Dr. Beth Hallmark and Dr. Sharon Dowdy are co-authors of an article published this month in Nursing Education Perspectives, a bi-monthly journal of the National League for Nursing.  Dr. Hallmark is director of the College of Health Sciences Simulation Center, and Dr. Dowdy is an associate professor in the School of Nursing.

The study explored the effects of deliberate practice on the retention of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) psychomotor skills among nursing students. The practice sessions were short, six minutes a session one time a month. Differences in performance between students who had deliberate practice and a control group, with no practice beyond the initial training, were compared every three months for one year. The intervention group performed better than the control over the 12 months. There is a need in nursing education for deliberate practice of relevant and high-use skills for students to improve their performance and gradually develop their expertise.

The article can be viewed at the National League for Nursing website.

Creative Writing professor and poet Gary L. McDowell has had several poems and essays published recently. These include:

• Barn Owl Review: “December,” a poem, will appear in issue No. 5
• Black Tongue Review: poems, “Always Being Born,” “Orderly in a Wheelchair,” and “The Tough Parts,’ will appear in issue No. 3.
• Burnside Review: “Of Wind,” a poem, in issue No. 7.2
• Copper Nickel: two poems, “Vasko Popa” and “After Watching Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child,” will appear in issue No. 17
• Hotel Amerika: a poem, “The Painter Goes for a Swim,” (to be published this winter)
• The Tusculum Review: three “Dear Obsessions,” “The Windows Are Always Open,” and “Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None” in issue No. 8 
• Mid-American Review: book review, “Review of Carol Guess’s Darling Endagered“
• HTMLGIANT: an essay, “On Using Hybrid Texts to Lead the Creative Writing Classroom: Some Notes Toward a Pedagogy”
• Ancora Imparo: an essay (and two poems, “Downspout” and “Catholic Parking Lot”), “Some Notes on ‘Downspout’ and ‘Catholic Parking Lot’,” (to be published)
• Pebble Lake Review: an essay, “Before Daddy Walks Through the Door: On Where I Write”

Philosophy Assistant Professor Noel Boyle will receive a Distinguished Alumnus award at Grand Valley State University in late October. He will also present a paper in the Philosophy Department Colloquium Series called “Jackson’s Dual Stipulation: The Incoherence of the Description of Mary.” As part of the award celebration, Boyle will also be talking with some current Grand Valley students about how his time at GVSU shaped his life and career.

Located in Allendale, Mich., Grand Valley State University is a comprehensive public university, with a strong liberal arts tradition.  There are over 25,000 students. Boyle was a student at GVSU from 1991-1996, graduating with a double major in philosophy and social science. Two years later, Boyle returned to GVSU as a full-time visiting instructor, a position he held for ten years, before coming to Belmont in 2008.

Philosophy Professor Mark Anderson  is producing a series of translations for a collection of Near-Eastern, Greek and Roman Mythology to be published by Oxford University Press and edited by Carolina Lopez-Ruiz, associate professor of Greek and Latin at The Ohio State University. He will translate the “myths” from Plato’s Protagoras, Symposium, Republic and Timaeus. He has been awarded a course release for next spring to work on the translations.