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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Alumna Basden Advances to Live Round of ‘The Voice’

9554_980731651996599_4382434863022640617_nAlumna Katie Basden is competing on Judge Blake Shelton’s team of NBC’s “The Voice,” and she has officially made it to the Live Rounds. Basden will perform April 11, and the show begins at 7 p.m.

For those who are unfamiliar with the show setup, each team has six people on it at the current Knockout round. As the Live Shows begin, 24 contestants will be cut to 12, based primarily on America’s vote.  The top two contestants with the most votes on each team will make it through, then the coach gets to save one more. A 14-hour voting window follows the show’s airing.

Voting can occur on The Voice Official App, the Facebook page or on the show’s website.  Lastly, download Basden’s performance on iTunes. All of these will add up to 40 votes per person.

Follow Basden on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with her progress, and download The Voice Official App to vote for the contestant during the live voting portion of the show.

Belmont Student on Next Generation Mobility Challenge Winning Team

Net Impact recently partnered with Toyota to engage students on bringing sustainability to the transportation industry. The Next Generation Mobility Challenge was held at Vanderbilt University on Friday, March 18, an opportunity for only 50 students to spend 7 hours in interdisciplinary teams to create innovative solutions to make the transportation industry more socially and environmentally sustainable. Participating teams pitched to Toyota and mobility experts and the national winning team received an internship with Toyota’s innovation partners.

JP Hechter, a Belmont senior audio engineering technology major and computer science minor, was a member of the challenge’s winning team. Michael Kranzlein, a Belmont senior with a computer science and French double major, also participated and came in second place. Hechter’s team will ultimately compete in a national event for the Toyota internship opportunity.

Kranzlein said, “Overall, the event was fantastic! Logistically, everything was very smooth, and I could tell that the event truly was about innovation. There was great representation across all disciplines and from quite a few schools.”

Mathematics Faculty and Students Present at MAA Southeastern Section Meeting

Students and faculty from the Mathematics & Computer Science Department recently attended the Mathematical Association of American’s Southeastern Section (MAA-SE) meeting March at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Dr. Andy Miller, chair and professor of mathematics, and Dr. Ryan Fox, assistant professor of math and education, led a three-hour workshop titled “Projects and Case Studies to Promote Quantitative Literacy.” Dr. Brad Schleben, assistant professor of mathematics, gave a talk on “Infinite Wedge Representations of a Lie Superalgebra.”

Students Kailee Gerzema, Savannah Halliday and Katie Kruzan presented on “Unique Opportunities for Growth and Collaboration via a Math/CS Club.” Two students gave undergraduate research presentations including Jonathan Hesser on “3D Hyperstereo Image Stitching” and Tucker Dowell on “Exploring Ramsey Theory.”

Allison Hardee, Halliday, Dowell, and Katie Kruzan formed Belmont’s Math Jeopardy tournament team. Dr. Sarah Ann Fleming, associate professor of mathematics, served as their sponsor. Belmont’s team earned one of the “wild card” spots in the second round where they were defeated by Berry College.

Magruder and Robinson Published in Physical Research Journal

Drs. Robert Magruder and Steve Robinson, (physics), co-authored a paper that was recently published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms. The paper is titled “Effects of excess oxygen on the 4.5–6.3 eV absorption spectra of oxygen-rich high purity silica.

Lovgren Published in International Journal of Operations Research and Information Systems

robin_lovgrenDr. Robin Lovgren, assistant professor of mathematics, recently had a paper published in the International Journal of Operations Research and Information Systems.  The Journal examines current, state-of-the art advances in the interactions, linkages, applications and support of operations research with information systems. Covering emerging theories, principles, models, processes and applications within the field, this journal provides practitioners, educators, and researchers with an international collection of all operations research facets.

The paper is titled “AEGISi – Attribute Experimentation Guiding Improvement Searches Inline Framework” and was co-authored with Michael Racer from the University of Memphis. 

Mathematics Faculty Present at Joint Mathematics Meetings

Several mathematics faculty members recently presented at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle, Washington. The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS) combine for the Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM), the largest Mathematics meeting in the world. Dr. Andy Miller helped organize and moderate a contributed paper session on “Quantitative Literacy in the K-16 Curriculum” and presented “Connecting quantitative literacy to financial literacy in the community” in the MAA session on Bringing the Community into the College Mathematics Classroom.

Dr. Maria Neophytou presented “Helping students see connections between mathematics and other disciplines through a fun teaching exchange project,” based on work she has done with several Belmont colleagues in multiple departments. New mathematics faculty member Dr. Brad Schleben co-organized a MAA Project NExT workshop on “Designing an original course.”

Drs. Mike (mathematics) and Robbie Pinter (English) gave a joint presentation on “Contemplative practices in mathematics: It’s not just a breathing exercise” in the MAA Session on Contemplative Pedagogy and Mathematics, Contributed Paper Session. Pinter also presented “Hats, hamming and hypercubes” in the MAA Session, Helping Students See Beyond Calculus.

Wells Receives Scholarship to Beijing Language and Culture University

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Belmont senior Jackson Wells, who has spent the last four summers performing in China while transitioning from student artist to rising star overseas, has received a scholarship to study at Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU). BLCU is home to approximately 10,000 international students from different countries that come to join the 6,000 Chinese students on campus every year. Since its founding in 1962, the University has been an academic base for language and cultural research and the cradle for talent in China. University alumni include Kassem Tokayev, the current United Nations deputy secretary-general and director-general of the United Nations Office at Geneva; Mulatu Teshome Watto, Ethiopian President; Karim Massimov, prime minister of Kazakhstan; Igor, Russian deputy minister of foreign affairs; Kubin, German sinologist and Eric Cornell, American physicist and Nobel laureate.

Wells has gained popularity in China for his original compositions which he performs in both English and Chinese. He is committed to four festivals in China this spring, including the fourth annual Taihu Music Festival, featuring musicians from 30 countries with over 12,000 attendees per day. He will also be performing several sets for the fifth consecutive year at the four-day Chengdu International Music Festival.

Faculty Present at National Conference of the Asian Studies Development Program

Belmont was recently represented at the 25th anniversary meeting of the National Conference of the Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP) of the East-West Center in Washington, D.C.. The faculty directors from Belmont’s 2015 summer China Trip, which featured an embedded research team of undergraduate psychology students, made presentations of their own research in a panel entitled “Filiality, Social Dominance, and Gender.”

Dr. Qingjun Li, assistant professor of Asian studies and Chinese language, presented “Revival of Filial Piety in China’s Society and Mass Media.” Dr. Pete Giordano, professor of psychology, presented “Social Dominance and Traditional Gender Roles: Findings from China and the U.S.”  Dr. Ronnie Littlejohn, professor of philosophy and director of Asian studies, presented “Transmission of Teachings on Exemplary Filiality in Chinese Popular Culture.”

The Asian Studies Development Program works with faculty from over 600 colleges and universities in the U.S. and over 60 universities in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Belmont is one of 17 universities designated as an ASDP Regional Center in the U.S.

Beasley Blogs for HuffPost

Alex Beasley HuffPostSenior music business major Alex Beasley is a business student turned health and fitness professional who has recently blogged about her expertise on sleep for Huffington Post’s blog, HuffPost. Her two articles thus far are “How to Sleep Like a Caveman” and “You are What You Sleep.”

On April 22, Belmont will host a stop of Arianna Huffington’s “Sleep Revolution” college book tour. The book is about the dangers of sleep deprivation and strategies to counter them. Huffington knows how widespread sleep deprivation is on college campuses, and she wanted to hear from a student on every campus she was visiting about their experiences and what they observe about sleep among students. As Belmont’s Fitness & Recreation Department has worked closely with this event, Director Jaime Zeller asked students to write for HuffPost and Beasley responded. The organization’s director of college outreach felt Beasley was a good match for the content and style of the blog, and her profile was set up and published three days later.

Beasley also runs her own blog, “For the Love of Strength,” providing accessible fitness, lifestyle and nutrition ideas for readers. Beasley explained she began the blog as she realized her lack of a creative outlet for her love of writing and after she noticed the trend in the fitness industry influencing women to realize their capabilities and strength.

“That’s where my blog title comes from. I want to help women love their bodies because they love how strong they are, both physically and mentally – not because they are having to compare themselves to arbitrary societal standards,” she said. “Writing for my blog has not only awakened a creative spirit that I had turned away from, but it has highlighted the importance of human connection and understanding.”

Beasley is a nationally certified personal trainer and is currently continuing her education at level one of NASM Women’s Fitness Specialist and Precision Nutrition. “For the articles on HuffPost, I start with personal experience and then research other people or organizations who are living out those practices as well to cite and give just a little more validity to what I’m putting out there,” she said. “When I began working in the health & fitness field, I made it a point to ‘walk the talk.’ I never tell someone to do something that I hadn’t or wouldn’t if the situation were reversed. Of course there are some exceptions to that rule, but if I put it out there as advice to others, I’m most likely walking the talk.”

Dr. Jennifer Wiseman Speaks on the Harmony of Faith and Science

Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, senior astrophysicist at NASA, spent Wednesday morning speaking to faculty, staff and students in Belmont’s Wedgewood Academic Center. During the standing room only Chapel presentation, Wiseman addressed the importance of incorporating both science and theology into understanding the universe.

As a child, Wiseman said she loved nature and was always curious about the world around her, but it wasn’t until she started college that she began to understand astronomy as a career. In graduate school, Wiseman studied the subject more in-depth leading to her career as a Johns Hopkins professor, NASA astrophysicist and director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion. Currently, Wiseman’s work at NASA includes her position as senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, a telescope currently traveling around the Earth collecting images of space for scientists.

Working among a team of other astrophysicists, Wiseman said she is passionate about her projects as she seeks to understand our vast universe and answer questions that continue to be posed. When it comes to the universe’s purpose and the place of human beings within it, Wiseman gave a nod to John Calvin’s belief that astronomy and theology are closely linked and quoted the theologian saying, “For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God.”

Wiseman doesn’t see the many unanswered questions of space or the enormous nature of our universe as a reason to doubt her faith–instead, she sees it as a reason to strengthen it. “We will likely never visit other planets,” Wiseman said. “But through science, we can have the ability to understand our universe. It’s a sign of God’s love and in turn, we’ll turn that back into praise for our God.”

In closing, Wiseman encouraged attendees to look to God with their love for science and find the natural harmony between astronomy, or any form of science, and theology. “Our own planet is precious,” Wiseman said. “Let us praise God for the Universe and let us praise God for the gift of science that lets us explore and understand our Universe.”

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