MURFRESBORO, Tenn. — The January edition of “Out of the Blue,” Middle Tennessee State University’s television magazine show, features Khalilah Doss, the first-year vice president of Student Affairs and dean of students, sharing about how her division proactively cares for students.

Doss, a Kingston, Jamaica, native who came to MTSU from Southern Indiana University-Evansville in July 2024, said her “role is to bring together some key departments that provide resources and support for the students who call MTSU home” in her interview with Andrew Oppmann, vice president of marketing and communications and “Out of the Blue” host.

“The nature of what Student Affairs is and does,” said Doss, “it’s that we are concerned about the welfare of students. Everyone is, but it’s in our job description, it’s Student Affairs, right? So, it’s how do we navigate between being present and having a presence?”

One of the early changes she suggested was the renaming the Office of Student Conduct to the Office of Student Care and Conduct.

“This is my third vice presidency,” Doss said. “And consistent across the board, best practices in the research shows that a lot of our conduct cases come out of the absence of care. We had a great system here at the university before I got here. What I challenged my team on was, ‘How do we reimagine what this could be?’ Out of that came this concept of having a care team, and even expanding on our behavioral intervention team as well.

“The care team is really the clearinghouse for all things involving students. A student could have had a death in their family, a student could be struggling with something. What we do is we help to figure out where the student needs to land to be best supported.”

In the middle of the fall semester, MTSU and Doss faced a crisis with the tragic death of a student.

“We triaged a lot of students through to counseling or other wellness opportunities,” Doss said. “The care team is a clearinghouse for any issue a student can have. I often share with them in the handbook, between pages 47 and 49, the Office of Student Affairs is where students should come with any concerns that they have.”

“Out of the Blue” is available anytime on the university’s YouTube channel, the True Blue TV channel, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. It also airs on Murfreesboro cable Channel 9 daily at 6 and 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.; NewsChannel5+ at 6:30 p.m. Sundays; via streaming on MTSU’s Jazz Network on WMOT HD2 and through WMOT.org at 7 a.m. on the first Sunday of each month; and on other cable outlets in Middle Tennessee, so check local listings.

It is also available as a podcast on iTunes and Google Play and as individual interview segments on Spotify at https://spoti.fi/453hxg3.

Watch previous episodes of “Out of the Blue” at https://mtsunews.com/out-of-the-blue.

— Randy Weiler (Randy.Weiler@mtsu.edu)