JANUARY

Legendary Loss

Dean Hayes, 84, MTSU’s track coach of 57 years, died January 7. Hayes guided the men's and women's programs to 29 Ohio Valley Conference titles, 19 Sun Belt championships, and 20 NCAA Top 25 finishes. Hayes received four Conference USA Coach of the Year accolades, 15 Sun Belt Coach of the Year awards, and 15 OVC Coach of the Year honors, which included 10 in a row from 1977 to 1986. He was inducted into the Blue Raider Hall of Fame in 1982.

Importantly, Hayes, who first stepped onto the campus in 1965, is credited with integrating MTSU athletics. His first recruit, Jerry Singleton, became the first African American varsity scholarship athlete at MTSU. Others followed as their quietly competitive coach recruited more and more Black athletes. When those athletes arrived on campus, so did their girlfriends, sisters, brothers, and friends. As such, Hayes is also rightly credited with integrating campus. He served as the first advisor for Kappa Alpha Psi, a Greek letter fraternity with predominantly African American membership, when it began a chapter at MTSU.

Hayes also deserves much of the credit for the increased presence of international students at MTSU. Under his guidance, international athletes began arriving from Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and other places in the 1970s.

Meeting Students Where They Are

In a three-week stretch beginning in late January, MTSU’s transfer admissions team met with prospective students at nine community colleges across Tennessee. The annual MTSU Promise Tour reaches out to prospective transfer students—from Knoxville to Jackson and from Dyersburg to Chattanooga—in time for them to meet the annual Feb. 15 deadline for the guaranteed transfer scholarship—$3,000 per year for qualifiers.

MTSU Promise is one of the University’s commitments to making the transfer process as smooth as possible and, in some cases, signing special agreements with the community colleges to ensure clear pathways. For instance, MTSU and Nashville State Community College have a “True Blue Pathway” agreement.

Future Pioneers

Students participated in the seventh annual HackMT January 28–30 in the Science Building.

HackMT, a “hackathon” and project expo hosted annually by MTSU’s Department of Computer Science, brings software developers and visual designers together with computer science and data science students from regional universities.

Teams try to invent new web platforms, mobile apps, and electronic gadgets during more than 36 intense hours. Their creations in 2022 included a way for people to find nonprofits nationally, a communications tool for college students similar to Slack or Discord, and a method to help match people with differentsized feet with correct shoe sizes through an app.