The Export-Import Bank of the United States announced today it has signed a city/state partnership with the Tennessee Small Business Development Center International Trade Center to bolster Tennessee jobs by stimulating the state's exports.

The SBDC is housed at Middle Tennessee State University.

Read more here.

The estate of Jim Buchanan, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in economics, on Thursday said it would give $2.5 million to the Middle Tennessee State University Honors College. Part of the bequest will go toward establishing a lecture series focused on applying Buchanan's ideas to today's economic questions.

Buchanan died in January at age 93. Read more about his estate's gift, including the possibility of MTSU partnering with George Mason University to organize Buchanan's papers, here.

WPRT 102.5 (Nashville) /97.5 (Murfreesboro) The Game will be the Nashville radio outlet for Middle Tennessee State University athletics, MTSU Director of Athletics Chris Massaro and the Cromwell Group announced Thursday. Beginning with the 2013-14 athletics season, the station will carry live all Blue Raider football and men’s basketball games, along with the coaching shows for Rick Stockstill (football) and Kermit Davis (men's basketball). Read more here. 

A team of three Lipscomb University students has taken top honors and $9,000 in prize money in the first-ever Deloitte Challenge, a competition among Nashville’s colleges and universities that allows students to demonstrate their technical know-how by developing a working mobile application to solve a practical business problem.

For the inaugural event, teams were asked to develop a mobile app that would facilitate coffee/food runs for groups working on client sites. Each team had access to a mentor from Deloitte to assist them in thinking through customer needs and other development issues.

The LU School of Computing and Informatics fielded two teams in the challenge. Alexander Givant, a senior computer science major; Marian Rushdy, a senior electrical and computer engineering major; and Stuart Pounders, a junior computer science major, placed first ahead of teams of undergraduate and graduate students from Belmont, Fisk and Middle Tennessee State universities.

The Lipscomb team, under the faculty guidance of Steve Nordstrom, director of undergraduate programs for the School of Computing and Informatics, won with its app iOrder, a mobile application for the Android platform allowing users to order premium coffee and lattes from the convenience of their mobile phone. Each team member received $3,000 in prize money.

Also competing in the challenge from Lipscomb was a team of computer science seniors led by captain Phillip Yates and including Christina Martin and Dylan Jones.

“Their passion for their craft along with their enthusiasm and strong work ethic carried the day,” Nordstrom said in a release regarding the two LU teams.

Following a three-week intensive development period, each team submitted its apps and delivered a presentation to a team of judges from Deloitte. The apps were evaluated based on usefulness, innovation, technology and quality. Results were announced at a banquet recently hosted by Deloitte at the Music City Sheraton Hotel.

Rick Carnes has been named the head of the Middle Tennessee State University Recording Industry Department's commercial songwriting concentration.

Jessica Nicholson and MusicRow.com have more here.