Belmont student Andrey Borisyuk, a neuroscience major, has been awarded a RISE internship for this summer. RISE is a summer internship program for undergraduate students from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences and engineering. It offers unique opportunities for undergraduate students to work with research groups at universities and top research institutions across Germany for a period of two to three months during the summer. RISE interns are matched with doctoral students whom they assist and who serve as their mentors. The working language is English. All scholarship holders receive stipends from the DAAD to help cover living expenses, while partner universities and research institutes provide housing assistance.
RISE internships were first offered in 2005 to applicants from the United States and Canada. In 2009 the program was extended to the United Kingdom. Following the first intake of around 100 students in 2005, the number of participants has increased steadily. In 2011 as many as 306 candidates (out of 1,600 applicants) were awarded an internship. Click here to read more.
Kacie Kleja (Mathematics, ‘06) was highlighted on the Hands on Nashville website for her volunteer efforts with senior citizens at Bordeaux Hospital and J.B. Knowles Home for the Aged. At these facilities, Kleja connects with seniors by playing bingo and other games through her regular commitment to Game Night. Since 2008, Kleja has been volunteering with Hands on Nashville.
Of Game Night Kleja says, “The residents look forward to having a night of fun and conversation. For some of the residents, it is truly the only interaction that they have and they are so appreciative of the volunteers.”
Kleja saud she loves connecting with people and her volunteer efforts not only offer companionship to the seniors but also a chance for them to be active and social.
English graduate student Kelsey LeCrone recently presented her paper, “The Relationship Between Reading and Listening in Literature,” on a panel titled, “Retextualizing Traditional Texts” at the Voice and Voicing in a Technological Era, A NEXUS Interdisciplinary Conference. The paper was a discussion of the fundamentals of reading and listening from a reading science and rhetorical viewpoint combined with a discussion of some of the key issues surrounding reading and listening in terms of how literature is interpreted and an overview of her case study.
Literary magazine Bartleby Snopes recently published a short story by English graduate student Shellie Richards. Her story, “Quick & Painless” also won the magazine’s story-of-the-month contest. Click here to read Shellie’s short story.
Sally Barton-Arwood and Annette Little, faculty members in the Department of Education, spent spring break working with educators at Siloë School in Grand Goave, Haiti. Barton-Arwood and Little worked in classrooms, interviewed teachers and met with school leaders as part of a needs and strengths assessment. This trip was part of Belmont’s initiative to develop meaningful and sustainable contributions to Haiti working with through Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionaries in Haiti.
Sally Barton-Arwood (Education) was recently asked to serve on Mayor Karl Dean’s Advisory Board on Exceptional Education. The Mayor’s Advisory Board was formed in January 2008 to assess policy and program strengths and weaknesses for students who are identified as receiving special education services within Metro Nashville Public Schools. Moving forward, the Advisory Board will focus on assessment and community-based classroom opportunities.
The Bible was once just a reference book on a library shelf for Asian Studies Professor Qingjun Li. Then as a professor twice recognized as a “Teacher of Excellence” at Zhengzhou University in China, religion was taboo in academia.
“The education that I received was that there was no God, and there was no Savior in your world but you. Religion was like opium; it made your mind numb,” said Li, who grew up in China. “I never thought I could use the Bible for myself as a companion.”
She shared her story of “Finding Faith in the Land of the Dragon” during chapel on March 14. In China, the dragon stands as a symbol of power, good luck and achievement.
Then a friend named Sherri Love would share stories of Jesus Christ with Li, sometime for hours.
“She planted a seed in my heart, but I did not become a believer all of a sudden. I still had questions and struggles,” Li said. Love would mail her books on Christianity, and Li began attending church secretly in someone’s home with other Chinese intellectuals. Soon thereafter, a pastor from Hong Kong baptized her in a bathtub.
“After that, I had a shift, and I had someone to rely on. That was only the beginning of my faith,” she said.
Her journey with Christ continued to flourish as Li became a graduate student in the United States. She used the Bible, once just a reference book, to find comfort when she struggled with language barriers and cultural nuances using Corinthians 12:9, Philippians 4:4 and Psalm 23.
Li has a Ph.D. in English and is the author of three books.
Kent State University sociology assistant professor Nicole Rousseau chronicled the role of black women’s wombs in America’s capitalist society over 400 years during a lecture to Belmont students on March 19.
Winner of the 2010 North Central Sociological Association Scholarly Achievement Award, Rousseau gave an outline of her book The Black Woman’s Burden: Commodifying Black Reproduction.
During slavery, black women were raped and forced to reproduce to provide labor for the agricultural South. During the U.S. industrial era, blacks were seen as parasites and sterilizations were mandated through the eugenics movements and The Negro Project. Today, sterilization is coerced through programs such as Project Prevention, which offers people with drug and alcohol addictions cash for sterilization. In Illinois, unwed mothers under21 are asked to have their tube tied immediately after giving birth to a second child, and wards of the state also are given cash incentives for sterilization. Each of these instances disproportionately affects women and minorities, Rousseau said.
“The reality is that this is an unnerving trend,” she said. “The idea is appalling that there are currently public debates about birth control and someone else’s body. This is a slippery slope because it legitimizes someone else making decisions for a woman.”
The Black Woman’s Burden explores bureaucracy, institutionalized racism, political economy and black women as a unique labor class while drawing from black feminism, the womanist theory and the critical race theory.
Rousseau earned her doctorate in Sociology from Howard University. Her work on the structural and institutional roots of race, class and gender inequalities, social rhetoric and identity formation, and Historical Womanist theory have been included in several publications in the United States and South America.
Belmont placed on ‘Honor Roll with Distinction,’ one of only 110 schools nationwide
Washington, D.C. – The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and the U.S. Department of Education has honored Belmont University as among the nation’s leading colleges, universities, students, faculty and staff for its commitment to bettering Nashville through service.
Belmont University was admitted to the Honor Roll with Distinction for its students’ and employees’ support of volunteering, service learning and civic engagement.
“Through service, these institutions are creating the next generation of leaders by challenging students to tackle tough issues and create positive impacts in the community,” said Robert Velasco, Acting CEO of CNCS. “We applaud the Honor Roll schools, their faculty and students for their commitment to make service a priority in and out of the classroom. Together, service and learning increase civic engagement while fostering social innovation among students, empowering them to solve challenges within their communities.”
Eduardo Ochoa, the U.S. Department of Education’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education, said, “Preparing students to participate in our democracy and providing them with opportunities to take on local and global issues in their course work are as central to the mission of education as boosting college completion and closing the achievement gap. The Honor Roll schools should be proud of their work to elevate the role of service-learning on their campuses.”
For the fourth consecutive year, Belmont University will turn off lights for an Earth Hour Celebration as part of a global project to raise awareness of climate change and the need for sustainable living.
Student around a bonfire at Earth Hour 2010.
Hosted by student organization O.N.E. Club (Our Natural Environment), Belmont Goes Dark begins at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 31 on the South Lawn outside of the Maddox Grand Atrium. The event, which is open to the public and Belmont community, will include fireside acoustic performances by Chris Wright, Derek Johnson and the Chadasha Choir. There also will be s’mores as well as recycling stations for batteries, light bulbs and old electronics. Several Earth-conscience organizations also will have information booths.
At approximately 8:30 p.m., all non-emergency lighting in residence halls and on campus grounds will be turned off, and all students are encouraged to refrain from using energy-consuming devices during that time. Previously scheduled campus events will continue as planned.
Students can receive personal growth convocation credit for attending the Earth Hour celebration. Students, faculty and staff also should use the hashtag #BUearthhour on Twitter, follow @BelmontUniv and and participate in next week’s photo contest for a chance to win $50 Bruin Bucks. For more information, visit http://www.belmont.edu/earthhour.
Before leaving campus for the weekend, faculty and staff should turn off their lights, computers and other equipment and be mindful that power will be off in some areas for the event.
Students who reside on campus and plan to participate in Earth Hour should arrive at their intended locations before campus goes dark at 8:30 p.m. Belmont’s Campus Security can be reached at (615) 460-6617 to provide security escorts during the event.
An initiative of the World Wildlife Fund, Earth Hour was started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. For more information on Earth Hour 2012, visit www.earthhour.org.
On Saturday, Feb. 25, 70 Belmont students spent the day working at Belcourt Terrace Nursing & Rehabilitation Center to raise money for a Honduras orphanage.
Throughout their day, volunteers spent time painting, washing windows, doing yard work and detailing wheelchairs as well as cleaning beds, residents’ bedrooms and the organization’s basement. The students also read Bible studies with the residents, sang hymns and played bingo.
Working alongside faculty advisor Sara Olson, who works in the Office of Admissions, and her husband’s nonprofit Both Hands Foundation (BHF), Belmont’s Bruin Recruiters wanted to volunteer together to impact their community, both locally and globally. BHF is an organization that serves widows in the community in a practical way while also raising money for orphan care and adoptions. After a visit to a partner orphanage in 2011, BHF founder JT Olson realized the need and came up with a concept to help. By assisting in mobilizing college groups to hold what BHF calls “big build projects” sponsored through letter writing campaigns, all money raised goes back to the orphanage to assist those needs.
The Belmont students wrote letters to family and friends two weeks before the build in an effort to raise money, and the student who raises the most funds will take the resources and letters to the orphanage in person. To date, the group has raised more than $8,000 with more money coming in daily.
Although this model has been done across the country at other campuses, Belmont is the first accredited institution to participate in Both Hands Foundation’s “Big Build.”
Sara Olson said because the Bruin Recruiters team has grown so large in recent years, it can be difficult to “remain connected to one another in meaningful ways. Projects like this one give us a chance to spend time with one another in the margins of life.”
Organization president Jared Delong is passionate about the importance of serving, especially in a leadership position, and felt it was important to show fellow Recruiters the importance of integrating service into the organization. “In the end, I feel that if we’ve raised enough money to save one orphan from dying alone on the side of a street at night, then that’s a good enough reason for us… It’s not about us, it’s just not.”
For more information about Both Hands Foundation, click here. To view a video of Belmont’s Big Build, click here.
Belmont student Andrey Borisyuk, a neuroscience major, has been awarded a RISE internship for this summer. RISE is a summer internship program for undergraduate students from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences and engineering. It offers unique opportunities for undergraduate students to work with research groups at universities and top research institutions across Germany for a period of two to three months during the summer. RISE interns are matched with doctoral students whom they assist and who serve as their mentors. The working language is English. All scholarship holders receive stipends from the DAAD to help cover living expenses, while partner universities and research institutes provide housing assistance.
