Staff from Belmont University’s Office of Communications spent the latter part of last week shadowing the men’s basketball team as well as employees, fans and students who went to Charlotte for a taste of March Madness. Here is what they saw and heard:
Wednesday, March 18
2:20 p.m. Central
With a few dozen fans holding signs and yelling “Go Belmont,” the Bruins exit the Curb Event Center loading dock after a final practice, toss their navy duffel bags under the bus and stuff too tall legs into seats, downing some Chick-Fil-A as they prepare for the ride to the airport.
Coach Rick Byrd and several players, including senior Reece Chamberlain (right), conduct last minute interviews with local media for a few minutes before the bus departs, skirting carefully through the 15th Avenue roundabout.
3 p.m.
Arriving at the airport, a woman everyone on campus recognizes with a shock of short white hair jumps off the bus to check in for the flight. Debbie Chenoweth, or “Miss Debbie” as everyone on the team calls her, handles all of the logistics for team travel, and she’s clearly the one in charge of the trip.
In addition to managing all of the details and being responsible for team and player stats during the game, Miss Debbie serves as chief problem solver and team encourager. Whether a player has lost his ID or just needs a bubblegum pick-me-up before the game, Miss Debbie has the answer. In fact, she carries with her at all times a bag of candy that includes all of the favorite sugar-infused snacks for each team member and coach.
The chartered plane is running about 20 minutes late so we wait on the tarmac, catching up with red shirt sophomore Taylor Barnette. He’s responsible for “The Shot,” the fall-away three-pointer that helped the Bruins win the OVC Championship and land Belmont its seventh trip to the Big Dance in 10 years. What many may not know is that he’s also working on an academic triple play: Taylor is majoring in communications with a double minor in entrepreneurship and Christian leadership.
Ironically, Barnette is a transfer from No. 2 seed Virginia, the very team Belmont will be taking on. “Those guys [on the team] were some of my best friends when I was there… It’s still sinking in that we’re playing them.”
4:04 p.m.
After a quick security check, the players, coaches and traveling staff have boarded the plane and been greeted by flight attendants enthusiastically wishing the team well. In moments, the plane departs for a quiet ride to Charlotte.
Belmont University College of Law’s Mock Trial teams recently competed in Louisville, Kentucky at the regional tournament for the American Association for Justice (
Twenty-five Belmont students, led by faculty members Jose Gonzalez and Marieta Velikova, recently returned from a 10-day trip to Cuba where Gonzales and Velikova taught a course entitled “The Emergence of Private Enterprise within the Boundaries of a Communist Economy.”
Belmont’s Alpha Chi National Honor Society chapter recently sent sixteen members (led by Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Sponsor Mélanie Walton) to the 2015 National Convention in Chicago to present their academic and creative work and brought home four award for best presentation. Belmont had the greatest number of presenters among the convention’s 250 total student presentations and the greatest number of discipline specific top prizes for a single university in attendance.
Belmont Professor of Journalism 
Belmont recently held its 2015 Brain Awareness Week (BAW), an endeavor sponsored by the Biology and Psychological Science Departments as part of the global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research. Held every March, BAW unites the efforts of partner organizations worldwide in a celebration of the brain for people of all ages.
Belmont’s Legal Aid Society hosted a week-long Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Clinic with Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors (TN JFON) as an alternative to spring break March 9-13. 
Since 2004, all graduates of Belmont’s Masters of Science in Nursing (MSN) program for Family Nurse Practitioners (FNP), totaling 150 students, have passed the nursing certification exam on their first attempt. The most recent class of 28 graduates passed the exam this spring.
