Massey Graduate School of Business’ team placed fifth overall.
Two Belmont teams participated in the sixth annual Cumberland River Dragon Boat Race on Sept. 29.
Kun Peng Zhan Chi is comprised of students who went on a China study abroad trip and are studying China and the Chinese language. The team name translates to “the great Peng bird spreads it wings and flies;” the Peng bird is significant in Chinese tradition. The Massey Machine represented the Jack C. Massey Graduate School of Business. Last year, The Massey Machine placed second in the race.
Kun Peng Zhan Chi finished the race with a time of 1 minute, 20.329 seconds, ahead of the Confucius Institute at MTSU. The Massey Machine cruised into the final rounds with an extremely fast time of 1 minute, 07.317 seconds. They ultimately finished in fifth place overall, just one second behind the fourth place team.
Participants raced in traditional Chinese dragon boats. Each boat is 46 feet long and holds 20 paddlers, one drummer and one person to control the steering paddle. The Cumberland River Dragon Boat Festival began in 2006 and is put on by the Cumberland River Compact in celebration of their advocacy work. The event lasts throughout the entire day with a number of different events all in celebration of Chinese culture.
Welcoming guests and the campus community with a brass ensemble, Belmont University celebrated today the official grand opening of the new McAfee Concert Hall. Originally built in the 1950s, the building located at 2100 Belmont Blvd. served in recent years as a rehearsal, classroom and practice space for many Belmont music groups as well as the main sanctuary for Belmont Heights Baptist Church. The University purchased the property from the church in 2003, but Belmont Heights continues to meet in the complex. In summer 2011, Belmont began a $9 million renovation of the space in order to provide the campus a new, large concert venue suitable for acoustic performances. The building is now named in honor of the McAfee family, who has supported Belmont University for years and provided the lead gift for the project.
Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher said, “We are incredibly grateful to the McAfee family for their generous gift to make this venue possible. Their commitment to the university has enabled us to build a concert space that matches the high quality of our music programs, and one that will appropriately showcase the amazing talent of our performing arts students. My hope is that the entire Nashville community will be able to enjoy the inspired concerts that will occur in this beautiful new hall.”
Lead donor Carolyn McAfee has served on Belmont’s Board of Trustees since 2006, and her late husband Jim, president and CEO of Hallmark Systems Inc., served on the board from 2002 until his untimely death in 2004. In addition to their time on the board, the McAfees also support Belmont through an endowed scholarship in their name for School of Music students with a major in organ or classical music.
Education Professors Annette Little and Sally Barton-Arwood have returned from Grand Goâve, Haiti where they worked with teachers at Siloë Baptist Church School in collaboration with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and their Haitian partner and translator Jeanson Chery. Little and Barton-Arwood designed and conducted workshops about Professional Learning Communities with elementary and secondary teachers. Teachers learned about characteristics of effective teamwork, developed shared professional goals, and practiced working together as reflective partners. Feedback from school principal Victor Jean Lestin and teachers was very positive. One teacher noted that now, “We have someone else who is thinking about future of Siloë.”
On Sept. 29, the School of Humanities hosted a community service event to practice civility, the topic of this year’s Humanities Symposium. Approximately 75 volunteers, comprised of faculty, staff, students and Parents’ Day visitors, donated time and energy at four different non-profit groups in the Nashville community.
Twenty-five volunteers spent Saturday morning at Second Harvest Food Bank sorting pallets of frozen meat which will be delivered to multiple food pantries across Middle and West Tennessee. Volunteers gladly braved the 34-degree air in the cooler, with a few bursts of 6-degree air when the freezer was opened, in order to help those who have fallen on hard economic times.
Twenty additional volunteers spent the morning organizing donations to Room in the Inn, a downtown facility that provides myriad services to Nashville’s homeless. This group sorted and shelved household goods that will aid Room in the Inn participants in establishing homes; they also prepared scarves, hats, and gloves to be distributed to those who will be living on the streets in the coming winter months.
Eighteen volunteers converged on Hands On Nashville’s Urban Farm in South Nashville for a morning of garden labors. Volunteers cleared a parcel, turned a compost pile, harvested sunflower seeds, cleared beds and planted fall greens. HON’s farm offers more than 100 service opportunities each year and donates its harvests to local nonprofits that represent communities in need. Another volunteer group worked at Richland Urban Farm in West Nashville, spending their morning planting, weeding, bed-building and tilling.
All four groups were able to complete their assigned tasks in less time than expected and were complimented by the site managers on their quick and efficient work. All 75 participants left their work sites with smiles on their faces and increased civility in their hearts.
Biology Professor Steve Murphree gave a lecture at Cheekwood Botanical Garden on Sept. 29 and Oct. 3. The lecture was titled “Migration of the Monarchs – Mariposa Monarchas” and was part of a professional development workshop for teachers at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art’s Learning Center. Each year, monarch butterflies travel 2,000 miles from the Northeastern United States and Canada to a butterfly sanctuary in Mexico. Cheekwood and Vanderbilt’s Center for Latin American Studies have partnered to offer a workshop that focuses on the art, history, geography, culture and biology that is part of this incredible journey. The workshop was titled The Incredible Journey: Exploring the Art, Migration and Traditions of the Monarch Butterfly.
Education Professors Lauren Lunsford, Kate McGowan and David Williams presented “Using Treatment Integrity Checklists with Math Preservice Teachers” at Tennessee Council of Math Teachers in Cookeville, Tenn. on Sept. 21. K-6 and secondary math education interns as well as intern graduates attended the conference.
Lunsford, Flynn-Hopper and McGowan also presented “Methods for Improving Literacy at the Secondary Level” at the Tennessee Council of Teachers of English on Sept. 27 at the Scarritt Bennett Center. Also at the conference on Sept. 28, Lunsford, Bonnie-Smith Whitehouse (English), and Leslie Green, a teacher at Hillsboro High School presented “Strategies to Improve High School Students’ Writing Skills.” In addition, Flynn-Hopper, Lunsford, and McGowan (Education) presented a session entitled “Improving Literacy in the Secondary Classroom.” This session was designed to assist middle and high school teachers in reaching students through a variety of research based strategies, engaging activities, and technology. Teachers throughout the state as well as Belmont University’s Education Interns attended the conference.
Media Studies Associate Professor Sybril Bennett was a panelist addressing Black Women Journalists: A History of Pioneering and Uplifting the Raceat the Association for the Study of African American Life and History annual conference held in Pittsburgh, Pa. She focused on the life of Maria Stewart America’s first African-American female journalist. She wrote for the Liberator published by William Lloyd Garrison.
As part of the Belmont University College of Pharmacy’s global outreach efforts, the college and Director of International Student Services Kathryn Skinner hosted three pharmacy faculty from the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. In 2008, Professor and Pharmaceutical Science Chairman Andy Webster visited Iraq to consult on curricular redesign for colleges of pharmacy in that country. The current visitors, Hiwa Saaed, Kawa Obeid and Naza Mahmood University of Sulaymaniyah are the fourth Kurdish faculty cohort to visit Belmont. The guests learned about the American pharmacy education process and shared their educational experiences with our faculty and students.
Tennessee Voices for Children honored Belmont’s Alpha Sigma Tau with its Volunteer of the Year award on Sept. 20. For three years the sorority has provided volunteers to support Tennessee Voices for Children’s fundraising efforts. Alpha Sigma Tau President Kailey Pearce accepted the award on behalf of the sorority.
During the ceremony, Tennessee Voices for Children honored organizations and people who have made a tremendous positive impact on Children’s Mental Health Initiatives. Tipper Gore organized the non-profit organization in 1990 as a statewide coalition of individuals, agencies and organizations working together as a Steering Council to promote children’s health and education services.
TVC has progressed to become a statewide and national source of referral, support and advocacy for families and the systems that serve them. TVC works collaboratively with parents, professionals, state and federal officials, policy makers as well as Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, Department of Education and Department of Children’s Services to ensure that services provided to children and families in Tennessee are family-driven, community-based and culturally and linguistically competent.
Belmont team wins top prize at event co-hosted by U.S. Department of State; Flagship project Spring Back Recycling gains momentum
Students from Belmont University were named the 2012 World Cup champions this evening in an international entrepreneurship competition in Washington, D.C., beating out the national champions of 37 other countries with a flawless presentation and annual report on their 14 community outreach projects. The Belmont team was formerly known as Belmont SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) until SIFE Worldwide announced its new name, Enactus, this week. Enactus is a community of student, academic and business leaders committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to transform lives and shape a better, more sustainable world.
Belmont President Bob Fisher said, “A National Championship is a big deal—even when it’s the second one in three years—but a World Championship is huge! I couldn’t be more proud of our faculty leadership and especially these absolutely amazing students!!!”
Alvin Rohrs, president and CEO of Enactus Worldwide, said, “I feel great pride for what the Belmont team did… The only thing better than their presentation and their projects this year is how they’ve shown the character they have in how they relate to everyone else. I think that speaks a lot about the University and the caliber of these leaders.”
Once a year, the national champion Enactus teams from around world meet at the Enactus World Cup where they present the results of their community outreach projects to a prestigious group of international business leaders. Through a written annual report and live audio visual presentation, teams are evaluated based on how successful they were at using business concepts to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need. The 2012 Enactus World Cup was held Sun., Sept. 30-Tues., Oct. 2 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., and the event was co-hosted by the U.S. Department of State.
Enactus members Brennon Mobley and Eric Taft celebrate.
Belmont won its opening round Monday and was one of 16 semi-finalists to compete on Tuesday afternoon; the Belmont team was named the World Cup champion at approximately 4:50 p.m. Central. Other top four competitors included India (HR College of Commerce and Economics), Zimbabwe (Midlands State University) and second place finishers Egypt (French University).
This is the second time in three years that Belmont’s team has won the national championship, placing the group as the No. 1 team out of nearly 600 teams in the U.S. The 2012 World Cup provided a showcase of the impact that Enactus teams are achieving around the world and brought together an international network of more than 3,000 student, academic and business leaders from more than 39 countries.
During the 2011-12 academic year, Belmont SIFE, now Belmont Enactus, focused on 14 projects to benefit the local and global communities. They addressed issues including job skills training, small business development and environmental sustainability. The students spent 2,442 volunteer hours developing and completing their projects. In addition, the 42 team members are involved in many other organizations and represent a variety of majors across campus.
