Pam Parry, associate professor of journalism, has received an “honorable mention” in the graduate category of the 2010 Kathanne W. Greene Award, an annual essay competition sponsored by the Committee on Services and Resources for Women at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. The award is for her paper titled “Second Fiddle, Not Second Rate: Associate Role Obscures Anne Williams Wheaton’s Contributions to Public Relations.” She will be recognized at the university’s Women’s History Month awards ceremony on March 31. Parry is working on her doctor of philosophy degree from Southern Miss, and her research on Wheaton is a part of her dissertation on the public relations strategy of the Eisenhower administration. Wheaton was the first woman to be appointed an associate press secretary to a sitting U.S. president.

Dr. Mike Voight, professor of physical therapy at Belmont, has been honored by the American Physical Therapy Association as a recipient of the Turner A Blackburn Lifetime Achievement Award from its Sports Physical Therapy Section. The award signifies a lifetime of positive contribution to education at both the university and continuing education levels. Voight received the award at the recent APTA Combined Sections Meeting in San Diego. In addition, Voight was inducted into APTA’s Sports Physical Therapy Hall of Fame, recognizing his positive impact on the profession of physical therapy for over 25 years.
Dr. Voight is a full-time tenured professor in the School of Physical Therapy at Belmont. He has spent most of his clinical practice working directly in the field of sports physical therapy, including time with many professional leagues, teams and athletes. In 1996, he served as a staff physical therapist at the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Outside of the classroom, Voight maintains a clinical practice specializing in athletic performance and orthopedic and sports related injuries. He also teaches the advanced Medical Tracks for the TPI Certification Program.

The Department of Biology recently hosted Dr. Dan Funk, an associate professor from the Department of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt. Funk gave a talk titled “Ecological Adaptation, Specialization, and Speciation: Causal Connections?” on March 2 in the Massey Boardroom. A reception followed the talk.

Rebekah Stewart, assistant director of Residence Life, and Nicole Rabalais, residence director of Maple Hall, presented at the regional Southeastern Association of Housing Officers conference in Williamsburg, Virginia on Feb. 25 to a group of 60 colleagues. Focusing on a part of Resident Assistant training called Behind Closed Doors, the women shared with colleagues some changes that the Office of Residence Life has made to this training for the August 2009 RA training. Behind Closed Doors (BCD) is a common tool used by many Residence Life programs to train new resident assistants in how to address a combination of serious and common issues they will face during their first month on the job. BCD can often be very dramatic and far-fetched, emphasizing only serious resident issues. The 2009 version created by Residence Life instead focuses on keeping RAs alert to smaller, less serious issues that make up the majority of the RA job and not just the serious issues. Stewart and Rabalais were very well received by fellow Housing professionals and were encouraged that Belmont’s innovative way of revamping this commonly used training tool for Resident Assistants will prompt other Residence Life programs to do the same.