Friday, May 19, 2006

Today’s Response
Middle Tennessee State University

Ethics on tap

Dr. Thomas Cooper, a professor of visual and media arts at Boston’s Emerson College, will be the new Ethicist-in-Residence at MTSU’s College of Mass Communication for the 2006-2007 academic year. Cooper served as an assistant to media theorist Marshall McLuhan, assisted White House speechwriters and co-produced some of the first audio spacebridges between U.S. and Soviet communications professionals. He is the author or co-author of five published books and more than 100 articles and review. He is also the co-publisher of Media Ethics magazine. Cooper’s tenure as ethicist-in-residence is funded by a $120,000 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation in Oklahoma City.

Contact the College of Mass Communication at 615-898-2813.

The Da Vinci mode

With all the commotion over the motion picture version of Dan Brown’s bestseller “The Da Vinci Code,” perhaps the real Da Vinci has gotten lost in the shuffle. Dr. Preston MacDougall, chemistry, says Leonardo Da Vinci “was dismissive of pure philosophy and abstract theory—pseudo-knowledge that ‘begins and ends in the mind.’ He saw artists and engineers as ‘human creators’ whose careful observations of nature allowed them to be a ‘second nature in the world,’ but only if they remained true to the causes and effects that they experience.” MacDougall also notes that Da Vinci was a supremely gifted student of geometry, and this enabled him to experience light in ways that are invisible to you and me.” This unique vision can still be experienced and enjoyed in his paintings such as “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper.”

Contact MacDougall at 615-898-5265.
pmacdoug@mtsu.edu

Sex and the media

Dr. Carol Pardun, director of the School of Journalism, is one of the authors of an in-home longitudinal study to determine whether exposure to sexual content in four mass media over time by early teenagers predicts sexual behavior. More than 1,000 black and white adolescents from 14 middle schools in central North Carolina were surveyed. The research found that “exposure to sexual content in music, movies, television and magazines accelerates white adolescents’ sexual activity and increases their risk of engaging in early sexual intercourse. Black teens appear more influenced by perceptions of their parents’ expectations and their friends’ sexual behavior than by what they see and hear in the media.” However, the scholars caution that more research is needed to fully understand the relationship between sexual media content and teens’ sexual activity.

Contact Pardun at 615-898-2814.
cpardun@mtsu.edu


TR EXTRA

SAVE THOSE TICKETS!—Due to illness, “Fresh Air” radio show host Terry Gross was notable to fulfill her previously scheduled commitments at MTSU. Her appearance has been rescheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 19. Marc J. Barr, electronic media communication, says new tickets will not be printed. Therefore, people with the original April 17 tickets are encouraged to keep them for the September event. For more information, contact Barr at 615-898-5118 or at mjbarr@mtsu.edu.

THE ART OF GOVERNOR’S SCHOOL--High school students can spend a fun and productive summer at the annual Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts June 11-July 15 at MTSU. Youngsters will enjoy intensive study in art, dance, theater and music during the five-week residence program. Students now will receive six hours of college credit instead of three, as was the case in prior years. “We had a fantastic school in 2005, with more than 200 talented students who had a wonderful, life-changing experience at MTSU,” Dale McGilliard, professor of speech and theatre, observes. “Everything from registration into classes, to buses to dorms, to the smallest detail was excellent, thanks to all the school’s teachers who worked so hard to make things happen for these young artists of Tennessee.” Contact McGilliard at 615-898-2274 or dmcgilli@mtsu.edu.