The Tennessee Society of Student of Pharmacists (TSSP) is the state-wide, student group for the Tennessee Pharmacists Association (TPA). For the recent TSSP and TPA Midyear Meeting, Belmont University School of Pharmacy was selected to nominate the two candidates for president- elect for TSSP for 2010-2011. Two Belmont second year pharmacy students provided platform presentations. Meeting attendees voted, and Shanna Harris was elected. Shanna immediately began serving as president-elect and will continue to serve TSSP for an additional year as president (2011-2012). Belmont was also represented by TSSP Members-at-Large Lindsey Smith and Erika Wass and by Delegates Lindsey Hoffman, John “JP” Pustulka and Lee Rembert.
Adams Awarded ‘Teacher of Honor’
Education graduate LaTricea Adams has been awarded the Kappa Delta Pi Teacher of Honor designation. This new recognition program honors practicing teachers with three or more years of professional experience who demonstrate commitment to continuous professional growth and integrity in the classroom. Adams is a Spanish teacher and foreign language department chair at Cane Ridge High School in Antioch, Tennessee.
ONE Program Profiled by Renewal
Belmont’s Our Natural Environment (ONE) program was recently mentioned in Renewal’s “Green Awakenings” report, which focuses on the environmental efforts of more than 50 Christian colleges and universities throughout the country. The report details ONE’s plan for the 2009-2010 school year, which includes collaborations with the Belmont community, the Student Government Association and Belmont administrators.
ONE uses surveys to determine what environmental issues are most important to students. This year, ONE will survey students about the environmental practices they value enough to incorporate into their lives. Renewal is a student-led, Christian environmental group active on campuses throughout the United States and Canada.
Parry Presents Paper at USM Symposium
Pam Parry, associate professor of journalism, will present a paper at the 2010 Graduate Student Research Symposium at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss. on March 26. She will present “Second Fiddle, Not Second Rate: Associate Role Obscures Anne Wheaton’s Contributions to Public Relations.” Parry presented this paper at the American Journalism Historians Association annual conference in October, where it won two honorable mention awards for best graduate paper and for best paper on women’s history. The USM graduate faculty selected it as one of eight papers to represent the School of Mass Communication/Journalism at the competitive graduate symposium, where each USM department nominates their top graduate student papers for the year. Parry is working on a doctorate of philosophy degree from Southern Mississippi.
Beta Alpha Psi Presents at Regional Conference
Belmont University’s chapter of Beta Alpha Psi (BAP), an international honorary organization for all undergraduate and graduate accounting, finance and information systems majors, participated in the Southeast Regional Beta Alpha Psi conference in Orlando last weekend. Belmont BAP President and Masters of Accountancy student Alexa Karpinski and Rachel McNabb, sophomore accounting major, presented their Chapter Sustainability project in the Best Practices Competition at the conference. Highlighting the growth at both Belmont University and the Beta Alpha Psi chapter, their project suggested ways to improve the efficiency and longevity of the chapter through the development and implementation of various tools/procedures. In addition to the presentation, Karpinski, McNabb and BAP Faculty Advisor Dr. Del DeVries attended professional workshops and a lecture on Ethics and Integrity.
AST Hosts Annual Mardi Tau Event
Alpha Sigma Tau hosted its annual campus-wide Mardi Tau event Fri., Feb. 12 with a “Back to the Bayou” theme. The sisters of AST decorated Belmont University’s Neely Black & White dining hall in a Bayou-Mardi Gras fashion. The event was a huge success with record attendance, reaching 200 people at the peak of the evening and a steady 75 attendees at any given time. The event offered a photo booth and fortune-telling tent, a DJ, and some of Belmont’s finest student performers. Alpha Sigma Tau upheld the tradition of selecting a Mardi Tau Court. Mardi Tau King, for which only greek men can be nominated, was Alpha Tau Omega’s Todd Farrell, while Mardi Tau Queen (always an AST sister) was Lara Jabour. Duke (non-greek male) was Read Davis and Mardi Tau Dutchess (Greek female who is not an AST) was Phi Mu’s Rachel Knight.
Voight Speaks on Golf Fitness in Ireland
Physical Therapy Professor Mike Voight recently gave a keynote address to more than 100 medical clinicians in Dublin, Ireland on the topic of Golf Fitness. Pictured with Dr. Voight are Lance Gill, head athletic trainer for Titleist Golf Company, and Padraigh Harrington, a three-time major champion and past PGA player of the year who is currently ranked among the top 10 players in the world.
Fishers Share Insights on ‘Life Is a Gift’
Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher and his wife Judy spoke this morning in Neely as part of the Spiritual Development Speaker Series, sharing stories and insights from their 2009 book release, Life Is a Gift: Inspiration from the Soon Departed. The book features a collection of interviews and lessons learned from 104 terminally ill patients of Alive Hospice in Nashville.
Judy Fisher opened the convocation by recalling Adam White, the longtime boyfriend of the Fishers’ daughter. White was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on New York City, but the memory of how he lived, with passion and vigor, lives on. “He truly lived like there was no tomorrow,” Mrs. Fisher said, noting that his example inspired the book. “We were just left asking ‘Why doesn’t everyone live like that?'”
Dr. Fisher added, “[His death] broke our hearts. For awhile I didn’t understand what was going on with me or how I felt about it. Adam inspired us to take a fresh look at everything.”
From their interviews with Alive Hospice patients, the Fishers transcribed more than 400,000 words. The conversations with patients like 5-year-old Maddie or the 98-year-old man who spent his last weeks learning Hungarian followed a standard question-and-answer formula: What are you most proud of? What has been your greatest joy? What has been your greatest disappointment? What do you regret? If you could give one message to the world, what would it be?
According to the Fishers, a few common themes that emerged were relationships, faith, forgiveness and gratitude. “The community needs the dying to force us to think about eternal issues and to make us listen,” Dr. Fisher said. “These connections taught us so much.”
Griswold Advocates for Global Trade
Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., delivered the keynote address for Belmont’s inaugural International Business Symposium Friday on his new book, Mad About Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization.
Griswold opened his talk by describing how Americans should challenge populist economics. He described how he examined the 120 items in his closet and found that only 10 items were made in America, nine of which were neckties. Griswold challenged the audience to do the same to their closets. Griswold’s closet example shows how the American economy is one based on global trade, and globalization is actually good for the economy.
“We have voted with our dollars for participation in the global economy,” Griswold said. He later added, “Trade today is the working family’s best friend.”
Schlosser Provokes Thought on Food Manufacturing, Consumption
More than 500 people turned out to Belmont Heights Baptist Church on Monday night to hear from Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and co-producer of Food, Inc. Schlosser’s visit was part of Belmont’s ongoing campus-wide academic theme for 2009-10, “A Paradise Lost.”
Schlosser opened the evening by declaring, “What I’m going to say isn’t intended to answer questions as much as to provoke them… I want you to think of sustainability in terms of practices each of us employs in our daily lives. It doesn’t just apply to the land or our environment but also to ourselves.”
He then proceeded to discuss the unhealthy patterns related to food production and consumption, patterns that began in the past few decades with the rise of fast food chains. In particular, he focused on the concepts of uniformity, conformity, speed and efficiency that these chains practice with the food they make and sell, adding that since the fast food inception the incidence rates of obesity, food borne illness and food poisoning have been on the rise.
Illustrating the dangers behind such production entities as factory farms and genetically-modified corn, he noted, “There’s been more change in our food in the past 40 years than in the previous 40,000… Knowledge is power, and that’s why these companies don’t want you to have it. The aim of my work isn’t to tell people what to do, but to make people think about their choices.”
As an investigative journalist, Schlosser tries to give a voice to people at the margins of society. His aim is to shed light on worlds that are too often hidden. Schlosser’s first book, Fast Food Nation (2001), helped start a revolution in how Americans think about what they eat. It has been translated into more than 20 languages and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. Schlosser also served as an executive producer and co-wrote the feature film Fast Food Nation (2006), and he was a co-producer of the award-winning documentary, Food, Inc., a film about how complicated and compromised the once simple process of growing crops and raising livestock has become.
