University College recently won several awards from the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) for its 2008 Marketing & Publications and Strategic Marketing efforts. The “Unfinished Business” postcard took home a gold medal while the billboard for the same campaign won a bronze. The “Unfinished Business” Garage TV ad also won a bronze award.
Belmont Preserves Lead in All-Sports Race
As the winter sports seasons have come to a close, the Belmont Bruins have held onto their lead in the 2007-2008 Atlantic Sun Conference Bill Bibb Trophy Standings. The Bruins have 235.5 points following the winter seasons, and are trailed by ETSU with 199.5. Belmont also leads the men’s and women’s all-sports races. In the Jesse C. Fletcher Trophy Standings for the men’s all-sports race, Belmont sits in first with 97.5 points; the Belmont women have 138 points to lead the Sherman Day Trophy Standings for the women’s all-sports race.
Belmont has the most combined team titles of any other institution, a big reason why it leads the pack in the combined all-sports race. The Bruins most recently added a men’s basketball title to a championship list that already included men’s and women’s cross country. Belmont scored 93 points during the winter seasons, the second most in the conference. They own a 36-point lead over second-place ETSU (199.5).
Alexander Serves as Keynote Speaker at Business Ethics Conference
Joe Alexander, associate dean of the Massey Graduate Business School, served as a keynote speaker for the Greater Greenville (SC) Chamber of Commerce Ethics in Business and Education conference on March 14. His presentation focused on the use of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria for creating an organizational framework for ethical behavior. Don McCabe, a Rutgers University professor of management, served as the other keynote speaker and presented the results of his national research on the ethical/unethical behaviors of K-12 and college students over the last decade. Other speakers included Debra Clements, general counsel for Milliken & Company, and Michele Brinn, vice president for workforce development and education at the Greenville Chamber. The program was sponsored by the Greenville Chamber Foundation, in partnership with Clemson University’s Robert J. Rutland Institute for Ethics, USC Upstate’s George Dean Johnson Jr. College of Business and Economics and the Capital Corporation.
Belmont University Profiled in New York Times, Other Media
In an inventive article in Thursday’s New York Times, reporter George Vecsey offers a lengthy profile of Belmont University that features the men’s basketball team’s third visit to the NCAA Tournament while also highlighting legendary alumna Sarah Cannon (Minnie Pearl).
Vecsey tells a story about Ms. Cannon that he first learned earlier this week in an interview with Belmont Music Business Professor Don Cusic, who is quoted in the article. Vecsey also writes, “I’m rooting for Belmont against the Dookies because I used hang out in Nashville, and I got to meet Belmont’s most popular alum — the Grand Ole Opry character with the moniker Minnie Pearl. The school might prefer to be known for its consistent grade-point average of over 3.0 for athletes — including the basketball team, which only a handful of teams in the final 64 could claim.”
Click here to read the New York Times article.
Belmont has appeared in a number of other major media outlets this week as well in response to the NCAA tournament. Click the links below to see additional coverage.
MSNBC
Baltimore Sun
ESPN.com
WSMV
The Tennessean: ‘Bruins Stare at History’
The Tennessean: ‘Belmont coach shows off press conference comedy’
The Tennessean: ‘Belmont Star Picks Hospitals Over Hoops’
Sporting News
InsideHigherEd.com Puts Belmont in Top 2 of Its NCAA Bracket
Teams standings determined by athletes’ academic performance
InsideHigherEd.com—an online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education—released today its own picks for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Bracket and selected Belmont University to make it all the way to the Championship Game. InsideHigherEd.com based its selections in each round by awarding wins to the team with the strongest academic performance using the athletes’ academic standing, enrollment continuity and graduation rates as key factors. Belmont finished this tournament bracket second, behind only Davidson, outscoring such academic power players as Duke, Xavier and Cornell along the way.
Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher said, “This is what I really love about Belmont’s athletic program: No matter what the scoreboard shows at the end of a competitive contest, we know that we’ve ‘won’ by playing with class, giving our very best, exhibiting good sportsmanship and doing all of this with scholar-athletes who will leave Belmont and make significant contributions to meeting the needs of the world.”
On the heels of its historic third consecutive Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament Championship, Belmont Basketball will face tradition-rich Duke in the first round of the 2008 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Bruins and Blue Devils are scheduled to play this Thurs., March 20 from the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. as part of the West Regional bracket. Tip-off time is 6:10 p.m. Central.
The Bruins are led on the court by Senior Justin Hare who is an ESPN The Magazine First Team Academic All-American. For the Fall 2007 semester, every Belmont team, including men’s basketball, held a team GPA average of 3.0 or higher.
Click here to read the full story of how the NCAA Tournament teams match up academically according to InsideHigherEd.com. Click here to read The Tennessean’s coverage of the news.
Psychology Alumnus Wins Research Award
Jessica Niesner, a recent Belmont Psychology major graduate (Dec. 2007), was awarded a Psi Chi Regional Research Award at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association held in Boston on March 13-16. Supervised by Dr. Michael Sullivan, the research was titled “The Effect of Relevant Information on Mindlessness.” In recognition for her work, Niesner received a certificate and check for $300. Out of 180 research posters with Psi Chi members as first authors, Niesner’s research was one of the few recognized with this award.
In addition, eight other Belmont students and recent graduates attended and presented their work at the Eastern Psychological Association meeting. Students presenting research were: Afton Cole, Luke Lancaster, Sarah Lashley, Layne Murphy, Kurt Niesner, Renease Perkins, Shandus Valentine and Ashley Wilkins. Psi Chi is the National Honor Society in Psychology, founded for the purpose of encouraging, stimulating, and maintaining excellence in scholarship, and advancing the science of psychology. The Eastern Region of the organization includes chapters at such schools as Trinity College, Mount St. Mary’s, Colby College, NYU and Yale.
Eric Volz Advises Belmont Students on ‘Media Ethics’
Recently freed from a Nicaraguan prison, former magazine publisher Eric Volz visited Belmont University Thursday to speak to journalism students on the subject of “Media Ethics.” Volz, the stepson of former Belmont Associate Dean of Students Dane Anthony, offered a brief lecture on his experiences and took questions from the students for more than an hour.
Volz was accused of the 2006 murder of ex-girlfriend Doris Jiménez and served more than a year in a maximum security prison in Nicaragua before an appeals court overturned his conviction in December. Due to repeated threats on his life, Volz has remained in hiding since his return to the United States, but in a meeting with local journalists yesterday afternoon, he said, “If you stay in hiding forever, then they’ve won.”
He added that he chose Belmont for his first academic appearance on the subject due to the strong support he and his family received from the university during his imprisonment, especially noting a fundraising concert held last January. Volz’ future plans include the re-launch of his Web site to “generate dialogue around topics that matter and… address cross-cultural misunderstandings.”
For more on this story, visit the media coverage of Volz’ press conference below:
The Tennessean
NewsChannel 5
WSMV Channel 4
Social Work Students Attend National Conference
Eight social work students accompanied professors Dr. Lorraina Scholten and Debbie Simpler to the Baccalaureate Program Director’s annual meeting in Destin, Florida. This was the 25th anniversary conference for the undergraduate social work program meeting, and this year’s theme was “Honoring our Past, Celebrating our Present and Affirming our Future.” More than 800 people from all over the country attended, including Belmont students Stephanie Gregory, Elizabeth Kearse, Alicia McDonald, Alison Peak, Sara Rosenbaum, Lizzie Simpson, Jimmy Smith and January Utermahlen.
Rick Byrd Named Finalist for National Coaching Honor
Belmont University head men’s basketball coach Rick Byrd has been named one of 10 finalists for the inaugural Skip Prosser Man of the Year award. The Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award will be given annually to a Division I head coach who best represents the high standards of the coaching profession: Winning with integrity. The award is named in memory of former Wake Forest head coach Skip Prosser who passed away suddenly on July 26, 2007.
The ten finalists were selected from a group of 20 semi-finalists compiled by the 21-member selection panel of coaches, administrators and basketball journalists. In addition to Byrd, the 10 finalists include Mike Brey (Notre Dame), Seth Greenberg (Virginia Tech), Frank Haith (Miami), Trent Johnson (Stanford), Bob McKillop (Davidson), Sean Miller (Xavier), Matt Painter (Purdue), Bo Ryan (Wisconsin) and Gary Waters (Cleveland State). Established by CollegeInsider.com and the Prosser family, the award will be presented at the 2008 Final Four in San Antonio.
Byrd, who with 541 career victories is one of 16 active Division-I men’s basketball coaches with 500 or more career victories, was named Atlantic Sun Conference Coach of the Year Mar. 4. This season, the Knoxville, Tenn. native directed the Bruins to their third consecutive Atlantic Sun Championship – becoming the first program in league history in earn three straight bids to the NCAA Tournament. A 2004 NAIA Hall of Fame inductee for his service in leading the Bruin program, Byrd also received the Dr. James Naismith National Sportsmanship Award in 1994.
Massey Graduate Students Experience Business in Madrid
Students from the Jack C. Massey Graduate School of Business at Belmont University, along with Assistant Professor of Marketing and International Business Dr. Jeffrey Overby, recently traveled to Madrid, Spain as part of the requirements for the M.B.A. degree.
While in Madrid, students met with representatives from Deloitte Madrid, who discussed the Spanish economy and other issues related to doing business in Spain. One surprise presenter from Deloitte Madrid turned out to be Belmont alumnus Rodrigo Mota (‘01), a current manager with the firm, who began his presentation by stating he is evidence that Belmont’s slogan, “From Here to Anywhere,” is both accurate and inspirational. Another notable visit included Club Atlético de Madrid, one of the most successful football clubs in Spanish League history. Mr. Miguel Arjona, Retail and Licensing Director, hosted the group to a stadium tour and an interactive discussion.
Overby said, “My hope is to have students return from international field study trips and study abroad trips as changed people, people intrigued, tolerant and respectful of other nationalities and cultures. Also, I believe such experiences help create skilled employees with a broader view of the marketplace and the workplace.”
