As a solution to the pause on live performances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of Belmont alumni joined forces over the summer to develop Eamotion, a concept providing a pandemic-safe and contact-free, drive through immersive sensory experience. Eamotion’s debut event, “Tempo,” debuted in September, and after a successful run, the team is now back with a new, holiday-themed audiovisual show at the Nashville Speedway named “Jingle Beat.”
Belmont alumnus and Eamotion Operations Director David Supica explained, “’Tempo’ was largely a proof-of-concept event for us. Until that point, we did not have metrics on how many cars we could process, how ticket sales would do, what customer demand would look like, etc. Once we hit our final night of ‘Tempo,’ we realized that there is certainly a market for immersive drive-through events which encouraged us to launch a more ambitious 27-day run for ‘Jingle Beat.’”
The infrastructure for “Jingle Beat” is 95 percent like that of “Tempo.” The team, which includes Supica and other alumni Erik Anderson, Gordon Droitcour and Emily Buckner Pierce, based many of the structural builds off the same drawings from “Tempo” with a few select changes.
However, the programming for Jingle Beat is vastly different. Supica said, “We used different color palettes, custom video content and imagery to lean into the holiday theme. It’s one of the exciting and unique elements that come with an Eamotion event. We can run two drastically different shows off the same infrastructure due to the flexibility of the site.”
During a challenging year, Eamotion has offered employment opportunities for those in the entertainment industry. “It’s been exciting just to be on site surrounded by colleagues from an industry that hasn’t been able to do much of anything for the past eight months. Coming from a background in venue management and operations, I’m just excited to see people doing the work they love doing,” Supica said. “The events industry has changed forever, and we plan on remaining dynamic and adaptive. The future of events is immersive, and we plan to continue to push into new types of immersive sound and light experiences with Eamotion.”
“Jingle Beat” is ongoing now through December 31. Learn more and purchase tickets on the Eamotion website.
Belmont College of Law alumna Marisa A. Garcia has joined Neal & Harwell, PLC, as an associate in the firm’s litigation group.
Garcia earned her J.D., cum laude, from Belmont University College of Law in May 2020. She served as Executive Symposium Editor for the Belmont Law Review and was a member of the Belmont Board of Advocates. Garcia’s team won the Emory Civil Rights and Liberties Moot Court competition in 2018, was the 2019-2020 Brooklyn Regional Champions of the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition, and Garcia was named the Brooklyn Regional Number One Advocate. Garcia also received the CALI Excellence for the Future Award in Trial Advocacy.
“We are thrilled to add Marisa to our litigation team at Neal & Harwell,” stated Ronald G. Harris, Chief Administrator of Neal & Harwell. “With her many talents and work ethic, we know that she will be a most effective advocate for our clients.”
During law school, Garcia gained experience and exposure to our court system as a summer associate at Neal & Harwell. She also worked with the Tennessee Attorney General’s office assisting in the Civil Rights and Claims Division and the Civil Litigation and State Service Division and with the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance Regulatory Boards Division.
Prior to law school, Garcia served as a member of the United States Air Force. She spent the majority of her service as a Security Forces Phoenix Raven. Garcia graduated from Airman Leadership School and received the highest John L. Levitow Award for “Academics, Leadership, Discipline and Moral Fortitude.”
Garcia also serves on the Junior Board for Women in Numbers “WIN,” which encourages and endorses qualified women to be elected to public office. Her interests include spending time with family and physical fitness. She has maintained her Personal Trainer Certification for the American Council on Exercise for more than a decade.
About Neal & Harwell, PLC
Neal & Harwell is widely regarded as one of the premier litigation firms in the country. Founded in 1971 by Jim Neal and Aubrey Harwell, the midsize firm is committed to excellence in providing the highest quality legal advice and representation. The firm also provides a wide range of full-service legal representation, and its attorneys use their skills as advocates in courtrooms throughout the country. In spite of the emphasis being on litigation, the firm has a substantial and growing business transaction and bankruptcy practice. Clients include companies such as Bridgestone Firestone, ExxonMobil, Ingram Industries, Pfizer, Pilot Flying J and TVA as well as numerous other businesses and individuals. For additional information, visit www.nealharwell.com.
This study synthesizes two decades of literature and is focused on identifying trends in the literature as well as practical takeaways for academic librarians serving business students.
Ranked again as a Top 20 National Program, Belmont University’s Thomas F. Cone Center for Entrepreneurship continued the success of last year’s inaugural Top 100 Entrepreneurship Awards by hosting the event again, this time virtually and with 35 new additions to the list of alumni entrepreneurs.
The Belmont Entrepreneur Awards recognize alumni who have started innovative and unique businesses, honoring founders who are excelling in business and challenging their industries. To commemorate the entrepreneurial spirit of Belmont University, 100 outstanding alumni businesses, including 10 rising businesses, are honored in the Top 100. In 2020, the list includes alumni graduating from 31 different majors and now residing in 27 cities.
“The ‘Top 100 Entrepreneurs’ awards is a marvelous showcase, both for the businesses themselves as well as for Belmont’s Cone Center for Entrepreneurship,” said Dr. Sarah Gardial, dean of the Massey School of Business. “Belmont continues its proud legacy of helping entrepreneurs combine their creativity and passion with business acumen and mentoring – and the results are impressive. There is a reason Princeton Review has ranked this program No. 20 in the U.S. for the past two years.”
Ryan Reisdorf of Placemat
The Cone Center for Entrepreneurship supports students from all majors who are wanting to start their business. Whether it’s a hobby turned career or wanting to start the next big thing, the Center provides resources to guide them along the way, from ideation to launch. Some of these resources include clinics, workshops, Belmont’s business accelerator, competitions, mentorships and more. The goal is to guide students through the process of starting their business and to support them as they grow and succeed after graduation.
One example of this is the success two alumni have found in their business Bizi’s Vitamin Honey, included on this year’s “Rising Ten” list in the Top 100. 2020 entrepreneurship graduate James Richard spoke during the awards ceremony about the story of co-founding his business with fellow alumnus Ethan Akdamar, looking for a way to combine raw Tennessee honey and certified supplements to help people get their daily doses more easily, especially for those like Richard’s brother who have Crohn’s disease and can’t have the fillers in regular supplements.
“Starting this business in college is not the easiest thing to do, but we benefited from being in Belmont’s Entrepreneurship program. During our classes we had time to sit down and break down our marketing strategy, break down our target market and look at the numbers, which was ultimately super beneficial in helping us in the long run,” Richard explained.
Evan and Jenny Owens of Reboot Recovery
“We were also able to be part of the accelerator program which was really awesome because we got to meet and talk with real entrepreneurs, ask them questions about how they got started, and learn about what they do day to day. And then we got the opportunity to join pitch competitions where we won some startup money and made connections with other entrepreneurs who have helped give us direction as we got started. We are just super thankful to be part of the entrepreneurship program and an alumni group. Vitamin honey has been doing awesome, and we are so grateful to be doing it full-time.”
Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship Elizabeth Gortmaker hosted the virtual event and thanked two of the alumni ventures that made the event possible. Geode Events hosted the event through their platform and allowed attendees to network before and after the ceremony, and Pack Films ran the camera for the show, in addition to filming the Top 100 Announcement.
New this year was a nomination process and the announcement of the Bruin Launch Fund. With this new fund, alumni can directly support graduating seniors in their entrepreneurial efforts. The Bruin Launch Fund is entirely funded by alumni who seek to pay it forward. 100 percent of funds are awarded directly to select graduating seniors for the purpose of starting their businesses. Alumni can join the fund here.
Bariangela Segovia of Rolled4Ever Ice Cream
“These entrepreneurs have incredible visions for the future. They’ve developed unique and impressive businesses and have continued to grow and succeed, even during such a challenging year,” Gortmaker said. “To our alumni, you have thrived in what has felt like an impossible year. We’re blown away by what you’ve accomplished, and we are so happy to celebrate you today. Life as an entrepreneur is not easy, especially in 2020. But the work you do truly makes a difference in this world. You’ve all gone out and done amazing things, and we are proud to call you part of the Belmont family.”
Belmont Professor of Physics Dr. Scott Hawley took a sabbatical in the Fall 2020 semester to write a book on Machine Learning. Part of his new book will contain interactive graphical exercises in JavaScript. Hawley recently decided to spruce up the online exercises around Christmastime to give them a humorous holiday theme.
The theme satirizes Santa’s workshop entering into a new partnership with Amazon. Amazon will use data collected from social media, fitness trackers, microphones in TV remotes, Alexa-powered Elves on the Shelves, cell phone tower connections, warrantless police drone surveillance, and more to analyze whether an individual has made the naughty or nice list.
Along the way, the lesson provides links highlighting the ethical issues of privacy, transparency and racial or gender bias in automated decision-making systems.
The Nashville Business Journal recently published an article titled “The Women Who Help Nashville Sing: Covid means Nashville’s music industry faces an uncertain future. They’ll chart the path forward.” NBJ typically celebrates dozens of women throughout Nashville every year as part of their Women in Music City Awards, but was unable to this year due to COVID-19. However, in a list of seven women interviewed this year on what comes next in the industry, NBJ featured Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Entertainment and Music Business Dr. Cheryl Slay Carr.
Carr spoke about the opportunity COVID presented for the industry to also bring about healing, both by televising concerts to lift people’s spirits and by shining a light on inequities and diversity and inclusion in the music industry. “The Black Music Action Coalition, for example, is a group of entertainment companies and artists who are taking another look,” Carr explained. “That’s a coming together that happened during Covid. My thought is that I wonder if it would’ve happened in the same way if it were not for Covid. In other words, there was an opportunity to really focus on that because there were no shows or concerts. This was about taking a look in the mirror, and that deserves mention in the midst of Covid.”
Carr chairs Belmont’s Welcome Home Diversity Council and has led Curb College’s Diversity in Entertainment Symposium for the past two years, which aims to ask questions on how the city’s music industry is more inclusive for Black people and minorities.
Carr said,” To challenge ourselves as a city to become aware and educated around what diversity, equity and inclusion are, how that might look within the entertainment industry and how we can be solution-oriented. We’ve also offered some webinars to talk about these issues, which is a great foundation to lay.”
Carr also said that the Curb College needs to keep innovating curriculum to keep in touch with the industry in order to support women. She said, “Just by being here, keeping our ear to the ground and encouraging our students to do the same, we are preparing the future of the entertainment business right here.”
Belmont alumna Tara Clance now works as an actress and singer in the Chinese T.V. and film industry after graduating in 2014 as an Honors students with majors in Asian Studies and Chinese. Her newest film “The Affair” just won the Best Narrative Film in theFestigious International Film Festival, Best Song in the Los Angeles Film Festival, Best Cinematography at the Filmcon Awards, Best Picture in the New York Film Awards and has garnered nominations in the Universe Multicultural Film Festival and Asian Film festivals.
Clance was the winner of Belmont’s Asian Studies Bass Award in 2012-13 and went on to complete her Master’s in Chinese Politics and Diplomacy at Fudan University, Shanghai.
As students were sent home after spring break and the music industry began to relatively shut down, Curb College’s Jenny Lokey, student enrichment coordinator, and Caroline Rupard, career development specialist, worked together to think outside the box for Belmont students.
Internships are an integral part of a career in the music business and it looked like they were not going to happen over the summer. To pivot, Lokey and Rupard created the Virtual Curb College Mentorship Program for students and May 2020 graduates as a way for them to continue their professional development when so many opportunities were put on hold. In total, 110 students and May graduates, as well as 23 industry professionals from across the country participated.
Students were greatly impacted by these mentorship groups, learning about the industry and some even landing real-life internships for the fall and jobs through connections with professionals made in the program.
One unique group took their mentorship to the next level once they decided to continue meeting after the initial program had ended. A May 2020 graduate who is living and working in Los Angeles, California, had the idea to organize a virtual songwriting camp as their final project for the mentorship group. Mentor Rachel Wein from Prescription Songs agreed to guide them through the process as an extension of their mentorship.
The group of five secured 25 songwriters and producers, most of which were current or former Belmont students, and acted as matchmakers to determine co-writing sessions with writers that would be compatible in personality and music style. They scheduled 20 different co-writing rooms over the four days of the camp, and after the camp finished, the writers had two weeks to record and produce demos of their songs.
“We compiled all their demos and lyrics into a playlist on SongSpace, so they could hear each other’s work,” May 2020 songwriting graduate Martin Chiesl reflected. “After listening to all the demos, Rachel said she was surprised by the overall quality of the songs from the camp–everyone did a really good job. She even sent some of the songs around to a few of her industry contacts. Organizing the camp was a challenge for our group, but we learned a lot in the process! It was fulfilling to hear that the writers had a really positive experience.”
Sugar in the Gas Tank is a four-piece band giving a new take on the Alternative/Pop Punk music scene of the early 2000s, made up of Belmont students including music business and songwriting double major Luke Dapuzzo on vocals and guitar, music business major CJ Christianson on guitar, audio engineering major Reese Marshall on drums, and audio engineering major Carlos Chavez on bass.
The Local Buzz, a Nashville rock radio station, has been promoting the band, most recently through spotlighting them as the “Local Buzz Cut” of the week, playing their song on air every day at 2 p.m.
The Local Buzz also included the band’s song “Bye” on its article “5 Songs You Should Hear Right Now.” Radio personality Andy Herrin wrote, “I found myself singing their song, “Bye,” in my head all day long. It’s the kind of song I feel like you’d hear in a movie at the end when a person realizes he made the right decision. They’re a newer band to the scene in Nashville and if this song is a sign of what’s to come, when shows come back, I feel like these boys will be selling out clubs for sure.”
Ascension Medical Group named Erick Hernandez-Campos, MSN, FNP-BC, the winner of their national 2020 Community Commitments Advanced Practice Provider Award. Hernandez-Campos earned his Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) from Belmont and is currently working on his Doctorate of Nursing at Belmont.
Nursing Professor and Director of Graduate Nursing Linda G. Wofford, DNP, RN, CPNP, said, “Erick exemplifies the Core Values of Belmont Graduate Nursing – communication and collaboration; critical thinking and problem solving; commitment to learning; compassion and caring. Of course, while Erick is an accomplished clinician, we are pleased to be working together to provide Erick with a transformative and positive doctoral experience.”
Hernandez-Campos practices at the Family Medicine Respiratory Clinic in Antioch, Tennessee, and provided primary care prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Hernandez-Campos has been seeing respiratory clinic patients and also making sure they receive appropriate follow-up. He has spent countless hours before his workday and after his workday calling patients to make sure they are doing well and coordinating care with primary care physicians.
“When the need arose for setting up a COVID-19 dedicated assessment clinic, Erick has gone above and beyond with his work and dedication there,” said Brian Wilcox, MD, President, AMG Tennessee. “There are numerous patients who would love to keep seeing him in primary care as he really tries to listen to the patient and communicate to them in a way they will understand.”
In his off time, Erick facilitates a Q&A outreach with a local television program regarding medical topics.
