Continuing a tradition of recognizing music industry greats who are also dedicated to the educational process, Belmont’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business will name Donna Hilley as the first recipient of the Robert E. Mulloy Award of Excellence at the 2009 Best of the Best Showcase at the Curb Event Center on April 25 at 7 p.m. Last spring, the Curb College established the Award of Excellence in memory of program founder Bob Mulloy to annually recognize an individual who has achieved a level of excellence in the music business and entertainment industries with notable service to Belmont University and the Nashville community.
Born in Birmingham, Ala., Donna Hilley came to Nashville with little knowledge of the music or publishing industries. Under the leadership of Jack Stapp and Buddy Killen of Tree International, Hilley learned the business and through persistence and tenacity established herself as one of the top female executives in Music City. After transitions in leadership and the sale of Tree International to CBS, Sony purchased the company in 1994. Shortly after, Hilley was named president and CEO of Sony/ATV Nashville.
Curb College to Honor Donna Hilley with First Mulloy Award
Alumni’s Company Featured in Tennessean
John Price and Sam Dryden, alumni of Belmont, were featured in the Jan. 16 issue of The Tennessean for the work they do as Lifetime Reel, a video production company that focuses on documenting important stories, memories and more for families and individuals. Click here to read the full story.
Watts Publishes Editorial in The Tennessean
Dr. Andy Watts, assistant professor in the School of Religion, had an editorial titled “Tower of Babel shows God’s love for language diversity” in the Jan. 16 issue of The Tennessean. Click here to read the article.
Faculty Present Research at Japan Studies Association Conference
Earlier this month, faculty members Dr. John Paine (English and Foreign Lannguages), Dr. Andrea Stover (English) and Dr. Jonathan Thorndike (Honors Program) attended the Japan Studies Association Conference in New Orleans and presented research.
Dr. Paine spoke on “‘Some Things Remain Broken Forever’: Christopher Banks’s Missed Connections in Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans.” Paine’s presentation concerned the quest of a London detective to solve the mystery of his own past and find his parents, who disappeared from the Japanese settlement in Shanghai in the 1930s, when Japan was about to invade China. Dr. Paine was given special recognition for accepting the role as editor of the JSA journal and bringing the newest issue of the journal to completion.
Dr. Stover talked on “Infusing Japanese Texts into an Upper-Level Composition Course on Life Writing.” Her essay explained the course she designed that combines Japanese and western authors, looking at how radically different authors construct a narrative self in the autobiographical mode.
Dr. Thorndike presented on “Tendai Buddhism and the Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei.” His essay discussed the founder of esoteric Buddhism in Japan (Saichō) and the extreme physical accomplishments of the Buddhist monks on Mt. Hiei, who run rough mountain trails in darkness, covering distances up to 84 kilometers each day for 100 days.
Paine and Thorndike led last summer’s Japan Study Abroad trip, and the 2009 Belmont in Japan Program will be led by Paine, Stover, Dr. Cynthia Bisson (History) and Dr. Marieta Velikova (Economics). Scheduled for May 13 to June 3, the program will offer two different academic options: “From the Tokugawa to Toyota: Japan, 1603 to the present” and “Japanese Life Writing in Kyoto.”
ESPN.com Reports on Bruin Basketball
ESPN.com college basketball writer Kyle Whelliston attended the Jan. 5 Belmont-Florida Gulf Coast game and filed a feature story on the Bruins. Click here to read the story.
United:For Change to Hold Kick-off Event at Belmont Jan. 19
Student-founded organization to raise money for needy children worldwide
Charity organization UNITED: FOR CHANGE announced today that it will hold its kickoff event featuring special musical guests on Mon., Jan. 19 at Belmont University. The 3-5 p.m. launch party will be held in Belmont’s Massey Performing Arts Center and coincides with President-Elect Barack Obama’s call for a national day of service.
UNITED: FOR CHANGE, founded by Belmont junior Joshua Maisner, is a movement to raise awareness of impoverished children worldwide and to create a sustainable financial model for college-age students to be part of the solution in helping eradicate children’s poverty. Each Belmont student will be asked to contribute their spare change each week. If each of the university’s 5,000 students donated $1 per week toward the effort, UNITED: FOR CHANGE could raise its goal of $100,000 over the course of the 20-week spring semester. The money raised will benefit four charities that impact children locally, nationally and internationally: Safe Haven Family Shelter, Feed the Children, African Leadership and World Vision.
“I’ve been really haunted by the plight of poor children in our community and around the world for some time, but as a college student, I’ve also felt incredibly powerless to do anything about it,” Maisner, a marketing major, said. “Then I realized that while my efforts alone might not seem significant, the efforts of a united campus could produce much bigger dividends. Asking individuals to contribute the spare change in their pockets on a weekly basis is a commitment that’s a lot easier for college students to do than to write a check each month.”
Alumnus Todd Williamson Returns to Belmont
Belmont University alumnus Todd Williamson returns to campus with the opening of his art exhibit “Blurring the Lines.” Williamson graduated from Belmont in 1988 with a Bachelor of Music.
On Wed., Jan. 28 at 3:30 p.m., Williamson combines his musical and visual arts talents with a performance in Harton Hall. The performance is a combination of three elements: music written by Greg Walter, a Williamson painting that is slowly revealed and a mirror attached to the back of the canvas to reflect the audience as it slowly turns. The purpose of the performance is to show the audience the influences and emotions that a visual artist feels when creating an original piece of artwork.
After the performance, the opening reception will take place in the Leu Art Gallery at 4 p.m. Williamson’s exhibit, “Blurring the Lines,” examines the question, “What influences an artist to keep painting?” The performance and opening reception are free and open to the public. For more information, call (615) 460-6770. “Blurring the Lines” will be in the Leu Gallery through April 2, 2009.
Longard Interviewed by The Tennessean
Dr. Shelby Longard, assistant professor of sociology, was recently interviewed by The Tennessean for a story on the new trend in relaxation beverages. To read the story, click here.
Belmont to Celebrate MLK Day with Week of Special Events
In celebration of the Jan. 15 anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth date, Belmont University will be holding its 13th annual series of Commemorative Programs over the course of the next several weeks. The university’s commitment to Martin Luther King Week through classroom and special events began in 1997 and continues to grow today with Belmont observing the MLK holiday with widely varied events. All of the events listed below are open to both the Belmont community and the general public at no charge unless otherwise noted. For additional information, visit Belmont’s MLK Web site at www.belmont.edu/mlk.
Mon., Jan. 19, 7 p.m.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Vigil
Video clips from the civil rights era will be shown before the group moves to other on-campus venues by candlelight.
Massey Performing Arts Center
Tues., Jan. 20, 9 a.m. – noon
Inauguration Viewing Party
Stop by to watch President-Elect Barack Obama take the Oath of Office and deliver his Inaugural Address.
Beaman A&B
Scarlett Leadership Institute Announces 2009 Business Workshops Schedule
Expanding upon its already successful member programs in leadership development and corporate management education, the Scarlett Leadership Institute at Belmont University announced today the launch of a series of workshop sessions that will be open to the broader business community. All of the Institute’s programs, including the new workshops, model a “learn it today, apply it tomorrow” mindset where students and organizations are encouraged to learn not only from world class leaders, but from each other.
The schedule for the Institute’s 2009 workshops is as follows:
Entrepreneurship Business Plan Boot Camp
Dates: Feb. 19, Feb. 26, March 19
Facilitator: Dr. Jeff Cornwall
Dr. Jeff Cornwall is the Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship at Belmont University. In the late 1980s, he co-founded and served as President/CEO for Atlantic Behavioral Health Systems. His company operated a variety of health care facilities and programs and employed more than 300 people. After nine years of rapid growth, and negotiating the sale of most of the corporations’ business interests, he returned to academics. He has authored or co-authored six books on entrepreneurship, and in 2006, he was named a Fellow of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). In 2008, Belmont University’s Center for Entrepreneurship received the USASBE National Model Undergraduate Program of the Year Award. His web log site, The Entrepreneurial Mind, is one of the most popular small business blogs on the web and was named by Forbes as a “Best of the Web” and is part of the Forbes blog network. His blog is also linked to by Entrepreneur, Inc., and US News and World Report.
Introduction to the Productive Selling Zone
Dates: Feb. 26-27
Facilitator: John Boyens
John Boyens has dedicated his business life to maximizing the productivity of sales processes for over 30 years. During his career in corporate America, John led national sales, service and marketing organizations to consistently increase sales productivity, improve market share, accelerate revenue performance and deliver bottom-line profit results. His proven track record as an executive sales leader with several Fortune 1000 companies as well as his research on over 15,000 salespeople and sales managers across the globe uniquely qualified him to form the Boyens Group® in 1998.
