The Inman Health Sciences Building became a workshop and playground on Thursday as part of an international project to promote pediatric mobility. University of Delaware physical therapy professor Cole Galloway and his Pediatric Mobility Lab and Design Studio bought to Belmont Go Baby Go, a program that teaches adults how to modify existing toy cars in a few hours to make them functional for children with disabilities.
Eight families and their therapists from Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia worked alongside Belmont occupational therapy and physical therapy students and alumni to learn how to modify toys and the logistics of the Go Baby Go program. Together, they altered Fisher Price Lightning McQueen red cars with Velcro, PVC pipes, pool noodles and kickboards to create wheelchair-like toys. The cars also function as physical therapy devices to teach strength and balance while allowing the disabled children to socialize with other children their age. Through constraint-induced therapy, the children are motivated to use their weaker muscles to gain independence and operate the toys, which by nature are fun. Buttons were moved so that the toy car moves only when a girl with cerebral palsy holds her head up or a boy with a spinal cord injury stands.
For 1-year-old Paisley Queen, she must engage her weak right hand to move her toy car. She suffered an intrauterine stroke and does not use the right side of her body.
“Hopefully, the car will make her more mobile and force her to use her right arm and eventually her right leg and catch her up with her peers who are crawling and starting to walk. That will be a benefit to us,” said her mom Laura Queen, of Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
Occupational Therapy Assistant Professor Teresa Plummer and Galloway sit on a panel of North American academics writing a position paper on early pediatric mobility to change policy among insurance companies and manufacturers.
“There aren’t wheelchairs this small, and insurance companies won’t pay for it because they don’t think these young children should be mobile. But these cars meet the needs of kids who don’t have access to independent mobility. Socially, they are not with other kids, so cognitively, they don’t develop, and they can’t keep up with their peers,” Plummer said, but she hopes their position paper will transform the industry.
“Go Baby Go is the candy coating to the science behind it, an advocacy program that gets the word out, bringing the latest research into condensed version so that policy makers can get a picture of how much support there is behind pediatric mobility,” said Galloway, who added that in five years, he hopes the industry will fill the gap. Go Baby Go toy cars cost only about $200, and because infants and young children weigh little, they can use devices made of plastic parts and small batteries.
“There is nothing magical about what we did today. You can’t judge a kid by her head control. With a little PVC and engineering, she can activate her whole body,” Galloway said. “What’s magical is all of you working together in this room. What we have here is easy to copy and paste anywhere,” Galloway said, as he encouraged parents and therapists to share their knowledge and pictures with other special needs families.
“Our ultimate goal is that in communities, people will hook up with others and pass down the devices. That when a child outgrows her car, it goes back to a clinic to be modified and passed to another child,” Plummer said. Belmont students plan to take what they learned to Mexico and Peru and build more Go Baby Go cars while doing summer medical mission work.
“We’ve learned more about pediatric mobility and possibilities for children zero to 3 years old. I’ve learned to engineer things you would not think are modifiable into functional devices for children that need help,” said third-year occupational therapy student Sara Harper.
Middle Tennessee-based Permobil, the leading provider of power wheelchairs with mobility products, funded the two-day workshop and sent engineers to observe the process for research and development. The company also unveiled its prototypes to parents and solicited their feedback on cost, functionality, safety features and aesthetics. Pixar also filmed the workshop on campus for a documentary on pediatric mobility and the Go Baby Go program.
Dr. Noel Boyle, associate professor of philosophy, gave a presentation titled “A Friendly Critique of Subjective Physicalism” at the 20th Anniversary Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference on April 23 in Tucson, Arizona. The conference is the world’s premier international conference on the topic of consciousness, drawing a wide range of scholars including philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, physicists, computer scientists, artists and Eastern meditation experts. The keynote speech was given by esteemed theoretical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose. Other pre-eminent speakers included some philosophers (including David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, John Searle and Ned Block), some neuroscientists (including Christof Koch, Bernard Baars and Michael Graziano) and novelist Rebecca Goldstein. Boyle’s presentation offered a defense and expansion of Robert Howell’s attempts to reconcile robust phenomenal realism with supervenience based accounts of physicalism.
Belmont University’s School of Sciences hosted this year’s 
Occupational therapy doctoral students Evan Pendygraft and Jevorius Price began work this semester to provide ergonomic consultation to Spring Back Mattress Recycling in Nashville. The local nonprofit was started in 2010 as a project by Belmont Enactus (then Students in Free Enterprise) who explored mattress recycling as a means of achieving a triple bottom line, serving people, planet and profit. Pendygraft and Price are working under the guidance of Dr. Teresa Plummer and Dr. Debra Gibbs, faculty members in the School of Occupational Therapy, and with Dr. John Gonas from the College of Business Administration, to assist workers at Spring Back to lessen the physical strain in their work activities and avoid potential injury. The consultation will continue during the next year.
Alumnus and Curb College Computer Technician Chris Wilcoxson was recently profiled on the Wordcamp blog for his skills as a developer on WordPress. The full article can be read 
Fourth-year student Mary-Martin Johnson, of Tuscaloosa, Ala., received the United States Public Health Service Excellence in Public Health Pharmacy Practice Award at a ceremony in April. Johnson was presented the award by Dr. Chris Lamer, a c
Twenty-one Belmont business students received recognition and awards during the 
Dr. Stephen Shin, assistant professor of sport science, recently shared his experiences and test preparation tips for the U.S. citizenship application with students in the English as a Second Language (ESL) class at the Nashville Korean United Methodist Church (NKUMC). Since September 2012, basic ESL classes have been offered every Saturday at NKUMC in Brentwood, Tenn. Shin became a U.S. citizen about a year ago by going through the entire documentation process and citizenship test. Based on his experience, he provided general information about the citizenship application process and test preparation tips to the students who want to apply for U.S. citizenship in the future. Most of the students are newly immigrated to the United States coming from non-English speaking countries and they want to be more active engaging members in American society by speaking more fluent English. They also expressed their wishes to become a U.S. citizen to get better opportunities and to contribute more to the society.
Belmont University will hold its spring 2013 commencement ceremonies for graduate and undergraduate students on Saturday, May 3 in the Curb Event Center. Belmont celebrates the graduation of a total of 1,079 students. During the graduation ceremonies, 770 undergraduate, 85 master’s and 226 doctoral degrees will be conferred.