[111] MTSU MSPS Earns TBR Academic Excellence Award

Release date: Sept. 23, 2010

News & Public Affairs contacts: Randy Weiler, 615-898-5616 or jweiler@mtsu.edu
Tom Tozer, 615-898-2919 or ttozer@mtsu.edu
MSPS contact: Dr. Saeed Foroudastan, 615-494-7618 or sforouda@mtsu.edu

MTSU MSPS Earns TBR Academic Excellence Award


(MURFREESBORO) — At the Tennessee Board of Regents quarterly fall meeting today, the TBR Academic Excellence Award was presented to MTSU for its Master of Science in Professional Science program – the only one of its kind at a public university in Tennessee.
The award was presented by Paula Short, TBR’s vice chancellor for academic affairs, in Hinton Music Hall of the Wright Music Building. Dr. Saeed Foroudastan, MSPS program director, accepted the award along with MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee and Jim Monsor, an MSPS advisory board member and senior vice president of operations at Franklin, Tenn.-based BioMimetic Therapeutics Inc.
The MSPS combines 15 hours of master’s level business courses with 21 hours of concentration in biotechnology, biostatics or health care informatics. Each student also must complete a 250-hour internship.
This program has been held up by the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C. as a model for other programs. Nearly all graduates of this program have found employment within their fields.
Short said the award was presented to MTSU’s MSPS program “for its success in interfacing between science and business and establishing interdisciplinary connections to better articulate graduate education with state and national workforce needs.
“The MTSU program demonstrates that higher education can respond energetically and directly to employers’ demands for sophisticated science professionals with high-level scientific skills as business and management skills.”
For those attending the TBR meeting, Foroudastan shared about the MSPS program through a PowerPoint presentation. He also is associate dean for the College of Basic and Applied Sciences and faculty adviser for various student projects.
For more about the Master of Science in Professional Science program, please call 615-494-7618. Program offices are located in Jones Hall Room 158.

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Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. This fall, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.

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


MTSU will receive TBR’s Academic Excellence Award, Thursday, Sept. 23, at 1:30 p.m., in Hinton Music Hall of the Wright Music Building. The award will recognize the university’s Master’s of Science in Professional Science, the only program of its kind at a public university in Tennessee. The MSPS combines 15 hours of master’s-level business courses with 21 hours of concentration in biotechnology, biostatics or health care informatics. Each student must also complete a 250-hour inter