Belmont faculty member Dr. Angela Lane was recently recognized as the 2021 Walk to Cure Arthritis Adult Honoree with the Arthritis Foundation. As a current associate professor of Nursing, Lane has worked for the past 30 years as a nurse tech, registered nurse and advanced practice nurse.
When Lane was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at age eight and then again at age 20, she recognized a passion for giving back to this community. Through her experience with arthritis, she has demonstrated selflessness as she continues to serve others in the Arthritis Foundation community.
Lane is currently on the board with the Nashville Arthritis Local Leadership Board and has just commenced her work as chair.
The Store, a nonprofit free-referral based grocery store co-founded by Belmont alumnus Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley, marks its one-year anniversary this week. Located on campus, The Store’s original model was significantly impacted by major events hitting the city and the world last March.
In response to the March 3 tornado that devastated parts of Nashville, The Store opened for in-store clients earlier than expected on March 12, 2020 to serve impacted families. But The Store was only open for four days when the COVID-19 pandemic became widespread, and it was obvious in-store shopping was not going to be feasible. A new plan was needed, and exemplifying the theme Better Together, staff, partners and volunteers all worked diligently to reach people in need as they were sheltered at home. A home delivery system for the elderly was immediately put in place with volunteers delivering to 48 elderly households the first week, and curbside pick-up was implemented for households in need. The weekly deliveries are currently capped at 450 households, and curbside pickup is at 200 per week, serving more than six times initial projections.
The Paisleys said, “When we started dreaming about creating The Store years ago, we never imagined we would open our doors just days from catastrophic events–the tornados and then the pandemic–that would greatly impact the need for assistance in our community for months and months to come… We couldn’t have opened The Store without fantastic community involvement from many people and organizations, including Belmont University, our board, staff, referral partners, volunteers, donors and the Edgehill community. None of us could have done this alone. We are definitely Better Together.”
The Store’s success in reaching the individuals and families in need of services is due in large part to their referring agencies, which increased from the original six partners in March 2020 to currently 15. Again, Better Together. Clients are referred by the following nonprofit and government agencies: Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, Edgehill Community Partners/MDHA, Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Monroe Harding (Reengagement Hub), Conexión Américas, Country Music Association, Metro Public Health Department (COVID Reserve Group), Oasis (Transitions Program), TriStar Centennial Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Hillsboro High School/MNPS Hillsboro Cluster, Safe Haven Family Shelter, Amerigroup, End Slavery TN, Community Achieves Program and YWCA.
Courtney Vrablik, The Store executive director, added, “We are so grateful for our community partners who have worked with us as we rapidly adjusted our operating model to meet this year’s challenges, our volunteers who stepped up to deliver groceries to our elderly neighbors, and our donors who recognized that their support meant food on tables this past year. I think it’s been a great example of how Nashville is at its best when we work together.”
The Paisleys partnered with Brad’s alma mater, Belmont University, on the location of The Store at 2009 12th Ave. South, next to the University’s Ministry Center. Belmont University offers legal aid clinics, therapy, counseling and nutritional education at the center, and through the Tennessee State “2-Gen Grant” is able to provide services to eligible families. Both groups will work closely together to serve the broader community in a variety of ways.
It is estimated that at this time 54 million people are suffering from food insecurity nationally. One in four are children, and one in six are elderly. The Store is thankful it is able to serve the community not only food staples but fresh produce, toiletries, household cleaners, pet food, diapers and other non-food items they may need provided by sponsors, partners and donors.
In honor of The Store’s one-year anniversary, Brad Paisley was recently interviewed on The View, and the Paisleys’ friend, actor Kevin Nealon, selected The Store as his charity to benefit during his recent appearance on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune. In addition, local NBC affiliate WSMV, ABC affiliate WKRN and FOX affiliate FOX17 featured the couple discussing the anniversary.
The Store Founder’s Circle supporters include Belmont University, ESa, Sysco Corporation, Amerigroup, The Children’s Hospital at TriStar Centennial, Nationwide Foundation, Kroger Foundation, Give – Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation and Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley. The Store’s food comes from Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, Sysco, Fresh Point, and local growers such as Old School Farms and includes both perishable and nonperishable offerings. All the food in The Store is selected to be both nutritionally beneficial and fresh.
The Board of Directors for The Store include Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Co-founders; Megan Zarling, Board President; John Schario, Vice-Chair; David Minnigan, Secretary and Elaine Bryan, Treasurer. Other board members include Father Dexter Brewer, Sarah Cates, Jaynee Day, Pete Fisher, Doug Paisley, Michelle Rowe, Scott Scovill, Michael Stagg, Becca Stevens, Dawana Wade and John Zarling. Executive Director is Courtney Vrablik.
About The Store Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley have partnered with Belmont University to spearhead The Store, a year-round free grocery store. Individuals and families will be referred by nonprofit and government agencies for a term of one year. There is no charge to those referred or to the people and agencies that send them. They may obtain food to supplement their income during times of crisis and as they work toward self-sufficiency.
A philosophy of community empowerment means The Store aims to help solve hunger issues in its community by developing programs to meet the needs of the community, including partnering with other organizations on issues of food security. The Store believes in cooperation and collaboration between organizations to better serve the population. Over time, the organization plans to develop additional supplemental services beyond the grocery store, such as job training, cooking and nutrition classes.
Country artist Ashley Cooke recently topped the iTunes Country charts at No. 1 and the iTunes all-genre charts at No. 15 for her new debut song “Sunday Morning Kinda Saturday Night.” A Belmont alumna, Cooke graduated with a degree in corporate communications in 2019 and then moved on to pursue her career in the music industry.
In 2019, Cooke participated in and won Belmont University’s Country Music Showcase following in the footsteps of other successful country artists such as Brad Paisley and Chris Young (read here). Since then, she has been writing and working with highly-acclaimed producers and songwriters establishing herself as an artist.
With more than 78 thousand streams for her new single, she shared with CelebSecrets Country that she “hopes her fans will relate to the lyrics.” In light of the consistent success, Cooke has also been receiving press from various news sources including Sounds Like Nashville. For more information on her upcoming work, visit her website.
Last month, Belmont University’s Moot Team participated virtually in the American Bar Association’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition at the regional level. The College of Law entered two teams into the competition that took place February 24-27.
The first team included Rebecca Gillette, Erik Halvorson and Kelly Walker, and the second team included Hannah Berny, Josh Kleppin and John Nix. Both teams performed admirably throughout the virtual competition despite Coach Amy Moore observing that the “virtual competition was more challenging than being in-person.”
The second team pulled through as the regional champions, moving through the competition undefeated and successfully beating more than 30 teams from schools across the country. This is the fifth year for Belmont’s College of Law to enter this competition and the fifth year for them to advance out of the regionals to the national competition.
The teams were presented with their issue in November and wrote their appellate brief over Christmas break. Since January, the moot teams have been practicing for the oral argument. Nix shared, “Auditioning for and joining the moot court program at Belmont was one of the best decisions I made in law school. Indeed, the moot court has taught me how to analyze extremely complex and unsettled areas of the law.”
The regional champion moot court team will be moving onto the national competition in April by taking the information from the regional competition and starting to prepare for oral arguments through practice rounds, alumni rounds and structuring the arguments for success.
“I am very proud of these students and how they have overcome the unique adversity of practicing and competing over zoom. They support one another and help each other grow as advocates,” shared Moore.
Will Akers, head of screenwriting and chair of the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business Motion Pictures Department, published his book “Your Screenplay Sucks!: 100 Ways to Make it Great” in 2008. For the second year in a row, the book has ranked number one on Script Reader Pro’s “12 Best Screenwriting Books to Read in 2021.”
Akers has been actively writing scripts for studios, producers and television networks for the past 25 years and loves helping his students learn. Previously, he taught screenwriting and filmmaking at Vanderbilt University for 19 years. With clients all over the world, Akers is also active in the Nashville community, co-founding The Nashville Writer’s Circle and currently serving on the board of the Nashville Composers Association.
The Script Reader Pro ranking story shares that his best-selling book’s “chapters on editing sentences are particularly helpful. Especially if you’re one of the many writers who suffer from overwritingingus.” The highly-rated book is available on Amazon.
According to Arbogast, the effectiveness of foreign aid has often been thought to be somewhat ambiguous. Though additional funding may help to drive economic development, this may skew wealth distribution in low-income countries and drive political corruption. This research investigated the effectiveness of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 11 Sub-Saharan African countries over a 60-year period (1960-2019).
Given the panel structure of the data, a fixed-effects model was used to determine the correlation between ODA and four key development indicators: average life expectancy, gross enrollment ratio at the primary schooling level, agricultural value-added and the age-dependency ratio. After controlling for a number of relevant macroeconomic variables, the findings suggest that higher ODA is associated with statistically significant improvement in all four development indicators. The positive associations may underlie important causal relationships which are critical for further understanding the nexus between the amounts of ODA received and economic development.
Early contributions to the research came from fellow students Grace Collier, Camille Herren and Bogle LaRue during a course in economic growth and development taught by Dr. Colin Cannonier. Cannonier served as research advisor and was also in attendance at the conference.
Tennis competition returns to Belmont’s campus this week as a new six-court facility atop the University’s recently completed South Garage celebrates its grand opening. A ceremony was held this morning to officially cut the ribbon on the tennis facility, which will be the permanent on campus home for Belmont’s NCAA Division I men’s and women’s tennis teams. The teams have played for the last decade at nearby Centennial Sportsplex following the construction of the Baskin Center near the site of the former courts.
Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher said, “Tennis is a popular sport in my own family so I’m particularly pleased to see these new courts open on campus. This facility will serve our teams well in their competitions, while also giving our fans easier access to cheer them on. Plus, I’m excited that we’ll be able to offer the entire campus community an opportunity to enjoy recreational play when the courts are not in use for Athletics matches or practices.”
The tennis facility, which sits on the top floor of a new 830-space parking garage, includes team locker rooms and coaches’ offices in addition to the six NCAA Division I regulation courts. The structure also will connect to a new indoor practice facility that is currently under construction, which will serve as the primary training home for Belmont’s men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball programs when it opens later this year.
Tennis team members pose for a picture after a ribbon cutting ceremony opening Belmont’s new rooftop tennis facility.
Belmont Athletic Director Scott Corley added, “With the tennis center and the indoor practice facility sitting just across the street from the Curb Event Center, the south side of Belmont’s campus has become a dream sports hub for our programs and our student-athletes. This centralized complex will provide tremendous benefits for player development and will certainly be a strong draw for us in recruitment. I speak for all of Athletics in expressing our immense gratitude for Dr. Fisher, the Board of Trustees and our donors for their support.”
The tennis facility is being made possible through the generosity of multiple donors, including avid Bruins fan and former Belmont tennis player Pat Johnson. Johnson fulfilled her dream to establish an endowed scholarship for every sport at Belmont with the help of her son Jeff, a 1982 alumnus. Pat’s first scholarship was the Johnson-Rotella Women’s Tennis Endowed Scholarship in honor of her mother who encouraged her to go back to school following a lengthy absence to raise her family, and she graduated in 1993. In recognition of this tremendous support, the Pat Johnson Tennis Team Lounge is being named in her honor. The facility also recognizes the legacy of the Joe C. Davis Foundation’s support provided by Bill and Bond DeLoache.
Belmont’s tennis teams begin play on their new home courts this weekend with matches Friday against Radford University (men at 11 a.m. and women at 3 p.m.) and Saturday versus Carson-Newman (women at 9 a.m., men at noon). Led by Director of Tennis and 2014 OVC Player of the Year Mauricio Antun, the Bruins are showing outstanding promise, as the men’s team is coming off consecutive OVC regular season championships as well as sending a team to the 2019 NCAA Doubles Championship while the women’s team secured a No. 4 seed in the 2019 OVC Tournament.
Kendall Crawford, a senior journalism and theatre double major, is currently in the midst of her internship at WPLN – Nashville’s Public Radio Station. Since moving to Nashville, Crawford has been an admirer of their reporting style and has been actively looking forward to applying for an internship with the Nashville NPR affiliate.
Applying in early November, she submitted a few of her best works and then moved onto an interview with the news director and the station’s political reporter. With two months of this position under her belt, Crawford’s responsibilities include covering legislative hearings at the state capitol and conduct both on-air and web reporting.
“Being in WPLN’s newsroom, I’ve been able to affirm my love for reporting and push myself to learn new skills. I’ve already learned so much about the world of public radio reporting and Tennessee politics — and I’ve fallen in love with it! I couldn’t be more grateful to learn from such kind and talented reporters at Nashville Public Radio,” shared Crawford.
As the political reporting intern, Crawford also has the unique opportunity to co-produce WPLN’s political podcast The Tri-Star State with Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, where she has helped conduct interviews with legislative members, learned audio-gathering skills and mixed entire episodes of the podcast.
Her position as the managing editor of the Belmont Vision was vital in preparing her to report for WPLN, where she has gained opportunities to write breaking news stories, meet deadlines, conduct interviews and pitch stories. These have all been necessary skills for her internship position. Crawford shared that in addition to the Belmont Vision, the journalism professors at Belmont have prepared her to feel more equipped and confident walking into her internship.
“This internship has really revealed to me how much I love audio reporting and has allowed me to grow my portfolio in that realm. Thanks to this internship, I’m able to enter the workforce with more published articles, on-air reporting experience and a greater understanding of what working in an NPR affiliate looks like,” shared Crawford.
In the future, she hopes to become a reporter for a local public radio station similar to WPLN and is passionate about telling stories on how policy impacts communities. Crawford shared that the tools she has been acquiring have advanced her abilities in the newsroom and will only continue to prepare her as she steps into pursuing a full-time job as a reporter.
Many dedicated, hard-working individuals leave their imprint on a profession, but few are deserving enough to have both a scholarship and an award established in their honor. Belmont University School of Nursing alumna Patty Cornwell is one of the deserving ones.
Cornwell, a retired certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA), devoted her professional career to providing exceptional anesthesia care to patients for surgery, labor and delivery, and other healthcare needs, and she devoted her spare time to serving the nurse anesthesia profession she loved. After graduating from Belmont, she worked for several years as an intensive care nurse before entering the Middle Tennessee School of Nurse Anesthesia to become a nurse anesthetist. She joined the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) in 1972 and the Tennessee Association of Nurse Anesthetists (TANA) in 1976.
Throughout her decades of membership, she served on dozens of committees and became passionate about advocating for her profession at the local, state and national levels.
In return, Cornwell is being honored by TANA and AANA with the creation of the Patty Cornwell Stewardship and Advocacy Scholarship, to be awarded annually to a student nurse anesthetist enrolled in one of Tennessee’s nurse anesthesia educational programs. The first scholarship will be awarded this spring. This follows the establishment in 2015 of the Patty Cornwell Practitioner of the Year Award, given annually by TANA to a Tennessee CRNA in recognition of Cornwell’s exemplary career as a clinician.
“Throughout her career, Patty was a shining example for all nurse anesthetists on how to provide high-quality, compassionate, patient-centered care,” said TANA President Vic Martin, MBA, CRNA, APN. “As a dedicated association member, Patty worked tirelessly to strengthen TANA and to advance and protect nurse anesthesia practice. She truly has been a difference-maker for our profession.”
“When I was pursuing my degree, my focus was always to just get through school and get a job,” said Cornwell. “I knew nothing about the work of the AANA or state associations at the time. After graduation, I went to work in Florida. That’s where two of my colleagues took me to a state meeting for the first time and got me interested in becoming an active member.”
After returning home to Tennessee, Cornwell went on to serve on every single TANA committee — including as president three times – and was the organization’s executive director, lobbyist and federal political director at various points during her career. She also served in various capacities for the AANA, the national association representing the nation’s nearly 60,000 nurse anesthetists.
CRNAs are anesthesia specialists who practice in every type of healthcare setting where anesthesia is required for surgical, obstetrical, trauma stabilization and pain management procedures. Across the United States, CRNAs and student nurse anesthetists safely deliver more than 49 million anesthetics each year. Much of Cornwell’s work focused on ensuring CRNAs’ ability to practice to the full scope of their education, training, certification and licensure.
Cornwell emphasizes to new CRNAs that how they introduce themselves to their patients can help raise awareness of the profession. “Make sure your patients know exactly who you are,” she advises. “I always told my patients: ‘I am a certified registered nurse anesthetist, and I will be providing your anesthesia today.’ I left no question or doubt.”
“I always encourage CRNAs and students to get involved in their state association and be as knowledgeable as possible about what is going on around them that can impact their profession and career,” she continued. “It’s important to pay attention and keep your eyes and ears open at all times.”
Belmont College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences hosted a Faith and Academics Presentation with guest speaker Dr. Tina M. Harris who shared her experience with the intersection of faith and scholarly perspectives on how to stay actively engaged in racial and social justice work. The event was put on for students and faculty by the Faith and Academics Committee of the college.
Communications Studies Chair Dr. Mary Vaughn introduced Harris at the beginning of the event. A former student of Harris, Vaught shared how she has shaped her as an educator and has contributed heavily to her perspective as a Christian.
Harris joined Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication in the fall of 2019 as the Douglas L. Manship Sr.-Dori J. Maynard Chair in Race, Media & Cultural Literacy—the first position of its type in the nation. She has a strong interest in research for interracial communication and focuses on critical communication pedagogy, race and identity, diversity and media representations, racial social justice, racial reconciliation and more.
Opening the convocation with a reading of scripture, Harris shared that “the steps of a good man or woman are ordered by God,” from Psalm 37:23. She used this passage to encourage the Belmont community to walk into their purpose as it is continuously laid out for them. She shared that although there is always unknown in the future, following the steps presented each day is a part of doing God’s goodwill.
Throughout the event, Harris discussed much of her personal experience with speaking up for racial justice as a Christian. She expressed that the major need of the Christian religion as a whole should be working towards inclusivity and equality. “I want to be a blessing to other people and I’m supposed to be a light to others, so that’s what I aim to do,” Harris said and encouraged others to do the same.
Harris utilized her critical essay written in 2019 to highlight the importance of a moral-spiritual imperative and discussed what it means to be an ally currently. She shared the dynamic of an advocate-mentor and said, “To be a mentor, one’s interest must be genuine and they must be willing and committed to assertively addressing situations.”
Over the course of the convocation, Harris discussed the dynamic between speaking up and being an active ally of racial justice as a Christian, leaving the Belmont community with new knowledge and helpful characteristics to implement in their own lives.
