The Tennessean announced today that it will partner with Middle Tennessee State University to launch “Brainstorm Nashville,” a digital hub for civic engagement designed to foster community problem-solving.
The news operation created Brainstorm Nashville at www.BrainstormNashville.com to capitalize on the altruistic momentum prompted by Nashville’s historic 2010 flood. It is designed as a centralized, communitywide collaboration tool for those with ideas, initiative and resources to put toward solving ongoing problems facing the region.
The initiative, still in beta form, is now live with childhood obesity as its marquee topic; others are planned for promotion each month. Topics will be chosen based on frequent conversations with a variety of stakeholders, including partners and readers. Successes achieved through Brainstorm Nashville will be celebrated online, in print, via social media and in real life.
MTSU joins as a contributor and supporter, reinforcing its leadership role in education and public service throughout the region. Working with MTSU and other partners, Brainstorm Nashville activities will also extend to events and grass-roots efforts to raise awareness and encourage involvement.
“As Tennessee’s largest undergraduate university and the largest institution serving the Nashville metropolitan area, MTSU puts a great priority upon partnerships that enhance the state’s educational, social, cultural and economic well-being,” said MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee.
“We welcome this opportunity to work with The Tennessean to spark public dialogue, raise awareness and help foster civic involvement.”
Brainstorm Nashville was built with input from dozens of community groups, government and business leaders, churches, non-profits and many other thinkers, givers and doers in middle Tennessee who see a need for a common brainstorming and collaboration platform.
“We view Brainstorm Nashville not only as the editorial page of the future, but a catalyst for community action,” said Maria De Varenne, executive editor and vice president of The Tennessean. “We are thrilled to have MTSU join this effort to improve the quality of life in middle Tennessee.”
Brainstorm Nashville’s focus is building community in the digital age. The Tennessean can accomplish this based on its reach, with 100,000+ unique daily site visitors, its audience and its ability to moderate, distribute and offer context on important topics.
MTSU offers more than 140 undergraduate and 50 graduate programs through its nine colleges. More than 70 percent of its 100,000-plus graduates remain in Tennessee, and 60 percent of its alumni live and work within the Middle Tennessee area. Its College of Mass Communication’s new Center for Innovation in Media, located in the Bragg Mass Communication Building, provides state-of-the-art multimedia content development skills to student journalists.
To get involved, visit www.BrainstormNashville.com. Users can register with their Facebook logins and provide their email addresses for notification of upcoming topics.
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Marlee Matlin, winner of the 1986 Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in “Children of a Lesser God,” will deliver the keynote address for MTSU’s National Women’s History Month celebration on Thursday, March 22, at Tucker Theatre.
The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 4 p.m. Matlin will sign copies of her books, which include I’ll Scream Later, Deaf Child Crossing, Leading Ladies and Nobody’s Perfect, after her lecture.
Off-campus visitors should be aware that nearby construction will limit parking opportunities for the lecture. University Parking and Transportation officials are encouraging visitors to park in the South Rutherford Boulevard lot and ride the Raider Xpress shuttle into the campus core to reach the Boutwell Dramatic Arts Auditorium, which houses Tucker Theatre. A printable campus map is available at www.mtsu.edu/parking/Map_2011-2012.pdf.
At age 21, Matlin became the youngest Best Actress Oscar recipient for her portrayal of a custodian at a school for the deaf who falls in love with a hearing speech teacher even as she resists his attempts to get her to talk.
Deaf since the age of 18 months, Matlin is a member of the National Association for the Deaf, communicates in sign language in her acting and public appearances and travels with an interpreter.
President Bill Clinton appointed Matlin to the Corporation for National Service in 1994, and she served as chairperson for National Volunteer Week. She serves on the boards of several charities, including Easter Seals and The Children Affected by AIDS Foundation.
On the April 3, 2011, episode of “The Celebrity Apprentice,” Matlin raised more money—$986,000—for her charity, the Starkey Hearing Foundation, than had ever been raised for charity in a single television program. Host Donald Trump contributed $14,000 to bring the total to $1 million.
In addition to her film debut in “Children,” her movie credits include “Walker,” “The Player” and “Hear No Evil.”
She starred in the NBC series “Reasonable Doubts” opposite Mark Harmon from 1991 to 1993, earning two Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in a Television Drama.
From 1993 to 1996, Martin co-starred in the CBS series “Picket Fences,” for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award (1994) individually and a Screen Actors Guild Award (1996) as part of the ensemble cast.
Her other TV credits include “The West Wing,” “The Practice,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” and “CSI: NY.”
Matlin’s appearance is sponsored by the June Anderson Center for Women and Nontraditional Students, the Distinguished Lecture Fund, Student Programming, the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, the Centennial Committee, the Sociology Club, Disabled Student Services, the Intercultural and Diversity Affairs Center, Black History Month and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.
For more information, contact the June Anderson Center at 615-898-5989.
– Gina K. Logue ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Some of MTSU’s first black students will discuss their groundbreaking experiences at The Pioneer Summit, an MTSU Black History Month event, at 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 27, in the Tom H. Jackson Building.
Among the pioneers scheduled to attend:
- Leonora Washington, a transfer student from Fisk University who was part of the first wave of black MTSU students and who has taught in the Rutherford County School System for 30 years;
- Michael McDonald, the first black president of the University’s Student Government Association, who later became Nashville’s youngest election commissioner;
- Jimmy Powell, a star basketball player for MTSU in the early 1970s and a charter member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity;
- Mary “Beanie” Secrest, the first black member of the Lady Raider basketball team as well as an MTSU volleyball player who now is the manager of Call Center/QA Training in the Office of Information Technology at Emory University in Atlanta;
- Dr. Phyllis Hickerson-Washington, a charter member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and later MTSU director of minority affairs who now serves as secondary-school coordinator for the Rutherford County School System;
- Dean Hayes, the track and field coach who recruited MTSU’s first black scholarship student and was a key contributor to the University’s integration; and
- Tommy Haynes, an All-American in the triple jump and long jump at MTSU and a charter member of Kappa Alpha Psi, the first black fraternity on campus.
This event, which is sponsored by the MTSU Black History Month Committee and the Centennial Celebration Committee, is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Vincent Windrow, director of MTSU’s Intercultural and Diversity Affairs Center, at 615-898-2238.
– Gina K. Logue ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Hundreds of supportive teachers and parents from across middle Tennessee gathered in MTSU’s Murphy Center Feb. 23 to support an impressive group of bright and dedicated young inventors.
The 2012 Invention Convention marked its 20-year milestone by showcasing approximately 238 inventions by 479 students. Inventions came from public-and private-school students in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades from several counties surrounding MTSU.
The young inventors selected to represent their grades and schools worked either individually or in small teams to create projects featured in the categories of “Games” or “Make Life Easier.”
A few of the projects intended to “Make Life Easier” included Joshua Wolbert’s “Candy Stress Eraser,” Katie Creech and Azura Haley’s “No Hands Handy Pad,” Colleen Thurmond’s “Toothpast-inator” and Makiah Prince, Keely Hicks and Chelsea Henry’s ‘Keep it Klean Shoe Kling. ’”
Hailey Johnson, the sixth-grade inventor of “Drink on the Go,” a helpful creation designed to keep a drink from tipping over while the user is pushing a shopping cart, said her decision to enter the competition was easy.
“When my teacher told me about it, it sounded really fun!” she enthused, adding that she was “really proud to be here.”
Inventions presented in the “Games” category included Christy McLaughlin’s “Time Traveler”; Jackie Ottinger, Isabella Magana, Ashleigh Green and McKenzie Carlton’s “Haunting in Hawaii”; Trey White’s “Even Smart People Walk the Plank”; Seth Filson and Nicholas Hunter’s “The Present Finder’; and Addy Pratt and Kathryn Schmittou’s “Awesome Adjectives.”
Every project featured a visual presentation as well as a working model demonstration by the inventors for judges and visitors.
“I’m so proud of you. You are an inventor. You’ve taken the time to think and create, problem-solve and literally create something that wasn’t here before you made it,” Dr. Tracey Huddleston, founder of MTSU’s Invention Convention and a professor of elementary and special education at the University, said in welcoming the youngsters.
“I also want to challenge you today to go beyond this invention, to continue to think and problem solve and create and dream and continue to make this world a better place. In your hands is our future.”
John Dwyer, news anchor and reporter for the ABC affiliate WKRN-TV in Nashville, was the event’s guest speaker. He told the young inventors that his favorite invention is the hot-air popcorn popper because it eliminated the potentially dangerous hot oil previously used to make the tasty treat.
Dwyer also encouraged the young people to continue inventing and working together to reach goals because “not trying is failure.”
Each participating inventor left the convention a winner with a certificate of participation and a gift of this year’s selected “feature invention,” tubes of ChapStick lip balm, invented in the early 1880s by a Virginia physician.
Judges also awarded selected students with first-, second- and third-place trophies as well as additional awards. Those included:
the State Farm Excellence Award, which acknowledges excellence in all required aspects of the competition;
the Group Champion Award, a medal presented to the group that exhibits the most cooperative teamwork in design and presentation;
the Individual Champion Award, a medal given to the individual who exhibits the most creativity and ingenuity;
the Best Presentation Award, a ribbon for the student or students with the most outstanding presentation skills; and
the Judges’ Favorite Award, a ribbon presented to the student or students who, in addition to meeting all requirements, provide a memorable and unique invention.
The schools represented by the talented young inventors included Byars Dowdy Elementary, Castle Heights Elementary, Cheatham Park Elementary, Coles Ferry Elementary, Coopertown Middle, Discovery School at Reeves Rogers, East Middle, East Robertson Elementary, George A. Whitten Elementary, Greenbrier Elementary, Guild Elementary, Heritage Elementary, Jo Byrns Elementary, Knox Doss at Drakes Creek, McFadden School of Excellence, Middle Tennessee Christian, Millersville Elementary, New Union Elementary, Northside Elementary, Sam Houston Elementary, Scales Elementary, St. Henry, St. Paul the Apostle, T.W. Hunter Middle, Union STEM & Demonstration Center, Unity School, Walter J. Baird Middle, Watuga Elementary, Westside Elementary, White House Elementary and Winfree Bryant Middle.
The event was sponsored by State Farm insurance.
For more information on the Invention Convention, including the contest rules, visit www.mtsu.edu/elementary/invention_convention.shtml or contact Huddleston at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
– Lauren Price ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) is scheduled to deliver the keynote address for MTSU’s observance of Black History Month at 7 p.m. Friday, April 6, in the State Farm Lecture Hall of the Business and Aerospace Building.
The event is free and open to the public. April 6 is a change from the date published in the University’s Black History Month calendar; the original March 2 date was rescheduled to accommodate the congressman’s re-election campaign.
Off-campus visitors should be aware that nearby construction will limit parking opportunities for the lecture. University Parking and Transportation officials are encouraging visitors to park in the South Rutherford Boulevard lot and ride the Raider Xpress shuttle into the campus core to reach the Business and Aerospace Building. A printable campus map is available at www.mtsu.edu/parking/Map_2011-2012.pdf.
Jackson, a social-justice and anti-death-penalty advocate who was Barack Obama’s national campaign co-chair in 2008, is the son of two-time presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson and Jacqueline Jackson. Jackson Jr.’s wife, Sandi Jackson, is Chicago’s 7th Ward Alderman.
The younger Jackson was first elected to Congress in 1995. He serves the 2nd Congressional District of Illinois, which borders both Lake Michigan and the state of Indiana and encompasses almost all of south Chicago and several suburban communities.
Jackson’s official House biography cites the 2001 creation of the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health as one of his major achievements in office. His committee assignments include the House Appropriations Committee. In addition, Jackson is vice chair of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs.
Since 2003, Jackson has been a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He has served on the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics Senior Advisory Board since 2000.
Jackson graduated magna cum laude from North Carolina A&T State University with a bachelor’s degree in business management in 1987. In 1990, he earned his master’s degree in theology from Chicago Theological Seminary. He received his law degree from the University of Illinois in 1993.
This event is sponsored by the University Honors College and the Black History Month Committee. For more information, contact the MTSU Intercultural and Diversity Affairs Center at 615-898-2238 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
– Gina K. Logue ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Howard Klug, a professor of clarinet at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, will perform at 8 p.m. Feb. 29 in a free public concert with MTSU faculty pianist Arunesh Nadgir in Hinton Music Hall inside MTSU’s Wright Music Building.
Klug also will teach a master class at 11:30 a.m. the same day in Room 101 of the University’s Saunders Fine Arts Building.
“I am thrilled to have my former teacher, Professor Klug, visiting the MTSU campus,” said Dr. Todd Waldecker, professor of clarinet at MTSU. “He is an exceptional musician and teacher who is always an inspiration to audiences and students.”
Klug was a featured soloist on flute, clarinet and saxophone as a member of the U.S. Air Force Band in Washington, D.C. He has also been the principal clarinetist of the Fresno Philharmonic, the Bear Valley Festival Orchestra, Sinfonia da Camera and the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra as well as a member of the Columbus (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra and the Grant Park Symphony and a concert soloist for the Belgian Radio Orchestra and the Kamerorkest of the Staatsacademie of Vilnius. His extensive chamber music affiliations have included the Illinois Trio, the Illinois Woodwind Quintet, the Chicago Ensemble, Trio Indiana and fourte’.
A graduate of Ohio State University and the University of Maryland, Klug has become a prominent educator and performer throughout the United States and at various venues in England, Belgium, Austria, Israel, Mexico, Venezuela, Iceland, China, Spain and Portugal. He regularly gives master classes in London at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School and in Vienna at the Hochschule für Musik and the Vienna University.
For more MTSU School of Music concert information, call 615-898-2493 or visit www.mtsumusic.com and click on the “Concert Calendar” link.
For the second time in six years, MTSU’s Land Development/Residential Building Construction Management team has won the National Association of Homebuilders Student Chapters Residential Construction Management Competition.
MTSU finished first out of 40 teams in the competition, which was held Feb. 8-10 at the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Fla. MTSU, which was runner-up in 2011, also won in 2007 and has placed in the top five teams for seven of the past eight years.
“Winning this competition validates both the construction program at MTSU and the dedication and hard work of all six team members,” said team leader Paige Parham of Nashville.
“The project challenged us as students and individuals. It required creativity and, most importantly, the dedication of our construction professors and the industry professionals who spent many hours directing us toward the appropriate research or giving us examples from their own experiences, which helped us to better understand the scope of this project.”
Other team members include Andrew Ethridge and Jonathan Jones of Brentwood, Tenn.; Maverick Green of Shelbyville, Tenn.; Kelly O’Leary of Memphis; and Patrick Turner of Fayetteville, Tenn. Ethridge and Green were on last year’s team.
“Our construction management students consistently are competitive,” said Dr. Walter Boles, chair of the MTSU Department of Engineering Technology. “It is truly a tribute to our program and our students to perform so well at the national level. They are able to bring back insights and capabilities to share with fellow students and, hopefully, our next team.”
The competition is designed to let students apply skills learned in the classroom to a real construction company by completing a management-project proposal, said Dr. David Hatfield, head of the construction management program.
Each MTSU team member spent 400-plus hours completing the 152-page proposal, which included market analysis, sales strategy, scheduling, estimating, infrastructure/house plans, sustainability, cash flow and a management approach for the project, Hatfield added.
In the competition, students were provided with a 22-acre plot in a flood-plain area in Huntsville, Ala., in which to develop a subdivision. Proposals had to be submitted four weeks before the competition.
All student teams presented their proposals to five construction industry judges, and judges then asked each team specific questions about their proposals.
“Many industries dedicated their time to our program,” Parham said, specifically thanking Regent Homes, Citizens Homes, LP Building Products, Regions Bank and Little John Engineering “for their guidance and support.”
“This win will continue to encourage construction industries’ support and keep the MTSU construction program as one of the best-recognized programs of its kind in the nation,” she added.
MTSU’s program is affiliated with the Rutherford County Home Builders Association, Home Builders Association of Middle Tennessee, Home Builders Association of Tennessee and the National Association of Home Builders.
— Randy Weiler ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Marvin Bell, Iowa’s first poet laureate and the author of more than 16 volumes of poetry, will make a special visit to MTSU for a poetry reading on Monday, Feb. 20.
The free public event is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. in Cantrell Hall inside the University’s Tom Jackson Building.
Bell, who has been called “an insider who thinks like an outsider” with writing that is “ambitious without pretension,” was the Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop for 40 years and is now a faculty member emeritus there. He was named as Iowa’s poet laureate in 2000 and served two terms in that role.
He has collaborated with composers, musicians and dancers and is the originator of a poetic form known as the “Dead Man” poem. Three new Bell books appeared in 2011: Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems, from Copper Canyon Press; Whiteout, a collaboration with the photographer Nathan Lyons, from Lodima Press; and a children’s picture book from Candlewick Press illustrated by Chris Raschka and based on the poem “A Primer about the Flag.”
A CD is forthcoming of a song cycle, “The Animals,” commissioned by the composer, David Gompper, which premiered in 2009.
Bell has edited for The North American Review, The Iowa Review and Lost Horse Press and also taught for Goddard College and the Universities of Hawaii and Washington. For five years, he designed and led a summer workshop for teachers from the urban after-school program America SCORES.
Bell, who lives in Iowa City, Iowa, and Port Townsend, Wash., is the father of musician Nathan Bell. The younger Bell is spending a week in residence at MTSU to share his songwriting talents with students at the Visiting Artist’s Seminar, culminating in a free public concert on Friday, Feb. 24, in the University’s Tucker Theatre.
The opportunity to win a free spring-break trip to Destin, Fla., and tickets to a Nashville Predators game are just two of the highlights of MTSU’s fourth annual National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association Sports and Fitness Day.
The event will be held Wednesday, Feb. 22, from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. in the Student Health, Wellness and Recreation Center gym, said Jenny Crouch, Campus Recreation Center marketing and adaptive recreation coordinator.
The event is free for all MTSU students, faculty and staff.
Other highlights will be the annual faculty/staff dodgeball tournament, dance showcase and climbing clinic. All begin at noon. Games, food samples and free chair massages also are part of the day’s activities.
A variety of local retailers, nonprofit organizations and campus organizations and departments will be providing information about living a healthier and greener life, Crouch said.
“Not only will they provide health assessments and information about products and services to encourage wellness, they also will be giving away an assortment of door prizes, samples, coupons and giveaways,” Crouch said.
Campus Recreation, Student Health Services, Student Programming and the Student Government Association are sponsoring the event, which provides information regarding healthy living and wellness, Crouch said.
For more information about Sports and Fitness Day at MTSU or the dodgeball tournament, call Crouch at 615-898-8472 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
