(MURFREESBORO)  MTSU’s Ann Campbell Early Learning Center is back in the saddle again on Saturday, April 30, when supporters of the unique preschool will gather at the Tennessee Livestock Center, 1720 Greenland Drive, for a morning of fun at the 15th annual “Saddle Up” fundraiser. 

There’s still room on the range, rain or shine — a whole arena’s worth, in fact — for plenty of those supporters: Tickets are available at $10 per person, and a $50 maximum per family, at https://bit.ly/MTSaddleUp2022Tickets.

This year’s Saddle Up event, set for 8:30-11:30 a.m. April 30, will feature plenty of activities ­— and plenty of room — for little ones with stations featuring building with boxes, learning about kindness with Moozie the Cow, exhibits from the Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a close-up look at MTSU’s award-winning Experimental Vehicles Program lunar rover and more.

The event also will include a silent auction packed with child- and family-themed items. Each ticket includes light breakfast foods from Chick-fil-A, Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Purity Dairy — and coffee for the grown-ups.

A segment of the April 2022 edition of “Out of the Blue,” MTSU’s monthly TV magazine program, focuses on this year’s Saddle Up and the ACE Learning Center. It’s available to watch at https://youtu.be/zbCgWk0e6R4.

The nonprofit ACE Learning Center, an arm of MTSU’s College of Education, is an inclusive preschool for children 12 months to kindergarten age, with and without developmental delays, whose environment allows them to play and learn with and from each other.  

Teachers at the center plan activities that help each child develop good communication, social, cognitive and motor skills. More than 200 MTSU students work and volunteer with the children and support teachers in the center’s three classrooms during the academic year. 

Proceeds from the annual Saddle Up fundraiser go toward ACE Learning Center projects, supporting funds from tuition, MTSU, the United Way of Rutherford and Cannon Counties, the Charity Circle of Murfreesboro and private donations. 

Thanks to Saddle Up supporters, the center’s been able to update its classroom facilities, learning material and services for growing children, tasks that always seem to need repeating. 

One of the largest projects helped by Saddle Up fundraiser is an expansion of the ACE Learning Center’s unique wheelchair-accessible natural playground along with continuing to provide daily services for local children.

The center is named for the late Ann Campbell, a faculty member in MTSU’s Department of Elementary and Special Education, who created Project Help, one of Tennessee's first inclusive early childhood programs, in 1983. Organizers gave the center its new name in 2014.

To learn more about Saddle Up, contact center staffer Jacob Smith at jacob.smith@mtsu.edu or visit https://www.mtsu.edu/acelearningcenter/saddleup.php.

For more information about the Ann Campbell Early Learning Center and its work, and to donate, visit https://www.mtsu.edu/acelearningcenter or call 615-898-2458.