Belmont partnered with Watson Grove Missionary Baptist Church (WGMBC) and 760AM The Gospel for WGMBC’s annual Edgehill ThanksLiving Fellowship Meal, a Thanksgiving celebration that serves the Edgehill community with a side of unapologetic dignity, as well as a hearty meal.

The event created an upscale atmosphere to provide guests with a high-quality dining experience. Servers were dressed in professional waiter attire and host pastors and their wives came in formal evening wear. A live jazz band contributed to the upscale experience and elaborate décor emulated a fine dining atmosphere. All guests left the lunch with a gift bag that contained personal hygiene items, food and winter clothing from area sponsors. In addition to the University helping to host and financially support the event, several students and faculty also volunteered their time to make the event possible.

With more than 200 community members in attendance throughout the day, the event was the largest in the three years since its conception.

“The church has a responsibility to reach out to the community. It is in our DNA to bless the Edgehill Community. We must embrace the reality of sameness; we are all more alike than we are different,” said WGMBC Senior Pastor John Faison.

First-year doctoral students in Belmont’s School of Occupational Therapy recently hosted students and faculty from the Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA) program at Nashville State Community College (NSCC) as part of their preparation for upcoming fieldwork experiences.

Ms. Donna Whitehouse, associate professor and director of NSCC’s OTA program, was joined by OTA students, Ashley Collins, Amber Sevier-Hunt and Chelsey Morton, in sharing information about OTA curriculum, roles and responsibilities of an OTA and supervision guidelines.  The purpose of the class was to familiarize the students with how OTs and OTAs collaborate to deliver occupational therapy services.

Belmont computer science student Christopher Hooper presented a talk, “Learning Programming Online: Where You Could Start and Where You Will Go,” at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Mid-Southeast Chapter Fall Conference in Gatlinburg on Nov. 14.

Hooper discussed available online resources for computer programming education, their uses and where a beginner with no experience could start. Hooper, an adult student taking computer science courses part-time, works full-time as a research assistant in neonatology for the Department of Pediatrics at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Computer Science Professors Drs. Joyce Crowell and William Hooper’s “Hidden Curricula in Computer Science” paper was accepted in the professional division of the conference.  An outgrowth of several years of collaboration, including a joint presentation at the 2012 Lilly Conference on College Teaching, their talk highlighted teaching outcomes that aren’t explicitly stated in course materials or captured in assessment data.