Monday, July 6, 2009

Today’s Response
Middle Tennessee State University

Sea hunt (minus Lloyd Bridges)

MTSU sophomore Terrance Adams and his fellow representatives of the Diving with a Purpose program will travel to Washington, D.C., July 16-17 to accept the “Take Pride in America” award in the Public-Private Partnership category from the U.S. Department of the Interior. Diving with a Purpose (DWP) is a program that trains young African-American divers. “I went to a party one time, and everybody knew how to swim except me,” says Adams, a journalism major from Madison. “I’ve been told by my peers that black people don’t scuba dive or swim. But how can you let a color determine who you are?” Divers in DWP have helped the National Park Service, a division of the Interior Department, to identify and research a number of sunken shipwrecks and develop professional site plans for historical and archaeological sites in Biscayne National Park in Florida.

For more information and/or a photo of Terrance Adams, contact Gina Logue in the MTSU Office of News and Public Affairs at 615-898-5081.
gklogue@mtsu.edu

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.

With a $165,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Melissa Lobegeier is preparing for her second major research project of the year. Beginning this fall and for the next two years, Lobegeier, an assistant professor of geosciences at MTSU, will study water quality in the Clinch and Powell rivers of southwestern Virginia, where pollution from mining is a concern. Pollution-resistant microorganisms figured heavily in a similar project Lobegeier recently completed in Florida waterways. “We’re trying to see how far the pollution is flowing from the source into the Gulf of Mexico because all of these areas are areas where people go to swim and particularly to fish,” Lobegeier says. “I think it’s important to know whether the pollution is making it into those areas and whether we should continue to eat that food.”

Contact Lobegeier at 615-898-2726.
mlobeg@mtsu.edu

The drive to get things done

Dr. Charles Perry, who holds the Russell Chair of Manufacturing Excellence at MTSU, has a patent pending on an invention that potentially could save America 120 million gallons of fuel each day. The plug-in hybrid retrofit kit received a first-place award of $50,000 from the Tennessee Technology Development Corporation, which awards grants to help inventors move their creations from the lab to the marketplace. Perry’s device would help to optimize energy consumption in hybrid motor vehicles. “Our first goal is to build a demonstration of a working prototype,” Perry says. “Then, working with the state of Tennessee, we’d like to build one dozen to two dozen prototypes. We’d like to put them on state vehicles to get data.”

Contact Perry at 615-898-5683.
chperry@mtsu.edu

TR EXTRA

PRESSING ON--The legacy of MTSU’s working replica of an 18th century printing press will be explained through photos and prints as part of an exhibit at the main branch of the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church St., through Sept. 27. The exhibit is titled “Telling the Story: Letterpress Printing and Community.” The university’s segment will include the story of letterpress printing at MTSU. The works of current MTSU art students; alumni; visiting artists; faculty; elementary, middle- and high-school teachers and students who printed on the James E. Walker Library’s unique device will be highlighted. A reproduction of the English common press used by Benjamin Franklin in the early 1700s, the printing press was handcrafted in 2004 and 2005 out of chestnut and white oak wood from a 100-year-old house in Virginia. Contact Kristen Keene at 615-898-5376 or kkeene@mtsu.edu.

GOING THROUGH CUSTOMS--Running through late July, incoming MTSU students and their families will start familiarizing themselves with their new academic home through the CUSTOMS orientation process. “So many parents and students comment on how friendly folks are and how comfortable they feel about their choice of coming to MTSU,” says Gina Poff, director of New Student and Family Programs. “Although CUSTOMS is a lot of work for the staff and the new students, it really pays off in the end. It is a great way to start off the new journey into MTSU, and the freshmen really get a sense of what it is like to be part of the MTSU community.” Poff says officials expect 50 to 75 more students at each session this summer than in previous years. Contact Poff at 615-898-2454 or gpoff@mtsu.edu.

THE TOUR DU JOUR--MTSU’s Office of Admissions will offer student-led campus tours at 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday (excluding holidays) through July 31. The tours are by reservation only. Plenty of openings remain for all of July. To make a reservation, call 615-898-5670 or visit mtsu.edu/admissn/tour_admissn.shtml and click on “Schedule Campus Tours.” For more information, contact Michelle Arnold at 615-898-5280 or maarnold@mtsu.edu.