Junior Jayme Trocino was recently featured in the City Paper for her performance on the Belmont women’s soccer team and her accomplishments as a nursing major, balancing hours of practical experience in hospitals with the practices that helped the team win its first A-Sun regular season crown. Click here to read the article.

During the October celebration of national physical therapy month, approximately 100 Belmont University Physical Therapy students and faculty volunteered their time to assist with the organization and on-site operation for the 4th annual Dierks Bentley Miles & Music for Kids charity motorcycle ride and concert to benefit Vanderbilt’s Children Hospital. This year, over $215,000 was raised for the children of the hospital. Since the inception of this annual event, over $800,000 has been raised to benefit Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Miracle Network.
A couple of days before the ride and concert, Bentley surprised the physical therapy students by coming to class to thank them personally for all their hard work in making this event a success. Bentley told the students “We could not have taken this event to the level it now is without the help of my friend Mike Voight and his students at Belmont University.” He explained that this year’s money would be going directly to families who had children being treated at the hospital so they could concentrate on their child’s needs rather than worrying about “all the other stuff” associated with their child’s illness.
The event took place on Oct. 11 with over a thousand leather-clad bikers joining Bentley for the ride into Nashville. Starting at the Cool Springs Harley Davidson in Franklin, Tenn., the long line of motorcycles wound its way through the Natchez Trace and then downtown to Riverfront Park. Once there, Bentley was joined by several celebrity friends to entertain thousands of fans with an open air concert. Physical Therapy Professor Mike Voight, who coordinated Belmont’s participation with the event, said, “This was a great learning experience and fun event for our students. Not only did they get to meet and work with the stars of country music, they also helped the community in a large way.”

On Nov. 13, Belmont senior Ross Buffington will present a talk on “Game Implementation for Increasing Mental Engagement of Security Professionals” at the 2009 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Mid-Southeast Conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. In addition, Dr. William Hooper (Math/Computer Science) will be giving a talk on assembly language programming with the Sony PlayStation 3.
Buffington, a computer science major, spent this past summer conducting research at the University of Houston, Texas that was funded by the National Science Foundation. He worked in the University of Houston’s Computational Physiology Laboratory with a number of master’s and post-doctorate students. This experience allowed Ross to further his understanding and competence in developing applications for the iPhone. Prior to the Houston research experience, Ross had spent the entire school year independently learning how to write software for the device.
Through his research he created “The Sky is Falling,” a computer based, two-dimensional, game which overlays on top of the live video feed of a security camera. The purpose of the game is to increase the cognitive engagement of a security guard when charged with the task of monitoring video feeds for hours on end. A secondary purpose of the application was to promote physical activity of the security guard. This was accomplished by incorporating the iPhone as a game controller-device, allowing a user to wirelessly interact with their computer using the iPhone.