MTSU faculty and a community partner appeared on WGNS Radio’s “Action Line” program recently to talk about an upcoming festival, new video production technology coming to campus, and an upcoming conference focused on positive aging.

The live program with host Scott Walker was broadcast on FM 100.5, 101.9 and AM 1450 from the WGNS studio in downtown Murfreesboro. If you missed it, you can listen to a podcast of the April 18 program here.

MTSU faculty and staff appearing on WGNS Radio’s April 18 “Action Line” program with host Scott Walker. Guests include, from left in order of appearance, Dr. Kim Cleary Sadler, professor of biology education; Billy Pittard, professor and chair of the MTSU Department of Media Arts; and Laura Grissom, health and wellness education coordinator at St. Clair Street Senior Center and a member of the Positive Aging Consortium, and Dr. Deborah Lee, NHC Chair of Excellence in Nursing and director of the Positive Aging Consortium. (MTSU photo illustration by Jimmy Hart)

Guests included:

• Dr. Kim Cleary Sadler, professor of biology education, who discussed the 44th Elsie Quarterman Cedar Glade Wildflower Festival at Cedars of Lebanon State Park. 

The festival, formerly known as the Wildflower Pilgrimage, will be held at Cedars of Lebanon State Park the evening of Friday, April 29^, and all day Saturday, April 30. MTSU’s Center for Cedar Glade Studies partners with the state park to host the annual event.

Events associated with the festival include three-hour hikes with field botanists for those that want to learn more about the plants. There are also shorter programs that are family friendly such as a short geology hike to learn more about the rocks and fossils in glades, native plant gardening, learning stations that teach about some aspect of cedar glades, an up close and personal visit with Orion the owl from Owls Hill, and several other activities.

For more information, contact Sadler at kim.sadler@mtsu.edu.

• Billy Pittard, professor and chair of the MTSU Department of Media Arts, who discussed amazing new XR video production technology coming to MTSU to train students.

XR, short for Extended Reality, is a new immersive video production technology that allows content producers to create a myriad of virtual and mixed reality worlds on a production stage through the use of multiple mounted LED screens and computer software.

Led by Pittard and Mike Forbes, assistant director of technical systems, MTSU has been working with XR experts from Monolith Studios Inc. in Nashville to set up an XR stage on the MTSU campus that will be used to train students on the latest technology that will provide the necessary skills for them to succeed professionally once they graduate.

For more information, contact Pittard at Billy.Pittard@mtsu.edu.

• Dr. Deborah Lee, NHC Chair of Excellence in Nursing and director of the Positive Aging Consortium, and Laura Grissom, health and wellness education coordinator at St. Clair Street Senior Center and a member of the Positive Aging Consortium, who discussed the inaugural Positive Aging Conference at MTSU. 

Registration is now open for the conference, which will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday, June 10, at MTSU’s Miller Education Center on Bell Street. Cost is $35 and space is limited.

Keynote speaker will be Julie Sweetland, Ph.D., of FrameWorks Institute thanks to sponsorship by the MTSU Distinguished Lecture Fund. Her topic will be “Building Momentum: How Mindsets on Aging are Shifting.”

Other conference topics include exercise, nutrition, cognition, living environments, financial decision-making and scam prevention. For conference updates and registration, visit https://mtsu.edu/pac.

Students, faculty and staff who are interested in guesting on WGNS to promote their MTSU-related activities should contact Jimmy Hart, director of news and media relations, at 615-898-5131 or via email at jimmy.hart@mtsu.edu.