The generosity of the donors below—Cornerstone Donors—helped make MTSU’s new Center for Innovation in Media possible.

Richard Campbell is the former director of the MTSU School of Journalism and author of a scholarly book on 60 Minutes. He currently directs the Journalism Program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is also the interim chair of the Department of Communication.

Gannett-owned media operations in Nashville, Murfreesboro and Clarksville—all of which are helmed by publisher Carol Hudler—are among the inaugural Cornerstone Donors. The Tennessean donated through the Gannett Foundation, the charitable arm of the Gannett Co., which owns the Nashville newspaper and its array of multimedia products. The Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro and the Leaf-Chronicle of Clarksville, both also owned by Gannett, also pledged through the foundation.

The Tennessee Association of Broadcasters (TAB) helps deliver public interest standards, consumer product choices, and other information to the public. (See article on page 38.)

The Tennessee Press Association certainly lived up to its mission statement when it became a Cornerstone Donor. In addition to promoting optimal quality in Tennessee Press Association member newspapers, the association prides itself on anticipating and meeting educational needs in the fields of journalism, First Amendment issues, advertising, business, and technology.

Virginia Dodge Fielder, Ph.D., retired in 2004 as vice president for research at Knight Ridder, the nation’s second-largest newspaper publisher until its sale in 2006. A member of the College of Mass Communication’s Board of Professional Advisors, Fielder also spent time as a reporter and research manager for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Lexington Herald-Leader.

John Seigenthaler founded the First Amendment Center in 1991 with the mission of creating national discussion, dialogue, and debate about First Amendment rights and values. A former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Seigenthaler served for 43 years as an award-winning journalist for The Tennessean. At his retirement he was editor, publisher and CEO. He retains the title chairman emeritus. In 1982, Seigenthaler became the founding editorial director of USA TODAY, serving in that position for a decade. He is chair of the College of Mass Communication’s Board of Professional Advisors and founded the College’s Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies.

Jeffery Reid (‘81), a veteran broadcast journalist with more than 28 years of experience, is an executive producer for CNN Productions. Reid oversees editorial content for the network’s long-form programming, including CNN Presents and CNN: Special Investigations Unit. Reid’s projects Black in America 1 and 2 and Martin Luther King: Words that Changed a Nation, examined the black experience in America. He has served as executive producer for Lou Dobbs Moneyline and Inside Politics. He’s also worked on breaking news including the space shuttle Columbia disaster and the war in Iraq. His other documentary work for CNN includes programs about the Virginia Tech massacre and the Oklahoma City bombing. Reid has been named to Ebony magazine’s Power 150.

Beverly Keel (‘88) is senior vice president of media and artist relations for Universal Music Group (UMG) Nashville. She was previously a recording industry professor at MTSU, where she also served as director of the Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies. Before joining UMG Nashville, she was also a nationally recognized music journalist who covered Nashville for more than 15 years. She served as a Nashville correspondent for People magazine for a decade and was also entertainment editor of American Profile and celebrity columnist at The Tennessean. Keel’s husband Ronnie Steine, who was reelected Metro Nashville councilman-at-large in 2007, also contributed to the project. He previously served as councilman-at-large from 1991 to 1999. He was elected Nashville’s fifth vice mayor in 1999 and served until his resignation in 2002.

The slogan “Can You Hear Me Now?” employed by Verizon Wireless reflects the company’s commitment to deliver the most reliable wireless network in America. But it’s not just the company’s network that earns praise. Verizon Wireless has been identified as one of the best-run companies in America and also ranked among America’s best employers. The company’s 85,000 employees (including many at its Murfreesboro call center), enjoy an industry leading pay and benefits package and work in an environment that inspires excellence. Verizon Wireless is a longtime sponsor of the MTSU College of Mass Communication.

An MTSU professor brings great literature to a most captive, and appreciative, audience

by Katie Porterfield

Each week, when MTSU English professor Dr. Philip E. Phillips concluded his literature class, every student lined up to shake his hand. They thanked him for his time, and they thanked him for coming. No, they weren’t angling for a good grade—they didn’t even receive course credit. In fact, they weren’t even MTSU students. They were inmates at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

“It’s really hard to explain the level of gratitude I find at the facility,” Phillips says, adding that while his MTSU students might be grateful for what he does, they certainly don’t come up and shake his hand after every class.

Phillips, currently the interim associate dean of the University Honors College, began teaching at Riverbend in 2008 as part of Great Books in Middle Tennessee Prisons—a program that he launched and directs. A partnership between MTSU, the Tennessee Department of Correction, and the Great Books Foundation (a Chicago-based nonprofit educational organization), the program gives inmates the opportunity to read and discuss literary and philosophical works with MTSU English faculty volunteers. In addition to Riverbend, the 10-week course has been offered at the Louis M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility and the Tennessee Prison for Women for the past three years. Two professors moderate each course, and so far, Phillips and his team of volunteers have used three textbooks (published by the Great Books Foundation), each of which is an anthology containing selections from authors and thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Flannery O’Connor, and Walt Whitman.

“We provide a different learning environment than one customarily finds in a prison,” Phillips says, explaining that the 10 to 15 class participants arrange their chairs in a circle whenever possible, and instead of lecturing, the professors facilitate discussion on works the students read before class.

For Phillips, the benefit of offering these courses stems from one statistic—an estimated 97 percent of all incarcerated felons are eventually released into the community, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.

“So the question for me is what sort of people do we want them to be?” he says. “Do we want to lock people up and throw away the key, or do we want to try to provide opportunities for people to enrich their minds, to reflect, to empathize, to work well with each other, to be able to listen to different sides of an argument respectfully, to learn how to make one’s position clear—all of those things that we’re able to achieve in this kind of classroom.”

Phillips is perpetually hunting for modest grants to pay for textbooks and other class materials. In the past, he’s received money, as well as pens, paper, and certificates of achievement, from an MTSU Public Service Grant, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Virginia Peck Trust Fund.

In the meantime, he says the inmates, at least those at Riverbend, know that he’ll be back. And while he may not be able to find the words to explain just how much they seem to appreciate the program, one of his students, who admits to being leery of the course in the beginning, doesn’t seem to have any trouble at all.

“I refuse to be a part of anything that free-world people introduce inside prison where I feel I would be exploited so somebody will feel good about themselves,” an inmate wrote to Phillips. “However, from the time I first met Dr. Phillips […] I knew that they were here simply because they wanted to share a part of their world with no other expectation than for us to give them a chance to enhance our lives.”

That’s quite a testament to Phillips and his Great Books in Middle Tennessee Prisons program.

[Editor’s Note: Some of the grant money the Program recently received went toward bringing Donald H. Whitfield from the Great Books Foundation to MTSU to provide a workshop, hosted by the Honors College, for the benefit of the faculty who will be teaching in the prisons in the spring of 2012. They include: Phillips, Rebecca King, Warren Tormey, Brett Hudson, Laura Dubek and Jim Hamby.]

The real love story behind Jack and Rose’s fictional one may just be that of Isidor and Ida Straus

by Candace Moonshower

Jine Hall McCash looks at the lives of Ida and Isidor Straus before their doomed final voyage.

On April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic, a passenger liner on its maiden voyage from England to New York City, struck an iceberg and sank. Titanic, the 1997 blockbuster movie version of what happened during the one and only voyage of the great ship, tells the story of Jack and Rose—star-crossed lovers played by young, vibrant, and good-looking Hollywood icons Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet—who spend four enchanted days together before Jack dies in the frigid ocean.

The real love story behind Jack and Rose’s fictional one may just be that of Isidor and Ida Straus, who were not so young, not so vibrant, and, possibly, not so good-looking. But their love was one built on more than 40 years of marriage and parenting together. The couple is depicted in the 1953 movie version of Titanic, and in the movie A Night to Remember. In James Cameron’s 1997 retelling, an elderly couple is shown briefly, lying together in bed, awaiting the crushing waters. While the scene may be intended as an allusion to the Strauses, their final moments together were quite different. But the story of Isidor and Ida Straus is a powerful one of love and honor, and definitely worth a book of its own.

And now, that story is coming to life as a result of author and longtime MTSU professor June Hall McCash, who first came to MTSU in 1967 to teach French. In 1973, she became the founding director of the Honors Program (now Honors College), and in 1980, McCash was appointed chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. She stepped down as chair in 1992 and retired in 2004. She remains closely connected to the University as professor emerita, and also through her service to MTSU’s Centennial Committee. Her newest book, A Titanic Love Story: Ida and Isidor Straus, is planned for publication in March 2012 by Mercer University Press. The timing is perfect.

This spring will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic.

Years before his fateful voyage, Isidor Straus, businessman and one-time congressman, went into business with the owners of the R. H. Macy store. Isidor and his brother Nathan eventually became sole owners of what would be the largest department store in New York City. By 1912, Isidor was turning over responsibility of the store to his three sons. He and Ida, 67 and 63 years old at the time, spent several months in Europe on vacation in 1912 and had their return voyage already booked on the Olympic, another White Star Line ship.

Because of a coal strike, the White Star Line couldn’t fuel both ships, and a return on the Olympic would be delayed. Fatefully, Isidor Straus booked their return to the United States on Titanic, and the couple, along with Ida’s new maid, Ellen Bird, and Isidor’s valet, John Farthing, boarded the ship and moved into their first-class accommodations. As Titanic was sinking, Ida boarded a lifeboat, but when she realized that her husband would not get on the boat while there were women and children still aboard the ship, she returned to the deck. Ida gave her maid her fur coat and her own seat in one of the lifeboats.

Like her movie counterpart 100 years later, Ida Straus did stay on the ship with the love of her life; unfortunately, neither survived. They were last seen embracing on the deck.  When Titanic went down, Ida was one of only four adult women from first class who died.

Have we learned everything there is to know about the voyage and sinking of the Titanic and all of the people whose lives it affected? We asked our resident expert, McCash.

“We will never know everything, but I believe that the documented sources concerning the sinking have been thoroughly examined and that we know, most probably, everything we will ever know. New documents surface from time to time, but they tend to shed more light on the lives of the victims than about their deaths. Information will continue to be gleaned from private papers, such as those I have used for this book. And that information transforms them into real, living persons we have not previously known.

“Ida and Isidor Straus are much more complete when one examines not just their deaths, but their lives—what they stood for, what they believed in, and what they valued. Those values impacted their deaths and why they chose to die together rather than live alone. The more I learned about the Strauses, the more I admired them. They are, I think, role models that could benefit the me-centered world in which we live today. At the end, neither thought of himself or herself, but of others. Honor and loyalty were values that defined them as human beings.”

[Editor’s Note: McCash was named Georgia Writer of the Year for her first novel, Almost to Eden. Her new novel, Plum Orchard, will be published in January 2012.]

An outsidethe-Box teacher licensure program helps recruit future STEM teachers

by Drew Ruble

Teaching the Teacher: MTEACH master teacher Sally Millsap, a former Tennessee Academy of Science Distinguished Secondary Science Teacher Award winner, works with three recruited MTEACH students on tactile lesson plans.

Eboni Eaton, a junior from Covington, Tenn., came from a family of teachers. She decided early in her college career not to follow in their footsteps.

“I didn’t want to be like everybody else,” she says. “Science is my thing. It’s something I’m really good at. So I was pre-medicine. I wanted to be a pediatrician because I love being around kids.”

A flyer detailing MTSU’s new MTEACH program—one of only 21 nationally*—altered Eaton’s chosen professional path. The program simply asks math and science majors to try out a one-credit teaching course free of charge to experience what it’s like to be a classroom teacher.

Eaton decided to give it a try. Within five weeks of starting the course, she was trained on lesson plans and getting experience teaching in a local classroom. She liked it so much that she switched her concentration to secondary education.

Eaton is not alone in making that decision. According to MTSU MTEACH program coordinator Leigh Gostowski, the program has been “radically successful.” Just one year into the program, MTEACH has increased by 222 percent the number of MTSU math and science majors now committed to becoming teachers. Going into the second full year of the program, more than 70 students are enrolled.

Those participation and conversion rates are filling a desperate need for teachers in math and science across the nation. Improving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is key to maintaining American economic competitiveness because so many of the technologies we depend on today are rooted in math and science theory.

The situation is particularly acute in Tennessee. Students are required to take chemistry and physics to graduate from high school in Tennessee; however, the state hasn’t been able to meet the need for teachers in those subjects. Just a few years ago, the whole state produced only one physics teacher.

That’s a crisis—so much so that MTSU was willing to reach into the Tennessee public school system and recruit one of its brightest science teachers to work instead in the MTEACH program. MTEACH master teacher Sally Millsap received the 2008 Tennessee Academy of Science Distinguished Secondary Science Teacher Award while working as a chemistry teacher at Blackman High School in Murfreesboro. She says her decision to leave the classroom was the hardest she’s ever made but worth it given the potential impact of MTEACH.

“I had worked with new teachers in the field, and I didn’t feel like we were producing the quality graduates that we needed from our higher education system,” Millsap says. “I also knew from my administrator that we weren’t producing the quantity, either. I knew I could go in and get college students excited about teaching. Instead of teaching chemistry to one kid or 150 kids every year, I could teach 100 college students how to be good teachers, then they could go out and teach 100 students. So I knew my impact could be exponentially greater here.”

Millsap says teacher education programs like MTEACH are also rich with research opportunities. Combined with MTSU’s recently launched Mathematics and Science Education Ph.D. program, as well as its Learning, Teaching, and Innovative Technologies Center (the focal point for faculty development at MTSU), the University is well positioned to ask tough questions about what really works in the classroom, how students really learn, and what are the best practices in teacher education and in the field. The answers have the potential to be crucial findings at a time when math and science education is a matter of global competitiveness.

[*MTSU received a five-year, $1.925 million grant to help launch MTEACH in late 2009.]

The Apostle Paul wrote it, and we’ve all heard it. Now a professor of management at MTSU has reached a conclusion about it:

“The love of money is the root of all evil” — at least in the workplace.

Q&A

by Allison Gorman

In 1999, Dr. Thomas Tang began researching what would become his academic specialty—the love of money as a measurable human quality, with foreseeable effects. His Love of Money Scale (LOMS) has become a standard measure in management research.

Tang has applied LOMS in scores of studies in office and university settings worldwide, finding empirical evidence that love of money makes people behave in predictable ways. And Tang says he’s consistently found that common wisdom about wealth—for better or worse—holds true.

Tang recently led a collaborative research project across six continents to explore how the love of money relates to corrupt intent among business managers in 31 countries. A condensed version of that report, named for Paul’s admonition, was selected for publication in the Best Paper Proceedings of the 2011 Academy of Management Meeting.

Your research begins with the premise that money itself is not inherently good or bad. Correct?

Tang: Yes. The question is, “What do you do with it?” If you earned your money ethically, you feel happy. I have published a paper on it: in a sense, if you have a lot of talent and a lot of money, chances are you will give more and you will receive more. And if you use it wisely, chances are more money will come to you. So, “To those who have, it shall be given in abundance, and for those who don’t have, even what they have will be taken away.”

You published a 2008 study focusing on college business majors. What were your findings?

Tang: I found that the love of money is somewhat related to Machiavellianism, which is related to unethical behavior and that [correlation] will be there for business students but not for psychology students. It’s there for male students but not for female students, and for male business students but not female business students. Male business students are more manipulative, and they’re more likely to engage in unethical behavior.

What conclusion do you draw from that?

Tang: Girls are more ethical; they seek other people’s approval. Boys sometimes venture out and do something really bad. That’s why I have a paper called “The Lost Sheep.”

So this is learned behavior that can be undone?

Tang: To some extent, yes, but it’s a matter of self selection. People who want to make more money may choose a business discipline because of the environment where everyone is competitive and sometimes ethical issues are ignored.

Has your research turned up anything counterintuitive?

Tang: A paper I’m working on now shows that people with a high love of money actually have low corruption for this particular sample in Macedonia—and I have a cross-culture study showing the same thing. That is, in poor countries, those people who want to have a lot of money move to the top, where they have the most opportunities to be corrupt—to take bribes and kickbacks, for example. After they’ve been corrupted for a long time, they have lots of money. And if they have lots of money, their love of money will go down somewhat. In other words, if you have everything you need, having extra money won’t be very helpful to you.

So in poor countries, the mentality is, “Let me get as much as I can get now because I may not be here next year.” It’s the same mentality as some of those executives at Enron and other places. Most executives survive for seven years as a CEO; they want to get as much as they can in those seven years because after that, they’ll be retiring.

Basically, I think it’s very true that the love of money is the root of all evil; however, the level of the love of money may change over time.

Thank you for your time, Dr. Tang.

A diverse array of centers and institutes focus the talents and attention of the MTSU community on problems that affect us all.

by Patsy Weiler

The various Middle Tennessee State University academic centers not only enrich the lives of those on campus, the surrounding community, the state and beyond; collectively, their academic, government, and business partnerships bring millions of dollars to fund cutting-edge research and community service offerings.

From helping a student struggling with dyslexia to assisting iconic WSM-AM place its historic radio broadcasting tower on the National Register of Historic Places, the work of MTSU’s diverse group of centers results in far-reaching, positive effects.

Here, then, is a brief look at some of MTSU’s most conspicuous centers and institutes as well as a sampling of their efforts.

Center for Historic Preservation

www.mtsuhistpres.org

The Center for Historic Preservation works across Tennessee to identify, preserve, interpret, sensitively promote, and sustain our historic environment.

Work Samples: The Tennessee Century Farms Program recognizes and documents Tennessee farms owned by the same family and in continuous production for at least 100 years. The statewide program includes more than 1,400 farms.

The Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area, operated in partnership with the National Park Service, is the nation’s only heritage area to encompass an entire state.

The Tennessee Rural African American Church Project is an ongoing survey of rural African American churches that date from 1850 to 1970. The project collects the history of significant events, people, and architecture associated with the various places of worship.

Did you know? Center director Dr. Carroll Van West co-chaired the state of Tennessee’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission, the body created to lead the state’s efforts in commemorating the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

Vision: “To support and sustain meaningful field projects, public-service efforts and student training.”
—Carroll Van West, director

Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia

http://dyslexia.mtsu.edu

The center is dedicated to unraveling the puzzle of dyslexia. It is a model for the organization and delivery of professional services to students with dyslexia, to psychologists and teachers who identify and instruct them, and to schools that must orchestrate a broad range of services to enable these students to achieve their potential.

Work Samples: Training services and workshops are offered statewide, as are specialized in-service school programs. Teachers, school psychologists, speech and language therapists, and administrators are taught how to assess and assist students.

Improving Instruction for Students with Dyslexia is an online, on-demand course offered through MTSU’s University College.

Did you know? The center is the only nonprofit center for the study and treatment of dyslexia in the state established by the Tennessee General Assembly.

Vision: “To bring awareness of what dyslexia is and what schools can do for the students, following identification, to assist them in reaching their full learning abilities.”
—Erin Alexander, assistant director for clinical services

Tennessee Small Business Development Center

www.tsbdc.org

T he Tennessee Small Business Development Center (TSBDC), headquartered at MTSU, consists of 14 sub-centers, 7 affiliate offices, and an online service center located at universities and community colleges across the state. The center is a network of professional business consultants providing expert business advice to all types of businesses. It also maintains an international trade center.

Work Samples: The most recent economic impact study data revealed that TSBDC clients generated $4.88 million in additional state and federal tax revenue.

TSBDC created 631 new jobs and saved 338 existing jobs. Over $9.1 million in additional capital was raised by clients as a direct result of the assistance of the TSBDC.

Did you know? More than 100,000 businesses have received TSBDC’s expert counsel.

Vision: “The strength of Tennessee’s economic growth is based in part on the small business community and its ability to get products to market. TSBDC is here to help every step of the way.”
—Patrick Geho, director

Albert Gore Research Center

www.gorecenter.mtsu.edu

Named for Albert Gore Sr., a former U.S. representative and senator from Tennessee (1939–1970), the center collects and makes available archival materials about the history of middle Tennessee to the public and the campus community.

Work Samples: The Margaret Lindsley Warden Library for Equine Studies is a nationally recognized collection donated by Warden, who for 52 years reported on horse events for the Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper.

The Gore Center contains more than 2,500 bound volumes, some dating to the 16th century. Also, more than 750 oral history projects/interviews have been conducted about middle Tennessee history topics, MTSU campus life, and other subjects. Also included are 400 interviews of veterans, conducted in partnership with the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.

Did you know? The University’s original 1911 payroll ledger is at the center. The book contains the signatures of the first president, R. L. Jones, and members of the campus staff from professors to janitor, all of whom had to sign for their paychecks.

Vision: “To serve the MTSU community as the University’s formal institutional archive and continue to expand our holdings, which help students and others understand the American democratic process.”
—Jim Williams, director

Center For Organizational and Human Resource Effectiveness (Cohre)

www.cohre.net

The center helps organizations meet their human resource and organizational development needs by providing a wide range of management consulting services, translating state-of-the-art research into practical strategies and solutions for clients.

Work Sample: The center’s expertise has assisted numerous University colleges and departments—including the Office of the President and the Department of Aerospace’s NASA-funded air traffic control simulation lab.

Did you know? In addition to its work on campus, COHRE has custom designed programs to assist Rutherford County government, State Farm, the Tennessee Supreme Court, Gaylord Entertainment, United Way, Comdata, and Nissan North America, among others.

Vision: “COHRE partnerships continue to have a growing influence on our community’s economic development while simultaneously providing our faculty and students with applied opportunities to sharpen their professional skills.”
—Michael Hein, director

Center for Health and Human Services

www.mtsu.edu/achcs/about.shtml

The center initiates and strengthens programs in health and human services to support workforce development and promote healthy communities in Tennessee.

Work Samples: The Death Scene Investigation/SIDS Project is a statewide training program for investigating sudden infant death, with the goal of creating evidence-based programs to reduce these tragedies.

Did you know? Collaboration with the Tennessee Cancer Coalition educates daycare/preschool providers on healthy lifestyles to decrease the risk of developing cancer and other lifestyle-associated diseases and conditions.

Vision: “As we strive to monitor health status to identify and solve community health problems; inform, educate, and empower people about health issues; mobilize community health partnerships; and attract highly capable students into the health professions, we will continue to improve the health of the citizens of Tennessee.”
—M. Jo Edwards, director

Middle East Center

www.mtsu.edu/~mideastctr

The center’s focus is to promote an understanding of the various populations and cultures of the Middle East among the student body as well as in the surrounding communities. It also encourages faculty research and seeks to serve and respond to the needs of Middle Eastern students on campus.

Work Sample: MTSU is one of just a few universities nationwide that offers Kurdish language instruction. Why is that significant? As a result of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which for years forced Kurds to learn Arabic, the Kurdish language is actually endangered. Middle Tennessee is home to the largest Kurdish community in the nation.

Did you know? The center is the first of its kind established in Tennessee.

Vision: “Current events and continued U.S. involvement in various parts of the Middle East remind us how important the region is and how important it is for us to learn more about its rich and diverse cultures.”
—Allen Hibbard, director

Interdisciplinary Microanalysis and Imaging Center (MIMIC)

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~mimic/about.html

MIMIC is a core facility for microscopy and other characterization equipment used by a broad range of diverse disciplines, from Concrete Industry Management to Forensic Science.

Work Sample: Hitachi Scanning Electron and Transmission Electron microscopes aid faculty and students in diverse research projects such as “Quantum-Dot Sensitized Solar Cells Using Copper (I) Oxide as the Hole Transport Layer.”

Did you know? MTSU is the first U.S. customer for the new TESCAN focused ion beam-scanning electron microscope system.

Vision: “MIMIC strives to provide consultation, services, training and equipment usage pertaining to microscopy and microanalysis for both MTSU and off-campus clients. MIMIC also collaborates with industrial and academic partners in solving problems in which nanoscale or microscale characterization plays a key role.”
—Ngee Sing Chong, director

Center for Environmental Education (CEE)

www.mtsu.edu/mtsucee/index.shtml

The center is dedicated to improving environmental education in middle Tennessee and statewide, inspiring commitment about our environment and its inhabitants.

Work Sample: The Tennessee Amphibian Monitoring Program (TAMP) is an all-volunteer effort to assess the abundance of breeding populations of frogs and toads in Tennessee.

Did you know? The center’s “Whale Man,” Dr. Padgett Kelly, brings a 50-foot long, life-sized adult humpback whale model to middle Tennessee elementary schools in his “Whale of a Tale” program to teach landlocked students about life in the ocean.

Vision: “Environmental topics are gaining higher visibility in the media and in daily conversations of the general public. We hope that the CEE will continue to move people from awareness about the environment to action for the environment.”
—Cindi Smith-Walters, codirector

Tennessee Center for Child Welfare (TCCW)

www.tccw.org

As the agency responsible for training the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) workforce and resource parents, TCCW and its partners bear a great deal of responsibility for the quality of child welfare practice in Tennessee.

Work Sample: One recent project involved evaluation of a new statewide effort called “multiple response” or “differential response,” which retrains protective services employees to better determine the exact nature of abuse or neglect calls (many of which can be remedied by simply aligning families with helping agencies) before automatically sending investigators to homes.

Did you know? TCCW is the recipient of the largest grant awarded to MTSU, funded by the DCS.

Confucius Institute

www.mtsu.edu/cimtsu

The institute exists to enhance the understanding of Chinese language and culture, facilitate engagement with China, and create opportunities for exchange and collaboration between communities in Tennessee and China.

Work Sample: The institute provides teaching resources and offers assistance to interested K–12 schools developing Chinese language programs. It organizes summer camps, forges collaborations between schools in middle Tennessee and in China, and even recruits volunteer Chinese language teachers from China to teach at K–12 schools.

Did you know? MTSU’s center was established in partnership with Hangzhou Normal University of China.

Vision: “The institute seeks to become a hub for China-related activities and a resource center for Chinese language, history, contemporary society, and culture.”
—Guanping Zheng, director

Who determined that Nashville’s health care industry contributes nearly $30 billion and 210,000 jobs to the local economy and that 10,000 green jobs may be created in Tennessee between now and 2014?

Who reported that Williamson County—Tennessee’s richest—had program and funding gaps for issues such as affordable housing; transportation; alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental illness treatment; and access to available services for rural parts of the county?

Who analyzed the compensation structure for manufacturing employees in Coffee, Franklin, and Lincoln counties in an effort to help economic development officials understand their markets when assisting prospective businesses in their relocation to the region?

Who revealed that the Bonnaroo music festival is a cash cow for middle Tennessee, pumping about $14 million in revenue into Coffee County each year? And who conducted a study that led to federal funding for a $20 million northwest Tennessee slack water port?

The experts at the Business and Economic Research Center, housed in the Jennings A. Jones College of Business—that’s who. The center, led by director David A. Penn, is often cited in newspapers statewide for its astute analyses of Tennessee economic issues.

Dem Bones: Nationally recognized forensic anthropologist Hugh Berryman is helping build a powerhouse forensics program at MTSU

An internationally recognized expert in forensic science builds a powerhouse program at MTSU

by Allison Gorman

His research goes by titles such as “Common Household Rope and an Outdoor Hanging,” “Cervical Vertebrae Entrapment in the Noose,” and “Evidence of Prehistoric Violent Trauma from a Cave in Middle Tennessee.”

Such scholarly, albeit gruesome, work in the field of trauma has earned MTSU professor Dr. Hugh Berryman a reputation as one of the nation’s foremost forensic anthropologists; Berryman will receive the 2012 award for lifetime achievement in physical anthropology from the American Academy for Forensic Sciences. The T. Dale Stewart Award, given annually to a single recipient, is the highest honor bestowed upon a forensic anthropologist in the United States.

Venerable institutions like the Smithsonian Institution regularly tap Berryman’s expertise on bones and bone trauma. In 2005, the Smithsonian invited him to join an elite scientific research team examining the 9,300-year-old skeleton dubbed “Kennewick Man.” He is also part of the effort to exhume the body of Meriwether Lewis to determine whether his shooting death was a suicide, as originally reported, or murder.

Berryman also provides consultation and regular testing and review for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, which identifies soldiers from as far back as the Civil War. (It’s one of the world’s most technologically advanced forensic labs.) And since moving to the Nashville area in 2000, he’s made himself available to regional law enforcement and other agencies that deal with death and homicide. As MTSU provost Brad Bartel notes, “Hugh Berryman is probably on speed dial for a lot of counties in Middle Tennessee.”

Certainly the glamorization of forensics on television and in fiction has inflamed student interest across the U.S., but at MTSU, Berryman has turned forensics into a flagship program that benefits students and community alike. It operates as an invaluable regional resource while turning out graduates who are several steps ahead of their competition.

He founded MTSU’s Forensic Institute for Research and Education (FIRE), which offers extensive training for local law enforcement. Last fall, building on the momentum Berryman created, MTSU introduced a bachelor’s-level program in forensic science—the only one in Tennessee, one of only three in the Southeast, and expected to be one of fewer than 20 accredited programs of its kind in the country. Berryman also created FASR, the Forensic Anthropology Search and Recovery Team, to give MTSU students practical experience at the undergraduate level. FASR students accompany and assist him at crime and accident scenes.

Such hands-on training makes FASR students highly employable once they graduate, says Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director Mark Gwyn, a 1985 MTSU grad.

“If you can get someone who already has knowledge and understanding of that particular venue, then it makes the training easier and shorter, and it puts that person to work a lot quicker. We’re always looking for that,” Gwyn says.

Bartel says this confluence of talent and opportunity in forensics will give the university national name recognition.

“As a provost, you want all of your programs to be as good as they can be,” Bartel says. “But some, by the nature of the quality faculty you have, and maybe just the uniqueness of the program, rise to a higher level nationally. I view the forensic program as one of those signature, reputational programs for MTSU.”

Daniel Erenso tackles sickle cell diseases one cell at a time

by Drew Ruble

It Takes a Very Steady Hand: Daniel Erenso wields tweezers in the fight against sickle cell anemia.

Dr. Daniel Erenso, associate professor of physics and astronomy at MTSU, uses an experimental technique that enables him to “grasp” individual cells with a laser beam to study the morphology and elasticity of red blood cells (RBCs) by measuring their responses to linear and rotational deformations. What’s the upside? Abnormalities in RBC shape or flexibility, which are caused by genetic mutation, can result in sickle cell (SC) diseases.

The prevalence of these diseases in the United States is approximately one in 5,000. Worldwide, an estimated 300,000 affected individuals are born each year. SC affects mostly people (or their descendants) from parts of tropical and subtropical regions since the gene mutation is caused by frequent exposure to malaria, which is common there. According to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the average life expectancy of individuals with SC diseases is 42 for males and 48 for females.

Though several treatments have been developed to treat these diseases, the most promising technique is stem cell–targeted gene therapy. Recently, a clinical trial conducted in mouse models by a group led by Dr. Derek Persons at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis corrected two common types of sickle cell diseases: sickle cell anemia and beta-thalassemia.

Future human clinical trials of such stem cell–targeted gene therapy will require a different approach to measure the efficacy of the treatment in mice. One method is to conduct a comparative study on the elasto-mechanical properties of the normal, the sickle, and the genetically corrected RBCs of the mouse model using laser tweezers. In 2010, Erenso teamed up with Persons to conduct this study. Erenso and coworkers found that new blood cells generated through the gene therapy technique have properties resembling those of healthy cells, a breakthrough for the scientists and good news for those with sickle cell diseases.

More recently, Erenso has been busy building a new device: a “magnetic” tweezer that will eventually allow him to study red blood cells at the molecular level—an even smaller dimension. Given Erenso’s cutting-edge approach to SC research, it comes as no surprise that another higher education institution in Middle Tennessee, Meharry Medical College, home of a sickle cell center, has recently reached out to collaborate with the MTSU professor.

An endangered local ecosystem stands to benefit from the return of two problem-solving plant ecologists.

by Drew Ruble

Outside garden clubs, co-ops, and farming operations, seeds probably don’t figure in daily conversations between average people. Yet, after water and oxygen, seeds are about as crucial to human life as it gets. One need look no further than the so-called “Doomsday” seed vault located in the Norwegian tundra (a repository for the world’s food sources should humans, or outside forces, one day need to resow the planet) to see how serious a matter seed preservation can be.

Still, storing a seed does little good if one does not know how to make it germinate. That’s where MTSU’s own seed experts—Drs. Jeffrey Walck and Siti Hidayati—come in. The husband-wife duo of plant ecologists study seed germination and have cracked the mysteries of hard-to-germinate species around the world.

The pair recently returned to MTSU after a two-year sabbatical working in Australia as part of a collaborative partnership with Kings Park and Botanic Garden in Perth, the University of Western Australia’s School of Plant Biology, and the Millennium Seed Bank Project at the Royal Botanic Gardens. (Dramatically named Norwegian seed vaults notwithstanding, this latter project is the world’s largest seed conservation initiative for safeguarding plants against extinction.) While in the Land of Oz, the couple solved the problem of germination in Guinea flowers—dominant shrubs in temperate Australia—and also worked on several plants important for mining restoration.

“[Australians] have large mining operations, so they have to reclaim the land but couldn’t get the seeds of the native species to germinate,” Walck explains. “That was very big for them from both an academic and industrial standpoint.”

Success unlocking Australia’s seed mysteries garnered attention elsewhere around the globe. Taiwan and South Korea each have the couple working to unlock their own seed germination mysteries. Their work also led to greater notice in the global sciencecommunity. Based on additional efforts in Australia reviewing the effects of global climate change on plant regeneration from seeds, Walck recently coauthored an opinion article in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, titled “Time to Future-Proof Plants in Storage.”

While the couple’s global seed germination studies continue to percolate in incubators lining the halls of the Davis Science Building at MTSU, the pair is turning their attention to a problem closer to home—the preservation and restoration of middle Tennessee’s signature cedar glades.

Cedar glades, where limestone bedrock occurs near or at the soil surface and makes it impossible for trees to grow, are endangered ecosystems. Globally unique, they are found primarily in middle Tennessee. But because of the rapid growth of Metro Nashville and nearby Murfreesboro and Lebanon, many cedar glades (an estimated 50 percent) have been destroyed by development. Plant communities of highly specialized species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world, have been destroyed along the way.

Walck has focused on restoration ecology—or what to do to “fix” a glade that’s been disturbed or destroyed.

“Nothing has ever been done on that question,” Walck says. “We have some glades that have been heavily impacted and could probably be restored, but we lack the basic ecological data needed to do it.”

Though the rest of the world may miss them, Walck and Hidayati’s return to middle Tennessee comes just in time for the cedar glades.