Belmont University | FYI


May 16, 2008

BELMONT NEWS


Belmont SIFE Team Receives Recognition at National Competition
The Belmont University SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) team returned to Nashville as winners after participating in the SIFE USA National Exposition held in Chicago, Ill. The event drew more than 140 competing teams with more than 3,000 students presenting their work to more than 650 business executives serving as judges.

The Belmont team was third runner-up at the semi-final level and first runner-up in the market economics area in this year’s competition. Belmont SIFE advanced to the SIFE USA National Exposition by winning at the regional level in early spring. Belmont won the grand prize of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) anti-piracy public service announcement (PSA) competition at the 2007 SIFE National Expo and made it to the overall top 20 both years.

There are 33 Belmont students involved in SIFE for 2007-08. SIFE is an international, non-profit organization active on over 1,500 college and university campuses in 47 countries. SIFE students form teams that serve their communities by developing projects that take what they are learning in classrooms about business and use it to solve real world problems for real people. The SIFE program concentrates on five areas: entrepreneurship, market economics, success skills, financial literacy and business ethics. Each year, the teams present their projects at competition where they are judged on creativity, innovation and effectiveness.

Dr. John Gonas, assistant professor of Finance and the Sam Walton Fellow responsible for coordinating the projects and preparing the students for the competition, said, “We are very grateful to have developed and maintained such deep-rooted community partnerships. The corporate sponsors of SIFE have continuously awarded us – embracing and validating the meaningful and sustainable changes we strive to make in teaching entrepreneurship, financial literacy and life skills within the greater Nashville community.”


Alexander Receives Fulbright AwardFullbright.JPG
Belmont University announces that Dr. Joe Alexander, associate dean of The Jack C. Massey Graduate School, will spend part of this summer in Japan through an award from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the U.S. government’s flagship academic exchange program. Administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), the Fulbright program includes a network of bi-national Fulbright Commissions in 50 countries and 90 U.S. diplomatic posts around the world, as well as international universities and higher education associations.

Alexander’s award is part of the U.S.-Japan International Education Administrators Program, an initiative designed to familiarize participants with higher education, society and culture in Japan. It consists of briefings, campus visits, appointments with selected government officials, cultural activities and meetings with Japanese international education professionals. Other 2008 award recipients joining Alexander include administrators from the University of Minnesota, Pace University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Rochester and Webster University.

"As one of the world’s largest national economies, Japan continues to play a significant role in shaping global business practice," Alexander said. "I hope to further strengthen Massey’s graduate business programs through this experience." Belmont maintains one of the few graduate business programs in the U.S. to require an international study-abroad experience for each of its graduate students.

Prior to his Belmont administrative appointment in July 2007, Alexander served as dean of the Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business at the University of Northern Colorado (2001 – 2007) where he led the program to receipt of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—the first college to ever earn that recognition from the President of the United States. He currently serves as chair-elect of the board of directors for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Foundation and also serves on the boards of directors for the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence and the Monfort Institute.

Alexander’s research has been published in a variety of journals, including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management and Journal of Marketing Education. He has also received numerous teaching awards over the years, and in 2006, received the University of Northern Colorado’s overall Award for Academic Excellence Leadership. Alexander earned his doctorate and master’s degrees in business administration from what is now the University of Memphis and a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Harding University.


New Book by Fishers Offers Insights from Hospice Patients
Authors to Sign Books at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Nashville, Thurs., May 22, 7 p.m.

FishersBobNJudyforWeb.jpgDr. Bob Fisher, president of Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., and his wife, Judy, are releasing, Life is a Gift: Inspiration from the Soon Departed (FaithWords, Hachette Book Group USA), on May 20, 2008, featuring a collection of interviews and lessons learned from 104 terminally ill patients of Alive Hospice in Nashville. FaithWords will hold a book signing for the Fishers at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville, Green Hills Mall, on Thurs., May 22 at 7 p.m.

During the course of their interviews, the Fishers spoke with a wide range of terminal patients of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds. Though each person had a unique story, each accepted death as an unavoidable fact. All of the 104 patients the Fishers interviewed have since died.

“We wanted to glean the wisdom of those who are ‘near-to-death,’” the Fishers wrote in Life is a Gift. “You’ve heard stories of people who have a near-death experience and change their way of thinking about the world… In our talking to the soon-departed, it was our goal to have an experience of being ‘near-to-death’ and to see where it led us.”

LIAGcoverforWeb.JPGAlive Hospice President and CEO Janet Jones said, “When I read this book, I was so inspired by the messages the people we were privileged to serve left with us. What a gift this book is to all of us about how to live our lives to the fullest. Bob and Judy Fisher's ability to lovingly be present during these conversations and allow the individuals to express their core feelings and then grasp them in the story is nothing short of miraculous."

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’s the most important thing you’ve ever done? What do you regret? What comes next for you? If you could give one message to the world, what would it be?

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