Monday, October 1, 2007

Today’s Response
Middle Tennessee State University

You don’t have to be Tiger Woods to sign up.

Golfers can register to play in the 14th annual Danner Invitational Golf Tournament, which will be held Wednesday, Oct. 3, at Nashville’s Hermitage Golf Course. Sponsored by the Neill-Sandler Foundation to benefit the Neill-Sandler Scholars at MTSU program, up to 120 golfers will compete in the event. The tournament schedule includes registration and practice starting at 11:30 a.m., lunch at noon, 1 p.m. shotgun start, and beverages, dinner and awards after tournament play ends on the President’s Reserve Course. Eighty-five students have been awarded scholarships since 1999. Each spring, up to 10 scholarships are awarded to students from Bedford, Cannon, Coffee, DeKalb, Franklin, Rutherford, Warren, Williamson, and Wilson counties, and Tullahoma city schools.

Contact Kippy Todd at 615-898-5756 or Randy Weiler at 615-898-2919.
ktodd@mtsu.edu
jweiler@mtsu.edu

Take Burkina Faso and lay the points.

Can a quantitative way of assessing an aggressor’s chances of winning a war actually be devised, or is military strategy still a matter of human judgment? Dr. Patricia Sullivan of the University of Georgia has tried to establish a formula for determining rates of success in post-World War II clashes. But Dr. Derek Frisby, assistant professor of history and a Desert Storm veteran, questions Sullivan’s methodology. “Because it was impossible to determine exactly the particular interventions Sullivan included in her study, the research lacks the essential historical context that again would interject a greater value on emotion and chance than technology or troop strength,” Frisby says. “This study should remind us that although it may be possible to quantify the odds of failure in military operations, it is the people we put in place to conduct such operations that will always determine its ultimate success or failure despite the odds.”

Contact Frisby at 615-494-8856.
dfrisby@mtsu.edu

He can dig it.

Dr. Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist who works in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., will speak at 7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 4, in the State Farm Lecture Hall in the Business and Aerospace Building at MTSU. His lecture will be free and open to the public. Owsley has worked on numerous fascinating cases, including the demise of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Tex., and the casualties of Desert Storm. He has worked on the skeletal remains of colonial and Civil War soldiers and, with MTSU’s own Dr. Hugh Berryman and others, Owsley has studied Kennewick Man, a 10,000-year old skeleton found near the Columbia River in Washington state.

Contact the Office of News and Public Affairs at 615-898-2919.

TR EXTRA

BONJOUR!--Any student whose summer was no more exciting than spending endless hours lying by the pool frying to a crisp can prepare now for an unforgettable summer 2008. There’s no time like the present to register for the annual general education study abroad program in Cherbourg, France, which will run from June 2 to June 27. At this beautiful port town in the Normandy region of northwest France, students will experience the history, art and culture of the area. “With the general education program, a student can spend four weeks in Cherbourg and in Normandy, and they can begin studying French while they’re there if they choose to, but they don’t have to already know any French,” Dr. Anne Sloan, Assistant to the Provost for International Education, says. Contact Sloan at 615-898-5091 or asloan@mtsu.edu or Jennifer Campbell, Director of International Education and Exchange, at 615-898-5179 or jjcampbe@mtsu.edu.

THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY--“Colleagues: A Community College Art Faculty Exhibition” is the title of the upcoming diversity-rich art exhibit that is being presented through Oct. 4 in the Todd Gallery on the MTSU campus. “This exhibition recognizes the talented faculty who serve students enrolled in community colleges across the state that are often far removed from major population centers,” says Lon Nuell, professor of art and gallery curator. Nuell says each of the participating artists work and teach in traditional studio areas such as painting, photography, printmaking, drawing, ceramics and sculpture, and graphic design and visual communication. The Todd Gallery, located on the first floor of the Todd Building, is open 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. weekdays. Admission is always free, and the exhibit is open to the public. For more information, please contact Eric Snyder, gallery assistant, at 615-898-5653.

COURAGE--MTSU Theatre will present its first outdoor theatrical experience with the classic drama “Mother Courage and Her Children” by Bertolt Brecht. The production will play at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 3, 5 and 6 on the south lawn of the Boutwell Dramatic Arts Building’s Tucker Theatre. The play’s storyline takes place amid a 30-year war in which Mother Courage, a canteen woman, continues to profit from the war. Her business is the war, and the wagon she pulls is her only possession. Her three children—Eilif, Swiss Cheese and Kattrin—have no father and no home. There is no charge for admission, and spaces are on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 7 p.m. prior to each performance. Donations are appreciated. For more information, please visit MTSU Theatre online at http://www.mtsu.edu/~theatre.

NEW FACES, NEW SOUNDS--The Stones River Chamber Players, artists-in-residence at MTSU, will present New Faces, New Sounds, the group’s first concert of the 2007-2008 season, at 7:30 p.m. tonight, Oct. 1, in the T. Earl Hinton Hall of Wright Music Building. Event organizers say one highlight of the free and open concert will be its finale, The Creation of the World, by Darius Milhaud, a ballet score for chamber orchestra that will be conducted by Reed Thomas, MTSU director of bands. The work, which is considered innovative for its fusion of jazz and classical styles, will be accompanied by abstract paintings projected on a screen. The artworks were painted by art students at the new Discovery School, a magnet school for high-achieving elementary students in Murfreesboro. For more information, call 615-898-2493 or visit http://www.mtsumusic.com.