Rachel Smith, a junior at Belmont University, is interning this spring at Harpo Productions, the home of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Smith, a journalism major, is working in the publicity department at Harpo, the production company that Winfrey launched in 1986. Harpo – that’s Oprah spelled backwards – produces the Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey began her Chicago-based talk show in 1985, after previously working in radio and television in Baltimore and Nashville during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Boston Rev. Ray Hammond, who lead a successful church-based effort in the early 1990s to reduce Boston’s crime and murder rate, told a gathering of leaders from Nashville churches and law enforcement and others at Belmont University Thursday how they did it.

The Goal: Reducing Nashville’s Rising Murder Rate
Belmont University is inviting the media to cover a very important anti-violence symposium on the Belmont campus at 2 p.m. today that is intended to lead to solutions to help reduce Nashville’s rising homicide rate. The Nashville Against Violence Symposium is set for 2-4 p.m., today, (Thursday, Jan. 19) in the Vince Gill Room at the Curb Event Center. The Rev. Ray Hammond, M.D., of Boston’s Bethel AME Church, founder of the Ten Point Coalition, which was successful in reducing Boston’s rising murder rate, will lead a conversation about possible ways to address the homicide problem in our city. The by-invitation event is open to the media.

Retired forensics expert to give annual Vaughn Science Lecture
Dr. Bill Bass, retired forensics expert known for his dead body “farm” at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, will deliver the annual Vaughn Science Lecture at Belmont University, 7 p.m. Thursday, in the Massey Boardroom. The Vaughn Science Lecture is held annually and serves to highlight scientific research and its ramifications to both undergraduate science majors and the more general audience of non-science students and faculty. Dr. Bass, professor emeritus and founder of the Forensic Anthropology Center at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, has titled his talk “Your Bones Are Your ID.” A reception follows the lecture.

32 of Belmont University’s newest students participated in a SERVE event to kick off their Belmont experience at the start of the new spring semester, reports the Office of New Student Programs in the Dean of Students office. Echoing the fall semester’s SERVE event – which stands for Students Engaging and Restoring through Volunteer Experiences – the 32 new Belmont students volunteered at the Nashville Rescue Mission warehouse, where they sorted shoes, organized clothing and provided other help to the charitable organization. SERVE is a foundational experience for new Belmont students.

An anti-violence symposium focusing on a church-based approach to reducing Nashville’s homicide rate is the cornerstone of a week of events planned for Martin Luther King Jr. Week at Belmont University, honoring the late civil rights leader. With Nashville’s murder rate on the rise, Belmont University has called the Nashville Against Violence Symposium (2-4 p.m., Jan. 19 in the Vince Gill Room at the Curb Event Center) at a critical time, and invited the Rev. Ray Hammond, M.D., founder of the Ten Point Coalition, to lead a conversation about possible ways to address the homicide problem in our city. Hammond’s Ten Point Coalition brought together urban pastors, the Boston mayor’s office, and leaders among the police and judiciary, and the effort was so successful at reducing the city’s skyrocketing murder rate in Boston that that other cities began adopting it.