Dr. Bob Fisher greets CRA Manager Luis Parodi and Financial Center Manager Rosa Berger of Fifth Third Bank.

Fifth Third Bank Gives Belmont Community-Building Funds
Fifth Third Bank presented a $15,000 check to the Belmont University Office of Community Relations and and Center for Service Learning on Aug. 9. The money will benefit the neighborhoods surrounding Belmont through student outreach and service projects.

Among the projects was the Next Generation Now Summer Enrichment Program, which hosted some 30 youth, many of them Edgehill residents, in a camp to improve academic achievement, community safety and nutritional health. Belmont senior Gabrielle Hampton was camp director.

Family Literacy Day and the Edgehill’s BEST newsletter, a collaboration between Belmont journalism students and Rose Park Middle School, also will benefit from the donation.

Summer 2012 Commencement Ceremony Tonight
Belmont University will hold its summer 2012 commencement ceremony for graduate and undergraduate students at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 10 in the Curb Event Center.

Belmont will celebrate the graduation of a total of 211 students. During the graduation ceremony, 78 undergraduate, 98 master’s and 35 doctoral degrees will be conferred.

Dr. Robert C. Fisher, president of the University, will preside over the event. Dr. Vaughn May, associate professor of political science, will present the commencement address.

Watch the graduation live at www.Belmont.edu

Belmont Renames Residence Hall in Honor of Late Benefactor
Belmont University remembered long-time benefactor Virginia Frances Potter July 30 with the renaming of a residence hall in her honor.

Potter was active in Belmont campus life from 1951 forward and a lead donor to the University for many years. She believed that “Christian education is an answer to our world’s problems” and shared gifts for new or refurbished buildings, scholarships, mission programs and faculty support.  A longtime Nashvillian and 1932 graduate of Tennessee College for Women, Potter had faith in the vitality and potential of Belmont students.  Her quiet nature, brilliant mind and gentle humor will be remembered through the co-ed residence hall, formerly known as Maple Hall. Potter Hall is a suite-style building housing 190 freshmen. It opened in the fall of 2008 as part of the North Lawn community.

“Frances Potter believed in Belmont University and the value of a Christian education. From the founding of Belmont College in 1951 until her death Nov. 9, 2011,  she supported the work of four University presidents, was a member of the Belmont Auxiliary, helped raise money for Belmont scholarships through the Tennessee College for Women Alumnae and quietly gave her own personal leadership gifts. She is missed and will long be remembered,” said Vice President of University Advancement Bethel E. Thomas.

Rick Byrd Receives NCAA Bob Frederick Award
Belmont University men’s basketball head coach Rick Byrd has been named recipient of the 2012 Bob Frederick Award, the NCAA announced Tuesday.

The Frederick Award, first presented in 2009 to honor the late Kansas and Illinois State athletic director, is awarded annually to an NCAA member institution coach or administrator who exhibits a lifelong commitment to sportsmanship and ethical conduct, leading by example, and promoting positive fan involvement in and out of competition. Like Frederick, recipients of the award are known by their sincere passion for student-athletes and colleagues.

One of the most respected figures in college basketball, Byrd has overseen a program marked by unparalleled on-court and academic achievement.

The Knoxville, Tenn. native joins Bill Self of Kansas and John Calipari of Kentucky as one of three head coaches in the nation to lead their program to an NCAA Tournament automatic berth five of the last seven years. Moreover, with 637 career victories, Byrd ranks eighth among all active NCAA Division I head coaches in wins. Read more.

Physics Professor Lands Sizable Research Grant
A professor and two alumni have received a sizable grant to further understanding of gravity and the universe through a computer code.

The National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratories has awarded Physics Assistant Professor Scott Hawley a grant of 250,000 service units, valued at $112,500, to upgrade the code and allow it to be interfaced with other research groups around the world. The grant is a follow-up to the “startup” allocation of 20,000 service units Hawley was awarded last fall. It reflects NICS’s mission to support Tennessee institutions of higher learning and the National Science Foundation’s EPSCOR program.

“The fact that Belmont is a teaching university and located in Tennessee made it very easy for NICS to award my grant request,” Hawley said. “My research involves writing a general purpose, publicly-available computer code for solving Einstein’s (General Theory of Relativity ) equation, which will allow researchers around the world to produce more accurate simulations of gravitational wave signals.” Read more.

Belmont SIFE Welcomes Championship Trophy to Campus
Several members of Belmont’s SIFE team took breaks from their summer jobs to visit campus today to celebrate the arrival of the national championship trophy. The win, which came at the SIFE USA National Exposition held in Kansas City in May, represents Belmont SIFE’s second national title in three years.

Belmont SIFE will compete at the international SIFE World Cup Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in Washington, D.C. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is confirmed to host the event. Prior to the World Cup, the team is sharing their winning presentation with numerous businesses and organizations, including Tractor Supply (Nashville), Home Depot (Atlanta), Wells Fargo (Des Moines and San Francisco) and Dollar General (Nashville).

Salama Brings ‘The Wiz’ to Belmont
Continuing a five-year partnership, Belmont University’s Troutt Theater will host a production from The Salama Institute this weekend as students from the Christian-based nonprofit organization perform The Wiz.

Last summer Salama celebrated its 25^th anniversary with Dimensions, a Cavalcade of Music from Opera to Broadway that included performances of Porgy and Bess, The Wiz, West Side Story, Dreamgirls, Grease, Cinderella and Carousel. This year, students return to The Wiz, a soulful rendition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

“We do Broadway for a couple of reasons: it demands artistic excellence, is a great training ground for our kids and exposes them to more classic work,” said Development Director George Crook. “We have been doing Broadway shows for 11 years and use it as character development for our kids. Peer pressure, sex, drugs, broken relationships, the struggles with fame – we try to take these things and find the life lessons our kids can learn from it. The Wiz is a historical African-American production, and it has a lot of life lessons on why you have to value home. With the tornado we talk about the trials of life, courage and hope.” Read more.

Philosophy Professor’s Critique Receives National Attention
Associate Professor of Philosophy Mark Anderson has received national media attention this academic year for his discovery of an author’s misappropriated material.

Last spring, Anderson said he was comparing two books on Friedrich Nietzsche while researching for a lecture on the philosopher for his undergraduate course on Plato, Andrew Melville and Nietzsche. He read Curtis Cate’s Friedrich Nietzsche and Julian Young’s Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography concurrently, alternating chapters between the two books. It was then that Anderson said he noticed that Young appeared to borrow material from Cate’s text without quotation or proper attribution. He published the article “Telling the Same Story of Nietzsche’s Life” in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies in August 2011.

“I suspected [my article] would have impact because it is an important field of study, and [Young’s Friedrich Nietzsche] was a widely received publication coming from Cambridge, an important press,” Anderson said. His article was picked up by NewAPPS, a prominent art, politics, philosophy and science blog. The Chronicle of Higher Education published the article “When One Biographer ‘Borrows’ From Another, the Dispute Gets Philosophical” on July 2, and this week the same author wrote a Wall Street Journal blog post on Anderson’s findings. Read more.

Round Two: Belmont’s Pipeline Project Aims for Innovation Impact in its Second Year
Student think tank seeks creative solutions for entertainment industry woes

Speakers at the recent Billboard Country Music Summit, which was held in Nashville June 4-5 and attended by top-level advisors from across the music industry, were surprised to see college students in the audience. These Belmont University students were gathering research as new members of an entertainment industry solutions think-tank: The Pipeline Project. Launched last year by Belmont’s Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business, the Pipeline Project has nine new members working for 10 weeks (June through mid-August), and the team has already set high goals for innovation this summer.

Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher said, “Belmont has a longstanding reputation for successful graduates both on the business and creative sides of the music industry. Pipeline exists to help identify those students early on and give them the access and environment to push their ideas forward. Let’s face it, the younger generations are shaping our industry—let’s intentionally put them in the driver’s seat.”

Pipeline member Erik Coveney, a sophomore, added, “We intend to do more than simply build on the work of last year’s Pipeline Project. In fact, we plan to come up with some truly groundbreaking ideas by the end of this summer. We believe the Pipeline Project team can use our creative capital and perspective as young adults who intimately understand new trends to innovate in revolutionary ways.” Read more. To follow what the think-tank does this year, visit www.pipelineproject.org.