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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Belmont Sponsors Digital Exhibition for the National Museum of African American Music

April Hefner
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Belmont Sponsors Digital Exhibition for the National Museum of African American Music

With June being declared by President Barack Obama as African American Music Appreciation Month (Black Music Month), the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) announced today significant financial support along with its new Rivers of Rhythm® Digital Exhibition. This first-of-its-kind digital exhibition was revealed by museum officials and award-winning gospel artist, CeCe Winans, who was recently announced as one of NMAAM’s National Chairs. The museum unveiled the digital exhibition at a press conference at Belmont University in the lobby of the Johnson Center, home to the Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business.

As a National Chair, Winans will focus her efforts for NMAAM specifically around the gospel genre and serve as an active ambassador, providing support in the form of appearances and access to her professional network for the organization. She–along with Darius Rucker, Keb’ Mo’ and India.Arie–were announced earlier this year and are actively engaged in the project. All are prominently featured in the Rivers of Rhythm® Digital Exhibition (RofR).

“With over 50 genres identified as created or influenced by African Americans, Rivers of Rhythm is an interactive tool that depicts the ebb and flow of music using a web-based platform to tell the Museum’s story even before our doors open,” said H. Beecher Hicks, III, NMAAM’s president and CEO. “We’re excited to provide an outline of the history, connections and impact that American artists and genres have around the world.”

NMAAM and Belmont also announced that the University had provided a $250,000 donation to the museum to sponsor the digital exhibition.

“Belmont has an outstanding reputation for fostering and nurturing top musical talent so supporting this project is a perfect fit for our campus,” said Dr. Bob Fisher, president of Belmont University. “What is even more important is that this digital exhibition reflects another step in Belmont’s efforts to become increasingly more diverse and broadly reflective of our local and global communities.”

NMAAM is proud to announce its first-ever digital exhibition during the National observance of Black Music Month (or African American Music Appreciation Month).

“This June and every June, we celebrate Black Music as a vital part of our Nation’s proud heritage. African-American music exemplifies the creative spirit at the heart of American identity and is among the most innovative and powerful art the world has ever known,” said President Obama in presenting this year’s federal proclamation.

This announcement was live streamed on Periscope via @theNMAAM and on Facebook via @BelmontUniversity.

About CeCe Winans:
CeCe Winans is a multi-talented singer, who has won numerous awards, including ten GRAMMY® Awards and seven Stellar Awards. She has sold twelve million records worldwide. CeCe is also the best-selling female gospel artist of all time. CeCe’s collection of Top Ten R&B radio hits include “Count On Me,” her duet with Whitney Houston, from the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack. The single was certified Gold in the US and reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 4 on the Adult Contemporary chart and No. 8 on the Billboard R&B Singles charts.

About the National Museum of African American Music:
As the only museum dedicated to all dimensions of African American music, The National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) will showcase over 50 music genres created or impacted by African Americans, honor the legacy and legends of this diverse music and detail the impact music has on musicians and consumers around the world. NMAAM will draw upon a range of music and history enthusiasts to explore and celebrate American music and will tell a story never before told, until now.

Alumni Strike Positive Chord with ‘Make Music Nashville’ Festival

April Hefner
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Alumni Strike Positive Chord with ‘Make Music Nashville’ Festival

Make Music Nashville logoBelmont alumni Matt Fox, Jesse Strauss, Dillon Minacci and Alan Fey hit all the right notes as they led the efforts for the third annual Make Music Nashville festival, with the day-long music event offering performances for the first time on Belmont’s campus. Make Music Day, a global celebration that happened in more than 500 cities worldwide on June 21, 2016, aimed to get as much free outdoor music into as many corners of the community as possible on the longest day of the year.

Minacci, a 2013 English Literature graduate, helped pull together Nashville’s first Make Music festival in 2014. He said, “I wanted an escape from the music industry I was working in professionally and a chance to connect to the community of Nashville through music. Make Music Nashville gave me that outlet to enjoy music again and organizing it in a community-based way rather than for money.”

Strauss  (’14, music performance) added, “Make Music Day started in France in 1981 and has since spread around the world. I discovered the holiday near the end of my schooling at Belmont through a friend that played a part in organizing Make Music New York. What attracts me about Make Music Day is the incidental nature of its music events… someone can walk down the street unaware of the celebration and suddenly find themselves part of a drum circle, an interactive musical lesson or a rock performance on a street sidewalk. There is so much music in Nashville, but there aren’t as many musical performances that involve the audience in such an integral way.”

All shows were free and open to the public, and  18 venues hosted shows in Nashville for the day-long festival. Make Music Nashville involved many non-typical venues around the city, including book stores, coffee shops and storefronts, to host musicians of all genres and ability. For the first time this year, Belmont’s campus also hosted a stage outside the Curb Event Center on Belmont Blvd. with many of alumni or faculty members artists.

Strauss noted that the purpose of the Make Music Nashville organization is to provide an equal opportunity for anybody and everybody who wants to perform or take part in the music-making process. In addition to artist performances, the day included a number of mass appeal events, bringing together individuals focused on one single instrument for a special performance or jam session. Strauss, whose focus instrument at Belmont was percussion, lead a drum circle in Sevier Park as well as two events at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the world premiere of Shimmer for cymbal orchestra and an interactive Cymbal Jungle for all ages. Make Music Nashville also offered free harmonica lessons at the Nashville Zoo, free guitar lessons at the Country Music Hall of Fame, a ukulele jam at Two Old Hippies and a western guitar swing jam at Gruhn Guitars, among other activities.

Christy Frink, another Belmont grad (2008, Social Work), joined in with planning the festival and helped the team with social media. She said, “I love the spirit of the global Make Music Day and the opportunity to spread the joy of live music around to Nashville’s neighborhoods. I feel like it’s such a great fit for this town. It’s getting bigger every year, and I’m so happy I get to be part of it!”

Belmont Campus Performances

The Belmont event will began at 2:30 p.m. with a Carillon concert from Professor of Music Dr. Richard Shadinger followed by these artists on the stage on Belmont Boulevard:

3:00PM – 3:30PM
Morgan Bosman
Soul
3:30PM – 4:00PM Robyn Harris
Pop
4:00PM – 4:30PM Matt Reno
Rock
4:30PM – 5:00PM Paulina Jayne
Pop, Country, Rock
5:00PM – 5:30PM Wynter Bethel
Singer/Songwriter
5:30PM – 6:00PM Emma Place
Country, Singer/Songwriter
6:00PM – 6:30PM Mignon
Country, Pop
6:30PM – 7:00PM Kayla Woodson
Country, Rock

Pharmacy Fellow Certifies with HIMSS

Hope Buckner
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Pharmacy Fellow Certifies with HIMSS

Kate ClaussenBelmont College of Pharmacy and Aegis Sciences Corporation Clinical Scientist Fellow Dr. Kate Claussen recently became certified by examination in health care informatics. The Certified Associate in Healthcare Information and Management Systems (CAHIMS) is a new Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) health IT certification designed for emerging professionals within the industry.

This certification demonstrates knowledge of health IT and management systems, facilitates entry-level careers in health IT and is designed to be a career pathway to the Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems (CPHIMS) credential.

Belmont’s sponsor of the CAHIMS certification initiative is Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Informatics and Analytics Anthony Blash, Pharm.D., BCompSc, CPHIMS. Blash has created a three-course sequence of classes to prepare Belmont student pharmacists for healthcare informatics and to sit for the CAHIMS certification. The college saw its first students certify at the CAHIMS level in 2015 and expects 20-30 students to certify each year moving forward. Blash has also been invited to teach a “Boot Camp” intensive version of the CAHIMS review at the 2016 Healthcare Summit of the Southeast in September. The conference is sponsored by the Tennessee Chapter of HIMSS and will be held in Nashville.

“Nashville is considered by many to be home to the U.S. healthcare industry, with nearly 300 companies providing healthcare synergies found in few other places.” said Blash. “If your interests lie in healthcare and informatics, our program stands apart. With experiential rotation sites at the headquarters of the largest healthcare organizations in the world, faculty with experiences in the corporate boardrooms of many American healthcare companies and a pharmacy/healthcare informatics experience facilitated by the immediate past national chairman of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists’ Educational Steering Committee on Informatics and Technology, our faculty represents the pinnacle of teaching experience. As an HIMSS Education Partner, Belmont University’s College of Pharmacy becomes the only pharmacy school in the world with a healthcare informatics concentration leading to an internationally recognized certification in healthcare informatics which may be obtained before experiential rotations, residency inquiries and job searches begin.”

Trost Featured as Expert in WalletHub Article

Hope Buckner
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Trost Featured as Expert in WalletHub Article

Charles TrostProfessor in the College of Law Charles Trost was recently featured as an expert in WalletHub’s “2016’s States with the Best and Worst Taxpayer ROI.” Highlighting where “taxpayers get the most and least bang for their buck,” the article ranks the states by overall ROI, as well as individual categories including school systems, hospital networks, water quality, roads and more.

As the featured expert, Trost addresses how tax revenue can be used more effectively across the country and how Americans can complete their own ROI assessments.

Honors Students, Faculty Present at Christian Scholars’ Conference

April Hefner
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Honors Students, Faculty Present at Christian Scholars’ Conference

Each year the Belmont Honors Program selects three outstanding students to attend the Christian Scholars’ Conference (CSC) and participate in a session with other Honors college students. This year the CSC theme was “Justice: Meaning and Practice,” and the students’ session was titled “Meeting Needs in Community Health Care through Service, Mission, and Volunteerism.” Belmont was represented by Honors Nursing students Rebecca Hall (senior from Bon Aqua, TN), Emily Tomsovic (sophomore from Edwards, IL), and Julia Sherwood (senior from Brookline, NH). The mission of the Christian Scholars’ Conference is to create and nurture an intellectual and Christian community that joins individuals and institutions to stimulate networks of scholarly dialogue and collaboration. The conference was created under the direction of Pepperdine University Distinguished Professor Emeritus Dr. Thomas H. Olbricht and has been hosted by several faith-based universities. The conference calls together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines in the liberal arts, sciences, business, law, education and medicine to develop their own academic research and to reflect on the integration of scholarship and faith.

Don Cusic and Jonathan ThorndikeHonors students each presented original essays on how their experience at a Christian university like Belmont informed their decisions to pursue a career in nursing, medicine or other health-related fields. The students discussed how they responded to issues of underserved communities, economic inequality, racial discrimination or inadequate health care resources in Nashville. They reflected on how a faith-based education better equips students to “carry each other’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” while responding with justice and mercy to unmet needs. The session was moderated by Dr. Jonathan Thorndike, director of Belmont’s Honors Program.

Also representing Belmont at the Christian Scholars Conference was Dr. Don Cusic, professor of Music Business, who presented “Free Burma Rangers: A Battle for Displaced People.” The Free Burma Rangers is a humanitarian and evangelical group that brings help, hope and love to people in the war zones of Burma/ Myanmar. Pro-democracy groups send teams to be trained, supplied and sent into the areas under attack to provide emergency medical care, shelter, food, clothing and human rights documentation. The teams also operate a communication and information network inside Burma that provides real time information from areas under attack.  In addition to relief and reporting, other results of the teams’ actions are the development of leadership capacity, civil society and the strengthening of inter-ethnic unity.

Pinter Presents at Teaching Professor Conference

April Hefner
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Pinter Presents at Teaching Professor Conference

Mike PinterAt the June 2016 Teaching Professor conference in Washington, D.C., Mike Pinter (director of Belmont’s Teaching Center and professor of mathematics) presented a poster session titled “Faculty Small Group Variations: Reading, Scholarship, Writing.”  The poster provided information about a range of Belmont faculty small groups, each of which has as its focus a common reading, scholarly projects and/or teaching and learning applications. The groups described in the poster included summer reading groups on a range of topics, applied teaching/learning groups that meet throughout a semester, reading groups that have a connection to faculty half-day retreats (using the Courage to Teach framework and process), faculty writing groups to support scholarly writing and faculty scholar cohorts that come together around a focal point of some kind.

Belmont Honored with Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award

Hope Buckner
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Belmont Honored with Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award

Belmont University was recently named as a winner of the 2016 Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award, a designation given by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Tennessee’s Department of Environment and Conservation Commissioner Bob Martineau. The award recognizes exceptional voluntary actions that improve or protect the environment and natural resources with projects or initiatives not required by law or regulation. Belmont was recognized in the state’s Building Green category for the university’s LEED Platinum certified Janet Ayers Academic Center.

“The quality of our air, land and water is essential for public health and the marketability of our state,” Haslam said. “I thank all of the winners for their individual contributions to keeping Tennessee a beautiful state to live, work and visit.”

Martineau described the award’s significance and said, ““It is important that we pause to recognize the people and organizations that work so hard to protect our environment while teaching others about sustainability. These winning efforts will help pave the way for future ideas on how we can further protect our natural resources.”

The only higher education institution to be recognized among the state’s 11 recipients, the list of honorees includes:

  • Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition
  • green|spaces – Hamilton County, Tennessee
  • Emmett Elementary School – Sullivan County, Tennessee
  • EPB – Hamilton County, Tennessee
  • The Jackson Walk – Madison County, Tennessee
  • Sevier Solid Waste, Inc. – Sevier County, Tennessee
  • Tennessee Environmental Council – Natural Heritage
  • Sharp Transport, Inc. – Lawrence County, Tennessee
  • Music City Center – Davidson County, Tennessee
  • Lipscomb Academy Elementary – Davidson County, Tennessee

A panel of 24 agricultural, conservation, forestry, environmental and academic professionals judged more than 85 nominations and selected this year’s award recipients based on criteria including on-the-ground achievement, innovation and public education. The winners will be recognized for their achievements and positive impact on the state’s natural resources in an awards ceremony held in Nashville on June 15.

Belmont’s Vice President for Finance and Operations Steve Lasley said, “The University is honored to receive this designation in recognition of our commitment to conservation and sustainability. With educational and sustainable green roofs, a geothermal heating and cooling system and two LEED certified buildings, among other sustainable features on our campus, we are delighted to join in Tennessee’s efforts to respect the resources we’ve been given. We could not be more pleased to accept this award from Governor Haslam and Commissioner Martineau.”

Syb Brown Delivers Keynote Address at College Debate 2016

Hope Buckner
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Syb Brown Delivers Keynote Address at College Debate 2016

Dr. Syb Brown, professor of journalism at Belmont, was a keynote speaker for the first College Debate 2016 held at Dominican University of California in early June. The event included representatives from higher education institutions across the U.S. Brown’s topic was digital citizenship and civility.

Belmont Vision Editor Riley Wallace also served as a delegate at the debate.

College Debate 2016 is a national, non-partisan initiative to empower young voters to identify issues and engage peers in the presidential election.

Belmont Physical Therapy Earns Reaccreditation

Hope Buckner
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Belmont University’s School of Physical Therapy was recently granted a 10-year reaccreditation term by the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE). This is the maximum length of time granted by the Commission and is reserved for programs that have demonstrated compliance with established criteria and excellent program outcomes.

Focused on the continued improvement of physical therapy education across the country, CAPTE requires programs to engage in a self-study to demonstrate compliance and submit it for review. Additionally, a team of CAPTE reviewers conducts an onsite assessment of the program. The findings of the self-study and the on-site review team are then reviewed by the Commission for determination of accreditation status. This year-long process (undertaken by Department Chair Renee Brown, PhD, PT and the entire physical therapy faculty and staff) included students, graduates, employers, clinical instructors and the Program Advisory committee.

The School of Physical Therapy’s 10-year reaccreditation was awarded on May 4 with no areas of non-compliance or areas for improvement cited. Additionally, the Commission commended the program for the quality of the self-study. The awarding of 10-year reaccreditation indicates that CAPTE recognized the high quality of the program, the caliber of the faculty and staff and the accomplishments of students and graduates.

Dean of the College of Health Sciences and Nursing Dr. Cathy Taylor said, “This is a remarkable accomplishment and well-deserved recognition for Dr. Brown and our exceptional PT faculty, staff, students and graduates.”

Mathematics, Finance Alumnus Receives Scholarship for Ph.D. Program at Oxford

Hope Buckner
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Mathematics, Finance Alumnus Receives Scholarship for Ph.D. Program at Oxford

andrew_trask (2)Andrew Trask, a 2014 Belmont graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Discrete Mathematics and Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance, was recently accepted to the doctoral program in computer science at University of Oxford in England, beginning in October 2016. Trask has received full funding, along with a stipend, from Oxford and will be studying deep learning with Dr. Phil Blunsom, an expert in deep learning and computational linguistics who holds joint appointments at Oxford and Google.

Trask, along with 2014 computer science graduate David Gilmore, presented research at the 32nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) in France last year. Their paper titled, “Modeling Order in Neural Word Embeddings at Scale,” describes the deep neural network built at Digital Reasoning, their employer. Neural networks are computer systems that are modeled after the human brain.

Like the brain, these networks can gather new data, process and react to it. The design for the network is based on ideas Trask developed while an undergraduate at Belmont. The parallel neural network is 14 times larger than the previous world record (built at Google) and performs 40 percent better in a key language-recognition benchmark than any other program.

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