Public Relations Instructor Susan Barnes was elected secretary of the Public Relations Society of America College of Fellows. The Fellows is a selective group of senior practitioners and educators who have at least 20 years of experience in public relations and have earned accreditation.
Convocation Lecture Brings Dr. Al Gini to Belmont
“In work, we create both the product and the person,” noted speaker Al Gini said during his convocation lecture Wednesday titled “Work, Identity and Self.” A professor of business ethics and the Chair of the Department of Management at Loyola University in Chicago, Dr. Gini spoke on the impact of work on the human spirit, not just the impact on the wallet.
He said that as a society, we rarely invite reflections on the nature of the work we do; rather, we’re only trained to work and expected to perform. Dr. Gini said in that routine we lose the most important aspect of work, creating ourselves.
He said he believes there is a direct correlation between our quality of life on the job and off. Since individuals spend so much time working, if the work is not enjoyed then chances are day-to-day life won’t be either. Dr. Gini concluded his lecture noting, “Don’t give up on your integrity… don’t let that happen to you.”
Belmont Co-Hosts Nashville’s First Annual Fringe Festival
Nashville’s Actors Bridge Ensemble, a professional theatre company in full time residence at Belmont, is hosting the first annual Sideshow Fringe Festival: Music City’s Progressive Performing Arts Event Sept. 29-Oct. 2. The first of its kind in Nashville, the festival joins the National Association of Fringe Festivals and is part of the city-wide Artober celebration.
Organized and led by three Belmont theatre alumni–Jessika Malone, Mitch Massaro and Jackie Johnson–the festival’s 41 events will be held at Belmont’s Troutt and Black Box Theaters, as well as at Bongo Java’s After Hours Theatre and on a Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood stage. Over 50 percent of the actors and volunteers for the weekend are current Belmont students.
According to the Nashville Scene, “Actors Bridge Ensemble paves the way for Music City’s entry into the genre, providing a forum for aerial dancers, jugglers, fire eaters, magicians and puppeteers, plus Caffeinated Theatre (a live-theater version of the 48 Hour Film Project), stand-up comedy, original scripts and storytelling, and one-woman shows from singer Annie Sellick and writer-choreographer Gabrielle Saliba. Music, visual art and workshops are also part of the celebration.”
Passes can be purchased online for the entirety of the four-day weekend, and individual tickets for performances can be purchased at the door. The outdoor festival activities are free to the public. For more information about the festival or to see a complete schedule, click here.
Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn Kicks Off Copyright Forum
U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn presented a briefing on the Commerce Committee’s anti-piracy efforts to Belmont University students, faculty and administrators sitting alongside Nashville songwriters Thursday at the Quonset Hut Studio on Music Row.
“It is imperative that we look for ways to give you some certainty that you are going to have some protection under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and some consistency and for you to know what those enforcement mechanisms are going to be,” Blackburn said.
In updating industry insiders and educators on music piracy and other copyright issues, she directed their attention to the Protect IP Act moving through the U.S. Senate and soon to be introduced in the House of Representatives chamber.
The legislation, also known as the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011, aims at disrupting the business model of rogue websites, especially those registered outside the country.
“We need to send the message loud and clear that the United States is going to stand with protecting our creators and protecting the product that they create and that they are compensated for that creation,” Blackburn said.
She also applauded the recent work of Tennessee legislators to make it a misdemeanor to share passwords for subscription-based streaming sites like Netflix and Rhapsody.
“People must realize the Internet is not the Wild West,” she added. “The Internet is a marvelous virtual marketplace, and it allows many of our innovators access to a global marketplace.
As social networking websites and music clouds evolve and may merge, Blackburn also said it is important for lawmakers to evaluate end users and connect their uses of entertainment and technology to compensation for creators rather than evaluating technology, which is constantly changing.
The Copyright Forum brings real world marketplace and legislative information and events to Belmont’s campus. Belmont’s students and faculty will in turn provide energy, ideas and feedback to help shape the future of the music industry.
“The overarching mission of the forum is to advance the American copyright debate by encouraging participation from all of the stakeholders, from all sides of the music entertainment industry. To do so, we intend to and will embed copyright in the day-to-day curriculum at the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business,” said the college’s Dean Wesley Bulla.
The Nashville Songwriters Association International and Belmont University announced in July a collaboration to host copyright and intellectual property forums to discuss solutions for the huge illegal file-sharing problem devastating the entertainment industry.
Hinton Appointed to APTA Finance and Audit Committee
Dr. Cathy Hinton, School of Physical Therapy professor, was appointed to the American Physical Therapy Association’s (APTA) Finance and Audit Committee. The APTA is the national organization that represents physical therapists within the United States. The appointment is for a four-year term, and the committee is tasked with providing the Board of Directors of the APTA with advice and counsel regarding financial commitments in light of the association’s strategic plan. To provide that overview role, the members of this committee are involved with review of the association’s income, expenditures and investments.
Simulation Event Exposes Belmont Students to Realities of Poverty
On Monday, student leaders from throughout the Belmont community participated in a poverty simulation event co-hosted by the Honors Program’s Leadership Studies program and Catholic Charities. The highly interactive simulation was intended to give students a small taste of what life is like on an extremely limited income. For one hour, participants were asked to join the nearly 40 million U.S. citizens who live with incomes below the poverty line, and through role-playing they faced some of the many challenges that confront real low-income families.
The simulation opened with representatives from Metro Social Services and Catholic Charities sharing statistics on poverty throughout the world as well as locally. Students were then assigned “roles” and “families” and spent the next hour—broken into four 15-minute weeks—attempting to go to work, pay bills, send children to school and deal with unexpected hardships.
Metro Social Services Dinah Gregory explained, “This simulation is intended to help students identify with the poor. Poverty can happen to any of us at any time.”
Junior nursing major Jennifer Thompson took part in the event, which was titled “Knowing Our Neighbors: Coming to Understand Poverty in Our Community.” During the simulation she played the role of a married grandmother who took care of two grandchildren; the grandfather in the family had mobility issues so Jennifer worked full-time while the grandchildren attended school.
“I’ve done evaluations like that before but not one so personal where you are physically carrying out those roles,” Thompson said. “I knew it was hard and stressful, but being put in that situation made a world of difference… [It was challenging] trying to balance all the errands necessary to accomplish in one day, with work, getting food, paying bills, etc. It was extremely difficult to pay all the bills, and by the fourth week we were evicted and the granddaughter was in jail.”
Debt Slavery Continues Cycle of Poverty
Modern circumstances of poverty emulate debt slavery structures from Biblical times, Dr. Mark McEntire told students during a Monday morning convocation using the Old Testament to examine the University’s 2011-2012 theme of Wealth and Poverty.
“Although many of you do community service, that (work) deals with the pain and poverty caused by this system (of debt slavery),” said McEntire, who teaches Old Testament and Hebrew in Belmont’s School of Religion. Instead, students should go beyond volunteerism and find solutions to eliminate the cycle of debt and poverty.
His lecture began with an examination of Hammurabi’s Law Code, which is one of the oldest legal texts and the first text to regulate poverty more than 3,800 years ago. Law No. 117 defines debt slavery as a means for the poor to work to pay back what they owe.
Written 1,000 years later, the Covenant Code laid the regulations of debt slavery in Exodus 21:2-6. A man serves for six years and becomes free on the seventh year, similar to the principles of Sabbath. Written two hundred years later, the Deuteronomic Code includes women in debt slavery regulations in Deuteronomy 15:12-18. Later in the Holiness Code in Leviticus 25:39-44, the poor working off their debts go free and are returned to the land of their ancestors in the Year of Jubilee.
“In the Bible, we have a description of a culture where there have always been slaves, and slavery will always exist. There are only simple improvements,” McEntire said. “Here, slavery and economic hardship are connected together exclusively with explicit regulations. These texts may have the power to help us focus our questions and reveal answers that we otherwise might not see.”
Although cattle slavery, or involuntary servitude, is illegal or hidden in most parts of the world, debt slavery is built into modern laws, similar to Biblical texts. McEntire drew comparisons between Biblical debt slavery and modern bankruptcy laws.
“We should ask, ‘who is our system for?’ and ‘what is it designed to do for people?’” he challenged students to consider.
This academic year, many academic lectures and programs explore the origins and effects of wealth and poverty as well as the social and ethical implications of each. The EthixRox convocation series will continue Oct. 31 with a Wealth, Poverty and New Testament convo and in November with a Hunger Breakfast.
Alumnus Named Chair of Voice Department at SMU
Clinton Forbis, a world-renowned operatic tenor and Belmont School of Music graduate, has been appointed chair of the voice department in the Division of Music at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts.
“Clifton Forbis has an international reputation in the opera field, and we are thrilled to have someone of his caliber and accomplishments as our new head of voice,” said José Bowen, dean of the Meadows School.
A dramatic tenor, Forbis is internationally known as a performer of some of the most demanding tenor repertoire in opera.
Forbis attended William Jewell College in Missouri and earned his B.A. in vocal performance from Belmont. He later attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and then transferred to SMU to complete his Master of Music degree in vocal performance in 1990. Two years later he completed the post-graduate program at the Juilliard School of Music Opera Center in New York.
Philosophy Professor Published in Book
Philosophy Assistant Professor Melanie Walton is publishing “Re-creation: The Phenomenology of Guerilla Gardening” in the book “Placing Nature on the Borders of Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics” edited by Forrest Clingerman and Mark H. Dixon from Ashgate Press released this month.
Belmont Hosts First Health Fair Oct. 5
Belmont University Health Services will host a five-hour health fair next month to put wellness and preventive health resources within reach of employees and students.
“This is an in-house health fair just for the campus community primarily involving the College of Health Sciences, University Ministries and Beaman Fitness Center. This event is intended to be a kickoff for a year of monthly seminars on health and wellness as well as current events in health care and to show people the unique resources we have right here on our campus,” said Director of Health Services Katy Wilson.
The fair, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 5 in the McWhorter Hall and the Gordon E. Inman Center lobbies, will include free health screenings and 35 booths. Students can receive up to two personal and professional growth convocation credits – one credit for visiting booths at the fair and another credit for sitting in on one of three lectures. Chris McKnight and Shanna Harris will present “Abuse of Bath Salts” at 10 a.m. in McWhorter Hall room 110. Jenny Cooper will present “Maximizing Your Relationship with Your Healthcare Provider” at 10 a.m. in McWhorter Hall room 109. There will also be a session titled, “10 Things Every College Student Needs to Know About Their Health” at 10 a.m. in McWhorter Hall room 108.
Wilson added, “This kind of event goes along with the National Prevention Strategy of America’s Plan for Better Health and Wellness, which includes healthy eating and fitness, through the (U.S.) Department of Health and Human Services.”
Opportunities throughout the day include: blood pressure, glucose, lipids and bone density screenings; backpack awareness and CPR demonstrations; and information on tobacco cessations, breast cancer awareness, counseling, healthy eating, self defense and recreation.
Wilson said Health Services plans to host a similar health fair during a spring basketball game to reach Belmont’s neighbors and sports fans.
Click here for additional information on the Health Fair.
