Physical Therapy Professor Mike Voight recently gave a keynote address to more than 100 medical clinicians in Dublin, Ireland on the topic of Golf Fitness. Pictured with Dr. Voight are Lance Gill, head athletic trainer for Titleist Golf Company, and Padraigh Harrington, a three-time major champion and past PGA player of the year who is currently ranked among the top 10 players in the world.
Voight Speaks on Golf Fitness in Ireland
Fishers Share Insights on ‘Life Is a Gift’
Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher and his wife Judy spoke this morning in Neely as part of the Spiritual Development Speaker Series, sharing stories and insights from their 2009 book release, Life Is a Gift: Inspiration from the Soon Departed. The book features a collection of interviews and lessons learned from 104 terminally ill patients of Alive Hospice in Nashville.
Judy Fisher opened the convocation by recalling Adam White, the longtime boyfriend of the Fishers’ daughter. White was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on New York City, but the memory of how he lived, with passion and vigor, lives on. “He truly lived like there was no tomorrow,” Mrs. Fisher said, noting that his example inspired the book. “We were just left asking ‘Why doesn’t everyone live like that?'”
Dr. Fisher added, “[His death] broke our hearts. For awhile I didn’t understand what was going on with me or how I felt about it. Adam inspired us to take a fresh look at everything.”
From their interviews with Alive Hospice patients, the Fishers transcribed more than 400,000 words. The conversations with patients like 5-year-old Maddie or the 98-year-old man who spent his last weeks learning Hungarian followed a standard question-and-answer formula: What are you most proud of? What has been your greatest joy? What has been your greatest disappointment? What do you regret? If you could give one message to the world, what would it be?
According to the Fishers, a few common themes that emerged were relationships, faith, forgiveness and gratitude. “The community needs the dying to force us to think about eternal issues and to make us listen,” Dr. Fisher said. “These connections taught us so much.”
Griswold Advocates for Global Trade
Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., delivered the keynote address for Belmont’s inaugural International Business Symposium Friday on his new book, Mad About Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization.
Griswold opened his talk by describing how Americans should challenge populist economics. He described how he examined the 120 items in his closet and found that only 10 items were made in America, nine of which were neckties. Griswold challenged the audience to do the same to their closets. Griswold’s closet example shows how the American economy is one based on global trade, and globalization is actually good for the economy.
“We have voted with our dollars for participation in the global economy,” Griswold said. He later added, “Trade today is the working family’s best friend.”
Schlosser Provokes Thought on Food Manufacturing, Consumption
More than 500 people turned out to Belmont Heights Baptist Church on Monday night to hear from Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and co-producer of Food, Inc. Schlosser’s visit was part of Belmont’s ongoing campus-wide academic theme for 2009-10, “A Paradise Lost.”
Schlosser opened the evening by declaring, “What I’m going to say isn’t intended to answer questions as much as to provoke them… I want you to think of sustainability in terms of practices each of us employs in our daily lives. It doesn’t just apply to the land or our environment but also to ourselves.”
He then proceeded to discuss the unhealthy patterns related to food production and consumption, patterns that began in the past few decades with the rise of fast food chains. In particular, he focused on the concepts of uniformity, conformity, speed and efficiency that these chains practice with the food they make and sell, adding that since the fast food inception the incidence rates of obesity, food borne illness and food poisoning have been on the rise.
Illustrating the dangers behind such production entities as factory farms and genetically-modified corn, he noted, “There’s been more change in our food in the past 40 years than in the previous 40,000… Knowledge is power, and that’s why these companies don’t want you to have it. The aim of my work isn’t to tell people what to do, but to make people think about their choices.”
As an investigative journalist, Schlosser tries to give a voice to people at the margins of society. His aim is to shed light on worlds that are too often hidden. Schlosser’s first book, Fast Food Nation (2001), helped start a revolution in how Americans think about what they eat. It has been translated into more than 20 languages and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. Schlosser also served as an executive producer and co-wrote the feature film Fast Food Nation (2006), and he was a co-producer of the award-winning documentary, Food, Inc., a film about how complicated and compromised the once simple process of growing crops and raising livestock has become.
Guest Speaker Lilienfeld Analyzes Pseudoscientific Claims
Dr. Scott Lilienfeld, professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, visited Belmont on Feb. 11 and 12 and gave a talk titled “Science and Pseudoscience in Everyday Life: A Field Guide for Evaluating Extraordinary Claims.” Lilienfeld is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and a recipient of the 1998 David Shakow Award for Early Career Contributions to Clinical Psychology from Division 12 of the American Psychological Association. His research interests include personality disorders, psychiatric classification, and pseudoscience in psychology. The author of numerous scientific articles and books, his most recent book, a co-authored volume titled 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior (2010, Wiley-Blackwell), is widely acclaimed for its ability to communicate complex ideas to the public.
In his formal talk on Friday, Lilienfeld highlighted the challenges of telling the difference between scientific and pseudoscientific claims in everyday life. In a world saturated with pop psychology ideas, it is increasingly important to distinguish truth from fiction, he argued. By adopting an attitude of open-minded skepticism, Lilienfeld encouraged the audience to become scientifically literate and offered rules of thumb for distinguishing scientific from pseudoscientific claims. Using examples such as the Rorschach Inkblot Test, extra-sensory perception, and UFO sightings he illustrated how pseudoscientific claims masquerade as scientifically sound ideas, when in fact they do not hold up under scientific scrutiny.
Literary Journal Staff Offer Custom-Written Poems for Valentine’s Day
Belmont Literary Journal managing editor Logan Franks, poetry editor Emmie Futtrell, creative nonfiction editor Lauren Paxton and art director Greg Privett offered custom-written Valentine’s Day poems in the Beaman Student Life Center on Fri., Feb. 12. The one-of-a-kind poems, composed on the spot and typed on a 1936 Royal Portable typewriter, were available at no cost to the Belmont community (although donations were gladly accepted). Proceeds will benefit the 2010 Belmont Literary Journal, a student-edited, student-written, student-produced annual journal of art, poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. The Poetry Stand, whose purpose is to offer the larger community a way to create and delight in the creation of poetry and word-based art, was designed and donated to Belmont English students by Bret and Meg MacFadyen, founders of Nashville’s Art and Invention gallery.
Adjunct Authors Book on History of Pittsburgh Radio
Media Studies Adjunct Instructor Ed Salamon recently authored a new book about the glory days of Pittsburgh radio, starting with the great KDKA-A, where Salamon started working in 1970. The book, published by Arcadia Publishing, will be available March 8 at retail and online outlets.
Senior Helps Organization Win Grant
Social Work senior Jimmy Smith interned last fall at The Contributor, Nashville’s “street newspaper” that focuses on the issues surrounding homelessness and poverty and is sold by homeless and formerly homeless individuals on the street as an alternative to panhandling. During Jimmy’s internship, he helped nominate The Contributor’s volunteer Executive Director Tasha French for the 2009 Titans Community QB Award. French recently won the award which resulted in a $10,000 grant from Tennessee Titans owner K.S. “Bud” Adams Jr and the Tennessee Titans Foundation to the organization. Signing up The Contributor for this award was one of Jimmy’s final duties at his internship last fall. Click here for video of the event.
Registrar’s Staff Present Sessions at SACRAO Conference
Staff from Belmont’s Office of the Registrar presented two sessions at the annual conference of the Southern Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (SACRAO) recently held in Chattanooga. Ginger Kuechle, assistant registrar, and Steven Reed, university registrar, presented “Planning and Implementing a ‘Paperless’ Registrar’s Office.” Associate Registrars Matthew McCrickard and La Kiesha Armstrong presented “Assessing Staff and Departmental Strengths through Appreciative Inquiry.”
Parry Agrees to Serve in Bridging the Gap Mentor Program
Pam Parry, associate professor of journalism, has agreed to serve as a mentor in the Bridging the Gap Mentor Program of the Nashville Junior Chamber. The program matches young professionals in Nashville with community leaders who help to provide leadership development for people in their 20s or early 30s. “Within the Middle Tennesse area, there is no other community-based program similar to this,” according to the chamber.
