MTSU faculty and staff appeared on WGNS Radio’s July 19 “Action Line” program with host Scott Walker. Guests included, from top left from left, Dr. Greg Van Patten, interim dean, MTSU College of Basic and Applied Sciences; Brelinda Johnson, Scholars Academy manager in the MTSU Office of Student Success, and Dr. Vincent Windrow, associate vice provost for Student Success; and bottom, from left, journalism lecturer Dan Eschenfelder, Dr. Chistine Eschenfelder, journalism professor, and journalism student Houston Chapman. (MTSU photo illustration by Jimmy Hart)

MTSU faculty and staff appeared on WGNS Radio’s “Action Line” program recently to talk about the recently appointed interim dean of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences, grant awards to support student success efforts and award-winning student journalism.

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 July 19 program here.

Guests included:

• Dr. Greg Van Patten, interim dean, MTSU College of Basic and Applied Sciences, who spoke about his recent appointment for the next year as the university searches for a permanent replacement for former dean Bud Fischer, who championed the new Science Building that opened in 2014 and is now Western Kentucky University’s provost.

Van Patten, 51, spent nine years as chair of the Department of Chemistry and will now lead the college during the university’s national search for a new permanent dean.  Along with chemistry, the college includes aerospace, agriculture, biology, computer science, concrete and construction management, engineering technology, geosciences, mathematical sciences, military science and physics and astronomy.

• Dr. Vincent Windrow, associate vice provost for Student Success, and Brelinda Johnson, Scholars Academy manager in the MTSU Office of Student Success, who discussed almost $100,000 in grants they were recently awarded from the Tennessee Board of Regents to assist with MTSU student mentoring and writing skills.

Johnson recently secured $50,000 in TBR grant funding for the Accelerated Mentoring Program, or AMP, which targets underserved (first-generation students of color) incoming freshmen and transfer students from June 2021 through July 2022. Meanwhile, Windrow secured similar funding for the Write On! Program, which will assist students all year.

• Journalism professor, Dr. Chistine Eschenfelder, journalism lecture Dan Eschenfelder, and journalism student Houston Chapman, who discussed real-world, award-winning experiential learning for MTSU’s journalism students through the student-produced Middle Tennessee News.

A team of nine MTSU multimedia journalism students and alumni, all part of the School of Journalism and Strategic Media in the College of Media and Entertainment, received a number of awards for their November 2020 TV news special, “100 Years of Broadcasting.” The MTSU team took journalism professor Christine Eschenfelder’s fall 2020 senior-level “Seminar in Media Issues” course, which focused this time on the centennial of U.S. broadcasting.

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.