MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — New Student Government Association President RJ Ware shared his vision for the coming school year on the August edition of “Out of the Blue,” Middle Tennessee State University’s television magazine show.

Ware talked with show host Andrew Oppmann, vice president of the Division of Marketing and Communications, and discusses his top priorities as the student body president and the importance of promoting mental health on campus.

“It was a pretty big pillar in my campaign when I ran for this job, and that mainly was because I believe that mental health, and mental fitness, and mental wellness, is the greatest challenge facing my generation,” said Ware, a senior political science, pre-law major from Hermitage, Tennessee.

Ware and members of the Student Government Association, or SGA, are working with campus leaders to create more programming to make sure MTSU is doing everything possible to positively impact the mental wellness of students.

“This university in particular does a lot to look out for the well-being of our students, but we always can do more,” Ware said. “And I want to make sure that the resources that we have are getting to our students, but also vice versa, that our students know about the resources that they have available to them.”

You can watch his segment below:

Not only is Ware planning for the academic year, but he wants to lay the foundation for other SGA presidents to keep building better mental wellness opportunities.

“We have the support of the university, of our administration,” Ware said, “so that made me think that we can actually get a lot of tangible things done by tackling this issue in this year.”

Ware is also interested in getting students more involved on campus through Connection Point events, which are designed to help new students acclimate to college life by providing them opportunities to interact with members of their class as well as upperclassmen.

“Well, we’re coming up on the first week of classes, so we will have weeks full of jam-packed Connection Point events,” Ware said. “The more that you engage, the more that you succeed, and the more connected that you feel to our university. And yeah, that’s my top piece of advice to new incoming freshmen and students — get involved.”

Ware is keenly aware that student input is extremely valuable, so he wants to hear from fellow classmates about their suggestions and requests.

“There’s never too much information that we can gather from our students,” Ware said. “The students have to be able to trust us, and the way that we built that trust is that they know that we’ll listen to their concerns and those concerns will be taken into action.”

That focus on listening and building trust has carried over into Ware’s own college journey. When deciding where to attend school, he looked for an environment that felt welcoming and supportive — a place where community mattered just as much as academics.

Ware was sold on MTSU after taking a campus tour when he was in high school.

“I liked the campus community. I liked that it felt like it was a big campus,” Ware said, “but it’s not too big.”

Prior to the start of his freshman year at MTSU, Ware also took part in the Scholars’ Academy, an early arrival program geared toward incoming students. It was then he met Michai Mosby, the previous SGA president who eventually became Ware’s mentor and encouraged him to get involved in student government.

“I haven’t looked back since,” Ware said.

To learn more about SGA, visit mtsu.edu/sga.

To watch and 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.

— Nancy DeGennaro (Nancy.DeGennaro@mtsu.edu