IMPORTANT NOTE: These are the archived stories for Belmont News & Achievements prior to June 26, 2023. To see current stories, click here.

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Hundreds of Belmont Students Travel the World for Maymester, Summer Study Abroad

Hope Buckner
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Hundreds of Belmont Students Travel the World for Maymester, Summer Study Abroad

As the Spring semester ended and final exams came to a close, students across campus began packing up for the summer. For 700 Belmont students, preparations to pack looked a bit different as they prepared to participate in one of 43 faculty-led Maymester and Summer Study Abroad experiences across the world.

Traveling all across the globe to Argentina, Belfast, London, Israel, Jordan, Greece, Cambodia, Poland, Austria, Costa Rica, Florence, Rome, Portugal, Ireland, Scotland, Korea, South Africa, Germany, Haiti, India, Tanzania, Hawaii and more, these 43 programs provide students with the opportunity to expand the classroom beyond the traditional experience. Students are able to visit places they’ve never been, see historical sites and spend time experiencing new cultures.

Thanks to the Office of Study Abroad and the dedication of more than 100 Belmont faculty who lead these programs, the catalog of study abroad programs offered to students continues to grow. This summer, new programs include studying acting and its origins in Belfast and London, examining the history and psychology of sport in Scotland, learning about conflict transformation and social justice at the George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, understanding service learning through live sound in South Africa and Zambia, evaluating the role of song in the spread of the Gospel in Uganda and Zimbawe, actively participating in adventure tourism in Australia and studying the role of music in society through the eyes of this year’s Bonnaroo line-up, among many others.

According to Thandi Dinani, director of Study Abroad, “Belmont’s study abroad programs continue to provide culturally enriching programs that enhance a student’s academic experience. Classrooms come to life as faculty take students to visit places where history took place. Whether visiting Nelson Mandela’s prison cell in South Africa, walking streets where Jesus walked in Israel or studying chemistry while taking a cooking class in Italy, students see how countries, concepts and cultures have shaped history and impact their world.”

Throughout their time away, students and faculty will document their travels on social media. Follow #BelmontAbroad to see their frequent updates.

 

Belmont Hosts Clinic to Community: A Health Summit

Hope Buckner
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Belmont Hosts Clinic to Community: A Health Summit

Belmont University hosted the Clinic to Community: A Health Summit on Thursday, May 17 in the Janet Ayers Academic Center. The event was presented by the YMCA and NashvilleHealth.

Community leaders and national experts shared how the industry can continue to reduce the burden of chronic disease and improve healthier living for all. Participants experienced discussions ranging in topics from prevention to community engagement across the state including presentations from Dr. Ann Albright, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Greg Allen, Cigna, Andre Churchwell, Vanderbilt Univeristy Medical Center, Senator Bill Frist, NashvilleHealth, Christopher Holliday, American Medical Association, Anne Oxrider, Bank of America, Dr. Bill Paul, Metro Public Health and Susan Spencer, Women’s Day Magazine, among others.

For more information on the Summit and NashvilleHealth, click here.

Alumnus Performs Original Production at the Troutt Theater

April Hefner
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Alumnus Performs Original Production at the Troutt Theater

Douglas Waterbury-TiemanMusical theater and Honors graduate Douglas Waterbury-Tieman is performing his original bluegrass production, “Johnny & the Devil’s Box,” at the Troutt Theater this weekend. According to his website, the musical’s lot revolves around “Johnny, a young fiddler from the mountains, [who] must contend with the threat of the law, a death in the family, a fiddle contest and the loss of his true love on his way to becoming the greatest fiddle player the South has ever known. But how will he fare against the greatest threat of all, the Devil himself? Inspired by myths of fiddlers’ dealing with the Devil, the piece takes a hard look at the association between a virtuoso’s egotism and hellish temptation. Told largely through American folk inspired music, the show is built to stir the audience’s urge to get up and dance.”

Douglas Waterbury-Tieman is from Lexington, Ky. Douglas and graduated from Belmont in 2012 with a Bachelor of Music in musical theatre performance.  He is also a professional fiddle player and recently appeared in Roundabout’s “The Robber Bridegroom.” Other recent theatre credits include; “A Christmas Carol” at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and “Fiddler on the Roof” at Studio Tenn.

The staged reading of the production will be Sat., May 19 at 6 p.m. at Troutt Theater.

Belmont Alumni Featured Recently in People Country

April Hefner
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Belmont Alumni Featured Recently in People Country

Russell and Kailey DickersonBelmont alumni Russell and Kailey Dickerson as well as Ashley Gorley were all featured recently in People Country. The Dickersons were the subject of a story on Russell Dickerson’s latest video, “Blue Tacoma,” which was directed by and starred his wife Kailey. Both are graduates from the College of Visual and Performing Arts program, and the couple works together often. “Working together is my favorite part of our story. I decided to go full-time filming Russ on the road because I’d rather be with him than anyone else,” Kailey told People Country. “Because we’re best friends and believe in each other more than anyone else, we feel unstoppable.” Dickerson will tour this summer with Lady Antebellum and Darius Rucker.

Ashley GorleyThe magazine also did a profile of songwriter Ashley Gorley, a 1999 Belmont music business graduate. A prolific songwriter, Gorley has 37 No. 1 country hits to date and has been named ASCAP songwriter of the year a record five times. He told People Country, ““There’s no ‘Oh, I really wanted to be an artist and ended up being a songwriter.’ This is what I wanted to do and I’m doing it, so that’s a very fortunate place.”

 

Simmons Elected to Cable Board of Directors

April Hefner
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Simmons Elected to Cable Board of Directors

Associate Professor of Management Information Systems Dr. Lakisha L. Simmons has been elected to the Board of Directors for Cable, Nashville’s most prominent women’s advancement organization for women in business. Simmons will lead within the member services cluster as Networking Events Chair.

Garrett Hosts Local Students for Chemistry Field Trip

Hope Buckner
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Garrett Hosts Local Students for Chemistry Field Trip

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Education Dr. Danielle Garrett recently hosted 47 4th grade students from Donelson Christian Academy (DCA) for a chemistry field trip about light and color.  4th grade teachers Ellen Deathridge, Tabitha Ingram and Natalie Brown also attended. The field trip was developed as part of Garrett’s work with the American Chemical Society (ACS) Science Coaches program.

Garrett poses for a photo with students from DCA

For the past 4 years, Garrett has partnered with Deathridge, visiting students each semester to teach a hands-on science lesson. This spring, Garrett wanted to try something new. “Last year, I developed a lab activity for Ellen’s classes where students determined the wavelength of red, yellow, green and blue LEDs and were challenged to make predictions about the wavelengths of other colors of visible light,” Garrett said. “The students were so engaged and had so much fun with the activity that this year I wanted to bump it up a notch and create an entire event of interactive demonstrations, scientific discussions and hands-on activities for the students.”

During their time at Belmont, students learned how scattering light can affect the colors we see in the demonstration “why are sunsets red?” They saw how mixing blue, green and red light produces white light and how prisms separate white light into the colors of the visible spectrum. Students made their own color wheel, observing how the individual rainbow colors blend and appear white, when spun very quickly and learned about the role electrons play in neon signs.

Observing the impact of various colored film squares placed over a glow-in-the-dark pad as it was charging, students were introduced to ideas behind the photoelectric effect. After lunch, fun with science continued as students performed the original hands-on lab activity that launched the idea for the field trip, exploring the wavelength of LEDs using spectroscopes. The culminating event for the day was the flame test. Students visited the general chemistry lab where they saw the colorful effects of exposing potassium, copper, barium, calcium and strontium ions to a flame.

A student from DCA participates in a science field trip at Belmont. DCA teachers and Garrett agreed that this was a great event for the students. “Our kids absolutely loved the experience,” Deathridge said.  Garrett hopes she can continue this field trip experience with future 4th grade students at DCA.  “For me, the best part of the ACS Science Coaches program is working with Ellen, an awesome science teacher who loves what she does and with her students, who are always a joy. Throughout the whole event, they were all eager to volunteer answers and ideas about why certain scientific phenomena occur. I was very impressed by the thoughtful nature and complexity of some of their answers. The students were able to make really good connections between some challenging concepts!”

 

 

Treybig & Risinger Featured on Pipedreams

Hope Buckner
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Treybig & Risinger Featured on Pipedreams

School of Music faculty members Joel Treybig’s (trumpet) and Andrew Risinger’s (organ) recent recording of Stephen Michael Gryc’s “Evensong” was featured on Michael Barone’s syndicated American Public Media broadcast “Pipedreams” on May 14. The broadcast featured “Music of the Night,” and the archived broadcast can be heard here. 

The piece was recorded in Belmont’s McAfee Concert Hall, using the hall’s 1969 Aeolian-Skinner organ.

Alumna Khadija Ali Amghaiab Awarded Prestigious Fulbright Grant

April Hefner
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Alumna Khadija Ali Amghaiab Awarded Prestigious Fulbright Grant

May 2018 graduate to teach in Germany for ten months

Recent Belmont University graduate and Brentwood, Tennessee resident Khadija Ali Amghaiab was recently awarded a Fulbright grant to Germany to partake in the English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) program there. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is an international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board that provides competitive grants to graduating seniors and graduate students to serve as cultural ambassadors of the United States abroad.

Khadija Ali AmghaiabAli Amghaiab graduated in May with a double major in philosophy and German as well as a minor in political science. She was recently awarded Belmont’s Fourth Year Award for Leadership, one of the University’s highest honors. Ali Amghaiab previously did a Maymester study abroad trip through Belmont after her freshman year, and then spent a month last summer in Berlin studying at the Goethe-Institut. She’ll be living in Germany from this September through next June teaching English as part of Fulbright’s diversity placement (a subsection of the ETA program) at a middle or high school that is predominately made up of an immigrant/minority student population.

“The idea of the diversity program is to actively engage these particular German students in discussions about American culture, political culture, diversity, etc.,” Ali Amghaiab said. “I and 19 other of the 140 English Teaching Assistants in Germany were given this placement, and I’m particularly excited about it because of the opportunity to engage my own identity as a hyphenated American (Arab/Muslim-American) and try and find common ground with my students, perhaps helping them work through their own identities as ‘hyphenated’ Germans.”

Ali Amghaiab was also recently accepted to Harvard’s Divinity School to pursue a Master’s of Theological Studies upon her return from Germany in the fall of 2019. While uncertain exactly what lies ahead on her career path, she’s contemplating a PhD program as well as dedicating her future to education as her own college experience impacted her intellectually and spiritually.

“I came to Belmont thinking I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do with my life, and those notions changed pretty early on by virtue of the classes I took and the professors from whom I sought guidance. Intellectually and academically, I’m indebted to a number of the professors that have taught me across disciplines, and who took seriously the importance of asking fundamental questions and making those the basis of their pedagogy. Since my freshman year, I have been active in a number of student organizations around campus, and, as a Muslim, have made an active effort to engage in inter-faith and cultural dialogue with my peers. The sort of conversation I’ve had with Belmont over the past four years has helped me better understand my role as a religious minority, and how I should use that role as an educator who seeks to find common ground and make the disparate seem less so. In Islam, one of the most noble vocations one can be called to is education, and as a person who is constantly asking questions just as I’m trying to answer them, I couldn’t think of a better one to be called to, and I hope Fulbright will give me a peek into the world of teaching as I imagine it.”

O’More Fashion Show Dazzles Crowd at Packed Franklin Theatre

April Hefner
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O’More Fashion Show Dazzles Crowd at Packed Franklin Theatre

With a dazzling blend of sight, sound, fashion and dance, the O’More College Fashion Show completed its historic run before a packed house at The Franklin Theatre on Thursday, May 10 in downtown Franklin.

The original collections of 22 student designers were presented on the runway before the show moves to its new permanent home this fall at Belmont University.

O'More College of Design Fashion Show, Franklin Theater in Franklin, Tennessee, May 10, 2018.
O’More College of Design Fashion Show, Franklin Theater in Franklin, Tennessee, May 10, 2018.

“There could not have been a better sendoff than to have our final Franklin show downtown in The Franklin Theatre,” said Jamie Atlas, O’More’s fashion department chair and the show’s executive producer since 2002. “Aside from the shared community connections, the venue was ideal for patrons, performers and sponsors. Most of all, it allowed the work of our student designers to shine. I’m so happy that they got to have an experience like this because they earned it. They are the ones who made this an amazing evening. They have set a high standard for when we move to Belmont, and that’s the way it should be.”

The show opened with a performance by New Dialect. The Nashville-based contemporary dance collective performed in costumes that were created in a collaborative effort with O’More students.

When the runway portion of the show commenced, models from AMAX Talent presented the student collections, including those of nine graduating seniors.

Ashleigh Cain, a senior from Thompson’s Station, Tenn., took home the Distinguished Designer award for her collection, Revival of the Fittest. The fur used in her garments was taken from the remains of ‘road-kill’ that Cain collected along the back roads of Middle Tennessee. “I wanted to give new life to the animals I found and give them a new purpose,” said Cain. The leather in her garments was crafted from salmon skin, and her textiles were created from hemp, peace silk and wool.

Other senior collections were The Black Garden by Miranda Bolinger of Murfreesboro; Sacred Nature by Sydney Duncan of Paducah, Ky.; A/W 18 by Macy Harmon of Brentwood; La Femme by Emily James of Portland, Tenn.; My Best Friend’s Wedding by Peach Malone of Memphis; Ken.drama S/S18 by Kendra Martin of Cleveland, Tenn.; In Search of Color by Sarah Mast of Nashville, and SuperNova by Kelly Nieser of Cleveland, Ohio.

The show also featured the work of Sarah Stevenson, a sophomore from Colorado Springs who won the 2018 Eastman NaiaTM Design Challenge. In the Eastman NaiaTM Design Challenge, students created innovative garments using fabric composed of NaiaTM, a cellulosic yarn made from wood pulp and derived exclusively from sustainably managed and certified forests.

Stevenson, who prevailed over 12 other sophomore and junior fashion design students, earned a $2,500 scholarship toward her 2018-19 tuition. Morgan Stengel, a junior from Brentwood, was the runner-up. This marked the second year that Eastman, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Kingsport, Tenn., and O’More have partnered to promote the application of an environmentally friendly fiber in original, ready-to-wear knit clothing.

Belmont, Columbia State Announce Degree Completion Program for Business Students

April Hefner
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Belmont, Columbia State Announce Degree Completion Program for Business Students

Agreement offers students cost savings, seamless degree completion, transfer scholarship option

Belmont University and Columbia State Community College announced today a new partnership that allows Columbia State associate degree students the opportunity to earn a Bachelor’s of Business Administration (B.B.A.) degree from Belmont’s Jack C. Massey College of Business. According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 80 percent of students attending community colleges nationwide intend to pursue a bachelor’s degree, but only 14 percent have one six years later. This new agreement—which provides deeper connections between the two programs and streamlines services and admissions for students—aims to improve those numbers in Tennessee.

Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher said, “Through this agreement we’re clearing the obstacles that all too often get in the way of students who are seeking a four-year degree. This partnership paves the way, outlining each step needed to ensure credits earned will all properly transfer while also maximizing each student’s financial investment in their education. At Belmont, we have always valued transfer students from Columbia State, and we are eager to welcome even more to our campus through this innovative new program.”

Columbia State student Anna Pollard, who will be the first to transfer to Belmont under the new articulation agreement, speaks with Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher.
Columbia State student Anna Pollard, who will be the first to transfer to Belmont under the new articulation agreement, speaks with Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher.

Eligible students must earn a Columbia State Associate Degree in Business Administration by completing the transfer coursework developed and approved by both institutions. Through this agreement, Columbia State students who meet stated requirements can be granted early admittance into Belmont’s Massey College of Business.

Columbia State President Dr. Janet F. Smith said, “This partnership demonstrates the commitment of  Columbia State and Belmont to work together to provide educational opportunity and support that promotes student success. Students can begin at Columbia State, take advantage of tuition-free programs such as the Tennessee Promise and Tennessee Reconnect, then transfer seamlessly to the nationally recognized Jack C. Massey College of Business at Belmont and be eligible for the transfer scholarship.”

The degree completion program is open to any Columbia State business student. Students applying for need-based aid or VA benefits as well as adult students seeking reduced tuition options are all eligible for this program. In addition, for the first time ever, a transfer scholarship has been created to support students pursuing 2-to-4 year Columbia State/Belmont option. The scholarship, open to graduates of Columbia State’s associates in business degree, has a value of $3,000 per semester for four semesters of continuous study at Belmont

Dr. Pat Raines, dean of Belmont’s Massey College of Business, added, “Belmont and the Massey College of Business are excited about this innovative partnership we are entering with Columbia State. Through a careful articulation of all degree requirements and a generous scholarship from Belmont, Columbia State students should be able to seamlessly transition to Belmont and complete our highly valued AACSB-accredited B.B.A. program.”

Ranked among the Best Undergraduate Business Schools by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Belmont’s Jack C. Massey College of Business offers the highest quality of business education in a Christian environment. Belmont is the only private university in Tennessee to have met the quality standards to achieve business and specialized accounting accreditation by AACSB International  — The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. This dual accreditation places Belmont among the less than one percent of the world’s business schools to achieve both business and accounting accreditation.

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