MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Middle Tennessee State University’s signature academic enhancement initiative Engage is in the spotlight for the August edition of “Out of the Blue,” the university’s television magazine program.

Julie Myatt, director of the program, talked with show host Andrew Oppmann, vice president of the Division of Marketing and Communications, to discuss how Engage has spent the past decade empowering students and creating a culture of active learning.

Engage began in 2015 as MTSU’s second Quality Enhancement Plan, then called MT Engage, an initiative designed to improve student learning outcomes and a part of the university’s accreditation process.

“We demonstrate that we add value for our MTSU students by helping them be active participants in their learning,” said Myatt, who took the helm of the program in 2019.

Watch the segment:

In addition to the classroom experiences, students develop an ePortfolio presentation to curate a collection of the work they’ve created so they can “look back on it and see how they’ve grown, see what knowledge, skills and abilities they’ve gained, and then articulate that to the prospective employers or graduate programs,” Myatt said.

“By helping them make connections across different learning experiences, both in the classroom and beyond, and helping them slow down and reflect on their learning,” Myatt said, “they can really make sense of what’s happening and why it matters, and how it can be personally useful to them.”

With 10 years of student success to celebrate, Engage will be hosting twice monthly events throughout the semester — “one that is kind of a fun event and one that is more academically focused, but also fun,” Myatt explained.

Not only are students encouraged to get involved in Engage courses, but there are incentives for faculty to build out-of-the-box learning experiences — many of which culminate in Engage Week, coming up in September.

“Our faculty are really invested in their students’ learning,” Myatt said. “These kinds of experiences that our program promotes make a difference for students.”

To learn more about Engage, visit the website at mtsu.edu/engage.  

To watch, listen

• “Out of the Blue” is available anytime on the university’s YouTube channel, the True Blue TV channel, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.

• It also airs on Murfreesboro cable Channel 9 daily at 6 and 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.; NewsChannel5+ at 6:30 p.m. Sundays; WKRN+ at 7 p.m. Thursdays and noon Sundays; via streaming on MTSU’s Jazz Network on WMOT HD2 and through WMOT.org at 7 a.m. on the first Sunday of each month; and on other cable outlets in Middle Tennessee, so check local listings.

• It is also available as a podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Music, iHeart and as individual interview segments on primary host Spotify at https://spoti.fi/453hxg3.

— Nancy DeGennaro (Nancy.DeGennaro@mtsu.edu