Belmont Entrepreneurship majors John Price and Sam Dryden won First Place and $5,000 Tuesday evening for their idea “Lifetime Reel” in Fast Pitch Nashville, a new style of competition designed to showcase great entrepreneurial ideas. A group of finalists pitched their ideas in 60 seconds to a live audience and a panel of judges from the academic, investor and entrepreneurial community in Nashville. There were approximately 200 people in attendance who were able to vote for the winning pitch, and more than 600 unique visitors watched the event live via UStream. The competition’s Grand Prize winner was Dan Simpson with Vintage Graphs who will have the opportunity to present his concept to Angel Investors for possible funding.
Belmont Students Win First Place in Fast Pitch Nashville Competition
Students, Faculty Participate in Community Health Fair
Belmont nursing students and faculty participated this week in the “Maggie McGlother Memorial Community Health Fair & Bingo Game.” Sponsored by Nurse Educators Partnering for Community Health Improvement (NEPCHI), which includes Organized Neighbors of Edgehill, Belmont, Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, Metro Health Department and TSU, the event included blood pressure checks, blood glucose screenings and STD tests in addition to lunch and bingo for the residents of I.W.Gernert Homes in Edgehill. Healthspring and Enhancecare Inc. were also represented as Medicare HMO and health management agencies at the health fair, which the organizing parties hope will be a monthly event.
SIFE Students Reign for Fourth Consecutive Year as USA Regional Champions
Team now prepares for national exposition, competition in May
The Belmont University Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team returned to Nashville as SIFE USA Regional Champions for the fourth consecutive year after participating in competition in Atlanta on March 30. The event was one of the 17 SIFE USA Regional Competitions being held across the United States during March and April. SIFE is an international organization that mobilizes students around the world to make a difference in their communities while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders. The Belmont team will now advance to the SIFE USA National Exposition to be held May 10-12 in Philadelphia.
Dr. John Gonas, assistant professor of finance and the 2008 Tennessee Professor of the Year, serves as a Sam Walton Fellow responsible for advising Belmont’s SIFE students. “I am so blessed to be affiliated with these SIFE students,” Gonas said. “To me they embody the Belmont spirit – taking what they’re learning in the classroom and unconditionally serving those around us. Every day I’m amazed at how passionately they engage and strive to build meaningful and sustainable relationships with our community partners. I think this opportunity is a wonderful added dimension to the college experience and can’t wait to see what these students do after graduation.”
Biles Published in Math, Computer Journals
Dr. Daniel Biles, associate professor in the Math & Computer Science Department, recently had two papers accepted for publication. “Nystrom methods and singular second-order differential equations,” which was co-authored with David Benko, Mark P. Robinson and John S. Spraker, was recently published in Computers and Mathematics with Applications. The same group also was recently published in Mathematical and Computer Modelling for the article titled “Numerical approximation for singular second-order differential equations.”
Entrepreneurship Student Presents at Nascent 500 Business Plan Challenge
Entrepreneurship student Julie Zaloba recently presented a business plan for “Julie’s Café” at the Nascent 500 Business Plan Challenge hosted by Ball State University’s Entrepreneurship Center. Zaloba’s plan was selected as one of 12 top collegiate entrepreneurial ventures invited to the annual competition held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indianapolis 500.
The Nascent 500 is an opportunity for undergraduate students from around the world to hone their entrepreneurial skills and compete for cash prizes by presenting their original business plans to a panel of nationally recognized judges. The twelve students/student teams selected to compete received $500 per team member to defray the cost of travel. They then had just 500 seconds (one lap) in the back of a limousine slowly circling the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to pitch their business idea to three judges followed by an additional 500 seconds in “the pits” to answer questions from these same judges.
Upon completing her pitch and taking in the overall experience Zaloba noted, “This was a first rate experience allowing me to interact at a level of professionalism that I could only have dreamed of. I learned a lot from the feedback I received from the investor judges, which is ultimately going to make my business plan even stronger as I continue to move forward in this entrepreneurial process.”
Dr. Mark Schenkel, assistant professor of entrepreneurship, added, “The opportunity for Julie to present her venture at this year’s Nascent 500 competition was an amazing accomplishment in its own right given the level of competition the event draws annually. It is also reflection of Julie’s talent, personal drive and prospects for her venture, Julie’s Cafe.”
Belmont Junior Wins Professional Video Award
Junior Jessica Walker recently won a 2009 Bronze Telly Award, one of the most prestigious professional awards in video and film production. Walker, a journalism major with a concentration in broadcast, won in the news/news feature category for her BelmontVISION.com news reporting compilation.
“Jessica puts maximum effort into everything she does,” said New Century Journalism instructor Stephan Foust. “This well-deserved international award reflects that effort and illustrates how anything is possible when you pursue a dream with determination and intelligence.”
The 30th Annual Telly Awards received more than 13,000 entries from all 50 states and 30 countries around the world. Entrants included professional production companies, in-house creative departments, ad agencies and television stations. Click on the play button below to see a sample of Walker’s work with her recent coverage of Fitness Day.
Lind, Students Present Research at Math Conference
Dr. Joan Lind, assistant professor in the Math & Computer Science department, along with students Sarah Claiborne and Cat Simpson, attended the 2009 Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM) Spring conference in Provo, Utah March 20-21. CURM is the agency which awards mini-grants to professors and teams of undergraduate students to conduct year-long undergraduate research projects in mathematics. One of the goals of the conference is to showcase the mathematical research supported by CURM. Since Dr. Lind and her students were awarded a 2008/2009 CURM grant, they presented a talk about their research titled “Discovering the Curve-Creating Black Box.”
Pharmacy Students Assist Feed the Children
Fourteen members of the American Pharmacy Association student chapter, led by Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences Dr. Kinsley Kiningham, spent Sat., March 21 in service at Feed the Children in Nashville. They packed nearly 500 boxes (approximately 12 pallets) of hygiene products for distribution to persons in need, locally and beyond. Student participants included Laura Hays, Bounchanh Souriyavong, Courtney Sowels, Cassidy Domagalla, Jackie Deal, Donny Mai, Benson Chiong, Lee Rembert, Zac Renfro, Catherine Williams, Lindsey Archer, Lindsay Locke, Chris McKnight and Ali Foster.
Social Work Students, Faculty Attend National Conference
Social work majors Michelle Barnett, Elizabeth Brown, Claire Godwin, Whitney Harold and Jimmy Smith joined their professors to attend the Association of Baccalaureate Program Directors annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. The conference theme was “The Future is Now,” which showcased the infusion of innovation and technology in social work practice. In addition to serving as conference volunteers, students attended a variety of workshops and met with dozens of graduate program representatives.
McCullough Enchants Large Crowd with History Lesson
David McCullough, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and New York Times’ best-selling author, appeared Monday night to more than 3,000 people in the Curb Event Center arena, enchanting them all with his charm, historical knowledge, educational philosophy and, surprisingly, even his singing. The final keynote presenter in Belmont’s “Art of Being Free” lecture series celebrating the 2008 Town Hall Presidential Debate, McCullough spoke on “Leadership and the History You Don’t Know.” The crowd was populated by numerous special guests including Mayor Karl Dean, former Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist and McCullough’s wife, Rosalie.
McCullough, who opened his remarks by commenting on how smitten he was with Nashville, focused his attention on the need for a much stronger emphasis on history in children’s education. He noted that revitalizing history education in the U.S. is part of his life’s mission because it is through the lens of history that Americans can truly find identity. “The history of our country is the most enthralling subject imaginable, but it’s often made tedious and irrelevant… We’re raising children in every part of the country who are by and large historically illiterate.”
Quoting from Dr. Margaret McFarland, the mentor of Fred Rogers, McCullough said, “What matters most in the classroom is attitude, and attitude isn’t taught, it’s caught.” Rather than increased salaries alone, McCullough advocated that educators deserve more respect and should be required to major in a subject, becoming experts in a specific area of knowledge beyond education alone. Still, he also strongly encouraged that education must occur outside classrooms; parents and families must actively engage. “We have to show [our children] what we love.”
