students will learn about such issues as patient-provider communication, internal hospital communication, and influencing behavior change for optimal health outcomes.
“How do we do something like normalizing wearing masks in public?” said Elizabeth Dalton, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies. “How do we improve adherence to clinical recommendations or prescriptions? How do we improve telehealth delivery?”
While the curriculum was in the works long before the coronavirus began to dominate headlines, the timing of the new concentration is beneficial in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s the Climb
An adult learner who came back to MTSU to finish his bachelor’s degree after almost two decades is climbing the ladder at one of the largest airline companies in the world—and is nearing completion of his master’s.
Now in aviation management at Delta Air Lines in Atlanta, Chad Goddard (pictured above, fourth from left) knew he wanted to work in aerospace from a young age. He was driven, too, securing a job as a pilot while still attending classes for his senior year at MTSU. Getting that pilot’s job before graduation kept him too busy to finish his last semester and get his degree. Unfortunately, as he'd find out later, that degree was required if he wanted to continue moving up the ranks in aviation.
A Dickson County native, Goddard, now 49, changed career paths several years ago, moving over to aircraft maintenance. He knew he was qualified for higher-ranking positions, but since many hiring processes begin online, his application was never even getting through to recruiters because he could not check the degree box. He had seen commercials and ads for online programs, but he decided to check back with MTSU about finishing his degree once and for all.
Thankfully, he was able to use most of his credits from the first time he attended MTSU as well as credits he earned while in the military, helping him graduate after just one semester.
It was during one of the last courses of his undergraduate studies where his life would really change. Goddard and his classmates were assigned to find a posting for a job they wanted. Not only did he find a posting with Delta, Goddard actually applied for the position—and this time, he got it.
After graduating with his bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies in May 2019, he moved his family to Atlanta and began working at the level he always knew he could. “I felt validated,” Goddard said. “It was nice to see it all pay off so quickly.”
He proved invaluable in Delta’s recent shift to changing over some passenger planes to cargo-only planes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This allowed Delta to transport muchneeded medical supplies across the country.
Predators' Sean Henry (l–r), Charlie and Hazel Daniels, and MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee
The General's Fund
The Nashville Predators stepped forward in 2020 to raise money and awareness for MTSU student veterans in distress and whose educational benefits have either expired or have been exhausted.
Predators President and CEO Sean Henry joined MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee and country music legend Charlie Daniels to announce creation of The General’s Fund during a March 2 news conference at Bridgestone Arena. Daniels, who died July 6 following a stroke, financially supported MTSU’s Charlie and Hazel Daniels Veterans and Military Family Center over the years through his foundation.
The new fund, raised to help veterans at MTSU in need of support, recognizes retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Huber, who now serves as MTSU’s senior advisor for veterans and leadership initiatives. Through this partnership, Henry said the Predators and MTSU will help Huber support military-connected students who struggle financially to reach their higher education and career goals.
“MTSU proudly serves more than 1,100 military-connected students, yet about 20% of them no longer have the educational benefits that were earned through service to our country,” Henry said. “The General’s Fund that we are establishing today will help fill that gap.”
