Friday, January 23, 2009

Today’s Response
Middle Tennessee State University

Grading the teachers

The results of fall 2008 student evaluations of MTSU faculty should be available for internal use by the end of January, says Barbara Draude, Assistant Vice President for Academic and Instructional Technologies and Co-Director of the Learning, Teaching and Innovative Technologies Center. Last semester marked the university’s first use of a questionnaire developed at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Vic Montemayor, physics professor and former chair of the Pedagogy Task Force, says a pilot study found the Berkeley instrument to be superior. “The best way to improve is to inform,” says Montemayor. “This instrument can help professors work on improving teaching in all disciplines across campus.”

Contact Montemayor at 615-898-2108.
vjm@mtsu.edu

May it please the court …

With so much focus on President Obama’s nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, Obama’s choice for Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, has received practically no attention. However, David Hudson, adjunct political science professor and First Amendment Center scholar, says the Harvard Law School dean has an impressive record of First Amendment scholarship. “An academic who also worked in the Clinton Administration, Kagan wrote a number of First Amendment-related law-review articles while teaching at the University of Chicago Law School in the 1990s,” Hudson says. “In those articles, Kagan—who clerked for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall—has tackled such issues and doctrines as hate speech, pornography, viewpoint discrimination, secondary effects and more.” (The U.S. Solicitor General argues the federal government’s cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.)

Contact Hudson at 615-727-1600.
dhudson@fac.org

A word on words

Middle-school and high-school students who have a way with words will vie to determine verbal supremacy in the Third Annual Linguistics Olympiad at MTSU on Saturday, Jan. 31, on the second floor of the Business and Aerospace Building. More than 80 students representing eight schools in the region are enrolled in junior and senior levels of competition. Traditional challenges in the Olympiad include such exercises as identifying the word formation of a foreign language based on the information presented, deciphering proverbs from other languages, finding commonalities among English words, and decoding cryptic messages. “Following the competition, we have organized fun activities for the students while judges are scoring, including Swahili 101, Word Games, and Psycholinguistic Experiments,” says Dr. Aleka Blackwell, associate professor of English.

Contact Blackwell at 615-898-5960.
ablackwe@mtsu.edu


TR EXTRA

MAKE LIFE CREATIVE--For the first time, Collage, MTSU’s literary magazine, is offering monetary awards for deserving student entries. Editor-in-Chief Hannah Green and Marsha Powers, University Honors College coordinator, will talk about this award-winning outlet for creative student expression on “MTSU on the Record” with host Gina Logue at 7 a.m. this Sunday, Jan. 25, on WMOT-FM (89.5 AND wmot.org). To listen to the latest program, go to http://frank.mtsu.edu/~proffice/podcast2009.html anytime and click on “January 18, 2009” at the top of the page. For more information about “MTSU on the Record,” contact Logue at 615-898-5081 or WMOT-FM at 615-898-2800.

PANDEMIC PLAY--“You Shall Live,” a dramatic presentation about the impact of HIV/AIDS, will be presented at 7 p.m. tomorrow, Jan. 24, at MTSU’s Tucker Theatre in the Boutwell Dramatic Arts Building. The production was created by Nashville playwright Timothy Hampton, a.k.a. Thunder Kellie. “A continuous HIV/AIDS conversation is crucial in terms of understanding, prevention, maintenance and compassion,” says Vincent Windrow, director of MTSU’s Office of Intercultural and Diversity Affairs (IDA). “Thunder Kellie and his group do an awesome job at facilitating that conversation.” “You Shall Live” is sponsored by IDA as part of the university’s Black History Month activities. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased either at the door or by contacting Valerie Avent at 615-898-5812.

THE WISDOM OF WOMEN--The President’s Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) is accepting applications from MTSU faculty for three grants of $1,800 each to be awarded in summer 2009 for integrating women’s issues into the curriculum. The grants are for use by tenured or tenure-track professors for the revision of a course, revision of a general education course for the Study Abroad program, the creation of a new course, the re-conceptualization of a current minor, or the creation of a new minor. Proposals will be reviewed by the Academic Affairs Subcommittee of the PCSW. The deadline for faculty to submit grant applications is Jan. 30, 2009. Details are available at http://www.mtsu.edu/~pcsw/grants.htm. Contact Dr. Samantha Cantrell in the Office of Research Services at 615-494-8751 or scantrel@mtsu.edu.

CONFEDERATES UNCOVERED--Learn about a significant but little-known Tennessean at the next “Between the Lines: Reading About the Civil War” book discussion group, a free and open activity that is meeting on Thursdays in January 2009. During the upcoming discussions, the group will consider Sam Davis Elliott’s Soldier of Tennessee: General Alexander P. Stewart and the Civil War in the West (1999), a book that has been praised as providing “a fresh look at an often ignored but important figure.” The group meets at 7 p.m. at the Heritage Center, 225 West College St. in Murfreesboro. The book discussion group is sponsored by the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area, Linebaugh Public Library, and the Heritage Center of Murfreesboro and Rutherford County. Contact Dr. Antoinette van Zelm at 615-217-8013 or avanzelm@mtsu.edu.

“IF YOU HAVE TO ASK WHAT JAZZ IS, YOU’LL NEVER KNOW.”—LOUIS ARMSTRONG--WMOT-FM (89.5 and wmot.org), which recently added an award for journalistic excellence to its lengthy list of honors, will hold a joint fundraising concert with the Nashville Jazz Workshop at 8 p.m. tonight, Jan. 23, at the workshop’s Jazz Cave, 1319 Adams Street in Nashville. Slated to perform in this special edition of the workshop’s “Snap on 2 & 4” series are the Beegie Adair Trio with special guests Jeff Hall, Connye Florance and Denis Solee. There will be two sets as well as a silent auction, door prize giveaways and complementary refreshments. Admission is $30 per person. Tickets are available at 615-242-5299 (242-JAZZ). Advance purchase is recommended. WMOT-FM is the music and public affairs voice of the MTSU community, a 24-hour station with an all-jazz format that the university has operated for nearly 40 years. For more information, call Lori Mechem at 615-242-5299 or Greg Lee at 615-898-2800 or visit http://www.nashvillejazz.org/