During the October celebration of National Physical Therapy Month, approximately 100 Belmont University Physical Therapy students and faculty volunteered for the sixth annual “Dierks Bentley Miles & Music for Kids” event. On Oct. 16, Bentley and more than 1,700 people gathered for his annual charity motorcycle ride to benefit Vanderbilt’s Children Hospital and the Children’s Miracle Network. The ride began at the Columbia Springs Harley Davidson and ended at Riverfront Park in downtown Nashville.

The event ended with a concert by Bentley and some friends (Eli Young Band, Charles Kelley from Lady Antebellum, Colt Ford and Josh Thompson entertaining thousands of fans at Riverfront Park. Event Coordinator Mandy McClister said, “It was definitely another great year, and again we could not have done it without the students from the Belmont University School of PT! The students worked harder this year than ever before to make this a success. The leadership should be proud of the way they have represented the University.”

Bentley was also impressed with the volunteers. “We could not have taken this event to the level it now is without the help of my friend Mike Voight and his students at Belmont University School of Physical Therapy. The Belmont students have been integral to the success of this event from the inaugural ride six years ago to its current size. I look forward to working with them again in the future,” Bentley said.

Since the inception of this annual event, $2 million has been raised to benefit the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Miracle Network.

John Niedzwiecki (Biology) presented research at the 2011 Meeting of the Tennessee Herpetological Society. The meeting was held on Sept. 29-30 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn.  Niedzwiecki’s research was done in collaboration with recent Belmont students,  Lauren Oeser  (2009) and Sara Bentley (2010). The talk was titled “The specificity of the anti-predator response in the streamside salamander, Ambystoma barbouri”. Dr. Niedzwiecki had previously presented this research as a poster at Behavior 2011, the Joint Meeting of the Animal Behavior Society and the International Ethological Conference, held July 25-30th in Bloomington, Ind.

John Niedzwiecki (Biology) and three of his undergraduate research students attended the 2011 Southeast Population Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics Meeting held Oct. 21-23 in Reidsville, N.C. The meeting was hosted by UNC-Chapel Hill.  The Belmont students presented posters at the meeting and were among 70 presentations and over 100 participants in this year’s meeting.  In addition to the poster session the students attended oral presentations from graduate students and faculty from a wide variety of southeastern schools including, UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Greenville, NC State, UGA, Emory, UVA, ECU, UF  and UT. The students enjoyed and learned from the keynote speaker about cooperative breeding birds as “superorganisms” to a final talk summarizing parthenogenesis across snakes.

The Belmont student posters were:
Abader Almowasi’s  poster was titled Habitat perception and the anti-predator response of Physid snail;  Kelsey Grant’s poster was titled Distance perception of a predator though a chemical cue in a Physid snail; Nicholas Kirk’s poster was titled The effect of development on bird diversity along a stream corridor.

On Oct. 8, students from Kim Daus’ (Chemistry) CEM 1050 class (Freshman Chemistry Seminar for Pharmaceutical Studies majors) participated in a Drug Take Back event in Dickson, Tenn., sponsored by the Dickson County Police Department.  People were able to dispose of their  prescription and over-the-counter medications that they no longer needed. The students catalogued and counted thousands of medications.

The Belmont students Vanessa Antonio, Huner Aradini, Katrina Barnett, Sarah Curasco, Brielle Davis, Turner Gerbig, Tiumy Giao, Luke Johnson, Katelyn Jones, Kiki Liss, Katie Lockhart, Mendy Lovelady, Ashley Nemenez, Gerald Offei-Nkansah and Anna Whitwell who participated in the event.