MTSU marketing students ask community to help homeless at Nov. 23 football game

Some MTSU students will be gaining valuable experience this Saturday, Nov. 23, by helping those less fortunate to fend off the winter chill.

“Warm Bodies and Full Bellies: Helping the Homeless One Giving Act at a Time” will be held under a tent in the Walnut Grove tailgate area from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 23 before the MTSU Blue Raiders’ football game against the Old Dominion University Monarchs.

Members of MTSU professor Virginia Hemby’s Professional Meeting, Event, Exhibition and Convention Management class will collect nonperishable food and warm clothing for Greenhouse Ministries prior to the MTSU-Old Dominion football game Nov. 23. They are, front row from left, Brittany Sensing, Miranda Merryfield and Suravit Ratnich. In the back row are, from left, Bailey Ford, Katelyn Gray-Crutchfield, Ever Pitchford and Logan Gibson. Not pictured is student Allison Sweat. (Photo submitted)

“We want nonperishable food,” said Miranda Merryfield, a senior tourism and hospitality management major from Indianola, Iowa. “We want blankets. We want coats. We want gloves, hats, anything that will keep people warm. Food is a big thing that we can donate to shelters and help them help feed other people.”

Dr. Virginia Hemby

In partnership with Greenhouse Ministries, the project is the work of the Professional Meeting, Event, Exhibition and Convention Management class taught by Dr. Virginia Hemby, a professor in the Department of Marketing in MTSU’s Jones College of Business.

Hemby said she gave the students free rein to come up with their own idea because they might find themselves in the same situation in the meeting planning industry.

“It forces them to do the work on their own, and I think that’s really important,” Hemby said. “I want to be the facilitator. I don’t want to be the doer of the work.”

The talents the students put into practice based on their classroom learning include planning, creating specific goals and objectives, risk management, and marketing, the professor said.