Belmont Associate Dean of Nursing Dr. Martha Buckner has been appointed to Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam’s State Board of Nursing.
Buckner serves as executive director of Partners in Nursing at Belmont University and has a wide range of clinical experience with adult post-operative and nutrition support patients. She also has teaching experience in nursing pharmacology, nutrition and adult health.
Two occupational therapy doctoral students from Belmont University, Evan Pendygraft and Jevorius Price, began work this semester to provide ergonomic consultation to Spring Back Mattress Recycling in Nashville. The local non-profit was started in 2010 as a project by a Belmont University Enactus (then Students in Free Enterprise) team who explored mattress recycling as a means of achieving a triple bottom line, serving people, planet, and profit. Pendygraft and Price are working under the guidance of Dr. Teresa Plummer and Dr. Debra Gibbs, faculty members in the School of Occupational Therapy, and with Dr. John Gonas from the College of Business Administration, to assist workers at Spring Back to lessen the physical strain in their work activities and avoid potential injury. The consultation will continue during the next year.
For the tenth consecutive year, graduates of the Belmont University master’s program (MSN) for Family Nurse Practitioners (FNP) has achieved a 100 percent first time pass rate on the nursing certification examination. The most recent class of 28 graduates all passed the exam on the first attempt this spring. Nationally, only 80% of new FNP graduates pass on the first attempt.
“This is a truly remarkable accomplishment,” said Dr. Martha Buckner, associate dean of nursing. She added, “We are so proud of the sustained level of excellence by our students and faculty and for the leadership of program director and professor of nursing, Dr. Leslie Higgins.” Continue reading
Belmont University School of Physical Therapy has received a 2014 nomination for the Mary Catherine Strobel Civic Volunteer Group Award presented by HCA/TriStar Health. Final awards were presented at an event hosted earlier this week by Hands On Nashville, Middle Tennessee’s largest volunteer resource center. “We’re honored to acknowledge your tireless commitment to enhancing our community’s quality of life,” stated Brian Williams, President & CEO of Hands On Nashville.
Receiving the nomination was Dr. Mike Voight, Professor of Physical Therapy, who helps lead PT student participation in community service throughout the year, which includes providing logistical coordination for annual events such as Dierks Bentley’s Miles & Music for Kids to benefit Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and the Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure in Nashville.
In a ceremony marked by numerous standing ovations, students and faculty were honored this week during the University’s annual Scholarship and Awards Day convocation. All of the awards given reflected Belmont’s mission and commitment to scholarship, service and leadership.
In one of the most moving presentations, graduating senior and social work major Matthew Thompson was awarded the John Williams Heart of Belmont Award, which is given to a student committed to Belmont’s values including innovation, persistence, advocacy for change, community development and service. Before coming to Belmont, Thompson served in the Navy on the USS George Washington for five years. In 2005, he enlisted in the Army where he served an additional four years and afterwards completed one year of service in the Tennessee National Guard. After 10 years of service and three deployments, he was honorably discharged and began pursuing a degree at Belmont. Continue reading
Recently several students from the College of Pharmacy’s Kappa Psi, Epsilon Kappa chapter assisted with a health screening fair at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Burns, Tennessee. The students provided bone density checks, blood glucose checks and surveys of diabetes mellitus. They also assisted with blood pressure measurement and counseling about blood pressure and nutrition. Participants included Kelly Maguigan, Chris Conkling, Fred ONeal, Niki Walker, Fernando Diggs, Kyla Cunico, Jessica Yost, Chris Kepinski, Joshua Ferrall, Destin Lenz and Sarah Gobin.
Erin Todd, a second year student in Belmont’s PharmD program, has been awarded the Walgreens Diversity & Inclusion Excellence Award. This monetary award is given to a student “who embraces diversity and promotes diversity and inclusion initiatives on campus”. Through Erin’s work in the Belmont chapter of SNPhA and as a student ambassador she has worked diligently to promote diversity in pharmacy.
Nursing students pictured left to right are Tiffany Jenkins, Erin Pettepher, Patrick Haltom, Emily Graehler and Elaine Seneff.
Belmont School of Nursing students and faculty participated in the March of Dimes March for Babies on April 13 at LP Field. The walk raises awareness and funding for the March of Dimes work to support community programs that help moms have healthy, full-term pregnancies. The March of Dimes also funds research to find answers to the problems that threaten babies. The March for Babies has been going since 1970 and raised over $2 billion. Nine nursing students and two faculty members participated in the walk. The students were led by senior Patrick Haltom and were sponsored by Assistant Professor of Nursing Angela Lane and Instructor of Nursing Barb Padovich. The Belmont Nursing team raised $1,160 for March of Dimes.
Social Work senior Matt Thompson recently presented a poster at the Baccalaureate Program Director’s (BPD) national conference on social work education. His poster, which was selected to be a part of the student conference within the larger BPD conference, was entitled “Welcome Home: Current Military Pre and Post Separation and Transition Protocol.” This poster provided an overview of current practices that are followed as men and women leave the armed services. As Thompson discussed the poster with conference attendees, he noted areas where policies should be reviewed as well as areas where social work expertise could be utilized to provide more effective services to new veterans. Thompson, drawing on his social work education as well as his experience in the military, summed it up this way: “Compassion and caring are not substitutes for action and advocacy.”
Assistant Professor of Social Work Julie Hunt and Associate Professor of Social Work Sabrina Sullenberger also presented at the BPD conference. Sullenberger co-presented a workshop entitled “High-impact Educational Practices in Teaching Social Work Research” with colleagues from Indiana University. Hunt’s roundtable presentation was entitled ““Integrating Spiritual Sensitivity into Cultural Competence Education for our Changing World.”
Reflecting on her work at the conference, Hunt said, “It was an honor to lead a roundtable discussion with a diverse group of colleagues from universities around the country on ways to integrate spiritually sensitive content in their social work curriculum. We had a productive and meaningful sharing of ideas, and their interest in this conversation has continued as we have been corresponding since the meeting, sharing syllabi, and ideas for readings and course assignments.”
Social work juniors in Dr. Jennifer Crowell’s Policy II class recently participated in Social Work Day on the Hill at the Tennessee Legislative Plaza. They met with legislators, observed committee meetings and participated in a policy presentation and poster competition. Prior to the Day on the Hill, students worked in class to identify bills under consideration at the state level, and analyze the bills in the context of social work values, ethics and populations served, and then made recommendations on how to improve the bills they had studied. This collective work led the class to identify one topic to focus on for the policy presentation, the issue of Human Trafficking in Tennessee. At Day on the Hill, junior Christi Sidwell was selected as Belmont’s representative to speak in front of a crowd of students, faculty and social workers from across the state about Senate Bill 1655 and House Bill 1870. Christi spoke passionately about the issue in Tennessee and also about how the bills as proposed could be strengthened to ultimately provide better services and seek justice for people in Tennessee who have been trafficked. The hard work of all the students was recognized when Belmont University was announced the winner of the undergraduate competition.