by Danielle Boyd | Apr 20, 2012 | Uncategorized
Losing weight and maintaining a balanced diet as a college student seems to be a far-fetched idea. With late night studying, midnight snacks, fast food and our busy lifestyles, health and wellness is not an easy task, but it is one that many Lipscomb students say is well worth it in the end. “At a certain point being healthy was just being smaller, and then I got educated on it,” said Shanika McMillian, a junior accounting major from Nashville, Tenn. “Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you are healthy, so for a point in my life I just wanted to lose weight to be smaller, but now it’s more that I want to be healthy.” McMillan has lost almost 30 pounds, and she says being healthy has not only changed her life but also changed her lifestyle. “For me I am motivated to disconnect from my past, my past is my weight and the more I shed it, the more I let go of that,” Shanika said. “The biggest challenge is giving up food, not knowing just how attached we are to food.” Choosing the right foods is an important aspect in losing weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. “Living a life where you are able to function at your top is choosing the right foods that help fuel your body,” said Lauren Waller, an exercise science major from Brentwood, Tenn. Health and wellness is not only being physically fit, but taking care of your body as a whole. “Losing weight is 80 percent of food and 20 percent of exercise,” McMillian said. As a college student, the hardest part of...
by Danielle Boyd | Mar 12, 2012 | News Slider
Neely Williams, an adjunct professor in the department of Communication and Journalism, is a long time community leader, educator, minister and activist for non-violence in youth engagement. Williams, who has been formally involved with the Nashville community for nearly 30 years, said her journey into community outreach began through participation in Vacation Bible School at a local church where four young men spoke about living with HIV/AIDS. As a part of the men’s presentation, “the Red Cross was there, inviting people from the community to get trained and be advocates and spokespersons about the disease,” Williams said. It was 1985, during the height of learning about HIV/AIDs. Williams stepped out into the inner city of the Nashville community to educate people on the disease. “I call this my formal step into the community because I have always been involved in nursing homes and wherever there was a need,” Williams said. Even at an early age, Williams had a heart for helping people and uniting cultures. “I like to say I built my first coalition on the Kindergarten playground,” she said, “because I am innately a person that says everybody should play and get an opportunity to have the ball. And I spent a lot of days trying to make sure those who were not chosen got a chance to play anyway.” Deciding to go back to school to obtain a degree at Vanderbilt University, Williams became trained as a chaplain, which furthered her community outreach with the Metropolitan Interdenominational Church. Since 1996, Williams has worked directly and indirectly with the outreach ministries of the Metropolitan Church in the north Nashville community....
by Danielle Boyd | Feb 24, 2012 | News Slider
Bringing together youth and communities has always been a dream for Phyllis Hildreth, the founder of Falcon Feather Fibers. “Our goal was to bring persons in the community, whether they were youth, seniors, or employees at the medical school down the street at Meharry,” she said. “They could sit, refresh and engage in the arts.” The art studio was located on Jefferson Street in the center of colleges and universities where individuals or groups could freely come and go to work on various projects. The communal space was a place where wisdom was shared through the traditional form of quilting, knitting and crocheting—an activity that has been long passed down through the ancestry of slavery. As Hildreth began to reminisce, she asked, “Where do you often find that calm subtle wisdom?” “If I say the front porch, it doesn’t matter whether you are talking about a front porch in Appalachia or just down the street here in Tennessee,” Hildreth said. “We know that’s where the elders were to be found. And you could find them there sitting, and they usually weren’t sitting there idle, their hands were going with something, whether it was crocheting, quilting, or shelling peas. You would just pick up the peas and start working too.” In the hopes of bringing youth and communities together, Hildreth created an art studio that would mimic the front porch or kitchen table, a place where individuals could collectively come together to work on arts and crafts. “It was important to me that people could come into a creative space that would provide examples, inspiration and opportunity,” Hildreth said. Partnering...
by Danielle Boyd | Feb 18, 2012 | News Slider
To take a deeper look into the history of the civil rights movement, a group of Lipscomb students traveled to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., at the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The one-day trip was led by Dr. Lee Camp, a Bible professor, who sought to give students the opportunity to visit the history of the civil rights movement. Most students had never been to the museum, so it was “an eye-opening experience.” “It’s one thing to hear about it all the time, but to actually be in a place where history happened…it just made it so real for me,” said Natilan Crutcher, a Lipscomb student who went on the trip. The museum takes students through the history of African Americans from the early 1600s to the recent years of 2000-2012. The museum is made up of exhibits, artifacts, sculptures and remakes of events which led to the civil and human rights movement. “I came to this museum as a child, and I didn’t really know much about it,” said John Brownlee, a Lipscomb student from Memphis, Tenn., “but now that I am older I’m starting to appreciate it more, now that I understand the struggle of people like my grandmother and great grandmother.” For some students, the museum opened their eyes to appreciate life and the struggle of so many African Americans reaching for freedom, justice and equality. “I have a better understanding of how things went down,” said Lipscomb student Day Day Wells. Wells said the experience led her to think about the things people often take for granted such...
by Danielle Boyd | Feb 3, 2012 | News Slider
The Latino population in Nashville is growing, and Lipscomb is the first local university to reach out to Latino students by offering grants of up to $22,000 per student for those who meet the general admissions requirements. As President Randy Lowry sets new initiatives to increase growth in higher education among Latino students, the Latino community on campus is growing rapidly. In the hopes of increasing diversity and setting a new vision for campus, Lowry appointed Jessie Van de Griek, the director of the Hispanic Achievers program at the Harding Place Family YMCA, to continue bringing students to Lipscomb. “My role on campus is to be a bridge builder,” she said. As the associate dean of intercultural engagement, Van de Griek works with the Latino students on campus to help identify ways to connect the Latino community to Lipscomb. In addition to being a bridge builder, Van De Griek is a mentor to students, helping them understand the importance of higher education and professional development. For many Latino students on campus, Van de Griek played an important role in providing extra assistance in understanding the enrollment process. Jarathzy Lendos, a sophomore majoring in nursing, said, “I didn’t know a lot of the process that goes into applying…and I asked for their help, and they were more than willing to help me out.” Lack of knowledge on the process of attending college and low income are common obstacles of the Latino community, according to Van de Griek. As a result, most Latino students do not even consider attending college. With the help of Lipscomb and the Hispanic Achievers grant program, more...
