MTSU News and Public Affairs

Visiting Fulbright Scholar Dr. Thurya Abdulla says spending the past six months at MTSU and Murfreesboro has been a “great opportunity.”

Abdulla, who received her doctorate in mathematics from Imperial College at the University of London and teaches at the University of Bahrain, has utilized her Fulbright opportunity with the MTSU Department ofMathematical Sciences.

STEM — or science, technology, engineering and mathematics — has become a popular buzzword nationally in the past year.

And STEM will be at front and center Saturday, Feb. 25, at MTSU when more than 400 middle- and high-school students and 600 people altogether participate in the annual Regional Science Olympiad.

Keathley University Center’s second-floor lobby area is where participants, their coaches, volunteers and others will gather before the first events at 8:15. Separate awards’ ceremonies will start at approximately 3 p.m. in the KUC Theater.

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.

Music lovers can take a trip through history with the Stones River Chamber Players’ Feb. 20 concert, which showcases music from “The 13 Original Colonies” of America.

The 7:30 p.m. performance in the Hinton Music Hall of MTSU’s Wright Music Building is the second in the three-concert season, titled “Pack Your Bags,” for the SRCP, a faculty ensemble-in-residence at MTSU.

The concert is free and open to the public.

Six songs to be performed by MTSU faculty soprano Christine Isley-Farmer are compositions by five different early Americans.

The Confucius Institute at MTSU will sponsor two Chinese New Year performances by entertainers from China’s Hubei University to celebrate the “Year of the Dragon” on Monday, Feb. 20, in Murfreesboro.

At 12:00 p.m., the Hubei University Dragon Dance Troupe will perform in the quadrangle in front of MTSU’s James E. Walker Library. In the dance, people carry the dragon costume around on poles, emulating the creature’s undulating movements to symbolize power and dignity.

MTSU Athletics and Lightning’s Locker Room are joining forces for “Operation Hat Trick,” a nonprofit movement to provide free headgear to wounded military veterans.

This initiative, which originated at the University of New Hampshire, was created in honor of two fallen Navy SEALs, Nate Hardy and Mike Koch, who were killed in Iraq in February 2008. They are buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Three agencies are teaming up to celebrate “Our People” Month during the City of Murfreesboro’s bicentennial year with a special community-heritage lecture, “We Are as Grand as We Want to Be: African-American Mutual Aid Groups in Murfreesboro,” on Thursday, Feb. 16.

The free public lecture will begin at 7 p.m. at the Bradley Academy Museum and Cultural Center, located at 415 S. Academy St. in Murfreesboro two blocks north of Broad Street.

It’s sponsored by The Heritage Center of Murfreesboro and Rutherford County and the Bradley Academy Museum and Cultural Center.  

"Wedding Dresses Through the Decades," an all-ages exhibit featuring real wedding dresses, vintage photographs, antique china and the stories behind their owners, is open for its final weekend at Oaklands Historic House Museum through Wednesday, Feb. 17.

The exhibit, presented in partnership with Middle Tennessee State University's Department of Human Sciences, is the first of its kind to take place at Oaklands, but organizers say they doubt it will be the last.

The Department of Jazz Studies in MTSU’s School of Music will present two consecutive concerts featuring two of the genre’s best-known and loved jazz drummers, Ed Soph and Duffy Jackson, Feb. 16 and 17.

Soph will appear with the MTSU Jazz Faculty as part of the “MTSU Jazz Artist Series” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16. Jackson will perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17, with the MTSU Jazz Ensemble I. Both performances will be held in Hinton Music Hall inside MTSU’s Wright Music Building and are open to the public.

MTSU Poll’s new ‘Partisan Profiles’ detail traits of state’s Democrats, Republicans

The MTSU Poll’s newly released “Spring 2012 Partisan Profiles” reveal which demographic traits tend to distinguish Tennessee’s Republicans, Democrats and independents from each other as the state’s primary and general elections approach.

The state’s Republicans, for example, are more likely than Democrats or independents to watch Fox News and to be white, moderately wealthy suburbanites.