James Al-Shamma, assistant professor of theatre, co-facilitated a panel on Middle Eastern and Middle-Eastern-American theatre and performance at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Annual Conference in Montréal on August 1.
As part of the panel, Al-Shamma presented a paper titled, “The Birth of Modern Iraqi Theatre: Church Drama in Mosul in the Late Nineteenth Century,” co-authored with Amir Al-Azraki of the University of Waterloo.
Patty Whitehead, a recent graduate of the Belmont University College of Law, was recently named as the winner of the 2015 Jon E. Hastings Memorial Award Writing Competition, sponsored by the Tennessee Bar Association’s Environmental Law Section.
The event is a juried competition for the best legal writing on a topic of Tennessee or federal environmental law and is open to law students enrolled in a Tennessee law school. Whitehead’s paper “Opportunities for Environmental Justice Review in Title V Permits Under the Tennessee Air Quality Act” addressed disproportionate air quality among minority and low-income communities.
The competition is sponsored by the Environmental Law Section in memory of Jon Hastings, one of the founding members of the section.
Belmont’s Iota Phi chapter of Alpha Tau Omega accepted the organization’s highest national award, Top Chapter, at ATO’s 150th Anniversary Celebration Weekend in Indianapolis, Indiana on August 8. The chapter also received the Gold Award in Communications Excellence and their fifteenth True Merit honor.
Established in 1969 and given to chapters that meet a high standard in philanthropy, recruitment, brotherhood and scholarship, the True Merit Award is given based on an annual report detailing the year’s accomplishments that is compiled by the chapter. Iota Phi has been awarded the distinction for each of the fifteen years since its chartering. The Communications Excellence award is given to chapters who excel in internal and external communications systems. Belmont received Gold for their use of social media, alumni and parent newsletters and coverage by local news outlets.
The Top Chapter Award is given annually to the single ATO chapter displaying the highest chapter-wide standards. A panel of judges uses the chapters’ Annual Reports to pick their choice for this prestigious award, and the panel then uses each judge’s individual pick to select the winner.
Chapter President and event attendee Robert Storrow said, “Accepting this award was incredibly overwhelming. Not only was winning top chapter a fulfillment of a 15-year vision forged by our founding fathers, but it represented all the never-ending effort so many brothers put forth to achieve such recognition.”
The chapter’s Annual Report described a number of milestones including raising more than $36,000 for their local philanthropy, Blood:Water Mission, a record-breaking total for Belmont Greek Life. Raised by the hosting of four signature events, chapter members also served a total of 11,240 community service hours throughout the past year. In both fall and spring recruitment, Iota Phi achieved record totals for new members using a values-based recruitment model.
A delegation of ten undergraduate chapter members and alumnus Jon Burt were in attendance. The weekend included leadership seminars, networking opportunities and a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo and ended with the annual Awards Banquet.
Bill Cates, a 1971 Belmont alumnus, was recently inducted into the Up With People Songwriters Hall of Fame at the organization’s 50th reunion celebration in Orlando, Florida.
Before finishing his degree at Belmont in, Bill traveled with the newly-formed cast of Sing Out ’66, a musical demonstration that performed across the globe and was eventually re-branded as Up With People.
Cates had been a part of Nashville’s songwriting mill of the ’60s, signed by the legendary Buddy Killen of Tree Publishing. After Sing Out ’66 came through Nashville, 600 Middle Tennesseans came together to write and produce their own show in Belmont’s gymnasium. Cates and friends directed and led the production of Sing Out South and traveled all over Tennessee sparking other Sing Outs. The song “Do You Really Care,” now in the Baptist Hymnal, was the final tune in the show and became part of “Good News,” a musical created for church groups.
The next summer, Cates joined the international cast to write and direct their show. He contributed on several of the show’s most loved and long lasting tunes like “Morning of Time,” “The Wonder of It All” and “With Everything Changing.” Paul Colwell, one of the creators of UWP, said at the induction, “He writes with a warmth and a passion and his tunes are always memorable.”
Belmont College of Pharmacy 2012 alumna Dr. Ali Foster’s “Metabolism and Disposition of Prescription Opioids” was recently published in Forensic Science Review.
Dr. Foster is a Clinical Scientist with Aegis Sciences Corporation in Nashville.
From the young age of 13, rising junior and music business major Maggie Cunin knew she wanted to work for the Vans Warped Tour. This summer, Cunin made her childhood dreams a reality as she served as the tour’s volunteer coordinator, directing 30 to 50 volunteers each day.
“Starting in eighth grade, I got my hands on every book, documentary, magazine… anything that could teach me more about working on the Vans Warped Tour. Eventually, those led me to learning about the music business program at Belmont University. Once at Belmont, I was able to dive into the resources in Nashville, and I met some truly wonderful people,” she said. “Warped Tour’s production company has offices in Nashville, and through a Belmont event, I was able to meet Allison Skiff who handles Tour Marketing and Sponsorship for Warped Tour. I honestly owe her everything.”
The Vans Warped Tour is a traveling music festival where more than 70 bands travel to 40 cities. Kevin Lyman, the tour’s founder, and Lisa Brownlee, tour manager, have been involved for the tour’s 21-year history, and Cunin said she has had the chance to learn from the best through her work with the duo. The tour’s mission relies heavily on non-profit organizations, service and making a difference in the lives of others.
Cunin tries to catch her favorite bands’ sets – Moose Blood, PVRIS and The Kenneths – as often as she can, but she has quickly learned that no day on tour is the same. Her morning starts when she wakes up on a tour bus with 16 other people and ends about twelve hours and miles later, with many surprises thrown in along the way.
Two great lessons have resonated with Cunin through this experience, one being the importance of flexibility. “Working on Warped Tour combines the challenges of an office job with the physical demands of working in 90+ degree heat every day. I have learned to be more direct, more assertive and a better listener. Even in stressful situations, a positive attitude and the ability to be flexible can conquer just about anything,” she said.
The second comes from slowing down and enjoying her time as a student. “I have the rest of my life to enjoy the workforce but such a short time to enjoy learning in a University environment. I think as students we often feel so pressured by ourselves to have five internships and two jobs, but my experience at Warped Tour has taught me to really enjoy being a student.”
In her position, Cunin recruits volunteers from the crowd to cater food in exchange for a backstage pass. She often sees fans’ eyes light up when, backstage, they realize they can make a career out of their passion – music. “I love meeting fans and hearing stories of what Warped Tour means to them. Answering questions and being a friend to tour attendees is such a joy for me. If I can help my volunteers have the best Warped Tour of their lives– to me that is a success.”
Cunin is also the production staff coordinator in Belmont’s Showcase Series and the event manager at Curb Café, which she says has given her the skill set to handle situations on the road. From small things like learning proper walkie-talkie communication, to larger situations like handling dissatisfied show attendees, Cunin said she owes her knowledge of live events to her time at Belmont.
“My advice to a fellow student interested in working for a large music tour would be to approach every single challenge with an attitude of gratitude. Feelings of entitlement or poor work ethic are not appreciated out on the road. If you have a willingness to learn and a respect for those around you, that is instantly noticed and goes a long way,” she said. “Rather than focusing on “networking,” focus on building genuine two-sided relationships with those in your field, and never forget to follow up with a ‘thank you.’ All of these skills become sharpened over time, and I believe that they serve students and fellow music-business hopefuls well.”
In the future, Cunin hopes to continue working in music and touring and is currently looking into the agency side of the music industry- specifically sponsorships and branding for artists. “Being on a music tour has been my goal for years now, so the fact that I am truly getting to live my dream is pretty surreal. My favorite part about touring is the fact that the people I tour and work with every day have truly become my family,” she said. “I have never experienced that kind of camaraderie in my entire life.”
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dr. Duane Hatch and two Belmont students, Ambrose Rice and Ryan Agh, spent 10 weeks at a Department of Energy national laboratory this summer engaged in a research project as a part of the DOE’s Visiting Faculty Program, which Hatch was selected for. On August 4, the students presented their research posters at the 15th Annual Los Alamos National Laboratory Student Symposium. The annual event brings together more than 150 students from universities all over the U.S. and is intended to broaden students’ expertise to prepare them for careers in the science and nontechnical fields.
Agh, a rising senior chemistry major, presented a poster titled “Towards the Concise Syntheses of Selenium- and Tellurium-Containing Tryptophan Analogs for the Elucidation of Protein Structure and Function” and won first place in the research poster competition. Rice, a rising junior biology major, presented a poster titled “Enzymatic Synthesis of Unnatural Amino Acids and Their Bio-incorporation into Selected Proteins.”
Above image: Ryan Agh presents his award-winning research poster.
Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business Professor of Music Publishing Dan Keen was interviewed on local NPR station, WPLN, July 31 to talk about Spotify’s list of the “Nashvillist Artists.” Spotify has started compiling playlists for cities across the world compiled of songs that are distinctive of their respective towns.
Keen said he feels that Nashville’s list under represents Christian artists. “We are the world’s center of Christian music here,” said Keen. “We’re not satellite offices from some office in New York or LA. Christian music is centered here,” he said.
Belmont University is one of the best colleges in the Southeast according to The Princeton Review. The well-known education services company lists Belmont among its 140 “Best in the Southeast” recommended schools in the “2016 Best Colleges: Region by Region” website feature, posted on August 3.
The Princeton Review editors made their selections based on data collected from a survey of administrators at several hundred colleges in each region, as well as staff visits and the perspectives of college counselors and advisors whose opinions the company solicits.
“We chose Belmont and the other outstanding institutions on this list primarily for their excellent academics,” said Princeton Review’s Senior VP-Publisher Robert Franek. “We also gave careful consideration to what students enrolled at the schools reported to us about their campus experiences on our student survey for this project. We designed our 80-question survey to include questions that prospective applicants might ask on a campus visit. Only schools that permit us independently to survey their students are eligible to be considered for our regional ‘best’ lists, and only schools at which we see a strong level of satisfaction among their enrolled students – whom we consider their customers – make it to our final slate of regional ‘best’ college selections.”
About The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review is a leading tutoring, test prep and college admission services company. Every year, it helps millions of college- and graduate school-bound students achieve their education and career goals through online and in person courses delivered by a network of more than 4,000 teachers and tutors, online resources, and its more than 150 print and digital books published by Penguin Random House. The Princeton Review is headquartered in Natick, MA and is an operating business of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI). For more information, visit www.princetonreview.com. Follow the company on Twitter @theprincetonrev.
Sarah Hadzor Worley, a 2013 liberal studies and 2015 Master’s of accountancy graduate and co-founder of Biscuit Love, has recently made headlines with the restaurant’s creation, The East Nasty. Named as bon appetit’s “Best Sandwich of 2015,” this menu item uses one of Nashville’s favorites – fried chicken. Add aged cheddar and sausage gravy, and you’ve got this award-winning delicacy.
As bon appetit said, “How good is it? Let’s just say hour-plus waits on the weekends at this breakfast-and-lunch spot in the Gulch neighborhood are not unheard of. We’d gladly join the line for just one bite of Karl and Sarah Worley’s monument to excess: a slightly-crunchy-on-the-exterior, fluffy, buttery biscuit topped with a ridiculously good piece of fried chicken, which is swaddled in rich sausage gravy, then topped with (you guessed it) the other half of the biscuit. Is it insane to even call this a sandwich? Definitely—that’s why we love it.”
But the hits don’t stop there. Biscuit Love was also included on bon appetit’s recent rankings of “America’s Best New Restaurants,” a list comprised of the truly original, innovative and unexpected across America. According to the organization’s listing, the restaurants all have something in common – “flat out deliciousness.”
Worley said she and her husband, Karl, are both culinary school graduates, so moving into the restaurant business was born out of their shared love for entrepreneurship. Obtaining business degrees after culinary school was an intentional decision to reach their goals sooner. “As for the biscuits, that came from our love of the south, southern food and Nashville.”
With the impressive lists of restaurants included in this year’s ranking, Worley said she and her team are honored to be included. And as for her recommendation for the best item on the menu? Biscuit Love’s hot chicken biscuit – the Princess – or an old tried and true favorite, the hash.
