Research and Instruction Librarian Claire Walker co-presented a session at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy held at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. Feb. 6-8. This conference focused on higher education teaching excellence and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Walker helped lead the session titled “Authentic Teaching: Lessons from Instruction Librarians,” which discussed best practices and strategies for development as an authentic teacher.
Hayley Lewis, a sophomore music business major, was crowned Miss Walking Tall on Sunday, Feb. 3. Miss Walking Tall is one of nearly 40 pageants in Tennessee. Winners of each pageant go on to compete for the Miss Tennessee title in June. The pageant was a first for Lewis, who decided to enter just weeks prior to the event. Lewis also received a scholarship as part of her prize. She has already began making appearances as Miss Walking Tall at various philanthropic and social events and will continue to do so over the course of the next year.
On Feb. 13 internationally acclaimed opera singer Denyce Graves sat down in the Massey Performing Arts Center for a conversation with longtime journalist Harry Chapman, who now serves as Belmont’s director of development and major gifts. Graves, who will be performing at the McAfee Concert Hall with various School of Music ensembles tonight, discussed her personal story.
Graves described her entire career as being her “mother’s fault.” She explained that each week her mother assigned her and her siblings a new activity. “One week would be sewing, next week would be something else.”
Eventually, her mother realized the potential of her children and formed the Inspirational Children of God, and the musical group would perform at the family’s local church. However, it wasn’t until Denyce’s brother, the lead singer, became ill that she reluctantly took his spot in the group.
“My mother pushed me onto the stage, and at that point, you can’t really say no,” she recalled. From then on, Graves’s passion for music flourished as she continued to sing for the church. She fondly remembers the church as her “first audience” and “nourishing ground.”
U.S. Congressman Lamar Smith shared his “three-prong approach” to combating the theft of intellectual property with a full room of Belmont University students this past Monday, Feb. 11. The event, sponsored by the Center for Business Ethics, was an academic lecture convocation titled “Internet Piracy: Copyright Infringement and Compensating Creativity.” Representing Texas’ 21st congressional district since 1987, Smith recently proposed legislation with the purpose of hindering the negative impact of foreign websites that consistently engage in illegal acts of digital piracy. Smith described SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and how the legislation primarily focuses on the prosecution of foreign-based websites.
Smith’s three-prong solution includes public education to the negative effects of copyright infringement, technological advances that allow artists to be paid fairly for their work and legislation that allows federal enforcement. Smith explained, “Theft of intellectual property can affect anyone in this room in one way or another.”
Several students from Belmont’s College of Law asked questions relating to copyrights and recent cases from their class studies. Second-year law student Franklin Graves commented, “It’s important for Belmont to host this type of event. They bring focus to the artist, the creator, the people the legislation truly affects. From a law student’s perspective, it’s great to hear a pro-copyright voice.”
Faculty and students from Belmont University School of Physical Therapy recently participated in the annual Combined Sections Meeting of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) held in San Diego, Calif.
Dr. Mike Voight was one of the presenters for a two-day pre-conference course focusing on injury assessment and management in golf. Approximately 100 clinicians from around the world were in attendance. During the conference, Voight presented the sections research award in his role as editor in chief of the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy and was roasted as a past president of the sports physical therapy section in conjunction with the section’s 40th anniversary celebration.
Dr. Cathy Hinton was a co-presenter for a session entitled” Knowing What is Right Does Not Equal Doing What is Right: Taking the Next Step.” The session focused on the responsibility of leaders in clinical practice and education to establish themselves as role models in PT practice, including the complexities of managing difficult situations with equally compelling choices.
Dr. Renee Brown collaborated with recent graduate Dr. John Hackett and Penny Powers, director of the Seating and Mobility Clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, to present a poster entitled “Clinical Education in Seating and Mobility: Designing and Implementing a Specialty Affiliation.”
Brown also presented a poster in collaboration with Tamara Garvey, an adjunct instructor in the School of Occupational Therapy, entitled International Inter-professional Cultural Training which described the Guatemala medical services trips and the changes in cultural competence due to this immersion experience.
Student research by third-year PT students was presented in a poster on Changes in Functional Mobility Outcomes of Individuals Receiving a New Seating/Mobility Device. Students involved in the research included Stacey Lindsley, Virginia Fly, Spencer Tomlinson, Lacey Little and Miranda Law.
More than 9,000 physical therapy professionals from around the nation attended the 2013 meeting.
Dr. Mélanie Walton’s manuscript, “Expressing the Inexpressible: Bearing Witness in Jean-François Lyotard and Pseudo-Dionysius,” is under contract for publication with Lexington Books, the scholarly division of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. This work brings together the contemporary French “father of postmodernism” and the late antique, presumably Syrian “father of mysticism” on the inexpressible, to which each are provoked by witnesses (the Holocaust survivor and faithful) silenced by the limits of grammatical possibility, even while called to testify. The latter’s radical conjunction of apopthatic and cataphatic theologies affords an unconsidered model for Lyotard’s search for new idioms by which to speak the impossible and the projects of both are revealed to be pedagogic pursuits and spiritual exercises. 
Walton is an assistant professor in the philosophy department.
Dr. Steve Robinson, assistant professor of physics, recently had an article published in the current issue of Chance. Chance magazine is designed for anyone who has an interest in the analysis of data, informally highlighting sound statistical practice. 
Robinson’s article is titled “How to Beat Kindergartners at Battleship”. Click here to view the article.
The Middle Tennessee Chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by hosting a Netherfield Ball in the grand salon of the Belmont Mansion on Feb. 8. Some 40 students enrolled in Austen-related courses taught by Belmont University professor Doug Murray and Vanderbilt professor Andrea Hearn danced traditional English country dances alongside local JASNA members.
Department of Media Studies Chairman and Professor of Journalism Thom Storey headed a workshop titled Making Ethical Decisions at the Tennessee Press Association Winter Conference held Feb. 6-8 in Nashville. Storey led a group of about 20 reporters and editors through real case scenarios and moderated a discussion on refocusing ethical thinking in a time of changing media landscapes.
Dr. Sybril Bennett, associate professor of media studies, is participating in the Bringing Theory to Practice in partnership with the American Association of Colleges and Universities Civic Engagement Project. She is contributing a piece on civic engagement and social media as they pertain to teaching and learning. The group including College Presidents, Deans and Faculty met in Washington, D.C. in early February to begin work on the monograph.
