In an article titled “Nurses Take Lead Role in Treating Depression Among Diabetic Patients” on nurse.com, Belmont Associate Professor of Nursing Jamie Adam was interviewed and quoted about depression in diabetic patients due to her recent work on the topic.
Adam provides information on factors that contribute to depression occurrences including poor health, chronic illness, socioeconomic status and unemployment.
To view the article in its entirety, click here.
Belmont Professor of Education Sally Barton-Arwood recently published an article titled “The Role of Mentors in Developing and Implementing High-Quality Field-Based Placements” in Intervention in School and Clinic, a national education journal. The article discussed how university teacher preparation programs can design and deliver comprehensive training for school-based mentors to better support pre-service teachers’ delivery of effective instructional practices.
Allison Storrow, a Belmont University junior and nursing major, was recently awarded one of five Promise of Nursing Scholarships from The Foundation of the National Student Nurses’ Association (FNSNA). Overall, 15 students from three states received the award sponsored by Johnson & Johnson’s Campaign for Nursing’s Future. Since 2002, the campaign has raised more than $18 million for undergraduate student nursing scholarships, faculty fellowships and nursing school grants.
The 15 recipients were selected by a scholarship selection committee, made up of faculty and students, who reviewed the hundreds of submitted scholarship applications. For more information on the FNSNA and its scholarship opportunities, click here.
Belmont Professor of Biblical Studies Mark McEntire recently has his book, An Apocryphal God: Beyond Divine Maturity, published by Fortress Press.
As stated on the book’s cover write-up, “In Portraits of a Mature God, Mark McEntire traced the narrative development of the divine character in the Old Testament, placing the God portrayed at the end of that long story at the center of theological discussion. He showed that Israel’s understanding of God had developed into a complex, multipurpose being who could work within a new reality, a world that included a semiautonomous province of Yehud and a burgeoning Mesopotamian-Mediterranean world in which the Jewish people lived and moved in a growing diversity of ways.
Now, McEntire continues that story beyond the narrative end of the Hebrew Bible as Israel and Israel’s God moved into the Hellenistic world. The ‘narrative’ McEntire perceives in the apocryphal literature describes a God protecting and guiding the scattered and persecuted, a God responding to suffering in revolt, and a God disclosing mysteries, yet also hidden in the symbolism of dreams and visions. McEntire here provides a coherent and compelling account of theological perspectives in the apocryphal writings and beyond.”
Pharmacy Professor Dr. Eric Hobson’s recent trip to Guatemala with three pharmacy students, as well as the work Hobson’s family has done with the Moore Pediatric Surgery Center in Guatemala City, was featured in an article on USA Headline News, titled “Medical Treatment in Guatemala A Family Affair.”
The article describes the history, work and current projects that Dr. Hobson, his twin brother Scott and Scott’s wife are doing for the clinic. “While Eric supervised students and did his walk-through inspection of the building as the foundation’s treasurer and overseer of all the operations and maintenance, Scott and Elaine were making their way from patient to patient, stopping to chat with mothers and children, giving a Bible to each family and praying with them as the child recovered,” said the article.
According to the article, the center hosts hundreds of surgeries each year, many for children that would otherwise face life-long suffering or death from medical problems. Most patients are from Guatemala, but the center has recently worked with children from surrounding countries. Read more about the most recent trip, here.
Belmont University School of Music faculty members Elisabeth Small, violinist and assistant professor of music and coordinator of strings, Dr. Robert Marler, pianist and professor of music and Xiao-fan Zhang, adjunct instructor of cello and member of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, were invited to present ten performances in eight major Chinese cities and venues this summer including Beijing, Jinan, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shantou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xining.
Representing Nashville, Belmont University and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, the trio offered a culturally diverse program that included works by Dvorak, Shostakovich, Corigliano, Debussy, Sibelius, Schubert, Chinese composer Sha Han-Kun and arrangements of Morricone’s “Cinema Paradiso” and “Jasmine Flower” by Nashville orchestrator, Carl Marsh.
The trio led master classes in Shantou, the Nanjing Culture and Art Centre and the Guangzhou Xinghai Conservatory of Music and Small led an additional master class at the Tianjin Conservatory of Music. The tour also included an interview and feature with the trio on regional Chinese television.
For Small, the opportunity to serve and work with students across China through common musical language was invaluable. “Instrumental music reaches the human soul, ministering joy and healing where such communication is not possible through cultural and language barriers. My teaching will be further informed to nurture the merits of working hard for the sake of meaningfulness and purposeful reward,” Small said.
Pictured above: Dr. Marler, Small and Zhang at Shenzhen Concert Hall.
Dr. Amanda Hassen, a 2015 graduate of Belmont University’s School of Occupational Therapy, was featured in a recent article in Today in OT for her work in teaching swimming lessons to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The effort was part of Hassen’s experiential component as a third-year doctoral student in occupational therapy that integrated curricular themes of clinical excellence, scholarship, service and leadership.
Hassen completed her experiential component at Dolphin Aquatics, a nonprofit organization in Nashville that has been teaching swimming to children and adults with special needs for 12 years. Using her background as a swim coach and OT, Hassen designed ’Phins, a sensory-based swim program tailored for children with ASD that continues today.
After graduating in May, Hassen moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where she was offered a job in a private OT practice. She has begun the process to develop a similar program in her new location.
Kenneth Jenkins, a Belmont University Doctorate of Physical Therapy student, recently won the national Pandemic Survival tournament at a gaming convention in Indianapolis for board and card games.
A cooperative board game where players assume the roles of Center for Disease Control specialists working together to cure diseases spreading across the globe, the Survival tournament pits teams playing the same game against each other. The winner is the first team (of two participants) with all four cures.
Jenkins’s win secured he and his teammate a trip to Essen, Germany for Spieltage, the European equivalent to GenCon. While there, the duo will competing against national champions from Italy, Canada, France, among other countries, for the world championships.
Belmont alumnus Trisha Yearwood will be presented with ASCAP’s Voice of Music Award at the organization’s 53rd Country Music Awards, scheduled for Monday, Nov. 2 at Nashville’s Omni Hotel.
The award, presented to “songwriters and artists whose music gives voice to the spirit of a generation,” has been presented to many artists through the years including Amy Grant, Kenny Chesney and George Strait, among others.
But Yearwood’s recent accomplishments don’t stop there. The Music City Walk of Fame will soon be home to two new names – Yearwood and her husband, Garth Brooks – after an induction ceremony on Sept. 10 to honor the duo and their contributions to Nashville and the industry.
In an article recently published by the Tennessean, Mayor Karl Dean is quoted as saying, “Trisha and Garth are two great artists who represent what makes Nashville special. They are musicians. They are entrepreneurs. And they are generous community advocates. The way they care about Nashville is as inspiring as their music. Garth stood strong with the city during the 2010 flood recovery, and we will never forget that.”
With successful hits like “She’s in Love With the Boy,” “XXX’s and OOO’s” and “How Do I Live,” Yearwood is a multiple award-winning artist with an impressive 12 million albums sold.
Rising senior chemistry major Ryan Agh spent ten weeks working on the chemical synthesis of certain enzymes, to create an amino acid analog that contains heavy atoms, so that his classmate, rising junior biology major Ambrose Rice, would be able to incorporate them into proteins. The students’ passion for this concept, one in which some may find difficult to comprehend, set them apart from other students interested in working under Belmont Chemistry Professor Dr. Duane Hatch at the Department of Energy’s Visiting Faculty Program. At the culmination of the summer, the duo presented their research at the 15th Annual Los Alamos National Laboratory Student Symposium, where Agh took home first place for his poster (pictured above).
The students explained the reasoning for their research – to expand the unnatural, synthetic amino acid tool box for scientists to further explore protein structure and function. The heavy, or electron dense, atom helps instruments to better “see” the protein structure and its function. There are a number of applications that immediately affect the general public, but the main purpose of this project was to aid scientists and industry, overall.
Agh’s success at the symposium is one the Belmont community can take pride in. “I think I stood out because I was passionate and knew my research very well. I was confident in my abilities as a chemist, and I think that showed through my presentation. To win, it felt like I showed that even a kid from a small chemistry and physics department can be someone to contend with in a scientific competition,” said Agh. “People don’t think of chemistry or research when they think of Belmont, but I feel like this shows that Belmont has an amazing chemistry program and there are plenty of amazing opportunities for us here.”
Although the students experienced a few adventures along the way including white water rafting and living in their first apartment, Rice said they also realized that work takes dedication and a strong work ethic. “I quickly discovered that ten weeks is not enough time to complete a research project, and sometimes your projects or ideas do not work,” said Rice. “I also learned that science is not a 9-5 job – you finish when you finish. That may mean that you may have to come in early or leave late, but the results will be worth it in the end.”
For Agh, one of the most meaningful parts of the summer was successfully completing experiments. “My most memorable moment was when I first successfully used the NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), and hit a spectrum that even Dr. Hatch was proud of. That meant not only that I used the instrument correctly, but also that my synthesis formed the correct product, and I purified it well by myself!” said Agh.
Both students have plans to return to Los Alamos National Lab before they start their journey into graduate and medical school, working toward PhDs. Agh went on to say he wants to spend time traveling after graduation before finishing school, but would love to teach and research at a school like Belmont. “I think the ability to inspire and excite young minds to pursue a career in science would be the most rewarding career I could have,” he said.
