Belmont junior Rick Patci, a music business major from Columbia, Mo., walked away from the women’s basketball game Wednesday night with a major Christmas gift: free tuition for a semester. Patci won free tuition by sinking a half-court shot during one of the game’s media timeouts.
Click here to watch a video of his $10,000+ shot.
Patci Scores Free Tuition with Half-Court Shot
Magut Featured in Tennessean
Belmont cross country and track and field standout Kipkosgei Magut was recently featured in The Tennessean for his volunteer work with Nashville’s Girls on the Run, an organization that teaches self-confidence and healthy living to young girls. To read the full story, click here.
Sturgis Named Finalist for Two Podcasting Awards
Amy Sturgis, an adjunct instructor for University College, is a finalist in two categories (Best Narrator and Best Fact Article Contibutor) in this year’s Sofanaut Podcasting Awards. Voting is open now at http://www.micropoll.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1118390 and will remain open until Jan. 23. (A complete list of Sturgis’ podcast commentaries, interviews and unabridged dramatic readings is available here.) In addition, she has just agreed to write a new book for Zossima Press tentatively titled The Gothic Imaginations of J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeleine L’Engle and J.K. Rowling for publication in Spring/Summer 2010.
Alexander Elected Chair of Baldrige Board
Joe Alexander, associate dean and senior professor of performance excellence, has been elected chair of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) Foundation’s Board of Directors for 2009. Other Board members confirmed as officers for the coming year are Debbie Collard, director of program management and business excellence for Integrated Defense Systems/The Boeing Company (chair-elect) and Loren Meyer, CEO of Wheaton Franciscan Medical Group (secretary).
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was the vision of President Ronald Reagan and created through an act of the U.S. Congress in 1987 as a means of enhancing the competitiveness of U.S. businesses. Award recipients are selected annually as examples of “best practice” for achieving high levels of performance excellence and typically receive their awards from the President of the United States in a special ceremony.
Alpha Chi Inducts New Members
Membership to the Alpha Chi National Honor Scholarship Society is the highest academic honor awarded by Belmont University. Its requirements are to be in the top 10 percent academically of all students and to be of junior or senior class rank. Alpha Chi members are nominated by the faculty, must have “outstanding moral character” and display leadership, integrity and service.
Alpha Chi inducted 71 new members in a ceremony on Nov. 7: Fatima Abdalla, Caroline Adams, Nathan Baldwin, Allison Berwald, Jared Bohland, Whitney Brazeal, Jennifer Brelsford, Payten Butler, Stefani Butler, Addie Campbell, Henry Carter, Andrew Chapman, Michael Chapman, Dana Clasby, Hailey Clowdus, Amy Cross, Amanda Danley, Allison Dowell, Carly Escue, Audrey Filson, William Forshee, Sarah Gaskin, Mark Gerdesmeier, Erin Gier, John Gladwin, Mary Gray, Kaitlin Guest, Jennifer Hermansen, Kristopher Hill, Laura Houser, Colleen Iuliucci, Jill Johnson, Ruchi Kapadia, Lezley Keppler, Hali Krewson, David Kumler, Natalie Lassinger, Jill Lawton, Matthew Lefavor, Kathleen McCrary, Brittany Meeks, Brittany Moe, Joseph Mosby, Catherine Mundy, Jane Nicholson, Bethany Parker, Lauren Payne, Heidi Pedersen, Kathleen Redding, Adam Richardson, Jessica Roadcap, Kimberly Scott, Mary Simpkins, Kirby Standifer, Hoyt Steel, Lindsey Stickline, Rachael Stuemke, Caleb Swartz, Michael Teutsch, Kelly Thomas, Grace Thomson, Brittany Thune, Jessica Tidwell, Amanda Tincher, Amy Valentine, David Vigil, Jessica Walker, Ashley Wannemacher, Kathleen Wells, Jackie Whitis and Justin Wood.
USASBE Best Teaching Case Awarded to Belmont Business Faculty
Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship Dr. Mark Schenkel, Associate Professor of Accounting Dr. Jane Finley and Assistant Professor of Business Law Dr. Wade Chumney were recently notified that a case study they wrote this summer has been selected by International Small Business Journal as the Best Teaching Case for USASBE 2009. USASBE (United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship) is a leading national organization that seeks to advance knowledge and foster business development through entrepreneurship education and research. The award will be presented on Sat., Jan. 10, 2009 in Anaheim at USASBE’s annual conference. The case study, “RHS, Inc.: Innovation ‘Guiding’ Agriculture,” presents an overview of an agricultural fertilization business that grew from personal necessity on the part of the founder into a promising, innovative and growing venture that specializes in bringing accuracy to agricultural production.
Senior Business Students Achieve Top Ranking on National Exam
Belmont’s College of Business Administration recently announced that many of its graduating seniors scored at or above the top 10 percent level on the Major Field Test in Business, an exam produced by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, N.J. The ETS exam has been administered to almost 85,000 students at 564 undergraduate business programs across the U.S.
“Many of our students are now demonstrating that they can score very well when compared to their peers at other U.S. business schools” said Susan Taylor, associate dean of the College of Business Administration. “Their performance is a direct reflection of our focus on delivering a high-quality program and the individual attention our students receive from our highly-qualified faculty.”
Undergraduate students from the Fall 2008 cohort who scored in the Top 10 percent or higher nationally include: Matthew Durdel (Suttons Bay, MI), Matthew Hilton (Mooresville, NC), Nathaniel Hudson (Nashville, TN), Alan Kruer (Floyds Knobs, IN), Ryan O’Hern (Kansas City, MO), Kelsey Rictor (Zionsville, IN), Jennifer Russell (Portland, TN), Patrick Schuyler (Baltimore, MD), Brock Short (Nashville, TN), Blake Tidwell (Kingston Springs, TN), Brian Watts (Franklin, TN) and Laura Wright (McEwen, TN).
York Selected to Ronald McDonald House Charities Board
Dr. Stan York, assistant professor of management in the College of Business Administration, was recently selected as a Director and Treasurer on the Corporate Board of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Nashville. Ronald McDonald House Charities of Nashville’s mission is to “keep families close” and provide essential resources and a “home away from home” for families of critically ill children receiving inpatient or outpatient medical care at Nashville area hospitals.
General Education Program Awarded Teagle Foundation Grant
Belmont University’s Department of General Education was recently awarded a $288,000 grant from the Teagle Foundation to assess the impact of experiential learning in the core curriculum. Over the course of the three-year project, titled “Learning by Doing: Assessing the Relationship Between Liberal Learning and Experiential Education,” Belmont will collaborate with Wagner College in New York to seek ways to better assess how experiential learning improves student engagement and enhances important skills such as critical thinking. The project builds from a one-year, $25,000 planning grant obtained in 2007.
The BELL Core, Belmont’s innovative and nationally-recognized general education program, features courses that encourage students to engage in “active learning”—service learning, community-based research and field studies, problem-based learning and other experiences in which students are challenged to move beyond the classroom and develop knowledge and skills that are rooted in real-world experiences.
Dr. Jeff Coker, associate professor of history and director of Belmont’s General Education program, served as project leader for the planning grant and will serve in that capacity again for the three-year study. He noted, “The Teagle Foundation grant will allow us to learn a great deal more about what faculty at Belmont already sense—that active, ‘hands-on’ learning leads to a high level of engagement and promotes an array of skills that better prepare our students to succeed. This long-term project will spell out the benefits of experiential education, and even more importantly, it will provide us with strategies for improvement. The study also will place Belmont on the cutting-edge of innovative assessment strategies and will be of great interest for colleges and universities nationwide.”
Belmont Provost Dr. Dan McAlexander added, “Belmont University is nationally recognized for its innovative, interdisciplinary general education program which emphasizes learning both in and out of the classroom. The awarding of this highly competitive grant gives us the opportunity to assess the impact of this kind of learning and to share our findings with the nation’s higher education community.”
Flynn-Hopper Participates in ‘Principal for a Day’ Event
In association with the Pencil Foundation, Dr. Rachael Flynn-Hopper, assistant professor in Education and Belmont’s Pencil Partner liaison, participated in the annual “Principal for a Day” event. She shadowed Dr. Schuler Pelham, principal at Belmont’s partner school, Overton High School, in November. Dr. Flynn-Hopper visited classrooms, toured the school, discussed programs and learned about the day-to-day administration of a high school. Pelham and Flynn-Hopper also attended a luncheon hosted by the Pencil Foundation at the new Martin Professional Development Center.
This is one of the many ways in which Belmont University’s Department of Education has partnered with the Pencil Foundation. Other activities Dr. Flynn-Hopper has coordinated include working with Millicent Jolly and Glenn Acree to donate computers to Overton High School that have been rotated out of circulation at Belmont, collection and donation of school supplies for the LP Pencil Box, collection and donation of motivational materials for Overton High School students and the planning of an Overton Night at the Women’s and Men’s basketball games on Sat., Jan. 24, 2009.
