The Middle Tennessee State University Student Union: A Hub of Campus Life

Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) has a rich history, evolving from its origins as a normal school in 1911 to a comprehensive public research university. A key aspect of campus life at MTSU is the Student Union, a central hub for students, faculty, and staff. This article delves into the history of the Student Union and the services it provides to the MTSU community.

A New Era: The Opening of the New Student Union

Past and present MTSU leaders, alumni, and friends of the university joined students Sept. Wednesday, Sept. 19, outside the main entrance with the revolving door and faces west toward the courtyard and College of Education Building. A large turnout attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony and heard remarks from McPhee, Sherlock, and Sells.

The three-story building, which opened Aug. 24 when students returned to begin the fall semester, is a long-awaited replacement for the 45-year-old Keathley University Center. McPhee said, “Architecturally, it’s beautiful. It’s designed to be home for students.” Sells said it was the vision of former vice president of student affairs Dr. Sells said, "Students had to pay for this." The public is welcome to visit the nearly 211,000-square-foot facility, which cost nearly $65 million.

Features and Amenities

The building features Phillips Bookstore, restaurants, an 840-seat ballroom, a 95-seat theater, a student government parliamentary room, and third-floor offices for the SGA, Student Unions and Programming, and the Center for Student Involvement and Leadership. Lounge areas include collaborative technology.

MTSU Traditions

Tradition means more than just something being passed down from generation to generation. Each college has its own unique traditions that students, faculty, and the community have kept alive through the years. The wide variety of events brings fun to the community and keeps the college experience worthwhile to students while connecting and engaging with others.

The Blue Horseshoe

The Horseshoe was funded and created by the MTSU Student Ambassadors. A penny from 1911-when the university was founded-was buried into the ground under the statue. This historic piece brings good luck for those who touch the Blue Horseshoe before anything you need luck for. It’s also one of the famous spots on campus to take pictures at either for graduation, a social media picture, or even at football tailgates.

Don’t Walk on the Campus Seal

The Agriculture Seal is located in the Quad outside the James Walker Library, John Bragg Media Building, and Business and Aerospace Building. Many students, faculty, and staff will avoid stepping on it because of the supposed curse of receiving bad luck or not being able to graduate on time. Although it’s technically not a tradition, it’s definitely something you should think twice about when passing by.

Kissing on the Steps of KOM

The Kirksey Old Main building is the oldest building on the MTSU campus which means it has seen the most change and holds the most history. Beware of who you kiss on the steps of the KOM because you might end up marrying that person…so says the myth of the KOM. It's more of a myth than a tradition, but think about it and avoid breaking any hearts if you don’t see something long-term.

University Convocation

University convocation is the official opening of the academic year that falls into the category known as a “rite of passage.” According to MTSU, this ritual marks the transition of an individual or an institution into a new stage of life. This event usually starts the Sunday before classes in the Fall semester and is typically followed by a traditional picnic at the President’s home on campus.

Week of Welcome

The Week of Welcome welcomes back new and returning students the first two weeks of every fall semester with activities coordinated by the Office of New Student and Family programs each fall. The events include lots of FREE food, movies, entertainment, information, and much more. Students take advantage of these two weeks because they’re always giving out free stuff like t-shirts, pizza, sunglasses, pens, and much more.

The Fight Song

The Fight song brings various and diverse groups from across campus to creatively think of ideas to sing the MTSU Fight Song with the Homecoming Theme. The purpose is to put it to song and dance to compete for the top awards.

The Freshman Walk

The Freshman Walk is an annual tradition where the incoming freshmen class runs across the Floyd Stadium field during halftime at one of the first home football games. They are joined by President Sidney A. McPhee who introduces and invites them to join him on the field. This gives freshmen an introduction to MTSU football and a free t-shirt designed specifically for their class (while supplies last, of course).

The Raider Walk

The Raider Walk is one of the newest traditions at MTSU and it started in 2000. The football team walks through the Walnut Grove two hours before the kickoff, while fans, cheerleaders, and members of the Band of Blue line up on the sides to wish the Blue Raiders good luck in their upcoming game. The band plays numerous tunes and everyone chants M-T-S-U x3 Go Raiders Go! The blue lightning bolts on the sidewalk near the Peck Hall and by the Horseshoe gives a signal to players and coaches to know where to walk.

Homecoming

The SGA plans out a week of events and activities for MTSU students, alumni, and the MTSU community. For the whole entire week, there will be traditional events such as: Banner Competition, Chili Cook-off, wing eating contest, Bash the Rec, parade and pep rally.

Exam Jam

MTSU After Dark’s Exam Jam gives students a break from studying before exams. President McPhee, his vice presidents, and members of his cabinet and admissions team helps with serving late-night breakfast to students on the day before finals begin. There are free pancakes, inflatables, games and free volleyball, but don’t forget your MTSU ID for admission.

Read also: Graduate Student Guide

Trick or Treat on Greek Row

MTSU Panhellenic Council hosts trick-or-treat every year on Oct. 30 for a pre-Halloween experience. The event is free to the public for local youngsters from ages 12 and under. Trick or Treat on Greek Row takes place in front of the Panhellenic houses at the corner of Alumni Drive and North Rutherford Boulevard in Murfreesboro according to MTSU News. Other games and activities are presented such as inflatable bounce houses and face painting. Kids 12 and under are encouraged to dress up and show off their best costumes.

Alternative Spring Break

If you don’t have much plans on spring break, or you’re on a budget, the Office of Student Organizations and Service sponsors the Alternative Spring Break program. It’s a trip that a select group of students have an opportunity to volunteer and make a difference in the community on some social issues that may include: homelessness, hunger, environment and etc. If interested, there is an application for students to fill out. The cost is $15 registration fee for the week which includes lunch and a t-shirt.

Future Alumni Tailgate

Going on 5 years, the future Alumni tailgate is open to all students to celebrate with friends, classmates and roomates the first football game of the season. There’s always free food and music and it’ll be located in Walnut Grove. This is sponsored by Office of Alumni Relations and it begins 3 hours before the kick-off. This event is a connection point event so don’t forget to pick up a Future Alum button and add it to your collections of buttons.

Road Rallies

Want to support the Blue Raiders at an away football game but don’t want to drive or can’t afford the gas money? The student government association (SGA) started the road rallies for students to take trips to away football games that are offered at a discounted price. The package includes: transportation, hotel room, game ticket and a Road Rally t-shirt. The package price usually ranges between $50-$100.

Academic Resources

MTSU offers a wide array of academic resources.

The James E. Walker Library

The James E. Walker Library is one of the leading Tennessee university libraries in its range of high-impact services and its research collection. The library collection has 1.5 million physical and electronic volumes, nearly 600 databases, and access to millions of journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, as well as access to streaming audio and video. Electronic resources are available anytime, anywhere to MTSU students. Walker Library provides the necessary research and study support for undergraduate students. Need assistance finding resources for that paper or project? The Reference Desk is staffed with skilled professionals who can help students with their research and using any of the online resources.

The library is an innovative work and study space on campus. Find technology and expert assistance in utilizing a variety of software and devices across the library. Get assistance from staff at the Technology Services Desk on how to access the campus network, using campus online course systems, checking out laptops, and other technology related services. Walker Library also hosts other student services, including tutoring, the writing center, an adaptive technology lab, and a Starbucks coffee shop.

Albert Gore Research Center

Numerous library and archive resources are located on the MTSU campus. The Albert Gore Research Center serves the campus community and members of the public interested in American politics, the history of MTSU, veterans’ and military history, and regional history. The Albert Gore Research Center has especially strong collections documenting American government and political activism. House and Senate and the records of Representative Bart Gordon (MTSU ‘71), Representative LaMar Baker, Representative Bill Boner (MTSU ‘67), Representative Jim Cooper, and Representative Richard Fulton and Representative Clifford Allen . Tennessee state legislators’ materials include the records of LaMar Baker, John Bragg (MTSU ‘40), Frank Buck, Jim Cummings, Buford Ellington, John Hood (MTSU ‘54, ‘74), and Andy Womack (MTSU ‘70). The center also holds the records of numerous political activists and citizen groups.

As the institutional archive for Middle Tennessee State University, the center holds the official records of MTSU programs and departments as well as the papers of alumni, faculty, staff, and campus organizations. A rich collection of photographs documents all aspects of MTSU campus life from its founding in 1911 to the present. Materials related to American veterans and the home front document the American military experience from the Civil War to the present. Collections related to World War II are especially rich and include the papers of and oral histories with veterans of that war as well as documents and artifacts from the Tennessee Maneuvers. The research center has significant collections about local history and culture. Many organizations and businesses have chosen the center to preserve their history.

Women’s and Gender Studies Program

The Women’s and Gender Studies Program, located in JUB 308, maintains a collection of books and other research materials related to women’s and gender studies.

Center for Health and Human Services

The Center for Health and Human Services is a federation of academic units that share the common goal of preparing the health and human services workforce in Tennessee. Coordinated by the chairholder of the Adams Chair of Excellence in Health Care Services, the center encourages quality interdisciplinary education, research, and service programs in health and human service areas. The center also collaborates with public agencies and private not-for-profit organizations to develop and implement programs designed to improve the health of the middle and greater Tennessee community.

Center for Historic Preservation

One of two Centers of Excellence at MTSU, the Center for Historic Preservation (www.mtsuhistpres.org/) was established in 1984. The center joins with communities to interpret and promote their heritage assets through education, research, and preservation. With the assistance of both graduate and undergraduate students, the center practices “boots-on-the-ground” historic preservation. Center staff go to property owners, communities, and elected officials and listen carefully to what they wish to achieve with their history. They then work together through reciprocal partnerships to craft a plan to move forward, helping our partners integrate their pasts, historic sites, and traditions into tools for stronger communities, enhanced economic opportunities, and more meaningful engagement with their fellow citizens on what is significant to them, and in turn to the state and nation.

Rural preservation recognizes the unique heritage, resources, and problems of rural areas and small towns. The overall goal is to create a heritage infrastructure for successful, long-term project development in small towns that have outstanding resources but lack the expertise to use heritage resources for cultural and economic improvement. The Tennessee Century Farms Program, established in 1985 in partnership with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, is centered on farms that have been in the same family for at least 100 years. The Rural African American Church Project, established in 1997 in partnership with African American heritage groups and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is an ongoing project that documents the state’s historic black churches.

Heritage education addresses the use of primary sources, including cultural heritage resources, as across-the-disciplines teaching tools in the K-12 grades. Much of this work is accomplished through the center’s statewide Teaching with Primary Sources-MTSU program, a partnership with the Library of Congress (library.mtsu.edu/tps). TPS-MTSU works with school systems, community heritage organizations, and higher education teacher-training programs to develop and present materials that meet curriculum standards. Serving educators and students at all levels, TPS-MTSU partners with other MTSU departments and educational institutions throughout the state, such as the Tennessee Historical Society and the East Tennessee History Center. The Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area (www.tncivilwar.org/) was created by Congress in 1996. The Heritage Area focuses on the preservation, interpretation, and heritage development of the multiple legacies of the Civil War and Reconstruction in Tennessee. The center is one of the only university units in the nation to serve as the administrative head of a National Heritage Area, which are partnership units of the National Park Service. The Heritage Area provides professional services to institutions, agencies, and property owners across the state and develops funding partnerships with groups, governments, and institutions, which work with the center to establish joint projects and programs of long-lasting benefit to the state and nation.

The Heritage Center of Murfreesboro and Rutherford County, located just off the square in Murfreesboro, is a partnership with the Main Street downtown revitalization program. Heritage Diversity focuses on incorporating the stories and traditions of all Tennesseans into the history and preservation of the state. Identifying, documenting, and assisting in the interpretation of historic African American schools, cemeteries, farmsteads, businesses, and contributions to the arts are a part of this initiative. National Register documentation of Tennessee, Alabama, and other southern sites associated with the Civil Rights movement are continuing projects. Interpretation and preservation of the Trail of Tears is also a top priority. The center partnered with the National Park Service’s National Trails Intermountain Region to complete a comprehensive, nine-state survey to identify and document historic buildings associated with the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. The report serves as a planning tool for future preservation and interpretation initiatives for the Trail. The center also has a partnership with the National Trails Intermountain Region to survey structures along both the Sante Fe Trail and the Mormon Pioneer Trail and to nominate sites on the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Trail to the National Register of Historic Places.

Center staff research and write about Tennessee women’s history, especially during the Civil War and Reconstruction, and partnered with statewide organizations in the commemoration of the centennial of women suffrage in 2020. Civic Engagement includes teaching historic preservation courses each year for the Department of History and directing a number of theses and dissertations. The center hosts graduate assistants from the Ph.D. program in Public History as well as those studying at the M.A. level. Graduate and undergraduate students who work at the center assist staff on a variety of applied research and public service projects, gaining valuable interdisciplinary experiences to supplement their in-class training. In addition, Center Director Dr. The center creates and supports several digital humanities initiatives and has a strong presence on social media. The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture Online Edition is a partnership among the center, the Tennessee Historical Society, and the University of Tennessee Press. The encyclopedia Web site is a comprehensive reference for the state’s history. Southern Places, a digital humanities Web site developed by MTSU’s Walker Library, highlights the center’s fieldwork and documentary projects across the region. Trials,Triumphs, and Transformations: Tennesseans Search for Citizenship, Community, and Opportunity is a mobile-friendly digital collection originally funded by the Tennessee Board of Regents and features materials that reflect the period between Reconstruction and the end of World War II. Landscape of Liberation: The African American Geography of Civil War Tennessee is an interactive map created by a partnership between MTSU’s Geospatial Research Center and the Tennessee State Library and Archives, with digital research assistance from the center and Walker Library.

Center for Popular Music

The Center for Popular Music (CPM) is an archive and research center devoted to the study of American popular and traditional music in all genres. It was established in 1985 as one of sixteen Centers of Excellence at universities in the Tennessee public higher education system. The center’s mission is to promote research and scholarship in popular music and to foster an appreciation of America’s diverse musical culture and its global reach. To carry out this mission, the CPM maintains a large research library and archive, presents public programs that interpret various aspects of American vernacular music, engages in original research projects, and disseminates the results of research through publications in various media. The CPM’s archive is one of the largest and most important popular music research collections in the world.

Materials in the center’s collection fall into three broad categories. First are extensive holdings of the various types of media in which music has been fixed and sold as a commodity. These include print materials such as sheet music, song books, song broadsides and songsters, and sound recordings in formats ranging from cylinders to compact discs and digital files. The center’s sound archive is one of the largest in the country and consists of more than 250,000 commercial sound recordings as well as many hours of unpublished recordings of music and interviews. The CPM’s sheet music collection of approximately 110,000 items is the largest in the Southeast, and its library of gospel songbooks is one of the most extensive of any repository not associated with a religious organization.

Second are various materials that are needed to study popular and vernacular music in all its musical, cultural, historical, technological, and commercial contexts, including such items as photographs, posters, playbills, concert programs, trade catalogs, music manuscripts, news clippings, and personal papers of musicians, songwriters, and business people. Third are books, periodicals, and other reference materials about popular music. Materials in the center’s collection do not circulate but are available to anyone doing research on popular music. Resources support undergraduate, graduate, and faculty research in a variety of disciplines and departments. In keeping with one of the aims of the Centers of Excellence program, the Center for Popular Music serves as a research resource for people far beyond the bounds of the University. Center staff members have fielded research queries from every state in the union and from more than thirty foreign countries. Public programs sponsored by the center include lectures, conferences, symposia, film screenings, and concerts of contemporary and historical popular music.

Student Media

Due to a significant emphasis on Mass Communication at MTSU, the campus has several mass media outlets. Sidelines is the campus's editorially independent, student-run news source, with daily content online and special print editions three times per semester. Off Center is an online-only publication sponsored by the Margaret H. Ordubadian University Writing Center. Collage: A Journal of Creative Expression is the Honors College's semesterly magazine for student-submitted literary and artistic creative works. MT10 (formerly known as MTTV), a student-run TV station, is carried locally by Comcast. Off Center, first published online in 2016, is a student-led publication produced by the tutors of the Margaret H.

Athletics

Middle Tennessee's athletic teams, known as the Blue Raiders, compete in Conference USA of the NCAA's Division I in the Football Bowl Subdivision. The most prominent athletic facilities on the campus are Johnny "Red" Floyd football stadium, Murphy Center basketball arena, Reese Smith Jr. baseball field, and Alumni Memorial Gym volleyball court. MTSU has won two national championships: golf in 1965, and men's doubles tennis in 2007. The Blue Raider football team won the Sun Belt Championship two times (2001 and 2006) and has participated in thirteen bowl games (1956, 1959, 1961, 1964, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, & 2021) with a 5-8 bowl record.

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