Vice President for Administration and University Counsel Dr. Jason Rogers was honored by the Nashville Business Journal in its 2013 Best of the Bar awards. For this year’s awards, the publication solicited nominees in three size categories, plus a corporate counsel category. Nominees then voted on each other, determining the full list of honorees.

Rogers is nominated in the Corporate Counsel category, along with attorneys from HCA, Vanderbilt, CCA, YMCA, Bridgestone Americas, AT&T Tennessee and Nissan, among others. Honorees will be recognized during a reception June 6 at the Nashville City Club where the three top vote getters will be revealed for each category.

Belmont University Associate Professor of Honors and Coordinator of Leadership Studies Dr. Kristine LaLonde was appointed April 26 to co-lead the new Office of Innovation for Metro Nashville, according to a press release issued by the Office of Mayor Karl Dean.  The office will capture the entrepreneurial and creative energy of Nashville to make Metro Government more transparent, efficient and responsive. La

LaLonde, who will be taking an approved, two-year public service leave from Belmont to launch this new office, said, “During the last six years, I have had the opportunity to learn from entrepreneurial and innovative students every day.  The position with the Mayor’s team will allow me to use that experience in the city to help support new ways to have a real impact.”

Nashville joins local, state and federal government agencies across the country, as well as private sector organizations, that have created offices of innovation in recent years to take advantage of new technology and business practices to improve constituent services and streamline operations. The office will also work in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Community Development on business recruitment and job creation efforts. It will also work with the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhoods to create opportunities for more efficient interdepartmental response to constituent needs.

Coordinator of Research Services Jenny Rushing Mills, who works in the Bunch Library, presented a workshop at the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) conference in Indianapolis on April 11. The goal of the interactive workshop, titled “Riding the RAILS of Rubric Assessment to Keep Information Literacy Learning on Track,” was to enable academic librarians to critique information literacy rubrics and practice the processes of norming, rating and creating customized rubrics. Mills has participated in the RAILS Project (Rubric Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) since 2009 along with librarians from across the country. At Belmont, the AAC&U Information Literacy VALUE rubric has been used to assess student learning in Pharmacy, Nursing and First Year Writing courses.

Dr. Mike Pinter, mathematics professor and teaching center director, was the Invited Lecturer for the 36th Annual Hendrix-Rhodes-Sewanee Undergraduate Mathematics and Computer Science Symposium held at Hendrix College, April 19 and 20. His presentation was entitled “Hats, Hamming and Hypercubes.” Dr. Pinter received his B.A. in Mathematics from Hendrix College in 1981.