Dane Anthony is a father, a former Student Affairs administrator and a current adjunct instructor of religion – with the launch of his new website, www.collegeparent101.com, Anthony showcases both aspects of his life. College Parent 101 is a site dedicated to the transitional issues and concerns of parents and students. It provides insight on student growth and development, relational transition issues, tips for successful parents, additional resources and a regular “reflection” series.

In addition, a DVD of Anthony’s live presentation is now available. The DVD is enhanced with extra resources not available elsewhere.

Anthony has been presenting the College Parent seminar for 10 years and knew by the responses he received that the information was both helpful and desired by parents and their students. Anthony’s site addresses many transitional topics that families of college students are invested in but cannot seem to get information on anywhere else.

Anthony gets his information from various sources – his own experiences, behavior he has observed in his 25-year career in higher education and his own memories of when his children went away to school.

He hopes that his words and information will create a conversational dynamic throughout families and their journeys. Anthony agrees that although his information is intended to guide parents and their children, “there is no ‘right way’ to do this – the process of transitioning your children to college is unique to each family and unique to each daughter or son in the family. I would hope, in time, that parents would begin sharing their experiences with each other through the site, providing a community of shared interests.”

For more information on Anthony’s seminar and DVD, click here.

The Belmont University Department of Education and DynaVox Technologies, the Tennessee Association for Behavior Analysis, collaborated to offer a training on utilizing augmentative and alternative communication in the classroom for children with communication impairments. Seventy-six teachers, teacher assistants, parents, speech/language pathologists, and behavior analysts from the middle Tennessee region attended the six hour training. The training, AAC in the Classroom:  Building Blocks for Success, was offered free of charge to participants.

Biology Professor Steve Murphree  recently taught a class at the Owl’s Hill Nature Sanctuary. The class was titled The World of Invertebrates:  Pollinators, Predators, Pests and Parasitoids. The topics discussed in the class included: Characteristics and life cycles of insects, Identification of insects, Overview of other arthropods, including spiders, isopods and mites, Methods of collecting and observing insects and other arthropods, and Ecological roles of arthropods.

Murphree is an entomologist and has been a professor of biology at Belmont University since 1991. He is a specialist on biting midges and maintains the international research website for this family of flies. He is also is a frequent contributor of articles about arthropods to the Tennessee Conservationist magazine.  He has taught summer insect day camps for children, “Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies,” since 1992 and has visited many elementary school classrooms and nature centers in middle Tennessee. In 2004, he was named the Tennessee Environmental Education Association’s environmental educator of the year.

Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Professor Ronnie Littlejohn has been contracted to write A History of Chinese Philosophy for the London publisher, I.B. Tauris. The work will be completed in late 2012 and will be the third book in Chinese philosophy he has written for Tauris, which distributes globally from offices in London, New York, New Delhi, Beijing and Melbourne.

He also is editing a book on Chinese Philosophers’ interpretations of Western thinkers to come out in early 2013 from State University of New York Press. All the essays in the collection are by ethnic Chinese philosophers and include pieces on the Chinese reception of Kant, Hegel, Darwin, Mill, Russell, Heidegger, Hume, Whitehead, Sartre, Nietzsche and James. Littlejohn is writing the introductory essay on the history of Chinese translation and commentary on Western philosophical works from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries.

In August, he taught a course in East Asian Religions and Philosophies at the USAF Special Operations School (AFSOC) for “top level” special operations operatives being deployed to the East Asian Theater.

Dan Keen, assistant professor in the Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business, was recently re-elected as the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA).