Belmont College of Law student Paul Madden recently won the 2017 Dean’s Cup, an annual oral advocacy tournament for first year students in the College. Run by the College’s Board of Advocates Program, led by Professor Amy Moore, this year’s distinguished final panel included Judge Neal McBrayer of the Tennessee Court of Appeals, College of Law Dean and former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and College of Law Professor Harold See, former Alabama Supreme Court Justice.
Lecturer of Audio Engineering Joe Baldridge has spent a considerable amount of time in the studio recently as one of his song’s, “Blue Ain’t Your Color” by Keith Urban, hit No. 1 in March. Urban’s album Ripcord was also nominated for five CMA awards, three Grammy awards and seven ACM awards in the 2017 cycle.
Additionally, Baldridge recorded 20 songs for the new Thomas Rhett album for producers Dan Huff, Jesse Frasure, Joe London and Julian Bunetta at Blackbird Studio D and Backstage Studio in Nashville. The first single, “Craving You,” produced by Huff, Bunetta and London, was released on March 31. Finally, Baldridge recorded eight songs for Dan Tyminski’s new Universal Music Group album in February with Frasure at Backstage Studio with Belmont student Josh Ditty assisting.
Belmont’s highest achieving students and faculty were honored for their commitment to the University’s mission and dedication to scholarship, service and leadership at the institution’s Scholarship and Awards Day convocation in the Massey Performing Arts Center on Wednesday. Associate Professor of Economics Dr. Marieta Velikova, the 2015-16 Chaney Distinguished Professor, gave the ceremony’s Honors Address and discussed the power of education, likening it to a springtime harvest. Quoting a Chinese proverb, Velikova described the gifts of each of this year’s Chaney Award nominees, detailing their unique gifts and the ways they contribute to the Belmont community.
She commented on her responsibility, as a faculty member, to understand the honor that comes with each student who chooses to attend Belmont. As she closed, Velikova urged her colleagues and all students present to be inspired by the “buds of spring. May we be renewed by the sense of hope and optimism, and create a possibility of love, connection and peace on the planet.”
The ceremony includes the presentation of the highly anticipated John Williams Heart of Belmont Award, an honor given to one student who demonstrates a deep commitment to Belmont’s values including innovation, persistence, advocacy for change, community development and service. This year’s recipient, Suzanna Stapler, chose Red Cloud Indian School as her community partner, the organization that will receive a donation in Stapler’s honor as part of her award. The school, located in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, serves the student population of the second largest Native American reservation in America. Stapler traveled with 9 other Belmont students and staff last May to volunteer with the community. “Hearing their stories inspired me to value my identity as an athlete and truly appreciate where I am today,” Stapler said. “I will always remember the kids’ joyful yells and smiles, and I hope to continue finding ways to invest in their lives.”
Other students honored in Wednesday’s ceremony included:
The Williams-Murray First Year Writing Awards: Alexander Wharton (“Frankenstein: The Incorrect Origin of Man’s Fear of Androids”) and Alexis Wilkins (“Bottle it Up”)
The Alfred Leland Crabb Award: Hailey Hanks (“No One Would Choose to Die”) and Rachel Petty (“A Witness to Suffering: A Narratological Analysis of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye”)
The Alfred Leland Crabb Award for Collaborative Work: Amber Baack, Katelyn Black, Katherine Patterson, Katherine Ward and Mallory Zimmerman (“Through My Eyes: A Refugee Experience”)
The Stacy Awalt Writing Award: Christopher Lutz (“Poetry, Sophistry, and Philosophy: Critiquing Poets in the Republic”)
The Annette Sisson First Year Writing Award: Megan Rafferty (“Addressing the Gender Gap in Higher Education”)
The Lumos Travel Award: Lauren Deklava (Thailand), Sean Grossnickle (Senegal), James Mixon (Kenya & Tanzania) and Karah Waters (Tanzania)
The First Year Award, Leadership and Service: Madison Manns
The Second Year Award, Leadership and Service: Mary Barber
The Third Year Award, Leadership and Service: Joseph LaMartina
The Fourth Year Award, Leadership: Kylee Smith
Dr. Fannie Hewlett Undergraduate Award: Marquis Jiles (commercial music major)
Dr. Fannie Hewlett Graduate Award: Evelyn Kisakye (pharmacy)
In addition to student award winners, a number of awards were given to faculty members. The Christian Scholarship Award honors faculty scholarship that engages the Christian intellectual tradition and advances the scholarly conversation between Christian faith and learning. This year’s recipient was Assistant Professor of English Dr. Jayme Yeo.
The Leadership in Christian Service Award honors faculty who provide leadership to a new initiative or an established Christian organization that serves those in need. This year’s recipient was Dr. Jamie Adam, associate professor of nursing.
The Faculty Award for Scholarship recognizes a faculty member for outstanding intellectual and creative contributions of discovery, integration, application or teaching. This year’s recipient was Professor of Physical Therapy Dr. Nancy Darr.
Dr. Caresse John, English Department, was named the 2015-16 Chaney Distinguished Professor. The Chaney Distinguished Professor Award, determined on the basis of superior teaching, is presented each year to a faculty member who best represents the vision of the university to be a “premier teaching institution.”
Dr. Christopher Norton, School of Music, was awarded the 2015-16 Presidential Faculty Achievement Award. The Presidential Faculty Achievement Award is presented each year to a faculty member who has made outstanding contributions to student life outside the classroom. The award honors and recognizes excellence in faculty-student relationships, special abilities in meeting student needs – academic, personal and professional – and symbolizes Belmont University’s commitment to being a student-centered institution.
Acclaimed authors Barbara Brown Taylor, Rachel Held Evans to headline
Belmont University’s College of Theology and Christian Ministry (CTCM) announced today that registration is now open for the “Writing for Your Life” conference on campus July 18-19. Partnering with the “Writing for Your Life” conference series, headline speakers for the Nashville event will be acclaimed authors Barbara Brown Taylor and Rachel Held Evans.
Brian Allain, director of the Frederick Buechner Center and producer of the Writing for Your Life series, said, “We are thrilled to partner with Belmont University to feature best-in-class writers and industry professionals from Nashville and around the country. Our goal is to make this the best writers’ conference possible for our attendees. I have worked with both Barbara Brown Taylor and Rachel Held Evans in previous writers’ conferences, and the audience just loved them. Packed houses and standing ovations. They are both incredibly inspiring and wonderful people.”
A member of the Association of Leaders in Lifelong Learning for Ministry, the Writing for Your Life conference at Belmont will offer 1.1. Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for pastors in attendance. In addition, an Advanced Writer’s Retreat pre-conference on July will offer an additional .5 CEUs.
CTCM Dean Dr. Darrell Gwaltney said, “We want to create an opportunity for people to grow into the writers they feel called to be. We think this conference is a unique opportunity for great conversations and personal growth. We are delighted to host it!”
Barbara Brown Taylor 
is a New York Times best-selling author, professor and Episcopal priest. Her first memoir, Leaving Church, won the Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association. Her last book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, was featured in TIME magazine. She has served on the faculty of Piedmont College since 1998 as the Butman Professor of Religion & Philosophy and has been a guest lecturer at Emory, Duke, Princeton and Yale.
Rachel Held Evans 
is a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Faith Unraveled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood and Searching for Sunday. Hailing from Dayton, Tennessee, she writes about faith, doubt and life in the Bible Belt, and her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, Christianity Today, Slate, The Huffington Post, The CNN Belief Blog, and on NPR, The BBC, The Today Show, and The View.
In addition to the headliners, other speakers for the event include: Robert Benson (author), Jeff Chu (author and journalist), Greg Daniel (literary agent), Robbie Pinter (author and professor), Erin Healy (author), Tony Jones (Fortress Press and author), Susan Salley (Abingdon Press), Sophfronia Scott (author), Margot Starbuck (author and book consultant), and Webster Younce (Thomas Nelson).
Early-bird tuition for the main conference is $325, through June 1, and includes all General Sessions and Breakout Seminars, lunches, snacks and beverages during the breaks, one-on-one meetings, and an open-mic evening session. After June 1, tuition will increase to $349.
About Writing for Your Life
Writing for Your Life is committed to offering many useful resources and services to support spiritual writers. We offer in-person writing conferences and online webinars featuring leading spiritual writers and publishing industry experts. Authors discuss and teach about various aspects of spiritual writing. Industry experts offer advice on how to get published and how to market. In addition, we offer several types of marketing services, online video training presentations and other resources. Learn more at www.writingforyourlife.com.
Belmont University piano instructor and graduate student Tiange (Tina) Wu was recently announced as the winner of the 2017 Composition Competition hosted by the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra for her work titled, “Abduction.” As a result of her placement, Wu’s piece will be performed on stage at the 2nd Annual W. Ovid Collins, Jr. Concert Series on May 7 and 9. The May 7 performance will take place in Belmont’s McAfee Concert Hall and the May 9 show will be held at Brentwood United Methodist Church on Franklin Rd.
“Abduction” was inspired by an urban legend originating in Guangxi, China that told the story of an intelligent and beautiful young lady referred to as sister Liu. Sister Liu was a folk singer from a minority ethnic group called Zhuang. Wu’s orchestral piece portrays a scene from the story in which the leader of a corrupt organization referred to as the “Huairen Mo” abducted sister Liu to force her into marriage. Wu uses a folk tune to represent sister Liu and a strong and dissonant sound to portray the Huairen Mo whom abducted her. The piece has been performed live onstage in Beijing, China, but this event will be the first time it has been played live in the United States.
Wu’s professional orchestration training began in 2006. In 2008, she entered the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music with a full scholarship to pursue her passion for multimedia composition. After graduating from Oberlin College, she performed as the principal keyboardist for the Firelands Symphony Orchestra in Sandusky, Ohio. She currently works for RocketPunch Game,Inc. creating music and soundscapes for the video game industry. Additionally, she is completing her master’s degree in music for commercial composition and arranging at Belmont.
Beginning on April 6 and lasting through April 9, Belmont University’s Social Work Club organized and implemented an interactive art project in Nashville as part of the international Unity Project movement. The event was aimed at reducing division in the community by visually showing how all lives are interconnected and related.
The event was held at the Bellevue Branch of the Nashville Public Library and began with an opening ceremony that featured a panel discussion led by local community members on matters of diversity and inclusion. Panelists included Belmont’s Chief of Staff and Vice President Dr. Susan West, Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at Vanderbilt Dr. George Hill, Education and Street Chaplaincy Coordinator for Open Table Nashville Lindsey Krinks, Community Relations Manager at Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Leah Hashinger, Belmont student Jasmine Niazi and a representative from Conexión Américas.
After the opening ceremony, the interactive art project was open for public participation during normal library hours and was constantly supervised by Belmont students until the closing ceremony, held on April 9. The art project consisted of 32 poles placed in a circle, with each pole representing a unique identifier (culture, ethnicity, race, religion, etc.). Participants were invited to wrap colorful yarn around the poles they identified with, connecting themselves with the growing piece. Once complete, the yarn formed a cohesive web of interconnectedness to show that community members have more similarities than they do differences. The closing ceremony featured a poetry reading, music by a local artist and a group discussion on diversity, which was led by Associate Professor of Social Work Julie Hunt.
Belmont student Kate Patterson initially came up with the idea to bring the Unity Project to Nashville after being inspired by her participation in a Unity Project in Washington D.C. last June. Patterson was the main student involved in organizing the event and was present throughout the whole event.
“The Social Work club and I have been working out the details for the event for several months. It was rewarding to see the event take place after so muc
h planning,” Patterson said. “The panel discussion at the opening event was powerful to hear how organizations across Nashville value working together with various populations for a common goal of promoting the rights of humans. Throughout the weekend, I was blessed to meet many amazing individuals who reflected on their identities and had dreams of carrying the event to other locations around Nashville and to other cities. It was refreshing to meet so many people who worked together to create unity in the collaborative art piece as well as in their lives.”
The Unity Project was created in June of 2016 as a response to the divisiveness and negative rhetoric in American politics. Since its conception, the Unity Project has been completed in more than 20 countries.
Belmont University junior Joe LaMartina was recently spotlighted in a national weekly email update sent out by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for his work with their collegiate program “Up ‘Til Dawn.” The program involves students raising funds for St. Jude by seeking pledges for staying up all night. LaMartina is a member of Belmont’s Up ‘Til Dawn executive board and has been involved with the event for the last two years. The program was started on Belmont’s campus only three years ago, but students have already raised more than $243,000, placeing Belmont among the top five campuses involved in the program out of 60 colleges across the country.
LaMartina’s involvement in the collegiate program took a more personal turn last summer when his younger sister Lily, who is three years old, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer. Her diagnosis came just a week after LaMartina’s first visit to St. Jude. Lily is currently being treated at a local hospital in their hometown of St. Louis.
In his St. Jude feature, LaMartina says the hospital is one of the primary reasons for his hope that Lily will defeat the cancer she is fighting. “Even though Lily has not been treated at St. Jude, I am incredibly grateful to St. Jude because the research they have done and continue to do is helping to save Lily’s life,” LaMartina said.
Since its conception in 1962, St. Jude’s contributions to childhood cancer treatments have increased the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent.
“Seeing how amazing everyone at the hospital was and how amazing the patients were was really inspiring,“ LaMartina said of his visit to St. Jude. “I truly felt like St. Jude was one of the greatest places on earth. My journey over the last year has caused me to fall in love with St. Jude.”
St. Jude is the official philanthropy of Belmont’s Greek organizations, and LaMartina is a member of Belmont’s chapter of Alpha Tau Omega (ATO). On April 7, he received an email from the president of the ATO Foundation congratulating him on this spotlight. The president is a childhood cancer survivor, and he commended Joe on his work inspiring his fellow ATO brothers and students to get involved with St. Jude.
Belmont’s 2017 Up ‘Til Dawn event raised more than $113,000, far surpassing its goal of $100,000. The event took place on January 26 and included activities such as a movie skit challenge, silent disco, four-way volleyball, an obstacle course, a mini golf course, foosball, trivia, a mission room, racquetball and basketball.
LaMartina hopes to serve on Belmont’s Up ‘Til Dawn executive board again next year. He has also applied to St. Jude’s summer Pediatric Oncology Education program.
In an event sponsored by Belmont University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, 33 student and alumni-owned businesses participated in the campus’s fifth annual Entrepreneurship Village on April 10. Dedicated to showcasing the innovation, creativity and success of Belmont’s entrepreneurship students and alumni, businesses in the idea, start-up and revenue generating phases participated. These businesses represented a wide variety of industries including design and photography, music business, restaurant, high-tech, fashion and apparel and various social ventures. Students set up booths around the Bell Tower and discussed their business ideas, experiences with their ventures and how they forecast business growth.
Several of these student-run businesses have recently taken strides towards success in Nashville’s entrepreneurship community. Senior audio engineering major Ian Rodriguez, founder of Innovo Management, was nominated for Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the Nashville NEXT Awards last November. Innovo Management is a multi-faceted music management and booking company that Rodriguez began almost two years ago.
Additionally, junior social entrepreneurship major Emily Waddell was invited to join The National Association of Women Business Owners by the Nashville chapter in February for her work with her start-up The Honest Consumer. The Honest Consumer aims to share the stories of social enterprises, spread the word about ethically made goods and empower consumers to consider their purchases.
Third-place winner of Belmont’s annual Business Plan Competition Kendall Warren was also present, showcasing her business The Gift Box Drop, an online retail store that aims to make gift-giving fast and simple. The store lets consumers buy boxes filled with a variety of different items based on the occasion (weddings, baby showers, Father’s Day) and offers to ship the gift directly to the recipient.
Director of Belmont’s Center for Entrepreneurship Elizabeth Gortmaker said, “The Entrepreneurship Village is an exciting and interactive event for both the entrepreneur and the participant. Our students create a variety of businesses (everything from coffee shops to tech apps), and it is so fun to meet the founders and learn more about their vision for the future. Our students learn from the interaction and feedback from potential customers. It is a great opportunity for the entrepreneurs to showcase their businesses to their professors, friends and the Belmont community.”
Belmont’s Center for Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a Top 25 nationally ranked program by Princeton Review for eight years. The University is the only school in Tennessee to be included.
Three Belmont biology faculty and eight students in biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, neuroscience and environmental science recently attended the joint meeting of the Association of Southeastern Biologists (ASB) and Beta Beta Beta in Montgomery, Alabama. The Belmont faculty attending were Drs. Darlene Panvini, Chris Barton and Matt Heard and students attending were Brian Song, Anna Margaret McDonnell, Gary Noel, Diana Neculcea, Stacey Crockett, Kody Muhic, Krystin Estes and Sandra Bojic.
Three students received awards in the Beta Beta Beta Division II oral presentations including Anna Margaret McDonnell (1st place), Brian Song (3rd place) and Gary Noel (Honorable Mention). Research presentations covered a range of biology and teaching topics.
Heard is co-mentoring Jordan Lewis, a student from Winthrop University, who presented at the ASB meeting and won the first place Microbiology award for students. Heard was also a co-author for his talk along with Dr. Victoria Frost from Winthrop.
As part of their linked cohort course (LCC) experience this semester, students in Dr. Danielle Garrett’s chemistry LCC researched forensic science/investigation topics in small groups, one of which was bloodstain analysis. As a follow-up, students spent time in the lab investigating the impact of distance and angle on simulated blood stains and patterns.
Students used their results to interpret and recreate a simulated blood stain pattern from a fictional crime scene.
