The Belmont University College of Law made the 2016 list of preLaw magazine’s Top 12 Best Value private law schools. The best value determination is based on a number of factors, including tuition, employment, bar passage rates, debt and cost of living expenses.
Students from Belmont University’s Greek Life Chapter hosted a Halloween Celebration on Friday, October 28 for children that live in the nearby Edgehill community. The students returned on Halloween to host a second celebration. More than 400 children attended both events where they participated in Halloween-themed activities in a safe and fun environment.
Friday’s festivities included a number of opportunities for kids to enjoy the holiday in a safe environment including corn hole, a pumpkin toss, face painting and other games hosted by Phi Mu and Alpha Gamma Delta, as well as both the fraternity and sorority councils.
Paige Lauri, vice president of programming for Belmont’s Panhellenic Council, said the opportunity to spend time with the families and children who live in the neighborhood is invaluable for students. “The best part was seeing the joy on people’s faces,” Lauri said. “It’s so great to contribute to providing such a fun night for these kids. Sometimes, as students, we don’t recognize what serving our community can do for people, but it truly makes a difference. It’s our honor to show love, patience and kindness to our neighbors.”
Monday’s Halloween festivities included additional opportunities to celebrate the holiday with stations where children bobbed for apples, played bingo, completed crafting projects and more. Festivities were hosted by all nine of Belmont’s Greek Life chapters.
Launched last year to celebrate the University’s diversity and inclusion initiatives, Belmont’s second annual Diversity Week was held Monday, October 24 – Friday, October 28 and included many opportunities for the Belmont community to engage in important dialogue and experience diversity on the university’s campus.
Beginning with a Diversity Forum, the week’s highlights included two “Real Talk” sessions where faculty, staff and students were led through a facilitated discussion regarding diversity and inclusion efforts, an opportunity for faculty and staff to discuss implicit bias and micro-aggressions and an interactive art project centered around individual diversity, among other things.
Throughout the week, service opportunities were offered at local nonprofits where members of the Belmont community engaged in community service with fellow Nashvillians. Serving at Second Harvest Food Bank, The Word Wagon and the Nashville Rescue Mission, among others, more than 60 individuals came together to serve.
On Friday, the week culminated with a special keynote address by Metro Mayor Megan Barry. During her time on campus, Mayor Barry discussed Nashville’s diversity initiatives, her vision for Nashville’s future as it relates to diversity and inclusion and what Belmont can do to further that vision.
Mayor Barry discussed her commitment, since her first day in office, to be sure her team reflects Nashville’s diversity. Seeing the government as the ultimate “convener,” the Mayor said the city will become more and more diverse and inclusive when the government understands its ability to bring people of all backgrounds together for important conversations.
A successful Nashville is a diverse Nashville, Barry said. Because our citizens can “only be what they see,” they must see people of all backgrounds in all positions. As the leader of our city, Mayor Barry said she sees herself as an individual convener, and with only 1,011 days left in her term, based upon the countdown she said she sees on her phone each morning, there’s not much time left to finish the things she’s started, so she feels a sense of urgency. “I only have 1,011 days left to move this needle,” she said. “And we don’t solve these problems on our own–we have to solve them together through the lens of equity, diversity and inclusivity.”
An initiative of Belmont’s Welcome Home Team, Diversity Week was created to provide an opportunity for faculty, staff and students to celebrate the diversity represented on Belmont’s campus and facilitate important conversations surrounding existing and upcoming initiatives. For more information, click here.
For images from the week’s events, click here.
Carrie Nanney, a 2001 Belmont alumna and former member of the soccer team, recently ended her first year of playing professional women’s football with an undefeated team record and a world champion title. Nanney plays as a kicker on the offensive line for the Utah Falconz. In July, the team made it to the world championship game in the Independent Women’s Football League (IWFL), where they rose above competing team the Minnesota Vixen. Nanney plans to continue her time with the team during next year’s season.
Nanney started her football career in high school, when she broke through gender barriers by playing as a placekicker on her high school’s boy’s football team. She played for two years before graduating and moving to Nashville to attend Belmont as a broadcasting major. While at Belmont, Nanney got involved with the very first women’s soccer team and played for two years. She also worked full time at the YMCA in Green Hills and interned in the sports department for Nashville’s News Channel 5. Nanney moved back to her hometown of Salt Lake City in 2002 and currently works in the marketing department for a non-profit higher education organization.
Nanney continued to play soccer for parks and recreation leagues once she was back in Salt Lake City, but she missed the competitive atmosphere and team environment of Belmont’s soccer program. Playing for the Falconz provided her with the exciting sports environment she had been missing.
For more information on Nanney’s journey, check out this feature article written by the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Belmont’s Mathematical Musings & Munchings (MM&M) focused on mathematics and democracy this month as Dr. Mike Pinter, professor of mathematics and director of Belmont’s Teaching Center, presented “Voting Schemes: Is Ranking a Good Alternative to “Vote for One”?” on Wed., Oct. 19. During this interactive session, participants explored several voting methods and considered the advantages and shortcomings of each. Pinter also presented examples from recent years, including a vote about voting in Great Britain and U.S. Presidential elections since 1992.
Grayson Carroll, Belmont computer science alumnus, entrepreneur, and technologist, presented “The Intersection of Data and Politics” on Wed., Oct. 26. The political world is inundated with data. Between open government data sets detailing votes, committee membership and campaign contribution and the vast swathes of data that the government has, the political process is driven by data. Carroll discussed the data open to citizens to help us stay informed, as well as the data politicians use to optimize their campaign process.
Local high school students were invited to celebrate National Chemistry Week as the Chemistry Department at Belmont University hosted Belmont High School Chemistry Day 2016 on October 21. A total of 23 high school students from five metro area high schools participated.
During Chemistry Day, Belmont students performed demonstrations and lead participants in a variety of hands-on activities showing how chemistry is used in the real world. The Belmont students that participated included Bailey Rose, Londyn Eberhardt, Anna Margaret McDonnell, Hannah Burnette, Hope Kramer, Nick Orji, John Longenecker and Hannah Peterson representing chemistry, biochemistry & molecular biology, and neuroscience. Drs. Rachel Rigsby and Dr. Alison Parker, chemistry, gave the students tours of the chemistry labs. Participants also had lunch in Belmont’s Harrington Place Dining and were given a campus tour.
**Above image provided by Belmont student Sarah Cannavino**
Belmont’s Chemistry Department recently celebrated National Chemistry Week with several events across campus. During the “Chemistry Colors our World” convocation, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Education Dr. Danielle Garrett and members of Belmont’s Student Members of the American Chemical Society (SMACS) discussed the chemistry behind tie-dying and guided students in tie dying t-shirts.
During the “Hey! Look at that Awesome Science” convocation, students from Belmont’s National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and SMACS lead demonstrations, explained various science experiments and discussed why things behave as they do. SMACS members also had a fundraiser in the 4th floor atrium of the Janet Ayers Academic Center to celebrate Mole Day with Mole Day Scrabble and Cupcakes.
Associate Professor of Biology Dr. John Niedzwiecki and seven Belmont seniors presented their research projects at the Poster Session of the 43rd Southeast Population Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics (SEPEEG) Meeting held October 21-23 in Madison, Florida. The meeting, hosted by the University of Florida, included research presented by faculty, post-docs, graduate students and undergraduates from universities across the southeast including Belmont, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of South Carolina, Mississippi State, University of Alabama, Auburn University and Florida State University.
Belmont students Sandra Bojic, Jasmine Conyers, Krystin Estes, Shirley Kyere, Kody Muhic, Joanna Sorrell and Ryan Tapley each presented posters in the Saturday night poster session. Dr. Niedzwiecki is the co-author on the student’s research projects.
Beginning Nov. 3 and continuing through Nov. 6, Belmont University will host the 2016 National Conference on Higher Education in Prison (NCHEP) to further coalition-building among prison-based higher education programs, both regionally and nationally. The conference is being sponsored by the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative in addition to Belmont’s College of Theology and Christian Ministry, Department of Sociology and Department of Social Work.
The 2016 NCHEP desires to continue the process of identifying and moving towards shared goals that began at the Strategies for Action Conference in October 2010, sponsored by the Education Justice Project and held at the University of Illinois. The conference aims to gather a network of professionals, educators and citizens who are interested in re-envisioning higher education as a liberating and transformative tool for incarcerated persons, free-world persons and the systems that affect them. The schedule is filled with papers, panels and presentations from professionals and scholars from across the country, and the majority of sessions are open to the public free of charge.
Belmont Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in English Dr. Jayme Yeo will be speaking at the conference on November 5 on “Bearing Witness in the Prison Classroom.” Her talk will focus on the crucial functions of a prison educator that involve going beyond merely reading and assessing student work. In addition to Yeo, Associate Professor of Religion Dr. Andy Watts, Professor of Sociology Dr. Andi Stepnick, Assistant Professor of Religion and the Arts Dr. David Dark and Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Dr. Nathan Webb taught in or are currently teaching in prison classrooms. Watts and Stepnick also served on the NCHEP 2016 Planning Committee.
For more information on the 2016 NCHEP, including the full schedule and registration directions, check out the event website.
If you’ve ever been faced with problems such as high parking rates, losing track of where you parked your car or getting ticketed for forgetting to extend your meter time, 2014 Belmont graduate Andy Seavers might have a solution for you. METER’D, a mobile app Seavers created to help fill in the gaps of a pleasant parking experience, allows you to search for nearby available parking on a virtual map and view its pricing. With this model, customers can compare pricing rates of the spaces around them to decide where they want to leave their car. The app has other features that allow the user to pay for parking via credit card, extend their parking time from wherever they are and find their car via turn-by-turn GPS directions when they are ready to leave.
The main idea of the app is to lower parking rates by allowing anyone to offer up space for parking, whether they are a homeowner with driveway space near a popular retail district or a business with lot spaces available after 5 p.m. With more space available for parking and more competitors in the industry, Seavers assumes parking rates will naturally decline.
Among his current goals for the new company, Seavers hopes to expand the app to other cities in the U.S. “METER’D is currently in a soft-launch in Nashville, with a goal to prove that this business model works by the beginning of next year,” said Seavers. “With a successful pilot under our belt, we will expand to Charleston, S.C. and will raise an investment round.”
Seavers is also working toward partnering with local businesses to develop another feature for the app that offers discounts to locations near a customer’s parking spot. “This functionality will be tested over the next few months, but is not scheduled to go live until the week of SXSW in Austin, Texas in March of 2017,” Seavers said. “We are, however, collecting the names of interested businesses. They can email me directly at andy@meterd.com.”
For more information on METER’D, check out its website.
