[505] Recent Grad Gray Makes USA Today All-USA College Academic First Team

Release date: June 10, 2010


News & Public Affairs contacts: Randy Weiler, 615-898-5616 or jweiler@mtsu.edu
Tom Tozer, 615-898-2919 or ttozer@mtsu.edu
Honors College contact: Dr. John Vile, 615-898-2152 or jvile@mtsu.edu
McNair Scholars Program contact: Steve Saunders, 615-904-8462 or saunders@mtsu.edu


Recent Grad Gray Makes USA Today
All-USA College Academic First Team
Biology’s Murphy Receives Honorable Mention

(MURFREESBORO) — May MTSU graduate Jasmine “Jaz” Gray of Memphis is one of 20 students nationwide named to the USA Today All-USA College Academic first team for 2010. MTSU is the only school in Tennessee represented in this top-tier group.
Gray, who received the MTSU President’s Award in April, graduated from the College of Mass Communications and also was a University Honors College student and McNair Scholars Program participant.
Gray was chosen based on her academic achievements (a 3.93 GPA in mass comm/journalism), interests (editor-in-chief of Collage, a Journal of Creative Expression, where she managed a staff of 17) and entrepreneurship (2006 founder of Jaz’s Jammies, which has collected more than 3,000 colorful pairs of pajamas for sick and homeless children).
Gray received $2,500 for the USA Today recognition.
“A lot of times you don’t realize what you do has an impact on other people,” Gray said of the honor. “You work hard. Then other people recognize what you’ve done.”
Gray, 21, who said her career goal is to be a social entrepreneur focusing on empowering youth of color and women, has had to cope with 29 surgeries for a circulatory defect in her face.
The “uncomfortable and uninteresting hospital gowns serve as a depressing reminder of illness,” she told USA Today, explaining that her experiences led to the founding of Jaz’s Jammies.
Her honors thesis addressed effects of the media on black identity. For this project, she interviewed black college students in Ghana, England and the United States and presented her findings to two universities in China as part of MTSU’s McNair Scholars Program. Gray has received a two-year, $102,000 journalism fellowship from Syracuse University to work toward a master’s degree.
“Jasmine Gray is a classic example of the kind of outstanding and hard-working students who call MTSU home,” said President Sidney A. McPhee. “In spite of many challenges, she has committed herself to being the very best that she can be, and her efforts have yielded positive results for her and for thousands of others who have been touched by her dedication and generosity. Jasmine is very deserving of this honor, and we are extremely proud of her.”
May graduate Shannon Murphy of Murfreesboro, who earned a Bachelor of Science in biology, received an honorable mention on the publication’s 2010 team.
The April Provost Award recipient also was an honorable-mention recipient from the Goldwater Scholarship Foundation in 2009, attended Posters on the Hill in both Nashville and Washington, D.C., this year and has been accepted into the East Tennessee State University medical-school graduate program. Murphy also attended a recent meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.
Both Gray and Murphy are members of multiple honor societies, including Phi Kappa Phi and the recently formed Omicron Delta Kappa, which recognizes students for both scholarship and leadership.
Alumnus Taylor Barnes, now at California Institute of Technology, has been both an honorable-mention (2008) and a third-team selection (’09) by USA Today.
“These awards will reinforce the national recognition that MTSU received last year from Forbes magazine,” Honors College Dean John Vile said, recalling the university’s 2009 ranking as the No. 1 public institution in Tennessee, one of the Top 50 higher-education “Best Buys” in the nation and one of the top 100 U.S. public universities in the magazine’s annual “America’s Best Colleges” listing.
Acknowledging that Gray and Murphy would have been worthy of recognition from any school, Vile credited Laura Clippard, who directs the Honors College’s Undergraduate Fellowship Office, the McNair Scholars Program and individuals throughout campus for nominating students and helping to guide them through the application process for the team.
MTSU was the only Tennessee college or university to place a student on the USA Today first team, and it was one of only two Tennessee institutions to have a student named to one of the publication's first, second or third teams or as an honorable mention.
To read the story online, go to www.usatoday.com and search for “All-USA College winners defy expectations,” or go directly to http://bit.ly/ccilwE.

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NOTE: For photos of Gray and Murphy, or to speak to either one, please e-mail Tom Tozer at ttozer@mtsu.edu. Both of the recent graduates are available for interviews.

With three Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and former faculty, Middle Tennessee State University confers master’s degrees in 10 areas, the Specialist in Education degree, the Doctor of Arts degree and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. MTSU is ranked among the top 100 public universities in the nation in the Forbes “America’s Best Colleges” 2009 survey.

For MTSU news and information, go to mtsunews.com.