Ocean Way Nashville’s video game scoring activities are highlighted in the current month’s Mix Magazine on page 36.
Tough Article Accepted for Publication
Audio Engineering Technology Assistant Professor David Tough’s article “Teaching Modern Production and Songwriting Techniques: What Makes a Hit Song?” has been accepted for publication in the December 2013 MEIEA Journal, a refereed scholarly work published annually by the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association.
VanDyke Appointed Associated Director at Provident Label Group
Music Business Adjunct Instructor Charles VanDyke recently became the associate director for national promotions at Provident Label Group, a division of Sony Music.
Walton Has Book Published
A book by Dr. Mélanie Walton, assistant professor of philosophy, entitled, “Expressing the Inexpressible in Lyotard and Pseudo-Dionysius: Bearing Witness as Spiritual Exercise,” has just been published by Lexington Books. This work brings the contemporary French father of postmodernism’ and the late antique, presumably Syrian father of mysticism into dialogue on the topic of the inexpressible, to which each are provoked by witnesses (the Holocaust survivor and faithful) who have been silenced by the limits of grammatical possibility, even while called to testify.
Hawley to Speak at Audio Engineering Convention
Dr. Scott Hawley, associate professor of physics, will give a talk at the 135th International Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention in New York, N.Y. being held on Oct. 17 through 20. The Audio Engineering Society is the only professional society devoted exclusively to audio technology. Founded in the United States in 1948, the AES has grown to become an international organization that unites audio engineers, creative artists, scientists and students worldwide by promoting advances in audio and disseminating new knowledge and research. The AES Convention will host the world’s largest gathering of audio professionals, attracting attendees from around the globe. The top names in professional audio engineering converge for the latest audio innovations through workshops, tutorials, technical papers, booth exhibits and product showcases. Hawley will discuss ways in which audio spectral analysis and quantum physics are intimately related. Click here to read more about Hawley’s lecture.
Ness Publishes Manuscript
Dr. Genevieve Ness, associate director of the Christy Houston Foundation Drug Information Center and assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical, Social and Administrative Sciences, has published a manuscript in the the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. The article is titled “Graduating Pharmacy Students’ Perspectives on E-Professionalism and Social Media.” As the lead author, Ness and her team provide insight into graduating student pharmacist views of professionalism while engaging in social media activities. The manuscript also compares student perceptions about the their level of professionalism in social media behavior while seeking different types of employment. Click here to read Ness’ article.
Hobson Presents at Public Health Conference
Dr. Eric Hobson, of the Department of Pharmaceutical, Social & Administrative Sciences, presented an abstract and presentation at the 2013 Tennessee Public Health Association Annual Educational Conference “Navigating the Currents: Partnering and Engaging to Improve Health.” His poster is titled “Teaching Patient Health Literacy Assessment and Accommodation Skills to Future Front-line Health Care Providers.” Hobson’s work is an overview of the coursework Belmont University College of Pharmacy student pharmacists complete in patient communication and assessing health literacy levels to effectively tailor patient health information.
Occupational Therapy Faculty, Students Help Produce Video
Faculty and students from the School of Occupational Therapy recently joined with Resolve TV to produce an educational video for the Council on Aging (COA) of Greater Nashville to demonstrate how family and friends can help safely transport older adults.
The Council on Aging aims to address the needs of older adults and caregivers through information, advocacy and education, acting as a catalyst for comprehensive solutions. COA identified the need to assist individuals in the Nashville community who help older adults get to and from appointments with doctors, attend church services, run errands and visit family and friends. While willing to help, these individuals were often unsure of how to safely assist seniors with transfers and mobility with devices such as walkers and wheelchairs. The Council connected with Belmont University School of Occupational Therapy to create a solution for the problem.
Dr. Debra Gibbs and Dr. Teresa Plummer, faculty members in the school, lent expertise to the project and worked together with occupational therapy doctoral students LaRae Murray, Danielle Paulsen, Brittni Thompson, Carrie Beth Henson and Shelly Singh to determine the subject matter, write a script and produce the video. Resolve TV, a local non-profit that assists organizations with marketing, provided technical and video support. The Belmont students demonstrated the techniques filmed in the video.
The video is now part of the “Transportation Toolkit” offered online by the Council on Aging of Greater Nashville. The video can also be watched on YouTube.
Physical Therapy Alumnus Featured in PBS Documentary
Belmont physical therapy alumnus Keith Cronin is part of a team of health professionals featured in a new PBS documentary about reducing concussions in high school football. The documentary, entitled “The Smartest Team,” shows how football programs and athletes can reduce concussions and their effects by playing smarter. The program premiered on Oklahoma Public Television last month and will roll out to all other PBS stations this fall. Cronin was recently interviewed about his participation in the documentary by Fox 2 in St. Louis, Mo.
Cronin earned his Doctorate of Physical Therap from Belmont University in 2008 and is currently a physical therapist in St. Louis, Mo., working on sports injury prevention and coaching education community outreach programs. He is a member of the Team of Experts at MomsTEAM.com, the premier online information gateway for parents of children who play youth sports. MomsTeam.com was founded by parenting expert Brooke de Lench, the author of Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (HarperCollins 2006).
de Lench was the brainchild behind “The Smartest Team,” documenting how she, Cronin and other health professionals worked with the football program at Newcastle High School in rural Oklahoma to address the challenges concussions pose to the sport, reducing the concussion rate in one season by 75 percent.
While at Belmont, Cronin wrote his doctoral thesis on identifying elbow injury risk among softball pitchers, and his course of study included a physical therapy clinical rotation at Champion Sports in Birmingham, Ala. under the direction of world-renowned orthopedic surgeon James Andrews. He is a certified strength and conditioning specialist and holds certification in the treatment of orthopedic injuries.
Over the past three years, Cronin has authored more than 60 articles on various sports and health-related websites. A former college baseball player, American Legion baseball coach and personal trainer, he has extensive experience working both to rehabilitate injuries suffered by and improve the performance of young athletes.
In 2008, he was awarded the Olin Business Cup by Washington University for medical product innovation for his work on the Medibite Jaw Rehabilitation Systems. He currently serves as the medical organizer for the annual Missouri Cowbell Half Marathon in St. Charles, Mo. and lives in the St. Louis area with his wife and daughter.
White Spreads Christianity in Iraq with Love
Through personal anecdotes and dry humor, the Rev. Dr. Andrew White, chaplain of St. George’s Anglican Church in Baghdad, Iraq, told the Belmont community on Friday how he spreads Christianity with love in the Middle East.
His journey to the Middle East began following his work in Eastern Europe with the International Center for Reconciliation.
“The Middle East is a major issue of tension in the world. I had no problem with Israel, and I tried to get into Iraq and they didn’t want me. I tried and tried and failed and failed,” White said. Eventually, Iraq allowed White to enter the country. “When you pray, he answers them. When you don’t, he won’t.”
Shortly after the terrorist attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, White said he sat in his Baghdad, Iraq hotel room and looked over the Tigris River to see unrest in the city. He turned to the Biblical book of Ezekiel for insight and later used Google to find the tomb of Ezekiel.
“I didn’t know it had 48 chapters. I’d never read it in one go before. And I read that the experience of Ezekiel in Baghdad was the same experience I was having,” he said.
White also told the story of a man who visited the church seeking a blessing for his ill daughter. He told the man she would be healed and to go to the hospital and say “Jesus” in Arabic all the way there. When the man arrived, doctors told him that his daughter had died. The man asked to see her body and hugged it, again repeating the name of “Jesus,” and the daughter awoke and began to speak. The astonished man returned to the church and told White. White replied, “Don’t worry. It’s been done before.”
Among the most moving moments of chapel was when White listed his horrible experiences in Iraq, his church being bombed, the murder of 11 of 13 Iraqis the week after he baptized them, being locked in a torture room with removed digits strewn about the floor and being threatened with guns in his face. Still, he faces his adversaries with love, he said.
“When Jesus tells us to love your enemies, he doesn’t just mean the people in our families. He means others as well. So, I know much of my work is engaging with terrorists. The really bad kind,” White said. “Making peace is long-term business, and you have to engage religion in an attempt bring peace.”
More than 6,000 people, including 600 Muslims, are connected to St. George’s Anglican Church, which is the largest in Iraq and operates a medical clinic and food program. White studied at both Cambridge University and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He served as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, is the author of seven books, and has won the Three Faith’s Forum Prize for Inter-Faith Relations and the International Council of Christians and Jews Prize for Intellectual Contribution to Jewish-Christian Relations.
