Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Today’s Response
Middle Tennessee State University

The sounds of success

Three MTSU recording-industry students are getting some financial support for their creative visions as the latest recipients of the prestigious API Visionary Scholarship. Taylor Bray, a junior from Columbia, S.C., and senior Jay Yaskin of Las Vegas received $2,000 each, while Nashvillian Ben Poff, who is working toward his Master of Fine Arts degree in recording arts and technology, received $1,000 from Jessup, Md.-based Automatic Processes Inc. “The people at API said they could tell that our faculty were proactive in encouraging our students to apply,” says Professor Daniel Pfeifer, who teaches audio course and coordinates the undergraduate and graduate audio internships for the RIM department. “This was the first time we were eligible to apply. It’s very unusual for a manufacturer to do something like this. The altruism on their part is awesome.”

Contact Gina Fann in the Office of News and Public Affairs at 615-898-5385.
gfann@mtsu.edu

To your health

The Center for Health and Human Services at MTSU has produced the fourth edition of Allied Health in Tennessee: A Supply and Demand Study 2010. Academic institutions, as well as employers and students, have come to rely on this publication as the source for allied health supply and demand information in Tennessee. This publication, by offering a compilation of academic programs and their locations in Tennessee, as well as pertinent information about each field, should be of great value to potential students, educational planners and state officials. It is funded by a grant from the Nashville Career Advancement Center and the Tennessee Hospital Association’s Center for Health Workforce Development in Tennessee.

For more information, contact the Adams Chair of Excellence in Health Care Services at 615-898-2904 or 615-494-8919.

Protons, neutrons, adjectives and adverbs

In his book The Language Instinct, author Steven Pinker defines a root word as a “syntactic atom” because neither the word in question nor the atom can be split without losing its meaning. Dr. Preston MacDougall, chemistry, says it’s an apt metaphor. He says, “While the sizes, shapes and functionalities of molecules are infinitely variable, just as a mouthful of words can be strung together for form a two-word matrimonial confirmation or a dizzying long soliloquy, there are rules of bonding that constitute a molecular grammar. For instance, ‘I do!’ and ‘Do I?’ will elicit vastly different emotional responses, but ‘He do’ is not allowed.”

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

TR EXTRA

THE FISCAL FUTURE--Dr. David Penn, director of MTSU’s Business and Economic Research Center, will be one of the participants in a panel discussion on “Nashville’s Economic Forecast” at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow, Aug. 12, at the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville. Other scheduled participants include Doug Brandon, managing principal, Cassidy Turley, and president of the Leadership Middle Tennessee class of 2010; Rob McNeilly, president and CEO, SunTrust Bank; and Christopher Parks, co-founder and CEO, change: healthcare. This discussion, which is co-sponsored by the Nashville Business Journal and Colliers International, is part of NBJ’s “Shaping a Greater Nashville” series. To register, go to http://nashville.bizjournals.com/nashville/event/27811.

GRITS ARE GOOD FOR YOU.--The GRITS Collaborative Project and MTSU invite you to participate in their 2010 forum from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow, Aug. 12, in the Tennessee Room of the James Union Building. The keynote speaker will be Lee Rennick, executive director of the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce’s Business Education Partnership. Her address is titled “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.” Guest speaker Donna M. Inch, newly appointed Chairman and CEO of Ford Land, will discuss the importance of attracting and retaining women in the engineering and science pipeline. GRITS stands for Girls Raised in Tennessee Science. Its collaborative project brings together organizations and individuals committed to informing and motivating girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The registration fee is $10. Students may attend for free. Contact Dr. Judith Iriarte-Gross at 615-904-8253 or jiriarte@mtsu.edu.

“A HEALTHY STATE ENCOURAGES MANY VOICES—AND LOTS OF LISTENING.”—HHS SECRETARY KATHLEEN SEBELIUS--Expressions of confidence, faith, defiance, togetherness, satire and sobriety characterize the second edition of Voices We Haven’t Heard, a publication of MTSU’s June Anderson Center for Women and Nontraditional Students. The latest Voices is larger than last year’s edition, and it includes feminist poetry and prose nestled between glossy, colorful covers. Center Director Terri Johnson says the magazine empowers students by providing them with a creative outlet for their observations on racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and other forms of oppression. Voices We Haven’t Heard is free and available from the June Anderson Center in its new home, Room 320 of the Keathley University Center. For more information, call 615-898-5989 or go to www.mtsu.edu/jac.

I’M PLAYING WITH MY BOOKS, MOMMY.--“Books and Children in the 19th Century: A Small Portrait” is the theme of an exhibit on display now and throughout this summer in the fourth floor Special Collections area of MTSU’s James E. Walker Library. The purpose is to show the variety of ways children and the adults around them engaged with books in the 1800s and early 1900s. The works available for viewing are indicative of the children’s book as an object of moral and educational value. The idea behind the books is to teach values and build character. Entertainment techniques are employed strictly to attract the children and hold their interest. Highlights include several movable books, which are books that contain text or illustrations that the child can manipulate. Pop-up books are one such type of movable book. Many items in the display have never been exhibited previously. Call the James E. Walker Library at 615-898-2772.