The newly established Belmont chapter of Global Medical Brigades spent spring break in rural Honduras working alongside the local community to help implement a sustainable healthcare system. The group participated in a 3-day temporary clinic in the remote community of Manzaragua where they worked intake/triage for almost 700 patients, shadowed and assisted healthcare providers, conducted “charla” (chats) with the local children teaching them proper dental care while administering fluoride treatments and collected electronic patient records to help monitor overall community health trends.
In addition to the clinic, they participated in public health projects where they worked on a pipeline for a clean water project in a community with no running water and built eco-stoves that help provide clean-air living conditions in the home. Students in BGMB represent a diverse group of majors from across campus including pre-health, biology, social work, chemistry and exercise science, among others. The chapter worked closely with the Public Health Program to prepare for their trip and Dr. Williams, director of the public health program, serves as their advisor.
Students from Belmont’s College of Health Sciences and Nursing attended the Leadership Health Care Delegation in Washington, D.C. this past week with Dr. Natalie Michaels from the Departments of PT and OT. Speakers presented information regarding issues related to health care currently being debated in congress at the federal level. The students were able to mingle with congressman and people in health care financing from Central Tennessee, all in our nation’s capital.
Richard Li, an economics major in Belmont’s Jack C. Massey College of Business, recently attended and presented a paper titled “
Economics graduates Carson Ward, CEO, Logan Mathews, COO, and Jonathan Rankin, Creative Director, have developed Skoller, a classroom crowdsourcing app that provides students with a way to manage all of their class grade and assignments in one place – their smart phone. How does it work? With the hard work of the Skoller team, including Vanderbilt junior Bruce Brookshire, CTO, and a team of programmers, syllabi extractors, campus ambassadors and interns. Students simply upload their syllabi, and the team pulls out important dates and assignments to populate the user’s task list. Students can also input their grades and track their progress, and there is now an option to chat with other users in the class.
Her book also explores the education of women and minorities in Nashville. Pethel added that Nashville was a “magnet and a Mecca for black liberal arts and professional education.” Mitchell went on to speak about the history of African American education in Nashville noting that the city’s history as an educational hub began with the Civil War’s end. “How do you incorporate 3,000 freed slaves into society?” he asked. “The answer: you educate them.” Accordingly, what is now known as Fisk University opened in Nashville as the Fisk Free Colored School.
Alumna Shelby Blalock (’17) is a finalist for the American Prize in Composition in two categories including Orchestral Music (student division) for her piece “Out of Ashes” and in Instrumental Chamber Music (student division) for her piece “Precarious.” Both pieces were composed by Blalock while an undergraduate at Belmont.
After about a year of work, Dr. Kelly Garner, assistant professor of commercial voice, released a new choral book and recording of urban gospel arrangements, “Yes and Amen!” The book was distributed worldwide. Garner arranged nine of the 12 arrangements, along with highly acclaimed choral arranger Cliff Duren.