Law Professor Loren Mulraine recently spoke on a panel at the Center for the Protection Intellectual Property’s Third Annual Summer Institute in Seattle, Washington on August. The panel, “The Future of Control of Creative Content,” also featured Joe DiMona, VP Legal Affairs, Broadcast Music Inc.; Troy Dow, VP & Counsel, IP Legal Policy, Disney; Professor Sean Pager, Michigan State University College of Law and Amelia Wang, VP Industry Relations & Government Affairs, National Music Publishers Association. The conference features the leading Intellectual Property voices in corporate, entertainment, academia and government.
Mulraine Presents at Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property
Alumnae Selected as English Teaching Assistants in Italy
Belmont alumnae Mikaila Minott, Hillary Bell, Danielle McCleave and Madison Bradford were recently selected as English Teaching Assistants in schools of the region of Lombardy, Italy. The program is an eight-month-paid internship (Oct. 1 , 2016– May 31, 2017) open to B.A. students who have earned a minor in Italian in a North American university. On a weekly basis, selected candidates will instruct/assist 12 hours in English and pursue an additional 13 hours of related activities. This is a great reward for students of Italian language, literature and culture at Belmont. It is also a unique opportunity for Belmont graduates to continue their study of Italian language and culture while gaining valuable life and teaching experience.
Leville Begins Movement to ‘Save God’s Kids’
It all started when Nancy Leville, a sophomore music business major at Belmont, couldn’t find a piece of fruit to snack on while walking to Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx. Igniting an interest in understanding food deserts and their prevalence in the U.S., Leville wrote a paper for a high school class and discovered that 83 percent of American children are not provided with the nutrients they need to thrive—regardless of their socioeconomic status or where they grew up. Armed with this information and a newly found passion for providing children with the resources they need to be healthy, Leville began the journey to “Save God’s Kids” (SGK).
Soon after, Leville moved to Nashville to attend Belmont. Beginning as a commercial music major, Leville’s future would change with the first person she met—Nancy Daines, a musician and fellow student. Soon after, Leville said the purpose she was led to Belmont became increasingly clear. “I had been called to Belmont to bring SGK to the world and to find Christian talent that could help deliver the message, beginning with my Phi Mu ‘big sister,’ Nancy,” she said. Within her first week of classes, Leville transferred to the Curb College to study music business, her current program.
Since developing her passion, Leville has launched SGK, a youth-driven movement to strengthen the church by nourishing the mind, body and spirit of all its members and empower young people to become stronger in their faith. She began by compiling her research into a proprietary nutrition solution called GoBrite and authoring two books, Save God’s Kids for parents and the I’m God’s Kid Activity Book for kids, designed to represent the five BRITE colors found in God’s nourishing foods.
After publication, the One World Literacy Foundation adopted the GoBrite secular version of the program, I’m a BRITE Kid and the solution was introduced to the New York City Public School System. More recently, Leville and her foundation, Global Children’s Wellness (GCW), changed the direction of their work to focus on a newly published study indicating that some of the nation’s unhealthiest children are sitting in churches. Armed with this information and understanding that parents need support to provide children with healthy options, GCW expanded the Go-Brite nutrition solution to serve the entire family. GCW is now partnering with thousands of churches across America, and soon the world, where the entire Save God’s Kids solution will be made available free.
Thanks to her personal connections and time at Belmont, Leville said she is proud to say the GCW team is entirely youth-driven. With Belmont students who are studying publishing, journalism and communications, among other things, alongside her, Leville said GCW’s future is bright and has Belmont to thank for a good amount of its success. “When I entered Belmont, I quickly realized that I was surrounded by some of the most amazingly talented Christian students in the world,” Leville said. “I knew I was meant to utilize that to help nourish the spirit of millions of young followers.”
For Leville and her team, the ultimate goal is to live out the purposes they were created to live and change the lives of many in the process. “The most important thing I have learned is that God has a plan for each of us and that true happiness can only be achieved when that plan is being fulfilled,” Leville said. “I want to create a movement to stop the epidemic of chronic illnesses that are weakening the church and putting a generation of God’s kids at risk.”
As for GCW, there are still big dreams on the horizon including an online personal eating analysis that is under development, an online customizable nutritional plan for families to use and the creation of a Christian music label to support the foundation’s work.
Belmont University Names Dr. Mary Clark as Director of Multicultural Learning and Experience
Belmont announced today that Dr. Mary Clark has been appointed as Director of Belmont’s newly created Office of Multicultural Learning and Experience (MLE). Since coming to Belmont in 2014, Clark has provided innovative leadership to the Bridges to Belmont program as it has grown to include four cohorts and more than 100 students. In her new role, Clark will lead the Office in its charge to serve Belmont’s student-centered community by providing academic and experiential multicultural learning opportunities that serve the university’s mission to engage and transform the world.
In managing the daily operations of the Office, Clark will provide institutional leadership to support, strengthen and expand Belmont’s culture of inclusion and diversity by collaboratively partnering with diversity initiatives across campus including the University’s Welcome Home Team, a senior leadership advisory committee focused on racial and ethnic diversity. Focusing on creating culturally diverse conversations, the MLE will permeate all aspects of campus life as it supports awareness events across campus, establishes its own programming surrounding key diversity and inclusivity topics and creates new initiatives and opportunities for diverse experiences.
Belmont Provost Dr. Thomas Burns said, “I am very excited that Dr. Clark is willing to take on the additional role of Director of Multicultural Learning and Experience. Her work with engaging students, faculty, and staff in conversations and collaborations around important issues has been exemplary. Expanding her opportunity to lead these initiatives as the Director of Multicultural Learning and Experience will be foundational for the University and help us serve our students, faculty, and staff though new programs and new opportunities.”
The development of the MLE at Belmont allows the institution to take a proactive, educational approach to providing faculty, staff and students with opportunities to further develop and engage their cultural competencies. Serving as the central location for administration and corporate diversity planning, the MLE will continue to infuse existing structures with opportunities to increase multicultural knowledge, advance the campus dialogue on multicultural literacies and provide resources to campus constituents to enhance their foundational knowledge.
Clark said, “I am honored to serve Belmont and its community through the work of the MLE. As we embrace the premise that all people are created by God to serve Him and one another in ways that are reflective of our talents and gifts, we become a true reflection of God’s diverse creation, humanity.”
Farringer Quoted in Article
Deborah Farringer, assistant professor in the College of Law, was recently quoted in an article published in The San Diego Union-Tribune. The article, “Tri-City, UCSD finalize affiliation agreement,” highlights the partnership recently forged between the two entities.
Farringer shares her perspective from experiences with similar partnership creations.
Belmont Receives Grant to Develop Online Performance Archive of Local Shakespeare Productions
Drs. Marcia McDonald, Jayme Yeo and Joel Overall, all from the English Department, were awarded a grant from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities for “Improving the Undergraduate Teaching of Shakespeare.” This grant will fund the development of an online performance archive of local Shakespeare productions, beginning with this fall’s Nashville Shakespeare Festival production of The Comedy of Errors.
Students in McDonald’s Shakespeare class will conceptualize and gather the raw materials for this archive, students in Overall’s digital literacies class will build and design the digital archive. The Bunch Library will house the archive, representing an initial project for the library to host knowledge bases created by Belmont students and faculty.
Though global Shakespeare productions have long been archived digitally, this project represents one of the early contributions to the study of “local” Shakespeare—the investigation of the way Shakespeare is interpreted by and interprets local cultures and topical issues. This is also a project in “digital humanities,” a rapidly expanding field focusing on the intersection of the traditional humanities with digital media.
Drs. McDonald and Yeo participated in a two-day workshop for grant recipients at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C., in June, on Teaching Shakespeare to Undergraduates. Belmont was chosen as one of 21 grant recipients.
Murray Performs at Association of Lutheran Church Musicians Meeting
Douglas Murray, English, was recently invited to improvise three organ chorale preludes in the style of J. S. Bach at the 2016 meeting of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians in Franklin, Tennessee.
The subject of the conference was “Bach for Everyone,” featuring the heritage of Lutheranism’s greatest composer. Murray has also been selected as one of three finalists in the University of Michigan Improvisation Competition to be held on 2 October in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Fyke Publishes Cases in Organizational and Managerial Communication
Dr. Jeremy Fyke, Department of Communication Studies, served as lead editor of Cases in Organizational and Managerial Communication: Stretching Boundaries, released Thursday, August 24. Given the interest in engaged scholarship and more flexible and virtual forms within organizational communication, cases in this volume cross diverse areas within the field and related disciplines.
Cases cover recently-emerging and longstanding topics and populations in organizational communication literature that play an important role in today’s global economy (e.g., social media, transnational organizations, blogging, cybervetting, leadership and consulting). Additionally, the book offers a unique pedagogical approach to the diverse array of topics that Fyke and his co-editors call “Take a Stand.” This method encourages students, instructors, and practitioners in various fields to engage in case study learning through a multi-stage process.
Julseth Presents at American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese
Dr. David C. Julseth, Department of Foreign Languages, recently presented on the experience of the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage as a way to teach Spanish language and culture at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) conference held in Miami. Co-presenter Dr. Mercedes Meier, Spanish professor at Miami Dade College, is the author of ¡Buen camino! – a Spanish reader that Julseth uses in some of his Spanish courses.
¡Buen camino! is a fictional story about a college student who travels to Spain to walk the pilgrimage, practice Spanish and have a cultural immersion experience. Julseth has developed class activities that complement the reader and the final project for his students was to create a video skit inspired by their reading that the students recorded on the Sculpture Trail at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. During the conference presentation, Julseth and Meier spoke about their own experiences walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain and shared helpful advice for future pilgrims.
