Dr. Susan West, vice president and chief of staff, was recently selected to be a member of Leadership Nashville’s Class of 2015. The 44 members of the coming year’s class were selected from more than 215 applicants. The Leadership Nashville Foundation was founded in 1976 as an independent, executive leadership program to give community leaders a three-dimensional view of the city. The goals of Leadership Nashville are to build channels of communication between established leaders, connect leaders to community issues and equip participants with insights.

Each person elected to participate in Leadership Nashville makes an extensive time commitment. Attendance is mandatory for the nine-month program that begins in September. The Opening Retreat is in early October and the Closing Retreat is early June. Between these retreats are seven monthly meetings that average 13 hours each on the first Thursdays of November through May. Participants also work in study groups and present a report at the closing retreat.

In addition to considering Nashville’s strengths that have put it on national lists of outstanding places to live and work, the program also looks at issues that face this city, indeed all municipalities: problems such as crime, affordable housing, school finances, racial tensions, transportation and arts funding. Throughout the year the class will hear approximately 125 speakers and makes on-site visits to all parts of the city.

Lacey Lyons, an adjunct English instructor, presented on the ways in which life changes affect health at the 12th Annual Tennessee Disability MegaConference. Topics of discussion included the methods people with disabilities and people who care for them use to plan for positive or negative life changes. Participants discussed the times life changes have affected their management of their disabilities, and the group talked about emergency measures they take to cope with disorders during times of change or upheaval.”

Dr. Nathan Webb, assistant professor of communication studies, recently was  published in the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. His article examined how college-level instructors build rapport with students in the classroom. In addition, Webb recently traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to present at the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning conference. His presentation focused on his research on instructor self-disclosure on social networking sites.

English Assistant Professor Gary L. McDowell recently won the 2014 Neil Shepard Prize in Creative Nonfiction from “Green Mountains Review.” In addition to a monetary prize, his lyric essay, “An Eye that Never Closes in Sleep: A Nightbook,” will be published in the Spring 2015 issue of “Green Mountains Review.” His poem, “Echolocation,” was a finalist in Yemassee’s Pocataligo Poetry Contest.  Also, his poetry manuscript, “Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None,” has been a runner-up or finalist in several contests this spring including the Permafrost Prize from University of Alaska Fairbanks Press, the Poets Out Loud Prize from Fordham University Press, the Maxine Kumin Memorial Prize from C&R Press, and The Burnside Review’s Book Prize.

Alumna Susan Bay (’13) has received the the prestigious Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, known as the German Academic Exchange Service scholarship, and will spend the 2014-2015 academic year at Technical University Dresden. Bay graduated from the Honors Program in the Project LEAD program with a degree in classical voice performance in May 2013.

Belmont students Cailey Norris, Miranda Richardson and Trey Gwaltney also will study at Technical University Dresden. During the past 12 years, an average of two Belmont students annually received smaller DAAD scholarships, worth about 1,250 Euros a semester, through the Technical University Dresden to support their studies.