Women’s History, Financial Encouragement, a New $800,000+ Grant in Agriculture and More on the WGNS ACTION LINE

Mar 15, 2021 at 09:10 am by Producer



SEGMENT ONE – 8:10 a.m.
 
GUESTS: Dr. Anne Anderson, finance professor and Weatherford Chair of Finance in the Jones College of Business, and Dr. Leigh Anne Clark, professor of management and Tolbert Faculty Fellow of Business Ethics
 
TOPIC: MTSU is combining its upcoming Ethical Leadership Week and Financial Literacy Week the first week of April.
 
MTSU will observe the Tom and Martha Boyd Ethical Leadership Week April 5-9. The week will include local business leaders giving virtual and in-person talks to Jones College of Business students about the importance of ethical leaders.
 
The virtual keynote for the week will be given at 11:20 a.m. Thursday, April 8, via Zoom by branding consultant Mila Grigg, founder/CEO of Moda Image and Brand Consulting. Her presentation is titled “Building and Sharing the Authentic You.”
 
As part of the Financial Literacy Week, MTSU is hosting New England Patriot linebacker and financial literacy advocate Brandon Copeland at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 8, for a presentation open to students only. Registration is required.
 
Copeland was scheduled to visit campus last year, but his appearance was canceled due to the pandemic.
 
As part of this year’s visit, students can also win a consulting “work out session” with Copeland as well as apply for a $1,000 Ascend Financial Literacy Scholarship. For more information, contact Anne Anderson at Anne.Anderson@mtsu.edu or visit https://mtsu.edu/econfin/tnfinlitweek.php for information about both weeks’ events. 
 
SEGMENT TWO – 8:25 a.m.
 
GUEST: Cynthia Chafin (CHAY-fin), associate director of community programs for the MTSU Center for Health and Human Services
 
TOPIC: MTSU secures $816,000 federal grant for the “STEMsational Ag: The Virtual Farm” project 
 
If youngsters can’t go to the farm during the COVID-19 pandemic, MTSU will help take the farm to the youngsters. The university’s Center for Health and Human Services has received an $816,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support the proposed “STEMsational Ag: The Virtual Farm” project.
 
The grant comes from USDA’s Rapid Response to Novel Coronavirus and is appropriate for traditional school settings, both in-person and distance instruction, as well as for homeschooling. Students will learn about agriculture and topics related to STEM, an acronym for the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
 
In partnership with the School of Agriculture’s Fermentation Science Program, the center will administer the project as a way to provide both formal and informal educational content for K-14 students throughout an 11-state region.
 
“STEMsational Ag: The Virtual Farm” includes modules and audio-visual resources that are tailored to each grade level and projects and assignments tailored to specific age groups. It empowers both formal and informal educators in their interactions with students, and it includes delivery options regardless of access to technology.
 
Learn more: https://mtsunews.com/virtual-farm-usda-chhs-mtsu/
  
SEGMENT THREE – 8:40 a.m.
 
GUEST: Maigan Wipfli, director, June Anderson Center for Women and Nontraditional Students 
 
TOPIC: MTSU’s National Women’s History Month celebration has a host of events on the calendar.
 
MTSU’s observance of National Women’s History Month will be an appreciation of more than 100 years of American women’s suffrage.
 
“Valiant Women of the Vote: Refusing to be Silenced,” which would have been the theme of last year’s calendar of events if not for the COVID-19 pandemic, is this year’s theme. The campus community will celebrate the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was adopted officially on Aug. 26, 1920.
 
Among upcoming events:
 
• Dr. Mary Frances Berry, former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission through four different presidential administrations, will deliver the National Women’s History Month keynote address at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 16, at https://mtsu.zoom.us/s/85112820036.

Berry, a Nashville native, is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.
 
• “Three Steps to Claiming Your Voice: A Framework for Empowerment” is scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday, March 15, at https://tinyurl.com/34e3kx5y.
This 90-minute virtual workshop, which is geared to faculty and graduate students, will help participants navigate academic environments where women’s voices are interrupted, ignored or silenced. It will focus on the costs of not speaking up and practical strategies for self-advocacy.
 
• Musician and dancer Nobuko Miyamoto will share music and moments from her memoir with collaborator Deborah Wong at 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 16, at https://bit.ly/3bcnvAm. Miyamoto will discuss her community-building work, social justice lessons from Asian Americans, intercultural coalition-building and allyship among women from different communities.
 
• Meg Brooker, MTSU’s director of dance, will explore Florence Fleming Noyes’ “Dance of Freedom” in a lecture and demonstration at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 17, in Room G040B of Murphy Center with limited seating, social distancing and campus COVID-19 protocols. The presentation will use archival film and newspaper records, as well as dancing, to depict the role of dance in the women’s suffrage movement, particularly the change from physical restraint to freedom of movement. To register to watch the videoconference, go to https://forms.gle/H7EjwtGHRU8G1cjp7.
 
• University of Tennessee-Chattanooga economics professor Claudia Williamson will discuss her most recent published article, “Does Individualism Promote Gender Equality?” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 18. To register, go to https://tinyurl.com/n5vtk8cc. Williamson’s article, co-authored with Lewis Davis, was published in the academic journal “World Development.”
 
Three wearable buttons displaying historic activists will be available through campus mail. The three buttons feature Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a crusading journalist in the anti-lynching movement; Alice Paul, a prominent suffragist who believed radical action was essential to passage of women’s suffrage; and Mary Eliza Church Terrell, the first president of the National Association of Colored Women.
 
For more information about National Women’s History Month at MTSU, go to www.mtsu.edu/jac/nwhm.php