IMPORTANT NOTE: These are the archived stories for Belmont News & Achievements prior to June 26, 2023. To see current stories, click here.

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Previous ‘Christmas at Belmont’ Performances to Air This December

Haley Charlton
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Previous ‘Christmas at Belmont’ Performances to Air This December

A favorite in homes around the country, a presentation of the 2019 “Christmas at Belmont” performance, which featured guest artists Michael W. Smith and CeCe Winans along with nearly 800 students, faculty and staff musicians from the School of Music, will re-broadcast in Nashville on WNPT on Tuesday, December 15 at 8 p.m. Central. It will also air Thursday, December 24 at 8 p.m. Central and Friday, December 25 at 11 p.m. Central.

The production of traditional carols, classical masterworks, world music and light-hearted seasonal favorites was taped at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center for the final time last fall.

The 2017 presentation of “Christmas at Belmont” will also re-broadcast this December. The performance featured Sheryl Crow and will air on WNPT in Nashville on Friday, December 18 at 11 p.m. and Thursday, December 24 at 9 p.m.

Past performances are also available online. Several “Christmas at Belmont” concerts and clips can be streamed through the Nashville Public Television website or PBS Video App. Visit www.wnpt.org to for more information. 

Check local listings for additional broadcast times in your area.

Belmont Names Dr. Bill Bates Founding Dean of New College of Medicine

April Hefner
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Belmont Names Dr. Bill Bates Founding Dean of New College of Medicine

Belmont University announced today the appointment of Dr. William (Bill) Bates, M.D., to the position of founding dean of the recently announced College of Medicine. Belmont announced last month its intent to start a new College of Medicine in collaboration with one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers, HCA Healthcare. 

Currently serving as professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of reproductive endocrinology at Meharry Medical College, Dr. Bates is the founder and former President/CEO of digiChart, an electronic medical records company. He has previously held positions as the vice president for health services at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, as executive vice president and chief medical officer for PrincipalCare (Brentwood, TN), as vice president for medical education and research for the Greenville Hospital System in Greenville, South Carolina and as dean of the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. He will begin his new duties as the Belmont University College of Medicine dean on Jan. 4, 2021.

Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher said, “Just as we couldn’t ask for a better partner than HCA Healthcare in launching a new College of Medicine, we also could not imagine an individual better equipped to be our founding dean than Dr. Bill Bates. Dr. Bates brings with him a wealth of knowledge in medicine and medical education, as well as the experience and connections that will prove vital to making Belmont Medicine and its students successful.” 

Dr. Bates said, “With the academic reputation of Belmont University and the national reach and clinical breadth of HCA Healthcare, the new Belmont University College of Medicine will have immediate recognition. Even as a new medical college, it will quickly take its place among other outstanding medical schools and colleges in the United States. I am humbled and excited to be selected as founding dean. Dr. Fisher and I share a vision for this College of Medicine. Working with faculty, leaders of Belmont University and HCA Healthcare, we will fulfill this vision. My responsibilities are to recruit faculty and, with that faculty, develop a modern curriculum and attain accreditation.”

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Bates also received his M.D. and completed his obstetrics and gynecology residency at UNC. He completed a reproductive endocrinology fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas) and received an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After serving as a major and chief of obstetrics and gynecology in the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Bates went on to hold positions with the University of Tennessee and the University of Mississippi Medical Center before becoming dean of the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. He then served as vice president for medical education and research at Greenville Health System before moving to Middle Tennessee in 1996 as the chief medical officer with PrincipalCare.

Dr. Bates then served as the vice president for health services and clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. VUMC tasked Dr. Bates to take a leave of absence to turn Breathe America (now digiChart, Inc.) from a practice management company into an information technology company. digiChart—which develops, markets and sells electronic medical records for obstetricians/gynecologists—was recognized by Microsoft as a winner of the best ambulatory electronic medical records in 2007 and 2008. It received CCHIT certification in 2011 with a five-star usability rating. He has been a member of the Meharry Medical College faculty since 2012.

Belmont College of Medicine will seek to become the nation’s 156th medical school accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), and its graduates would be well positioned to help fill the significant physician gap anticipated to be felt between now and 2033. Sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association, LCME is the nationally recognized accrediting authority for medical education programs leading to the M.D. degree in the U.S. (and Canada). Belmont will enroll its first class at the appropriate time in the LCME process.

HCA Healthcare’s Nashville-based TriStar Health will provide clinical elements in support of Belmont’s new college. As the largest and most comprehensive healthcare provider in the region, HCA Healthcare’s flagship, Tristar Health, will offer vast opportunities within a rich learning environment for Belmont College of Medicine students and residents. TriStar Health will provide third year medical students core clinical clerkships and fourth year medical students clinical elective rotations. HCA Healthcare also will provide a pathway to outstanding graduate medical education opportunities for Belmont College of Medicine graduates and will support existing members of the medical staff who may be interested in faculty positions in Belmont’s College of Medicine.

The academic and clinical expertise HCA Healthcare brings to the table along with the countless opportunities presented by being located in the nation’s healthcare capital aren’t the only advantages Belmont medical students will receive. They will also benefit from numerous interprofessional healthcare opportunities already embedded on the Nashville campus. The University is heavily invested in the health sciences, currently offering degrees in nursing (bachelor’s, master’s and DNP), physical therapy (DPT), pharmacy(Pharm.D.), occupational therapy (OTD) and public health (bachelor’s) as well as an MBA in Healthcare and a Health Law certificate program.

Belmont, Avid Establish Five-Year Software Subscription Agreement to Augment Media & Entertainment Studies

Haley Charlton
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Belmont, Avid Establish Five-Year Software Subscription Agreement to Augment Media & Entertainment Studies

Starting in January, Belmont will be giving students a more powerful learning environment based on a new generation of software and solutions from Avid® (NASDAQ: AVID). The University’s strategy to augment its facilities for media and entertainment studies will ensure that students can stay on track and accelerate toward their degree goals, whether attending on campus, remotely or in a hybrid model.

The centerpiece of the Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business strategy is its adoption of a five-year software subscription agreement for several hundred seats of Avid’s editing and creation tools, Media Composer® and Pro Tools®, and the open MediaCentral® platform that will enable students to work on their stories and productions from any location on their laptop or mobile device. With this upgrade, students will also be able to edit and manage projects collaboratively in real time with access to more than a petabyte of Avid NEXIS® media storage.

As part of this commitment, the college will also upgrade the current Avid S5™ Fusion console in its state-of-the-art Johnson Center Dolby Atmos theater to a new dual-operator Avid S6™ audio control surface. The Johnson Center, which opened in 2015, includes the world’s first Dolby Atmos® mix stage at a higher education institution, giving Belmont students a unique opportunity to learn how to deliver immersive Dolby Atmos theater experiences.

The Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business is a powerful magnet for aspiring creative professionals and is consistently ranked among the top U.S. institutions for media and entertainment studies. For more than 20 years the college has applied Avid technologies to help prepare thousands of students for professional careers in television, film and music. The school is now an Avid Media Campus program partner, which guarantees volume pricing that enables it to grow its infrastructure with optimal cost efficiency. This special designation, combined with continuous releases of new product enhancements and capabilities through Avid software subscription, ensures Belmont students can enter their chosen profession with up-to-the-moment expertise in the emerging technologies shaping how media is created, presented and experienced.

“Belmont University’s strategic priorities are ready to adapt to change and embrace new technology so we can innovate—and this approach has prepared us for today’s very challenging environment,” said Technology Specialist Ron Romano in the Curb College. “Our new agreement with Avid plugs right into this philosophy and gives our programs a technical foundation to evolve and thrive over the long run. In the end, we’ll be able to do an even better job of helping our students stay focused on strengthening their creativity and storytelling expertise and then get into the workforce with confidence.”

Avid collaborated with longstanding certified channel partner Marshall Graphics Systems, the iconic media technology supplier to the creative community throughout Nashville, and the southeastern U.S. Marshall Graphics Systems specified, designed and deployed the Avid solution at Belmont University.

“Belmont University and Avid share a commitment not only to bring forward new generations of media professionals, but also to ensure their full command of technology that will advance the impact and reach of their ideas and stories,” said Jeff Rosica, CEO and President of Avid. “Today the school is moving fast on its exciting vision to create an even more extraordinary professional-grade environment for its students, and the Avid team is thrilled that our products and programs will provide the flexibility to evolve and grow.”

About Avid Media Campus

With exclusive education discounts and flexible solutions specifically tailored to the needs of educational institutions, the Avid Media Campus program prepares students for the distinct career advantage of industry-recognized Avid certification. It facilitates a deeper engagement with Avid across its comprehensive creative tools and workflow solutions—spanning film/video/TV, sports, graphics, journalism, music/audio production, live sound and theater. 

About Avid

Avid delivers the most open and efficient media platform, connecting content creation with collaboration, asset protection, distribution and consumption. Avid’s preeminent customer community uses Avid’s comprehensive tools and workflow solutions to create, distribute and monetize the most watched, loved and listened to media in the world—from prestigious and award-winning feature films to popular television shows, news programs and televised sporting events, and celebrated music recordings and live concerts. With the most flexible deployment and pricing options, Avid’s industry-leading solutions include Media Composer®, Pro Tools®, Avid NEXIS®, MediaCentral®, iNEWS®, AirSpeed®, Sibelius®, Avid VENUE™, FastServe® and Maestro™. For more information about Avid solutions and services, visit www.avid.com.

Dark Quoted in The New Yorker’s Article on Chapter 16

Haley Charlton
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Dark Quoted in The New Yorker’s Article on Chapter 16

The New Yorker article “The Tennessee Solution to Disappearing Book Reviews” spotlights Tennessee’s nonprofit media outlet, Chapter 16, which is one of the few in the country that is dedicated to coverage of the arts while most news outlets, papers and magazines across the country have stopped covering books and publishing book reviews. Chapter 16 is “a community of Tennessee writers, readers and passersby” that garners as many as half a million people reading something every week. Associate Professor of Religion and the Arts Dr. David Dark is quoted in the article as he is a frequent writer for Chapter 16.

According to The New Yorker, Tennesseans noticed this national crisis of rarely published book reviews a decade ago, and Humanities Tennessee, the state’s affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, stepped in. They created Chapter 16, a part-digital, part-print publication that “covers literature and literary life in the state by doing what almost any other outlet would—running reviews, profiles, interviews and essays—but also by doing what almost no other outlet could afford to do: giving away its content for free, not only to readers but to any publication of any kind that wants to reproduce it.”

The founders of Chapter 16 made it the publication’s mission to try to cover every book by a Tennessee author, every book about Tennessee and every book by any author coming to Tennessee for an event at one of the state’s more than two dozen independent bookstores and nearly one hundred colleges. It turned out that there were too many Tennessee-related books and events to write about them all, and so their editorial choices reflect the books they feel are of greatest interest to their audience.

Hundreds of thousands of people who read reviews or interviews syndicated from Chapter 16 in its regular partner publications—the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Nashville Scene, and the Chattanooga Times Free Press—may never notice the tagline indicating where it originated.

Dark, a lifelong Nashvillian, first learned of Chapter 16 when it reviewed one of his books, “The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.” Two years ago, Dark wrote his first piece for the site about the philosopher James P. Carse, in advance of Carse’s planned visit to Belmont’s campus. It was one of many pieces about religion and politics that Dark would write for Chapter 16.

Dark told The New Yorker about his experience attending a cocktail party last year celebrating the publication’s tenth anniversary where he looked around the room and realized how eclectic and creative a crew it was. He is quoted in the article saying, “I always tell my students to amplify the oracle, to amplify whatever thoughtfulness you find, to sponsor the culture you want to see more of. And that’s what Chapter 16 does.”

Southern Economic Association Honors Kara Smith with Georgescu-Roegen Prize

Haley Charlton
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Southern Economic Association Honors Kara Smith with Georgescu-Roegen Prize

Belmont Associate Professor of Economics Dr. Kara D. Smith was honored with the prestigious Georgescu-Roegen Prize by the Southern Economic Association (SEA), along with the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Celeste K. Carruthers, during the SEA’s 90th Annual Meeting on November 22.

The Georgescu-Roegen Prize is awarded each year by the Southern Economic Association for the best academic article published in the Southern Economic Journal. Carruthers and Smith were awarded the 2020 prize for their article “Are ‘Education Lotteries’ Less Regressive? Evidence from Texas,” published in Volume 86 of the Southern Economic Journal (SEJ, Volume 86, Number 3, January 2020).

In this paper, the Smith and Carruthers obtained more than 2,000 press releases from the Texas Lottery Commission from 1993-2006 and performed content analysis on the frequency of specific terms regarding education and public schools. The press releases were also rated according to how much they discussed the lottery’s role in funding public education. Using these novel measures, the authors showed that lottery ticket purchasers in Texas were somewhat responsive to the purported use of lottery revenues in ways that make sales less regressive across space. The sales shift toward richer counties followed more potent education messaging through official channels.

ln 1997, lnstant Games and Lotto Texas sales were both regressive with respect to area income and that this remained true in the three years immediately after revenues were earmarked for education. However, beginning in the year 2000, the lottery was increasingly marketed as a funding stream for public education by the Texas Lottery Commission, which was a sharp shift in messaging. Shortly thereafter, the conditional area sales to income gradient began trending upward in the case of Instant sales but steadily downward for Lotto sales.

Their results suggested that unobserved factors other than statewide marketing played a much greater role in moving local demand for Instant and Lotto play. However, Instant game sales were modestly responsive to education messaging.

Wigal Offers Expertise in Publishing to Writing Gym Podcast

Haley Charlton
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Wigal Offers Expertise in Publishing to Writing Gym Podcast

Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Director of Publishing Sara Wigal recently appeared on a podcast episode from The Writing Gym titled “A Deep Dive Into the Publishing Process.”

The episode covers what happens behind the scenes from the moment a manuscript is accepted to the time the book is published, how a publishing house really supports and markets a book and what is expected of authors in terms of marketing their book.

Wigal is the fundraising chair for the Next Chapter Society which supports the programming made possible by the Nashville Public Library Foundation. She has been published by The Tennessean, Publishers Weekly and Writer’s Digest.

Listed to her episode on The Writing Gym website.

Grammy-Nominated Jutz in the Running for Best Bluegrass Album

Haley Charlton
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Grammy-Nominated Jutz in the Running for Best Bluegrass Album

Belmont Songwriting Lecturer Thomm Jutz has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass album for his album To Live In Two Worlds Volume 1. The nomination marks the first for Jutz and the fifth for Mountain Home Music Company based near Asheville, North Carolina.

The To Live In Two Worlds collection is unique in that it showcases Jutz’s diverse talents. The album features the stories of rambling vagabond musicians, the hard life of mill workers, tragic Civil War characters both real and imagined, semi-forgotten regional legends and new stories of more recent real-life dramas and tragedies that will be tomorrow’s parables. 

“I wanted to make another bluegrass record but I also wanted to make a ‘true’ solo record, with just me singing and playing. So I did both,” Jutz said in a press release from Mountain Home. “The players on these records are my dream team, and I love how the band and solo tracks correspond on these two volumes. From a songwriter’s perspective I feel that this is my best work yet. I’ve found my place with ‘one foot in a different world and one foot here today.’”

Listen to To Live In Two Worlds Volume 1 HERE.

Jutz is a songwriter, producer and guitar player whose songs have been recorded by Balsam Range, Chris Jones & The Night Drivers, Terry Baucom, Nanci Griffith, Kim Richey and many more. To date he has had six #1 bluegrass songs and was nominated for IBMA Songwriter Of The Year in 2017, 2018 and 2019. His song “Going Back To Bristol” was nominated for Song Of The Year 2017. He’s the producer and principal songwriter of The 1861 Project, a three-record collection of original songs about the American Civil War. He also co-wrote and produced I Sang The Song, a musical biography of Mac Wiseman featuring John Prine, Alison Krauss, Shawn Camp and many other renowned Bluegrass artists. Jutz has previously released two Bluegrass solo records Volunteer Trail and Crazy If You Let It. He is the recipient of 2 SESAC Awards and an alumnus of both Leadership Music and Leadership Bluegrass.

Spaar Illustrates Cover of Nashville Scene’s Thanksgiving Issue

Haley Charlton
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Spaar Illustrates Cover of Nashville Scene’s Thanksgiving Issue

November 2020 graduate Mary Spaar illustrated the cover of the most recent copy of the Nashville Scene for the week of Thanksgiving, featuring the words “hey thanks” in Nashville’s five most-spoken languages: English, Spanish, Burmese, Kurdish and Arabic. Spaar just recently graduated with her Bachelor’s in Religious Studies and a minor in social work.

In Spaar’s Illustration 1 class, taught by Art Professor Dan Brawner, the final project was aimed at working with a client, specifically the Nashville Scene. All of the students created amazing work, but the Scene chose Spaar’s submission to use as the cover.

Spaar said seeing her work used in the real world felt amazing. “I’ve been drawing since i could pick up a pen, and seeing my work in print was definitely a goal of mine! The day the issue dropped, my roommates drove me around Nashville, and we picked up copies from different places around the city,” she said. “Even now, friends will send me pictures if they spot an issue!”

Mary Spaar

Spaar explained that she had no idea the scope of nations that Nashville hosted until she took a service-learning Old Testament class her freshman year with Associate Professor of Religion and the Arts Dr. Donovan McAbee. The students worked with refugee organization Legacy Mission Village for the service portion of the class, and getting to know Nashville’s diverse refugee community is what inspired her design.  

Belmont Celebrates Winter Commencement through Individual Ceremonies

Haley Charlton
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Belmont Celebrates Winter Commencement through Individual Ceremonies

While the ability to bring all graduates together for one graduation ceremony was not possible, Belmont did receive permission from local authorities to be able to host Winter Commencement ceremonies for each college while following social distancing guidelines. Individual ceremonies were held in several locations on campus Friday, November 20 and Saturday, November 21.

The University celebrated the accomplishments of approximately 466 degree candidates, by recognizing 410 bachelor’s degrees, 55 master’s degrees and one doctoral degree.

A live stream of each ceremony is still available here.

Alumna Emily James Pursues Fashion Dreams, Opens Lady James Atelier

Haley Charlton
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Alumna Emily James Pursues Fashion Dreams, Opens Lady James Atelier

2018 Fashion Design alumna Emily James has wanted to be a fashion designer with her own storefront business for as long as she can remember. After graduating with her degree from O’More College of Architecture and Design, she began chasing this dream through working, interning and designing until her career flourished into a partnership with her sister, a marketing and business expert, to launch a new business venture: Lady James Atelier.

Lady James is a 100 percent female owned and operated company that is dedicated to empowering all women through fashion. A French term used to define a studio or space in which a designer works, James explained that each article of clothing is hand-sewn in house at their Atelier in Nolensville, Tennessee. “We marry non-conventional looks with timeless elegance to create the most unique designs,” she said. “Our driving force, and the reason we do what we do, is to create beautiful clothes for beautiful women. We also offer the perfect tailored fit for all clothing. We give the option of not only custom women’s wear but also a luxury tailoring experience for both men’s and women’s alterations.”

James describes her personal style as taking a classic, elegant look and making it edgy or sexy, and the same aesthetic is carried through her Lady James brand. She said, “My designs merge daring silhouettes with ultra-feminine details and fabrics.”

Her style and aesthetic have caught on. Besides accomplishing her goal of opening a storefront, she has also reached another major milestone when her custom design found its way to the CMT Red Carpet in Nashville. Stylecaster even included her design as number seven in their article “Every Can’t Miss Look from the 2019 CMT Awards Red Carpet.” “This was a huge achievement for me as a designer,” James shared. “Seeing my design ranked among the top looks on stars like Carrie Underwood, Maren Morris and Carly Pearce was such a huge compliment.”

Her designs have come a long way since receiving her first sewing machine for her tenth birthday and creating clothes for her Barbie dolls. Although she fell in love with the intricacy and beautiful details of evening, bridal and red carpet wear at a young age and carried a sketchbook in hand everywhere she went, she didn’t receive an official sewing lesson until she enrolled at O’More College of Design. She explained, “I was blessed with talented instructors like Kevin Crouch who taught me all about the beautiful art of sewing and design. It was at O’More that I got to really explore what direction I wanted to go in the design world.”

She fell more and more in love with celebrity and evening wear and sought out an internship with highly renowned NYC designer Cristina Ottaviano, whose designs grace most of New York’s biggest red carpets. After a successful summer internship in NYC with Ottaviano and graduation, James worked for a year with an expert tailor in Nashville as she grew into the city’s country music industry. While working full-time as a personal assistant to Aaron McGill at Only One Tailoring, meeting many celebrity artists and dozens of country music stars, James was still working on designs of her own. She juggled two jobs for a year and a half before going full-time with her custom women’s wear design work and luxury tailoring and eventually starting the partnership with her sister.

“It was the perfect match and the beginning of a new business venture,” James said. “We were blessed with many opportunities leading to our Lady James atelier opening in October of this year. We are still learning how to navigate not only a new business, but a pandemic nonetheless. It takes lots of hard work and dedication, but we couldn’t be happier with the ability to finally make our entrepreneurial dreams a reality!”

James hopes to grow more into the country music industry and one day be the “go-to designer” for women’s custom red carpet and luxury wear in Nashville. She and her sister plan to eventually open another storefront in downtown Nashville. While the duo gain their bearings as two new entrepreneurs, James said she is thankful for her family’s support, the experiences she gained with Ottaviano and McGill, and for the instructors at O’More, namely Crouch.

James said perseverance, passion and networking are key to starting and running a business. “Many people will tell you, ‘No,’ ‘You’re too young,’ or even, ‘You’re not good enough,’ but you have to believe in yourself and your business,” she said. “No one will believe in you like you do. Ultimately, don’t quit dreaming!”

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