The $5 Million Club
Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
Top-funded faculty grab the gold for groundbreaking grant projects
06
Center for Health and Human Services Director Cynthia Chafin turns project expertise into life-changing results
Vol. 6 • No. 1 • Spring 2023
Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
18
12 BLAST FROM THE PAST MTSU Professor and State Historian Carroll Van West’s impact on historic preservation—and on grant funding at MTSU— has been profound
SPECIAL INTEREST
Education Professor Robyn Ridgley helps families and their children flourish
24 ENGINEERING NEW CURES
Biology researcher Anthony Farone draws on inspiration from family to effect change through science
University President Sidney A. McPhee • University Provost Mark Byrnes • Vice Provost for Research and Dean, College of Graduate Studies David Butler • Director, Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
Rachel McGinnis • Vice President for Marketing and Communications Andrew Oppmann • Senior Editor
Drew Ruble • Senior Director of Visual Services Kara Hooper • Designer Steve Swain • Associate Editor
Carol Stuart • Contributing Editor Nancy Broden • Photographers Andy Heidt, J. Intintoli, Cat Curtis Murphy, James Cessna • Special Thanks Jamie Burriss, Andres Jaras, Katie Medrano
Address changes should be sent to Advancement Services, MTSU Box 109, Murfreesboro, TN 37132; alumni@mtsu.edu. Other correspondence should be sent to Drew Ruble, 1301 E. Main St., MTSU Box 49, Murfreesboro, TN 37132. For online content, visit mtsumagazine.com. 630 copies printed by Allen Printing, Nashville, Tennessee. Designed by MTSU Creative and Visual Services.
0123-1527 – Middle Tennessee State University does not discriminate against students, employees, or applicants for admission or employment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, disability, age, status as a protected veteran, genetic information, or any other legally protected class with respect to all employment, programs, and activities sponsored by MTSU. The Assistant to the President for Institutional Equity and Compliance has been designated to handle inquiries regarding the non-discrimination policies and can be reached at Cope Administration Building 116, 1301 East Main Street, Murfreesboro, TN 37132; Christy.Sigler@mtsu.edu; or 615-898-2185. The MTSU policy on non-discrimination can be found at mtsu.edu/iec.
30 WEAVING A WEB Math Professor Mary Martin has s titched together a lasting legacy at her alma mater
42 BUILT TO LAST Business Professor Patrick Geho leads a team that builds Tennessee's economy
36 SINGING PRAISES Choral director Raphael Bundage pours a lifetime of experience into opening doors for young artists
48 STERLING SERVICE AND PRIZED RESEARCH
“$2 million club” covers STEM subjects, student success, and education efforts
Hallmarks of excellence in higher education. Keys to success in life. Be a part of it.
Ask how.
Transforming the present, discovering the future MTSU’s network of faculty and student researchers lead the way in Tennessee with more than 20 research centers, institutes, and support centers.
MTSU connects researchers with funding opportunities and ways to make a meaningful impact statewide, nationally, and internationally, through partnerships and strategic alliances with businesses and organizations.
• $1.7 million annual faculty research and creative activity investment by MTSU
• $59 million portfolio in current sponsored programs
• Research opportunities at every level—undergraduate, graduate, faculty
Every organization has people who excel in their roles. Universities are no exception.
Each university has a unique group of folks who, over their careers, bring a substantial amount of grant and contract dollars to the institution in support of their research, teaching, and service. These dollars help facilitate the university’s mission of research, teaching, and service, and they help the bottom line, adding to the traditional revenue streams of tuition and state funding.
These rare individuals are both golden and precious to the University. In this issue, we are taking stock and time to celebrate those individuals who have achieved the distinction of bringing more than $5 million in grants and contracts to the University over their careers at Middle Tennessee State University.
Besides these $5M+ gold achievers, we also highlight the silver medalists who have brought in between $2 million and $4.99 million in their careers at MTSU, many of whom are on pace to become part of the gold medal group, and the bronze group of $1 million–$1.99 million. Each of these rare people has earned our respect in their top achievements.
As a publicly supported institution of higher learning, we take our role to serve the state of Tennessee very seriously, which includes conducting research and creative activities that produce knowledge, information, data, technologies, know-how, and other outcomes that are disseminated from MTSU to the whole state to help improve the economy, services, and quality of life for all Tennesseans.
Last year, we celebrated our advancement to an R2 high research activity doctoral university designation by Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. This elite status places us among a select group of only 3% of institutions nationwide to earn the R2 designation. The MTSU Office of Research and Sponsored Programs is now building the foundation for expanding the research enterprise at MTSU, including supporting wider participation and increased dollar amounts in grants brought to the University.
David Butler Vice Provost for Research and Dean, College of Graduate Studies
As a student at MTSU, Cynthia Chafin (’88) studied in the Jones College of Business. She said it seemed a logical choice at the time as she was the child of business owners. Armed with her Business Administration degree, Chafin spent the first five years out of college as an accountant.
“I did okay with it, but something was missing,” she said of her first professional experience. “I figured out I’ve always been personally passionate about any kind of health-related topic.”
From within her business sphere, Chafin smartly shifted her work emphasis over to the then-burgeoning area of corporate wellness.
“This was before they knew they needed someone qualified for those types of positions,” Chafin quipped.
But as Chafin became more and more knowledgeable about health and wellness, her curiosity and passion for it grew. She enrolled at Vanderbilt University and obtained a graduate degree in health promotion and education, then started working with the Tennessee Department of Health.
“I really felt like I was making a difference with people,” she said. “That was my motivation and continues to be my motivation—really doing something for somebody. Making someone’s life better.”
Chafin later had a chance meeting with Martha Jo Edwards, who then held the Adams Chair of Excellence in Health Care Services at MTSU. Edwards asked her to help administer a grant. It marked Chafin’s return to her alma mater, working in MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services (CHHS) as a project director.
Founded in 1993 through a gift from the Murfreesboro family that created the Adams Chair, CHHS collaborates with agencies and nonprofits to improve the well-being of Tennesseans through training, research, communication, and education. The center's reach is national, currently working in an 11-state area.
That first project Chafin worked on at MTSU may still qualify as her greatest success in public health. The project that she directed was a tobacco cessation program focused on a very specific population—low-income women who used Health Department services who were pregnant and smoking.
One might think that’s a small segment of the population. But in 2002, when CHHS launched Smart Mothers Are Resisting Tobacco (SMART Moms), Tennessee had the second-highest maternal smoking rate in the nation. More than 29% of the state’s pregnant recipients in the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition supplement program smoked.
Under Chafin’s guidance, SMART Moms became operational in public health agencies in all 95 counties across Tennessee.
“This was before Zoom,” she said. “This was before Teams. We had to travel. We had to do all of this training in person. We trained every health department in the state on effective practices.”
In all, more than 13,000 pregnant women in Tennessee received one-on-one counseling with a provider that Chafin’s team trained.
The result? Of the enrollees, more than 24% stopped smoking, far exceeding both the 14% success rate of similar programs and the goal of 10%.
“That was a much higher success rate than programs that had similar components or parameters nationally,” Chafin said. “So we knew that what we were doing was effective.”
At the conclusion of the study, the state health department decided to continue the program CHHS had established.
“They have repackaged it and renamed it since then, but now every health department in the state continues to offer pregnant women a special program to help them quit smoking,” Chafin said. “That is something that we can be proud of here at MTSU, because at the time there was nothing, and MTSU created this program and gave it life.”
Such early success in the field bolstered Chafin’s decision to use her administrative strengths and passion for health care to improve public health through large grant-funded projects.
THERE ARE COUNTLESS PEOPLE OUT THERE WHOSE LIFE HAS CHANGED BECAUSE OF THE WORK WE DO HERE AT THE CENTER.
“By getting involved in these larger research projects, you can help large numbers of people,” said Chafin, who became CHHS director in 2018. “In my role now, I don’t have as much of the oneon-one interaction. But I know there are countless people out there whose life has changed because of the work we do here at the center.”
Tobacco was a top public health target in 2003. Given the tremendous success of public health smoking cessation efforts like SMART Moms, much progress has been made toward that public health concern.
What is pressing today is opioid usage. Responding to that current need, CHHS and a Wilson County nonprofit coalition recently partnered to address opioid use and misuse in the rural communities of the Midstate county thanks to a $1 million federal grant.
The MTSU center, in partnership with DrugFree WilCo and others, received funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The three-year grant follows completion of an 18-month HRSAfunded planning grant to address the epidemic in those communities.
CHHS is collaborating on this project with Public Health faculty; the University’s Data Science Institute; and other on- and off-campus partners.
“I’m not a substance-use expert,” Chafin said. “What I am an expert at is pulling people together who have different areas of expertise and making a project work.
“I go out into communities and say, ‘Hey, you guys are considered a rural community. You guys are already doing XYZ about the problem. Now how about joining us and working on this grant proposal, because if we get it, we can bring a million dollars into your community.’ ”
That money can be used to provide transportation for people who want to get treatment but can’t, or to pay for treatment for people who are uninsured
CHHS AND A WILSON COUNTY NONPROFIT COALITION RECENTLY PARTNERED TO ADDRESS OPIOID USE AND MISUSE IN THE RURAL COMMUNITIES OF THE MIDSTATE COUNTY THANKS TO A $1 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT.
or underinsured. The money also can be used to conduct “stigma-reduction activities.”
“So, for instance, I can sit here and talk to you all day about having high blood pressure or being a diabetic,” she said. “I could sit here and have that conversation comfortably with you. But I may not be able to sit here and say, ‘I have a substance use problem. I’m taking drugs illegally. . . . I keep trying to quit but I can’t. It’s impacting my work and my family.’ Those conversations aren’t as natural because there is a stigma associated with saying ‘I’ve got a substance use problem.’ That’s what we’re trying to counter, whether it’s mental health or substance use or something else.
“We’re trying to normalize it so that people understand it’s a disease and people need and deserve treatment for it. It shouldn’t be any different than any other physical condition.”
In 2004, Tennessee’s legislature mandated that every law enforcement officer, firefighter, and EMT in the state be taught how to investigate the death of an infant who dies with no obvious explanation.
Given that tall task, several divisions within the Tennessee Department of Health turned to well-known experts—MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services (CHHS)—to help fulfill it.
The best practices program CHHS created uses a “train-the-trainer” model, and now online training as well, to reach all 95 counties. To date, more than 27,000 emergency and municipal workers across the state have received this training, directly or indirectly, through CHHS.
Local health departments have better information about which neighborhoods are at high risk for sudden infant death. First responders are better equipped to assess a death scene and help families grieving the loss of a baby. And medical examiners get better information so they can find the true causes of deaths.
Chafin is busy expanding the opioids work to other counties, including partnering with the new Physician Assistant (PA) program at MTSU on a rural health and substance use grant.
“This will help them because we will get some of the PAs out into the communities,” Chafin said. She also may work with MTSU’s Concrete Industry Management program on a grant proposal.
“It’s all about physically connecting people who need public health services with the services,” Chafin said. “It analyzes an area’s infrastructure— roads, bridges, etc.—to support people being able to access health care and other services.”
That potential $3 million federal grant is a pilot program called Connecting Communities.
“What the project does is it takes a real community where, for whatever reason, the roads are not what they need to be, or where, for instance, if something happened to a bridge, it’s the only way out for these people to see their health care providers or get to other needed services or even to work . . . and it puts money into repair or rebuilding,” she said.
Additionally, Chafin is working on a grant proposal with the MTSU School of Nursing aimed at putting more nurses in the pipeline. “There’s huge turnover in that particular field,” she said.
Regardless of the project, each is a mammoth effort, Chafin said, and requires the help of a talented and tireless staff to make it happen.
“It takes a team to pull all of this off and to keep these grants going. There are so many hands here that touch each project. The whole team is involved in the success of this center,” she said.
Chafin’s life outside of work may not involve public health, but it does involve caring for others.
Chafin’s son is a meteorology student at Western Kentucky University. Her daughter attends MTSU and studies in the Recording Industry program.
Her husband, who now works for Nissan, has a lengthy history in IT including with music companies.
“I’m actually the only person in my house who has no musical talent,” Chafin said. “So I’m the audience for everyone, and I don’t mind being that.”
In addition to running a family, Chafin also is a selfdescribed physical fitness nut who does all kinds of activities in that area.
She’s also about to finish her doctorate at MTSU. “I really don’t have much of a personal life right now, but I will again,” she said.
Family, fitness, and her studies aside, about the only thing that rivals Chafin’s passion for public
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“I’m a cat collector,” she confessed. “I have more animals than I know what to do with. At any given time, the number can vary, but I’ve taken care of several colonies of feral cats. Not my choice, they just pick me. I’m a big animal lover.”
Chafin said she’s currently “down to five animals” but admits that number has “been up to 15.”
“But there are only three that are inside,” Chafin said. “The unofficial rule is if you have three or less inside, you are okay. Anything more than three, then you are starting to move into a different (i.e., crazy cat lady). Or so I’ve been told.”
Personally or professionally, Chafin’s motivations seem clear: She wants to help the otherwise helpless to survive and thrive.
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As a season ticket holder for the Tennessee Titans, the Nashville Predators, and now the Nashville Soccer Club, MTSU History Professor and State Historian Carroll Van West is a bona fide sports junkie.
To some, that’s all he is.
West recalls a recent time when a fellow season ticket holder at Bridgestone Arena brought a friend with him to the game. That friend happened to be a young historian.
“Do you know who this is sitting beside you?” the young historian asked his friend incredulously. “He’s a major Southern historian!”
“No he’s not,” the fellow fan responded. “He’s just Van. He knows everything about every team. He’s just a sports nerd.” Upon reflection, West agrees with the assessment.
“I think that’s right,” he said. “I am a sports nerd.”
Total funding:
million
But the young historian was right too. West is a major Southern historian, to say the least.
An MTSU History professor since 1985, West has served as director of MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation (CHP) since 2002. The center, MTSU’s first Center of Excellence and one of nine original centers at Tennessee Board of Regents universities, was established by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1982. West also serves as co-chair of the Tennessee Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission and as a Tennessee representative on the national board of advisors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He is a member of the National Historic Landmarks Commission of the National Park Advisory Board (appointed in 2019). In 2013, then-Gov. Bill Haslam appointed West as state historian, a position he continues to hold under Gov. Bill Lee.
Born in Murfreesboro, West had a love for history at a young age and was inspired by his parents’ interest in history—and willingness to drive to see it with their own eyes.
“My parents were the types of middle-class parents that took you places,” West said. “I had parents who liked history themselves and liked to go to places, my dad in particular. He wasn’t too big into reading books, but he liked to go to the places where history occurred and experience that, and my mother was largely the same way.”
Trips the family took included to the Civil War Centennial, to many Civil War battlefields including Gettysburg, and to Colonial Williamsburg.
West graduated from MTSU with a Bachelor of Arts in 1977 (and with a master’s from the University of Tennessee in 1978). After that, he actually moved to one of those historic places—Williamsburg— where he earned a Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary in 1982.
West’s imprint on historic preservation ever since has been nothing short of profound. An author of numerous books on history, West is even better known for known for the work he performs on field projects nationwide through the CHP. The work of the center is vast and continues to expand, administering millions in research dollars and saving history
before it’s too late. Projects span not only across the South but throughout the Midwest and into the Southwest. The focus is primarily on properties associated with the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War, rural areas, marginalized communities, and the Southern music industries.
Arguably the center’s biggest impact, though, has been on the communities of Tennessee—large and small, rural and urban—in developing and providing, at no charge in most cases, historic preservation plans, historic structure reports, heritage tourism plans, Main Street program assistance, National Register and survey projects, and a host of other related assistance.
The CHP also provides administrative and planning aid to many of Tennessee’s heritage organizations.
“Our community-anchored work drives everything at the Center for Historic Preservation,” West said.
With such a vast portfolio of work and so many lucrative grants, it would be impossible to explore all of them in a single article. (One example would be the $1.75 million grant brought in through the Library of Congress for a Teaching with Primary Sources program focused on the Civil War.) Asked to pinpoint one grant project that he believes had the most significant impact, West points to the work that began in 2001 when the CHP became the administrator of the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area (NHA), a private-public partnership with the National Park Service and the only NHA managed by a university.
During the ensuing two decades, CHP staff and students tirelessly worked to enhance the effectiveness of statewide Civil War interpretation, preservation, education, and heritage tourism efforts, effectively overseeing nearly $8.2 million in funds, including appropriations of $436,000 in fiscal year 2022. The program, housed at the center, is a go-to institution for communities, nonprofit groups, government officials, and property owners who wish to join the NHA's efforts to tell the state’s story of the Civil War.
“That is where we really have practiced what we preached,” West said.
They did so by going beyond battle descriptions and getting to the heart of the war’s impact on communities.
“It didn’t matter if I was in a rural Black community or an upper-class white community, everyone would always come back to the impact of the war on families, the impact on the home front,” West said. “And then, of course, for the Black communities, emancipation is the start of most of their community-building.”
Tennessee has clearly benefitted from the CHP, but the center’s geographic scope has significantly expanded in the 21st century.
The center first entered the national arena when forming a longstanding relationship with the National Park Service—celebrating 20 years of working together in 2022. More recently, the CHP tackled the job of identifying and documenting historic buildings associated with the first half of the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail. The Mormon Trail is a continuation of the center’s involvement with the development of the Trail
of Tears National Historic Trail and the Santa Fe National Historic Trail.
During the first half of 2021, the CHP also took a national leadership role in the preservation of famous sites associated with 20th-century American popular music. King Studios in Cincinnati (where James Brown recorded) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and steps are underway to add Nashville's Exit/In music club. West’s most recent National Register nominations include RCA Studio A in Nashville; FAME Studio (co-authored) in Muscle Shoals, Alabama; and King Studios (co-authored with MTSU’s Charlie Dahan). These projects—both home and away—not only enhance education and economic opportunities in Tennessee. Along the way, M.A. and Ph.D. students in Public History (the MTSU doctorate program is one of only six in the nation) have worked alongside West and his staff, gaining real-world historic preservation experience and a competitive edge in the workforce.
“There is no better way to learn history and develop a passion for it than to go put your hands on it,” West said.
Among MTSU’s most celebrated historic preservation graduates is David J. Brown, chief
preservation officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Other alums holding highprofile positions include Blythe Semmer (’98) at the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and Jeff Durbin (’89) at the National Park Service.
Students are still the focus of MTSU’s prestigious place in the world of historic preservation and are—and, in fact, steering it in new and needed directions.
“Students today see the world in broader terms than my generation did,” West said. “Not only do they ‘stretch’ us in that their ideas, needs, and goals are different from those of a generation ago, but they also come with that 21st-century skill in communication, research design, and community outcomes.”
Mirroring the new perspectives of those students, the CHP has evolved through the years to better reflect the experience of history by all witnesses— including marginalized communities.
As an example, one of West’s major statewide rural preservation projects is the Rural African American Church Survey, which has engaged congregations large and small in the preservation and heritage development of these extraordinary properties. Additionally, the team has fielded increasing requests for assistance with the African American Civil War story, especially with cemeteries that date to the pre-Civil War period or time of Reconstruction.
It’s projects exactly like these, West said, that motivate him to keep working despite his lengthy history of success in the field. When he first started getting inquiries from Black communities and marginalized groups asking for help, he said, his fire for the profession was relit. It began with groups in Birmingham, Alabama, asking him for help with their Civil Rights story. Later, the Cherokees and the National Park Service came knocking about the Trail of Tears.
“And I thought, well, if you’re going to do history right, you want to tell all of the stories,” West said. “So, that really sort of galvanized me these last 20 years, these community projects.
“I see that as a service. It’s a privilege to be asked, and I thoroughly enjoy it. I learn so much.”
In what he predicts will be his final years of service at the center, West wants to get back to his roots— specifically to working with the state Department of Agriculture on what’s called the Century Farms program, one of the CHP’s earliest initiatives.
IT DIDN’T MATTER IF I WAS IN A RURAL BLACK COMMUNITY OR AN UPPERCLASS WHITE COMMUNITY, EVERYONE WOULD ALWAYS COME BACK TO THE IMPACT OF THE WAR ON FAMILIES.
Starting in 1985, CHP staff began managing the program to identify, document, and recognize farms that have been in the same families continuously for at least 100 years. The ongoing research has certified more than 1,500 Century Farms scattered across Tennessee’s 95 counties. In addition to honoring these farms and families, the program allows the center to collect information to interpret the agrarian history and culture of the state and provides learning opportunities for MTSU student research assistants. The initiative has become a model for other states.
West’s eventual retirement will no doubt be filled with family, music, and sports.
West is married to MTSU Associate Provost Mary Hoffschwelle, herself an expert in the history of education in the rural South in the early 20th century and in Southern women’s history.
Hoffschwelle and West met during the late 1970s in Virginia when she was finishing her master’s and he was working on his doctorate at William and Mary. They actually met at Colonial Williamsburg, where West was giving tours on weekends and in summers and she was working in history site administration.
They married in 1980 and moved to Murfreesboro in 1985 when West accepted the CHP post. Hoffschwelle became director at Oaklands Mansion and earned her doctorate from Vanderbilt.
West and Hoffschwelle enjoy music of all kinds, including MTSU’s WMOT Roots Radio, country, symphonies, and opera. And West loved some punk back in the day. They have season tickets to the Nashville Opera and the Nashville Symphony, in addition to their Titans, Predators, and Nashville SC tickets.
They have a son, Owen, 32, and a daughter, Sara, 25, and became grandparents with the birth of Owen’s daughter, Olivia, now 4.
It seems along the way to preserving American history, West made a little history of his own.
MTSU’s Ph.D. in Public History and M.A. historic preservation track teach students skills to preserve the public memory, cultural identity, and valuable architecture in their communities.
Doctoral candidates may specialize in historic preservation, cultural resource management, museum management, archival management, oral history, or public archaeology.
• First Public History doctorate in U.S.
• Yearlong residency in professional practice
• Partnerships with the Center for Historic Preservation, Center for Popular Music, Albert Gore Research Center, and Walker Library Media Studio
• Graduate assistantships available at Ph.D. and M.A. levels
Gain real-world experience working with professionals at historic sites.
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Article by Drew Ruble
Total funding:
Decades of research shows that children’s earliest experiences play a critical role in brain development.
According to the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, neural circuits, which create the foundation for learning, behavior, and health, are most flexible or “plastic” during the first three years of life. Over time, they become increasingly difficult to change.
Children with developmental delays or disabilities are particularly vulnerable if cognitive and language skills aren’t addressed early on. For them, high-quality early intervention services from seasoned education specialists boost their quality of life.
Robyn Ridgley, associate dean and professor in the MTSU College of Education, started her career as a special education teacher, working to manifest exactly those types of improved outcomes for such students.
“I was dual licensed in Kentucky to be a special education or elementary education teacher. So my first job out of school was in a rural elementary school in western Kentucky, and I worked primarily with children who had language delays,” she said. Ridgley quickly learned that a good college program only prepares you so well for the obstacles you face on the job.
“That’s true for most teachers,” she said. “You learn pretty quickly that your training is good. It supports you. But there are so many other things you need to learn, and that’s how I felt after about a year and a half working in this elementary school, just trying to make my way.”
She decided to go back to school to get her master’s, attending Vanderbilt University, which offered an inclusive early childhood program for children and families in the community. With her special education bachelor’s degree already in hand, Ridgley was able to both work and study at Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and Human Development.
“The combination of working with young elementary children with language delays and then working in this early childhood program—it really fueled my interest, and I learned very quickly that that’s what I enjoyed,” Ridgley said. “I enjoyed working with children in the context of their families and thinking about them in the broader sense, not just when they’re at school.”
Ridgley later added a doctorate from the University of Kentucky to her growing résumé. She joined the MTSU faculty in 2005 and soon found herself at the heart of an exciting new early childhood initiative.
In 2010, Lana Seivers, then dean of MTSU’s College of Education (and a former Tennessee commissioner of education), became aware that the state planned to rethink how it provided early intervention services. Seivers knew the state was looking for new entities to apply for funding to provide such services to children and families in Tennessee.
“Because of her connections to the state, we were made aware of it and got the opportunity to apply for that very first grant,” Ridgley explained. “She was the principal investigator at first. However, I was heavily involved because my background was in that work.”
The result of the grant was the formation of the MTSU Home and Community-Based Early Intervention (HCBEI) Program providing early
intervention (sometimes identified as developmental therapy) to children from birth to 3 years old who have been diagnosed with a developmental delay or disability and qualify for services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The program is free to children and families who qualify.
Through HCBEI, MTSU’s team of degreed and experienced early interventionists travel to homes or other sites in the community to work with infants and toddlers with special needs and their families, child care providers, and other therapists. They educate and support children and families so they can take advantage of each child’s critical period for learning, growth, and development. They provide support as outlined on the family’s Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP). They also participate in IFSP meetings, complete visits together, and exchange information about strategies for helping children.
This MTSU program provides developmental therapy services to children who reside in Rutherford, Williamson, and Maury counties.
Ridgley fondly recalls the earliest days of the massive grant implementation, as she was responsible for all of the initial organization, preparation, planning, and hiring.
“It really connected me back to the work that attracted me to higher education to begin with,” she said.
“For me, I had always had this vision that I would be able to make the world a better place. That I would be able to help children and families. This gave me that opportunity to create a program. . . . and train people and support others.”
Ridgley continued in the role as principal investigator (PI) of the grant for 10 years. She has since changed her role at the University, and now Connie Casha, director of Early Learning programs in the College of Education, serves as PI of the service grant. What remains the same is that the funding goes directly to providing services to support young children and their families in the area.
MTSU’S TEAM OF DEGREED AND EXPERIENCED EARLY INTERVENTIONISTS TRAVEL TO HOMES OR OTHER SITES IN THE COMMUNITY TO WORK WITH INFANTS AND TODDLERS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS AND THEIR FAMILIES, CHILD CARE PROVIDERS, AND/OR OTHER THERAPISTS.
Programs like MTSU’s have dramatically improved the lives of developmentally disabled children and their families in Murfreesboro and the surrounding area. Ridgley is proud of the work occurring at MTSU and across the nation in special education but said there is always room for improvement.
Early intervention for young children with developmental delays “varies depending on where you live,” Ridgley said, “and what kind of services and supports are available to children and families in the community. We’ve made so many strides over the years. . . . We have funding that supports so many programs that are guaranteed for families if their children are eligible. . . . But we also know there are families and young children who still aren’t getting adequate support.”
What would Ridgley do if she could wave a magic wand to improve conditions in the field?
“I think, in the field, generally, we are slow to adopt practices that are research-based and evidencebased. There’s this research-to-practice gap, and it’s been in existence for a long time.”
Take literacy and reading, for example. It’s taken a while for professionals in the field to start implementing what academia now knows are highquality, evidence-based literacy practices.
“That’s true in all fields, including early childhood education,” Ridgley said. “There are old practices that we hang on to, because we think they are good, but they may not be tied to what has been proven to work.
“If I could do anything, I think changing that mindset would have the largest impact on outcomes for children. . . . Moving from what we know will be effective to actually implementing effective practice I think would be helpful to the field.”
Ridgley deflects efforts to hoist too much credit on her shoulders for the exponential impact the MTSU grant has had on children and families.
“I think the people who deserve the credit are the folks out there every single day doing the work. They produce the greatest impact. They see the progress that happens over time. They see how families eventually don’t need their services anymore, and that’s huge.
Speaking of those people doing the day-to-day work, Ridgley forcefully defends educators and the teaching profession, which have come under attack in the past year.
IF WE WERE TO QUIT FIGHTING, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO OUR COMMUNITIES? IF WE DON’T HAVE PEOPLE WHO ARE TRAINED TO BE TEACHERS, IF WE AREN’T INVESTING IN THE TIME TO RECRUIT AND TO TRAIN THEM WELL, WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO OUR COMMUNITIES?
“Teachers are working harder now than they’ve ever worked. . . . This is evident when I spend time in schools. Go and see what’s happening, and if you do that, you start to see all of the things that teachers do every day.
“That’s not to say there aren’t teachers that could do better. It’s not to say that there aren’t schools that could improve. We know that’s forever going to be the case. It is a human profession in which professionals must always learn and grow.
“We just have to figure out how to share the message of what the reality is. Tell what’s really happening with children and families and teachers. Celebrate the work they’re doing. . . . It’s important that when we get the opportunity to highlight positive things that are happening and the meaningful work that’s going on, we need to tell it.”
Such a strong belief in teaching and teachers is what Ridgley said keeps her motivated to continue working hard, raising grant dollars, and implementing new best practices.
“If we were to quit fighting, what would happen to our communities? If we don’t have people who are trained to be teachers, if we aren’t investing in the time to recruit and to train them well, what will happen to our communities? We've got to keep fighting.”
Considering the gravity of Ridgley’s work, it’s no wonder she makes time to decompress, set aside her work, and focus on refilling her tank.
“I’m a reader,” Ridgley said. “I read all the time. That’s what I choose to do if I’m not working or busy.”
When interviewed, Ridgley said she was reading The Lincoln Highway , a novel by Amor Towles about two brothers who set off from their failed family farm in Nebraska intending to start a new life in California.
“It’s just easy fiction,” Ridgley said. “A good story.”
Ridgley’s own journey as a special education teacher who has had a huge impact on young children and families in our community through her grant activities makes for a pretty good story as well.
I HAD ALWAYS HAD THIS VISION THAT I WOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. THAT I WOULD BE ABLE TO HELP CHILDREN AND FAMILIES.
Started as a teacher’s college over a century ago, MTSU still helps teachers, education leaders, counselors, and librarians shape the lives of future generations.
Advance your career with these graduate programs:
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Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
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Total funding: $7.1 million
Inspired by Jacques Cousteau’s aquatic adventures and other PBS nature shows on the four TV channels he watched in childhood, Anthony “Tony” Farone wanted to become a wildlife or outdoor biologist one day. But, as his interest and knowledge in the subject advanced during high school and college in Pennsylvania, he noticed how much cancer was affecting the extended family of his parents, who grew up during the Depression era.
“I realized that there were a lot of these older folks in our family who were getting cancer and dying of cancer,” the MTSU Biology research professor said, “and it kind of switched my biology focus to where I am now with a more medically related emphasis.”
While most of his cousins worked at steel mills or in factories and wondered when he would get a real job—“they couldn’t get over that I was still in school”—Farone not only was one of the few in his family to attend college, but also continued on to grad school and a Ph.D.
“When I was in college at Penn State, my mother’s brother had pancreatic cancer and he was very sick, and he thought that I could find a cure for him by the time I finished this graduate school thing. Whenever I would see him, home from college, he always would tell me to hurry up,” Farone recalled. “Obviously, President Biden still has this cancer moonshot, all those sorts of things, so it’s a complicated problem. It’s been interesting to learn about, and obviously I spent a lot of years on it.”
Article by Carol Stuart Photo by Andy HeidtThat included three years of postdoctoral research in the esteemed labs at Harvard University after completing his master’s and doctoral degrees at Miami University in Ohio, where he and wife Mary, also an MTSU Biology professor, “met under a microscope.”
“We’ve worked together pretty much ever since,” Farone said.
The couple had never heard of MTSU until he saw a faculty position open up, and they decided to move south with their baby in 1995. Tony Farone’s career at MTSU, as well as his wife’s as she wended her own way, have followed the arc of the growth of the science and research programs—and certainly played a role in that trajectory as well.
They also underwent their own personal journey with cancer when that baby, Grace, the oldest of their four children, was diagnosed with a sarcoma as a high school freshman.
Before relocating for Tony’s faculty job—and closer proximity to Mary’s family in Kentucky—the Farones both had promising research careers with Harvard post-doc fellowships.
“That pretty much is as good as it gets researchwise,” he said about his Harvard days. “But I had always enjoyed working with undergraduates and other students.”
When accepting the faculty position, Tony Farone had been guaranteed a mobile home-type facility to use mice in his laboratory work as part of a grant proposal both Farones had written— perhaps the first National Institutes of Health application at MTSU. He had started immunotherapy work during his doctoral program, using reovirus and low-dose chemotherapy to stimulate the immune response to leukemia in mice.
The planned portable animal facility was scrapped due to cost, however, so Farone pivoted to in vitro research since the couple had already bought a house. His wife soon joined him on campus and shared a small office with him,
taking over a counter in his space closer to the lab than her first office—until the 250,000-squarefoot Science Building opened in 2014.
Along the way, as Tony worked on major grant projects, often in partnership with Mary as well as other researchers, the University added three science Ph.D. programs including the Molecular Biosciences doctorate. MTSU also achieved the recent R2 designation (high research activity) and constructed the state-of-the-art Science Building, where the couple now has adjacent quarters. That new building was supposedly nearing reality when Tony Farone was hired, but the Molecular Biosciences doctorate helped put the project back on the drawing board.
“We really planned the building like three different times,” he said.
FARONE’S CAREER AT MTSU . . . FOLLOWED THE ARC OF THE GROWTH OF THE SCIENCE AND RESEARCH PROGRAMS—AND CERTAINLY PLAYED A ROLE IN THAT TRAJECTORY.
Farone’s research, focusing on the interaction between the immune system and pathogens, now helps support Ph.D. students in that program and is attached to MTSU’s Tennessee Center for Botanical Medicine Research. The interdisciplinary center works to develop drugs from botanicals and natural compounds that have anti-cancer, anti-viral, anti-parasitic, and anti-inflammatory activity to help combat conditions such as cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn’s disease. Farone has received three patents in his quest to invent new immunotherapeutics.
One of Tony’s (and Mary’s) big breakthroughs, in 2015, was actually part of a major Environmental Protection Agency-funded project in the wake of the famous Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in a Philadelphia hotel in 1976. As one of their first grants, he started working with MTSU researcher Anthony Newsome since Legionella pneumophilia usually affects lung macrophages, a type of immune cells and Tony’s area of expertise, and he had Mary help revise that grant written by Newsome and Tennessee Technological University colleagues. Prior to her joining the MTSU faculty full time, he then brought Mary aboard as a technician to help collect water samples on a second grant project, where they were looking for the prevalence of the organism in natural environments versus constructed environments.
In 2015 the team discovered a new genus of bacteria taken from samples collected years before. Two new species were identified in the MTSU lab, named Candidatus Berkiella aquae and Candidatus Berkiella cookevillensis after research partner Sharon Berk and Cookeville, where they were found in a cooling tower and a hot tub.
“That was my role to find them, and then his role was to see if they infected human macrophages,” said Mary Farone, whose expertise is in viruses— Legionella bacteria infect cells similarly to viruses.
One of the samples collected by the Tech team indeed did so—and, in fact, infected the nucleus, which was extremely unusual, and replicated.
“We had isolated these samples in 1999, and it wasn’t until really just recently that we were able to identify this new genus of bacteria—like those Jacques Cousteau kind of documentaries that we used to watch growing up where you would find this whole new kind of sea life at the bottom of the ocean,” Tony Farone said. “. . . It’s really that different of a bacteria.”
It was a monumental discovery at MTSU, one in which University researchers—and around a dozen students—played a prominent role. They hope genetic assessments may lead to how it’s getting into the nucleus and thereby figure out how to take a treatment inside a cancer cell.
An outgoing guy, Tony Farone also made other connections early on that boosted his research— and that of MTSU’s Biology Department. For one, he reached out to a Vanderbilt virologist, attended that researcher’s lab group meetings, and collaborated on a couple of projects together.
On another of his grant projects, the $3 million GK–12 National Science Foundation award from 2009 to 2016, Farone made connections with classroom teachers, industry partners, and Chilean and Puerto Rican universities and students. That project involved educational rather than lab research.
“I think I was in every office on campus that related to money or contracts, budget, auditing—oh, man, it was complicated,” Farone said. “My mom’s penmanship was perfect, and she was so disappointed that I had signed my name so many times that it just became a squiggle.”
While his laboratory work and grants regularly support stipends for doctoral as well as master’s and undergraduate students, this project provided around $30,000 apiece for 30 grad students to conduct research and teach in area high schools. He also had to persuade other MTSU faculty to part with researchers to work on the project.
During this period a decade ago, a tumor developed on then-teenage daughter Grace’s hand. It was a heartbreaking and helpless time for the two scientist parents. The Farones couldn’t believe how toxic chemotherapy agents still were—treatments more than 50 years old. Although Tony had continued along that research path some, he had steered more toward infectious agents after arriving at MTSU and having to take a detour without his lab mice. Even powerhouses in the field had been unable to affect the available treatments for Grace, and the research couple felt powerless.
“She came out of it really well thanks to Vanderbilt and the children’s hospital. That was probably the roughest situation we had to go through,” Tony Farone said.
“I always tell the story to my students that we both lost our hair, but hers came back.”
Grace went on to graduate from MTSU’s Dietetics program, became a dietitian at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and now has a daughter of her own.
For a family who hadn’t heard of MTSU, they’re almost totally True Blue now. Second daughter Cate received a Buchanan Fellowship before earning her bachelor’s at MTSU and now studies law at Belmont, while oldest son Danny is a Data Science major serving an internship at the University’s Data Science Institute. The youngest, Dominic, a high school junior, may be headed to campus to pursue a Chemistry or Biochemistry degree.
“I’m just blown away by how good our faculty is,” Mary said.
The Farones couldn’t help but bring work home, discussing students and research over the dinner table, although they tried to limit it when the children were younger. And they often worked after the kids went to bed, with Mary especially turning into a night owl and Tony taking the morning shift to get the children to school.
WE WERE ABLE TO IDENTIFY THIS NEW GENUS OF BACTERIA—LIKE THOSE JACQUES COUSTEAU KIND OF DOCUMENTARIES . . . WHERE YOU WOULD FIND THIS WHOLE NEW KIND OF SEA LIFE.
Family is obviously important to Tony Farone, an only child whose 94-year-old mother has lived with them since the early 2000s and helped with the children and the cooking as a “support system behind the scenes.” Inspired by his southern Italian heritage and his mother’s dishes, Tony often cooks meals for the family, with Grace and his first grandchild, Emma, who live next door, joining them when his son-in-law works nursing shifts.
Farone also helped with his children’s scouting activities, including serving as a Cub Scout leader. And his passion for model trains, kindled as a kid after inheriting a family train set, has been handed down to the next generation and, soon, to the newest one.
“It went into storage for about 20 years until we moved to our current home in Murfreesboro that also has a basement,” he said. “We set up my current Polar Express layout with my four kids as they grew up, during the break between fall and spring semesters. Now, my granddaughter and I get to enjoy it together.”
And that’s what he values—family time—whether it’s working with his wife in the lab to find a cure, cooking up meals, or turning on the train track.
The Molecular Biosciences Ph.D. interdisciplinary program focuses on biological problems at the molecular level using a research-oriented course of study.
Graduates have accepted post-doctoral fellowships and internships at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, National Science Foundation, Virginia Tech Center for Drug Discovery, and Procter & Gamble, among others.
• Numerous lab opportunities in the $147 million Science Corridor of Innovation
• Research and teaching assistantships available on a competitive basis
• May apply up to 16 hours of previous master’s-level coursework to 65hour degree
• Faculty come from biology, chemistry, math, and agriculture disciplines
Engage in bench research with mentors and conduct independent investigation.
Jan. 31: Fall (to be considered for graduate assistantships)
Sept. 30: Spring admission
Few if any professors on the MTSU campus have the kind of True Blue ties that Mathematics Professor Mary Martin possesses.
Martin’s mother taught on the MTSU campus in the College of Education and for almost a decade was graduate school dean.
“So I was on the MTSU campus pre-college and through college,” said Martin, a 1984 alumna of the University.
“I wasn’t born in Murfreesboro, but I grew up here.”
Following her graduation from MTSU, Martin went to graduate school at the University of North Carolina. Her first job out of college was at Colgate University in New York.
“That was a wonderful job, but it was too far away and too cold,” said Martin, who then relocated back south to Winthrop University in South Carolina as a math professor and director of the Honors program. She eventually returned to her alma mater as a faculty member in 1998.
Total funding: $7.04 million
A lot has changed at MTSU since her return to campus 24 years ago, not to mention since she was a kid walking the campus with her mother in the 1970s.
“I remember one day a couple of years ago, I came walking out of one of the buildings and I had to pause a moment to orient myself as to where I was, because everything in sight was brand new,” she said. “I’m very proud of how the University has grown, and I think that’s one thing that feeds my determination is that I know what MTSU can do. I’ve seen what it has done personally with my own eyes. I’m very grateful to MTSU for my undergraduate degree and the high level of instruction I received at the time.
Article by Drew Ruble“You can come out of MTSU with absolutely the best degree possible in the world. MTSU has the resources, and if you maximize them, you can go as far as you want to go.”
Martin has contributed to MTSU’s growth in profound ways as one of the most prolific grant writers on the faculty, penning (with her peers) proposals that have resulted in millions of
dollars in funding coming to the MTSU campus for math- and teaching-related endeavors. She also helped steer MTSU’s mathematics program to become the diverse and modern program it is today, with connections reaching into many of the most relevant degree programs on campus.
Martin personifies the old adage that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Her expertise—math and teacher education— strongly resembles the professional talents possessed by her aforementioned mother as well as her father, an electrical engineer who worked for
Westinghouse troubleshooting obstacles on interstate and coal mine projects.
“He was a technical person,” Martin said. “A problem-solving type person.”
That’s a skill at the heart of the complex mathematics Martin teaches.
The study of math has evolved considerably since Martin’s re-arrival on campus in 1998. MTSU’s Mathematical Sciences Department now supports three Ph.D. programs that are significantly math— none of which qualifies as pure math. There’s computational math, which is applied math; math education—Martin’s grant-writing focus—which develops innovative teaching strategies; and data science, a new field and current darling of industry.
“The Ph.D. programs are aimed at new science,” Martin said. “The intersection of two or more fields. It’s math and education. It’s math and computation. It’s math and data analysis. That’s where all the new science comes from, and the reason it comes about is because of partnerships. Ideas and fields of study merge into a new kind of material. And that is very exciting. It’s also where you get a lot of new results.”
Take linear algebra, for instance, which is a course Martin teaches. Developed by physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and economists, the field evolved when those various interests realized they were working on the same problems in their respective silos. Together, they developed a new structure.
“In my linear algebra classes now, I have Computer Science majors, Mechatronics Engineering majors, Mathematics majors, Physics majors, and Economics majors,” Martin said. “I’ve also had a couple of Accounting majors and Data Science majors. And they’re all there for a different reason.
“Those are the people that are going to be doing research quickly because they’re going back to their own fields and taking this computational technique to apply to the problems they’re trying to solve.”
The MTSU math department has served as the springboard and support system for all of these new and popular degree programs. These new lines of study are not just tentative connections anymore, Martin said. They’re more like “muscle and bone
connections” to traditional math studies, which have transformed how the math department views itself (and how the University views the math department.)
“Think of the math department as having spider web connections to all these different branches of mathematics,” Martin explained. “You’re pulling tendrils and major support structure from all these different ancillary pieces, and that is where science is growing.
“So the math department isn’t getting math majors only. . . . The sign of a good, well-developed, modern math department is this growth into these other areas, which takes away from your primary visibility, but not the strength of the structure nor the necessity for the structure.”
In support of such studies, Martin is the primary investigator behind millions in federal grants coming to MTSU to support math teacher training, preparation, and student support.
“The earliest grants were used to make sure that teachers were up to speed on best practices, doing cross-disciplinary activities in math and science, especially for students going through the middle school to high school transition, which is where you lose a lot of STEM students . . . due to the level of rigor in mathematics,” Martin said. “We were raising the intuition and perspective of the teachers, who could then teach and help students get over those stumbling blocks.”
Martin estimates those early grants impacted more than 6,000 teachers over a three-year period.
Figuring that each of those 6,000 teachers spent just five years in the field, and worked with a mere 100 students each, those grants impacted (minimally) tens of thousands of individual students.
“That’s a really big impact,” Martin said. “And all of these teachers were in Tennessee. We worked with teachers from every county in the state.”
An example of a more recent grant Martin acquired (worth $1.5 million in federal dollars) is called an Upward Bound grant, serving the needs of students
in 10th grade through their transition to college. This particular project is focused not so much on math, but rather on getting students graduated and prepared for college (meaning activities like tutoring and paperwork preparation assistance).
Multimillion dollar grants like the ones Martin has captured through the years aren’t just lying around on the ground waiting to be scooped up. Landing them requires incredible amounts of time and expertise, and there’s a lot of competition.
“You’ve got to make sure that you’re ready to go before you even hear about the funding, because by the time you hear about the funding for something like an Upward Bound grant, you’ll maybe
have two months to write a 600- to 1,000-page document that’s full of data and tightly constructed to meet every guideline,” she said. Given her status as a leader in her field, Martin commonly cultivates great opportunities that can benefit MTSU. The $1.5 million Upward Bound grant serves as an example, as Martin landed the grant through a relationship and synergy that she built with the Texas Instruments Educational Foundation.
“I had done two or three regional and two national training sessions for them, where they teach teachers about what’s coming out next on their equipment,” Martin explained. “So they said, ‘You know, you’ve hosted these workshops for us—we’d like to help you and get a grant writer to work with you who has experience with Upward Bound.’ ” Such an incredible offer dramatically cut the time Martin needed to write the grant, allowing her to focus on plugging in the local information and forging a partnership with the MTSU Office of Student Success to optimize the proposal.
Even with a big head start, Martin stressed that she relies on a team of grant writers, budget specialists, and other highly trained educators campuswide.
“I am so grateful to everyone who ever worked on a grant with me. And there are a lot of them at MTSU,” Martin said. “Especially when you get tired or your class schedule heats up or your grading load gets really deep, someone else on the team can keep things moving forward. Success breeds success, Martin said. Winning a big grant like the Upward Bound grant makes things a little less daunting going forward.
“Upward Bound stacks toward the experienced,” she explained. “So now we’re in the experienced category, which means keeping this grant will be easier than getting the first one.”
With so much accomplished, what keeps Martin working so hard to secure new opportunities? Martin said math education is desperately needed, and she can’t fathom resting on her laurels.
“When Texas Instruments said that they would help me, I went looking at some of the data, and some of the data is so appallingly bad,” Martin said. “The graduation proficiency of students in mathematics in some of the affected schools is 12%. That means 12% of the students who graduate from some of those high schools actually are successful to be baseline math students—not advanced, not super proficient—they just made the baseline.”
Despite her ongoing and time-consuming mission to improve math education, Martin nevertheless made time to serve a recent term as the faculty
THE SIGN OF A GOOD, WELLDEVELOPED MODERN MATH DEPARTMENT IS THIS GROWTH INTO THESE OTHER AREAS.
representative to the MTSU Board of Trustees, the University’s governing body.
“I know what MTSU is capable of,” Martin said. “I’m very passionate about doing whatever I can from my position as a faculty member to continue to support its growth and success.”
Martin acknowledges that her service to the Board of Trustees required a reallocation of her work focus since time is finite.
“I have an incredible team that makes my work possible,” Martin said. “They are always there, telling me, ‘I need this data,’ so I could rearrange my schedule like puzzle pieces to get the information needed so that I didn’t slow the project down. I could trust them to continue to build the puzzle, to construct the grant, as long as I kept feeding it.”
So, what does Martin like to do with the few spare hours she does have to herself?
“I knit. I crochet. I do eight different kinds of embroidery,” said the math-minded Martin (who also sings in her church choir).
Actually, Martin works on 12 types of needlework: cross-stitch, needlepoint, drawn thread, hardanger, classic embroidery, Berlin work (a type of needlepoint), bargello, blackwork, beaded embroidery, crewel, Japanese rozashi, and Hungarian embroidery. And that’s in addition to yarn work, including crochet, knitting, and macrame.
The seasoned knitter has used a similarly hands-on approach to teaching and grant writing, weaving together an impressive list of accomplishments.
MTSU’s Mathematics and Science Education Ph.D. offers opportunities to improve the way science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses are taught.
This program prepares graduates for leadership in education settings, including conducting discipline-based research at the college level and preparing America’s next generation of K–12 math and science teachers.
• Biological Education
• Chemical Education
• Interdisciplinary Science Education
• Mathematics Education
Conduct research with cutting-edge work in STEM education.
IDEAS AND FIELDS OF STUDY MERGE INTO A NEW KIND OF MATERIAL. AND THAT IS VERY EXCITING. IT’S ALSO WHERE YOU GET A LOT OF NEW RESULTS.
For Raphael Bundage, an MTSU professor in the School of Music, director of choral activities, and longtime director of the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, music began as a family affair.
Bundage’s father, a Methodist (AME) minister (who also taught chemistry at Jarvis Christian College), sang bass in a high school quartet. His mother, an English teacher, was a wonderful singer herself. One of his sisters sang opera. Another played violin. His brother played trumpet. Even his paternal grandmother played guitar.
“When I was very young, we stayed in the manse of the church,” said Bundage, a native Texan. “At family gatherings, especially around the holidays, well, those days were filled with carols around the home and at the church.
“When I was old enough to play some carols on piano, we would sing together. We still do that. We still do that and sing as a family.”
million
Music, as the expression goes, was in his blood. His direction in life was clear. One visceral memory Bundage has of the family piano perhaps best exemplifies this passion.
“As a kid, I would gnaw at the keyboard,” Bundage said. “There were teeth marks on the piano. I so wanted to be close to the music.”
Bundage sang in school choirs from elementary school through high school. His earliest taste of conducting came in high school when he got to conduct a vocal ensemble of 14 high school singers called the Songmates.
A musician as well, Bundage played in the high school band and had an extracurricular band called the Dynamics—a group on the order of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. The Dynamics would play for dances at the National Guard armories in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, among other venues.
“On weekends, I played at the Italian Inn in Fort Worth, where I accompanied waiters who sang Italian art songs and Broadway hits,” Bundage said, referencing the 1950s eatery that proudly advertised “no hamburgers, no bar-b-q” in Cowtown, U.S.A. “We played pianos. Got tips.”
All of these formative years in Bundage’s life encompassed the time of Elvis, the British Invasion, and psychedelic rock. But pop music didn’t interest Bundage much. It was choral music that attracted his interest. In addition to the wonderful piano faculty, TCU also had fabulous choral music.
“I got to conduct those choral ensembles,” he said. “In those days, they had weekly chapel services, and undergraduates could conduct the choirs. I also got to conduct the prestigious TCU A Cappella choir.”
Bundage followed that up as director of the Eastman Chamber Chorus and assistant director of the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Chorus while earning his master's and doctorate at the Eastman Conservatory of Music in New York.
Bundage’s professional career began as a supervisor of choral music in the Texas public school system.
“Some of the best choral music in Texas was along the Rio Grande Valley,” Bundage said. “I taught junior high and high school in the border town of Edinburg from 1976 to 1982. . . . It was some of the best choral singing I’ve ever heard.”
Years later, as a college student in the 1970s, Bundage would famously perform in another band—the pep band for the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys. Bundage played both clarinet and tenor saxophone at all the home games for several years. He loved the music but wasn’t much of a football fan, admitting he brought a book to the games to read between songs.
After graduating with honors from high school in Fort Worth, Bundage was accepted to Texas Christian University’s School of Music.
“They were known for several things,” Bundage said. “Theory, music history, and the International Van Cliburn Piano Competition every four years.”
A few years later, in 1985, he came to MTSU as a professor in the School of Music. How did he find MTSU from deep in the heart of Texas? Well, it started with a job tip from a teacher Bundage knew at MTSU. It ended with the strong recommendation of his mentor to take the position he was offered, for various strategic reasons.
American musicologist Alfred Mann, who specialized in the history of Western musical theory and was a professor at Eastman, convinced Bundage that MTSU would make for a wonderful start to his college teaching career.
Mann also liked Murfreesboro’s proximity to Atlanta, where his colleague Robert Shaw—an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus—was located. Shaw also was renowned for his support for racial integration in his choruses and his support for modern music.
AS A KID, I WOULD GNAW AT THE KEYBOARD. . . . I SO WANTED TO BE CLOSE TO THE MUSIC.
“Once in Murfreesboro, I would travel to Atlanta and sing in Shaw’s Atlanta Symphony Chorus, and I would stay over and have private lessons in his home. This was essentially a post-doc position.” Back home in Murfreesboro, Bundage turned his MTSU position and rising profile into formidable positions like chorus master of the Nashville Opera Association and Nashville Symphony Chorus, conducting choruses for several seasons under the late maestro Kenneth Schermerhorn, who led the Grammy-winning Nashville Symphony for 22 years. Today, Bundage is a frequent clinician and adjudicator in the choral field.
Such a storied background in choral music makes Bundage a great professor. But it also made him the perfect fit to direct one of MTSU’s most prestigious—and lucrative—grant programs.
For more than a decade, from 2010 to 2021, Bundage served as the primary investigator (PI) on the nearly half-million-dollar annual Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts (GSFTA) grant— and served as the program’s director.
For the past 38 years, the GSFTA, hosted by MTSU’s College of Liberal Arts, has been a tool for the education, training, and development of gifted high school students in Tennessee. The pre-professional summer curriculum includes individual and group instruction designed to help each rising 11th- and 12th-grade student explore and develop talents in music, ballet, theater, filmmaking, or visual arts over three weeks.
Students apply or are nominated by their teachers and competitively audition or present portfolios of their work. When they’re accepted, they come to MTSU for days filled with workshops and presentations and master classes and rehearsals and guest lectures and field trips and concerts— and evenings that are much of the same.
As host for the Governor’s School for the Arts, MTSU awards scholarships with Tennessee Department of Education grants to help students with program fees, allowing them to take advantage of this unforgettable on-campus experience.
MTSU is the oldest of the Governor’s Schools, serving as the pilot when the state established summer programs for young people in arts, engineering, and international studies—one for each of Tennessee’s three grand divisions. Boasting nearly 10,000 alumni, the arts program is also the largest of the 11 different Governor’s Schools now sponsored annually across the state, ranging from agricultural sciences to teaching.
In the summer of 1985, the same year Bundage arrived on campus, MTSU hosted the first Governor’s School for the Arts with
SUCH A STORIED BACKGROUND IN CHORAL MUSIC . . . MADE HIM THE PERFECT FIT TO DIRECT ONE OF MTSU’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS—AND LUCRATIVE—GRANT PROGRAMS.
90 orchestral students. The following year, the program was expanded to include wind ensemble, vocal music, theater, and visual arts. Dance was added in 1987, and filmmaking in 2009.
Since 1985, more than 7,000 of Tennessee’s gifted and talented students have been afforded the opportunity to attend the Governor’s School for the Arts. Each January, more than 1,400 compete for 230 available scholarships.
Bundage became director in 2010 and taught in the GSFTA until summer 2021, handing over the reins to MTSU colleague Kate Goodwin (Theatre).
In addition to his steady stewardship of GSFTA, Bundage’s accomplishments with the choral department at MTSU are equally impressive. He even brought esteemed actor James Earl Jones to MTSU’s Tucker Theatre in fall 1994, shortly after Jones’ voice work as Mufasa in The Lion King movie, to narrate Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” as Bundage conducted choral students.
Bundage’s various MTSU choral ensembles have toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe.
On Palm Sunday in 1989, his ensemble performed at the morning service in composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s home church, the Cathedral of Salzburg, in Austria.
“The service itself called for several anthems,” Bundage said, “both as prelude music and especially during the Communion part of the service.”
Most recently, the MTSU Schola Cantorum was honored to sing at the Vatican, providing several selections for the Vesper service.
During Bundage’s tenure, an MTSU ensemble also performed in Carnegie Hall as he conducted Mozart’s Mass in F-major.
In 2011, MTSU choral students sang at St. Peter’s Basilica during a Saturday evening Mass.
It’s a long way from Rome, Italy, to a preacher’s dwelling outside Fort Worth, Texas, where Bundage chewed piano keys. His lifelong love of choral music got him there.
For all his personal accolades, Bundage said the best part of being a professor is being around talented and driven students. According to Bundage, there has been a steady stream of elite vocal talent streaming in to the University.
“It’s remarkably consistent, actually,” he said. “MTSU is fortunate to attract very talented vocalists and has done so routinely over the past 38-plus years. It’s a wonderful representation of our department.”
The MTSU School of Music has a strong reputation throughout the region for music instruction and the quality of students, who get to compete not just regionally but also nationally.
“Our alumni have gone on to the international stage of opera. They’ve won national trumpet competitions,” Bundage said. “Not to toot our own horn . . . but there is a lot of fabulous music being made here, and with our excellent musical staff here, both instrumental and vocal, well, we’re very fortunate indeed.”
Much of that attraction can be attributed to the Governor’s School, he said.
“These young students experience our campus and teachers,” he said. “So there’s a natural recruitment mechanism there, too.”
For Bundage, it’s been a busy and fulfilling career at MTSU. He has a lot to show for the effort he has put into his job.
Others who work as long and hard as Bundage might get to the end of another rigorous day at work and turn to classical music to relax.
Bundage, whose work is classical music, seeks an alternate route to inner peace. Asked what type of music he likes to listen to on his own time or when he needs to unwind, Bundage offers that he actually likes a little break from music.
“Mostly, it’s wonderful to have a little silence,” Bundage said.
MTSU’s new online Master of Music (M.M.) specialization in music education allows music teachers across the nation to take classes while working full time.
• open to band, orchestra, choir, and general music teachers
• must be concurrently teaching in a K–12 music setting
• one year of classroom experience required
• competitive in-state cost and out-of-state eRate (42% discount)
All M.M. specializations available at MTSU:
• collaborative piano
• conducting
• jazz studies
• music composition
• music education
• musicology
• performance
Feb. 1 if applying for a graduate teaching assistantship
mtsu.edu/music
“NOT TO TOOT OUR OWN HORN . . . BUT THERE IS A LOT OF FABULOUS MUSIC BEING MADE HERE, AND WITH OUR EXCELLENT MUSICAL STAFF HERE, BOTH INSTRUMENTAL AND VOCAL, WELL, WE’RE VERY FORTUNATE INDEED.”
Article by Drew Ruble
During the nearly three decades Patrick Geho has worked with the statewide Tennessee Small Business Development Center (TSBDC) program, he has seen it help countless individuals start or expand their businesses.
In his years of service with the TSBDC office at MTSU, Geho has secured more than $40 million in state, federal, and in-kind funds under various economic development contracts.
In this program year alone, the center just landed a U.S. Small Business Administration grant of almost $2.7 million to deliver business development and training services through the statewide TSBDC network. In addition, the lead center has applied for almost $3.9 million in U.S. Department of Treasury State Small Business Credit Initiative funding.
“This would expand business consulting and training opportunities in underserved communities lacking access to capital and build financing ecosystems that support entrepreneurs and small businesses,” said Geho, a Department of Management professor who started at MTSU as a TSBDC service director in 1995 and has been lead center director since 2006.
There are many success stories stemming from the TSBDC’s work, which continues to benefit businesses across the state. For instance, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Riverfront Seafood Company restaurant in Kingsport suddenly had no patrons. Established in 1991, Riverfront’s slogan is “attitude is everything.” With help and timely guidance from their local TSBDC, Riverfront’s ownership was able to obtain a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan, resume operations, and retain all its staff. Business is booming again.
Or how about when family health issues required Knoxville resident Lynette Casazza’s household to go gluten free— Casazza quickly (and regrettably) discovered there was no provider of gluten-free baked goods in her area.
She responded with more than motherly concern; she responded with an entrepreneurial flair. Casazza launched her own bakery, Mama C’s Gluten-Free Goodies, making the leap into small business ownership with the mentorship of her local TSBDC. Locally, family-owned Duggin Construction showcases the long-term work of the TSBDC to help a client grow and sustain during economic bursts and booms. Duggin's chief financial officer, Misael Tovar, has been meeting with the TSBDC since 2013. The 20-year-old company, which provides services in land clearing, underground utility installation,
and grading, has received consulting on items such as business insurance, debt financing and consolidation, and financial analysis. The TSBDC also provided Duggin information on the PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs during the pandemic and most recently advised the company on employee retention credits. As the TSBDC has walked alongside Duggin, company sales have grown by an average of 31% each year over the last nine years, resulting in more than 100 new jobs and over $10 million in locally infused capital. But it’s not just traditionally “small” businesses like these that the TSBDC has helped launch, grow, or just stay afloat. Contrary to what people might think, Geho said a small business is defined by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) as a company with 500 or fewer employees. However, the TSBDC has provided assistance to much larger firms when the assistance requested does not involve seeking SBA loan guarantees.
The TSBDC also works with state, county, city, and quasigovernmental agencies on a wide range of economic and community development projects. In recent years the TSBDC has worked closely with entities like the Gibson Rural Electric Cooperative, owned by its 39,000 members across eight west Tennessee and four west Kentucky counties. When the cooperative determined to construct a highspeed broadband infrastructure for its service area but needed technical help with the application process for a U.S. Department of Agriculture Reconnect Loan, it smartly reached out to its local TSBDC office. The result? The cooperative landed more than $31 million for the project.
In another example, the MTSU service center successfully assisted rural Smith County in applying for a certificate of public purpose and necessity to borrow funds to develop an industrial park.
According to Geho, there are thousands more stories just like these sprinkled across the organization’s 38 years of service to the state.
TSBDC’S ASSISTANCE AND TRAINING RESOURCES REPRESENT A GOLD MINE OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR NEW AND GROWING BUSINESSES.
Created by Congress in 1980 and adopted by Tennessee in 1984, the Small Business Development Center program combines the resources of higher education, government, and the private sector to support the development of small businesses. In 2004, MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee was successful in relocating the TSBDC lead center from Nashville to MTSU, allowing collaboration with faculty and creating experiential learning for students through paid internships in the community through the lead center.
With the lead center headquartered inMurfreesboro, the TSBDC network consists of 14 service centers (including at MTSU) and two affiliate offices across the state. Each service center is staffed by consultants who provide no-cost virtual and in-person business consulting, training, and resources to help businesses start, grow, and sustain. After all, not everyone who starts a business went to business school.
Center staff can assist in business and financial planning, marketing and sales strategies, social media and website analysis, government contracting, international trade, cybersecurity, and numerous other areas. The centers also conduct market research as well as competitive and financial analyses at no cost to the client. And staff help companies with preparing to go before a lender and getting access to capital. TSBDC’s assistance and training resources represent a gold mine of opportunities for new and growing businesses.
“We’re all about reaching out to small businesses,” Geho said. “Helping somebody grow a company from 30 employees to 100 employees may not sound like a big deal to some people, but if it’s happening in your community, 70 more jobs is very significant.”
Geho, who served as a primary architect of MTSU’s new Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship major (and who teaches its capstone class), knows of what he speaks. That’s because he has lived what he now does.
Prior to coming to MTSU, Geho was founder and co-owner of Consolidated Investors Inc., which developed commercial and industrial properties. The company later ventured into manufacturing, incorporating as SCIC Inc., an automotive drivetrain component subassemblies metal coatings manufacturing plant serving Dana Corp., Chrysler, General Motors, Mercedes, Nissan, and Toyota.
As CEO, he grew the plant population to more than 130 employees. As an entrepreneur, Geho was recognized by the White House in 1995. He also serves as an officer on several statutory economic development boards.
Under Geho’s leadership, the TSBDC has expanded in both size and scope. Four new centers have opened, and the network has grown to almost 50 staff.
SBDC programs nationwide can tell similar success stories of growing the American economy through their many assistance programs.
A leader highly regarded by his colleagues statewide, Geho is reluctant to take too much of the credit for TSBDC’s success.
“I’m all about bringing people that are smarter than I am,” Geho said. “It’s all about continuous improvement. I never pretend to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I even tell my students that they are going to say something that’s going to spark an idea that I never really thought of before. If you pay attention, you will always learn something new.”
analyst in HR and later as an administrative manager in the outpatient nursing division.
“I had learned how small business worked, and now I got to see how a large organization functioned, while also being introduced to the idea of working for a mission—not just a business,” she said. After moving to Murfreesboro, with a newborn baby to care for, Miller started doing part-time business counseling at the TSBDC. She later went full time in the service center at MTSU and now is associate director at the lead center.
Miller’s timeline at TSBDC placed her smack dab at the center of one of the most disruptive events in the history of small business—the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was terribly difficult,” Miller said. “You almost have like a PTSD-type reaction when you talk about it. It was a desperate feeling to listen to your clients who were confused and concerned with the possibility of losing their life savings, having to let employees go, and talking about what this was going to do to their community, friends, and neighbors.
“Just considering the options at hand could be excruciating. It was a time of very, very difficult conversations filled with lots and lots of questions like ‘Is taking a PPP loan even the right thing for my business?’ ”
In short order, though, the TSBDC found its footing and served a key role in guiding clients through perilous times.
A sterling example of Geho’s team approach and his instinct to develop future leaders is the story of his right-hand colleague at TSBDC, Kayla Miller. Miller began her career at a small business in Birmingham, Alabama, and was integral in the rapid growth of the company from 70 employees to 150. This experience allowed her to learn everything she could about HR, payroll, accounting, and business development.
Miller and her husband eventually moved to Memphis. Both got jobs at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital—Miller as a compensation
“Our staff pivoted and started doing online webinars and also were able to provide people with real-time updates on the federal response. We created additional stakeholder newsletters. We were emailing daily to our chambers,” she said. “Our office was actually the central hub for information . . . just doing the best we could to get people through.”
Geho said COVID-related consulting continues to this day. For instance, businesses that took loans and had payments deferred are having payments coming due, and many people just forgot about it.
“Clients are getting due dates in the middle of inflationary times,” Geho said. “They are turning back to us as consultants to help them deal with it.”
Miller has also brought in a company to redevelop the TSBDC’s financial tools, freeing up more time for center directors to consult and innovate. She also was the driving force behind the TSBDC’s website enhancement project and the new Knowledge and Training Portal, featuring 120-plus short business videos free to the public.
Staff involvement in committees and in projects to serve the state is a further testament to the heart of the TSBDC.
“The quality of the people working in the lead center’s Murfreesboro office and across the state in TSBDC centers is what really makes the program work,” Geho said. “The people who work here are highly skilled, and they care about helping people.”
Geho clearly has the support he needs to do the work of the TSBDC. That’s not to say he’s sitting on his laurels. It’s simply not in his DNA to either sit still or stop building. His success both as an entrepreneur and as leader of the TSBDC is proof of that.
Geho’s work ethic extends to service with his community’s industrial development board, chamber of commerce, regional development district, and the education foundation he chartered. When he is not volunteering, he is spending time on his farm.
“I just like being together with my wife and grandkids and doing things around the farm,” he said.
“I’m a lousy golfer, don’t play tennis, not much luck fishing. I’d much rather cut hay, fix fence lines, take care of the horses, or work on equipment.”
Geho said the picture he paints of himself in his free time may not seem very exciting to some.
“I’m what my wife calls an easy keeper,” he joked.
IT’S SIMPLY NOT IN HIS DNA TO EITHER SIT STILL OR STOP BUILDING.
Develop skills to earn promotions into higher levels of management at different types of organizations with MTSU’s Management M.S. concentration in Organizational Leadership.
The program helps enhance planning, communication, and ethical decisionmaking skills and exposes you to realworld experiences to help you mature as a manager.
• an applied management project or experience
• 12 hours of core management courses
• 12 hours in behavioral aspects of leadership
• 6 hours of electives customized to your career
MTSU’s Jones College of Business ranks in top 1.4% nationally.
March 1 priority for summer admission, June 1 priority for fall, Oct. 1 priority for spring
Gregory Rushton
$4.02 million
In 2014, Towe became director of MTSU’s TRIO Student Support Services (SSS), which serves low-income, academically at-risk students. The program is 100% federally funded by the U.S. Department of Education and aims to increase the retention and graduation rates of participants. To qualify, a full-time undergraduate student must have a verified academic need and either be a first-generation college student, meet income eligibility under federal guidelines, or have a documented disability registered with MTSU’s Disability and Access Center. Services offered include free tutoring, financial advising and financial literacy education, academic and major/career counseling, personal support, grants, success workshops, cultural events, a computer/resource lab, and graduate school assistance.
$3.8 million
Phelps, a Chemistry professor, is the principal investigator (PI) on the $1.45 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Noyce MTeach award that provides scholarship support for future teachers of chemistry, biology, earth science, physics, and mathematics. Additionally, she is part of the leadership team for the Tennessee STEM Education Center’s four-year, $609,435 award from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program, with Gregory Rushton as PI. The collaborative research effort with other universities focuses on active learning environments for large-enrollment chemistry courses.
$3.1 million
In 2018, Rushton assumed the reins of the Tennessee STEM Education Center (TSEC), an outreach arm of MTSU aimed at improving K–20 education in science, technology, engineering, and math, both locally and nationally. During this time, he has been funded as principal or co-principal investigator on six distinct awards totaling nearly $4 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Tennessee Board of Regents. His grants as PI include almost $1.4 million from the Institute of Education Sciences, as well as $1.02 million, $609,435, and $214,350 awards from the NSF. Some of his recent projects seek to understand the experiences of minoritized populations in undergraduate STEM courses and to understand how precollege STEM teacher leadership programs impact the retention of educators in high needs school environments.
$3.02 million
As director of early learning programs at MTSU, Casha helps guide three programs affiliated with the College of Education: the Home and Community Based Early Intervention Program ( see page 20 ), Ann Campbell Early Learning Center, and MTSU Child Development Lab. These programs support families and children; educate and empower families and the community as advocates for all children; and engage current and future leaders with professional growth opportunities. Casha recently helped launch the “Pyramid Model for Social and Emotional Skills” online training program for Tennessee’s pre-K, preschool, and Head Start teachers, co-hosted by MTSU and funded by the state. Holding an M.Ed. from MTSU in Early Childhood Special Education, she formerly served as early childhood education director for Tennessee.
$2.9 million
Coordinator of the Aeronautical Science master’s program and an Aerospace professor, Craig served as PI on four National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research grants. Findings and evidence from the seminal $750,000 SATS Aerospace Flight Education Research (SAFER) into scenariobased training for pilots was used to change the method by which all pilots are now tested in the U.S. Further, success of this project led to Craig’s landing another $1.5 million project funded by two NASA grants, providing for the creation of MTSU’s Flight Operations Center–Unified Simulation (FOCUS) lab. This scenario-based training went beyond pilots and also involved Industrial/ Organizational Psychology curriculum, plus funded MTSU’s first jet flight simulator. Craig included the complete story of SAFER and FOCUS in his 14th and latest book, Flight Times .
$2.6 million
Cui, a School of Agriculture associate professor involved in cutting-edge agriculture practices using drones, is the director of MTSU’s new interdisciplinary Digital Agriculture Center—a first in Tennessee. He leads the team that landed a three-year, nearly $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to offer high-quality experiences and projects for non-formal educators (such as scouts, 4-H, and afterschool programs) and youth.
Cui (pronounced choy) also is part of a $450,000 USDA grant, along with Psychology’s Ying Jin and Agriculture’s Chaney Mosley, to create a three-year institute to provide professional development to high school agriculture teachers for project-based and “deeper learning” instruction. He has published more than 20 agricultural science studies since 2020.
$2.5 million
Otter, a Biology professor, researcher, and now director of MTSU’s Data Science Institute (DSI), has twice received international acclaim along with three student researchers for studying riparian spiders. Their work, most recently published in the international scientific journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry , proposes using spiders as a cost-effective way to monitor chemical contaminants in aquatic ecosystems. An environmental toxicologist, Otter was part of a multiagency response team after the 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority ash spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant, using spiders to gauge contamination. The DSI also is involved in MTSU’s Digital Agricultural Center, on a $750,000 interdisciplinary USDA grant that assists in the DSI’s goal to advance environmental science through the use of data science.
$2.5 million Kimmins, a Mathematical Sciences faculty member since earning her master’s at MTSU in 1983, has worked extensively with preservice and in-service teachers. She directed the Teachers Now congressionally directed grant program during 2008–10 to focus on increasing the number and quality of middle grades teachers produced by the University. Kimmins has directed or co-directed 18 professional development projects impacting over 1,000 teachers from at least two-thirds of the school districts across Tennessee. She recently has collaborated with colleagues on math literacy training for K–5 teachers in Murfreesboro City Schools through the district’s state Department of Education grants. Kimmins also served on the committee to author the state mathematics curriculum standards and has organized seven statewide conferences since 2005.
Bronze:
$1 MILLION CLUB ($1M–$1.99M total funding)
Guanping Zheng (Center for Asian Studies)
Tracey Huddleston (Elementary and Special Education)
Robert Blair (Marketing)
Hugh Berryman (Sociology and Anthropology)
Zhijiang Dong (Computer Science)
Donald Walker (Biology)
Murat Arik (Business and Economic Research Center)
Jason Jessen (Molecular Biosciences)
Dorothy Craig (Womack Educational Leadership)
Ron Henderson (Physics and Astronomy)
Elliot Altman (Biology)
Bev Clanton (Health and Human Performance)
Whether it’s business, education, nursing, or many other high-quality options, find your future at MTSU.
• Connect with innovative faculty and peers.
• Retool and create your next opportunity.
• Advance with affordable and convenient options.
• Succeed in one of the nation’s hottest economies.
Engage in real-life research, scholarship, and service with expert faculty, including through partner centers and institutes on campus.
14 fully online graduate degrees
100+ programs at certificate, master’s, specialist, and doctorate levels
$4.7M toward assistantships
575 assistantships awarded each semester
17 types of degrees
2,648 grad students
27% first-generation
25% underrepresented minorities
Benefit from over $1 billion in recent facility investment.
