MURFRESBORO, Tenn. — Middle Tennessee State University’s Student Union Building as a central gathering place for campus life for students is featured in the November edition of “Out of the Blue,” Middle Tennessee State University’s television magazine show.

In an interview with Andrew Oppmann, vice president of Marketing and Communications, Danny Kelley, interim vice president of Student Affairs, and Justin Reed, director of Student Engagement and Leadership, share insights on the Student Union and the many opportunities available for students to get involved on campus.

The segment highlights how the Student Union serves as a central hub for connection, programming and community-building, helping students find their place and thrive at MTSU.

“The Student Union has provided a great opportunity to increase the engagement of our students with various activities,” Kelley said. “That’s critical to our philosophy because research continues to tell us that the more students are engaged, that’s going to increase their feeling of belonging, retention, then wanting to stay in school and then ultimately graduate. Having this facility really ties in nicely to that philosophy.”

Reed said they consider the 13-year-old, 215,000 square feet of “student exploratory space the living room on campus. We want to be the home away from home for students when they come to MTSU, to be able to find identity, find themselves, find their people and find how they’re going to engage with campus out of the classroom here.

“We’ve got game rooms, e-sports centers, movie theaters and hangout spaces. That’s a big thing about what we try to achieve — a place for students to just hang out and be a student.”

You can watch the segment here:

The Student Union Building is home to the Student Government Association. Kelley said SGA “has really been very intentional in assessing the needs of students, and they do this through research, through getting out there and talking to students about ways that the SGA and specifically the (SGA) Senate can improve student life on campus, and they take their legislation very seriously.”

Kelley added that legislation introduced and passed by the SGA Senate and later voted on by the student body led to the creation of the building.

To watch, listen

• “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; WKRN+ at 7 p.m. Thursdays and noon 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, Google Play, Amazon Music, iHeart and as individual interview segments on primary host 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)