by Emily Snell | Nov 28, 2012 | Uncategorized
After a successful career in military defense engineering, Kerry Patterson thought he’d arrive at age 65 and start sitting “on the porch in a rocking chair somewhere.” But now that he’s reached retirement age, Patterson says he’ll keep teaching classes and going on engineering missions trips as long as he can. Patterson, who started teaching engineering at Lipscomb nearly 10 years ago, said he entered education as an escape from the “commercial rat race.” According to Patterson, his old friend from the University of Tennessee Fred Gillam, former head of Lipscomb’s Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering, called one day to encourage Patterson to join the teaching staff at Lipscomb. “When I interviewed with the provost for the position,” Patterson said, “Dr. Bledsoe said, ‘I don’t really think I have much choice because I promised your friend that a condition of his taking the job was that he had to be able to hire you.’” After a three-year stint in the U.S. Army missile command, Patterson spent 25 years doing work related to military ballistic missile defense systems. But Patterson said education had been a possibility in the back of his mind for years. “I always thought that sometime down the road I’d like to teach and I’d like to teach in a Christian university,” he said. “But since there weren’t very many Church of Christ schools that had engineering, I thought I would probably have to settle for math or physics. When this college of engineering thing came along, it was an even better situation than I had anticipated.” Patterson said he knew when he came to Lipscomb that he...
by Brynn Watkins | Nov 23, 2012 | Uncategorized
Warby Parker is the Toms of the eyewear industry. It was founded on a new, yet simple concept in eyewear. The Warby Parker team wanted to provide “eyewear with a purpose.” After many brainstorming sessions, a collaboration between four friends formed. All avid fans of the famous beatnik author Jack Kerouac, the friends decided to name their revolutionary company “Warby Parker” after two characters in Kerouac’s first novel. Sick of the pretentious and over-priced glasses industry, the Warby Parker team realized the obvious need for a low-priced alternative. So, they did something about it. When you purchase a pair of glasses or sunglasses from Warby Parker Eyewear, a pair is given to a person in need. On the company’s website, it explains the mission further: “Almost one billion people worldwide lack access to glasses. This means that 15 percent of the global population cannot effectively learn or work — a problem that Warby Parker is determined to address. We’ve partnered with non-profits like VisionSpring to ensure that for every pair of glasses sold, a pair is distributed to someone in need. We believe that everyone has the right to see.” To do this, Warby Parker needed to create quality prescription glasses at affordable prices. The Warby Parker team decided it needed to bypass the larger eyewear cooperations in order to create a more personal customer-to-company approach. They decided to go with a website format so they could keep prices down and quality up. By eliminating the big business aspect, Warby Parker customers can engage the company directly through the Warby Parker Eyewear website. This keeps prices down and provides customers with higher-quality, better-looking prescription eyewear...
by Brianna Langley | Nov 20, 2012 | Uncategorized
In the cafeteria of Lipscomb University, usually around lunch or dinner, you can find Sheila Hood cleaning tables, straightening chairs, scolding some messy boy or greeting a student at the door with a warm hug. To those around her, Hood goes by Mama Sheila, and all 4,000 students at Lipscomb University are her kids. “I’ve been in food service all my life,” says Mama Sheila, “Ever since I was 14.” Mama Sheila started out working for both Vanderbilt and Baptist Hospitals, where she was employed for many years. Eventually, Hood decided she wanted weekends off, so she came to Lipscomb after seeing an ad in the paper about the new position. Mama Sheila found herself at Lipscomb in 2002. She also had a son who worked on campus, which made the job hunt easier. Mama Sheila remembers all the places on Lipscomb’s campus where she’d ever worked in order. She used to work at the now-closed Pizza Hut in the food court, Smoothie King , the Grill and Sub Connection, as well as the currently in business Starbucks and Chick-fil-a. Of course, after all these places had come and gone, Mama Sheila eventually found herself in the cafeteria. “She always makes my day,” says Courtney Rider, a sophomore nursing major from Greenbrier, Tenn., “After the first day I met her, she already knew my face.” The students of Lipscomb University are almost as attached to Mama Sheila as she is to them. Meal times would be a different experience without a “Hey, baby” or a “Be sure you put those chairs back where you found them” from the campus Mama. “Having Mama Sheila in the cafeteria means you always...
by Brynn Watkins | Nov 14, 2012 | Uncategorized
Mark Slagle and Alex Cox are the men behind MANA Nutrition’s Manabago project. Through a partnership with MANA Nutrition, the team has helped raise money and provide sustenance for malnourished people across the globe. However, Slagle and Cox encountered an unfortunate setback when their 1971 Winnebago exploded on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., leaving the philanthropic duo car-less and craving a new start. That new start came with a rather “nutty” idea called Good Spread Peanut Butter. Good Spread Peanut Butter is made from essential vitamins blended with organic honey and natural sea salt. With three servings of MANA’s peanut butter-based therapeutic food each day, a child on the brink of death can be revived in four to six weeks. “The dream and ultimate goal of Good Spread is to provide more therapeutic food to more severely malnourished kids,” Slagle said. Slagle and Cox partnered with MANA Nutrition once again to launch Good Spread Peanut Butter. In fact, MANA let Slagle and Cox use the company’s factory in South Georgia to produce their product. World Vision and other organizations have also partnered with MANA to help provide food for needy children. To help raise money for the Good Spread cause, Slagle and Cox established a website called Indiegogo to try and raise $65,000 in two weeks – just enough to help make 100,000 packets of Good Spread to get the project started. “We wanted something to give people so they wouldn’t just donate money to a cause and then turn around and forget about it all the next day,” Cox said. “We think a creative and delicious way to do that is by turning America’s craving...
by Aaron Schmelzer | Nov 12, 2012 | Uncategorized
Over the past couple of years, social media and technology have reached an all-time high in daily usage. Many forms of technology are available almost everywhere via smartphones and laptops–including school classrooms. Because of this increase, teachers are struggling to keep the attention of their tech-savy students. At Lipscomb, technology can be found in many classrooms. While some professors utilize the media in capacities like Internet searches or PowerPoint presentations, there are still some that enjoy having no media in the classroom. Alan Bradshaw, chair of the physics department at Lipscomb, prefers for students’ laptops to stay in their backpacks. “It bugs the fire out of me when people use computers and cell phones in my class,” Bradshaw said. He is not completely against using technology, though. Bradshaw explained that he uses Lipscomb’s online blackboard to send questions to students so they can prepare for the lecture the next day. “I started doing this thing this year with my college physics class where I’ll do what’s called a JIT (Just In Time) quiz,” Bradshaw said. “They’re due the night before class, and it’ll be two very simple questions about what we’re going to cover in class and then a question that says, ‘What would you like to see covered in class?’ So, I can go through those and kind of get an idea of where everybody is. I like that a lot.” Bradshaw also explained that it is difficult to use technology in his classes because physics is a hard subject to teach using media. There are plenty of other subjects that provide the opportunity to use technology. One of these...
by Erin Gupton | Nov 11, 2012 | Uncategorized
Serving at the Cap Haitien Children’s Home in Cap Haitien, Haiti, brings the Lipscomb men’s and women’s track and cross country teams closer as they minister to children in need. “At the end of the day, we won’t remember every 100-meter sprint or every mile we ran with each other. But I will never forget serving with my teammates and my family,” said Alexander McMeen, a junior from Nashville. The teams strive to make service a focus both in Nashville and around the world. They have held mission trips to Los Angeles and Belize City, Belize. But they have recently shifted their attention to Haiti, making it an annual mission trip. The Cap Haitien home was founded in 1988 and hosts about 60 children of all ages. For the past few years Hunter and Jillian Kittrell – two Lipscomb graduates – have taken position as the field administrators. “Our main goal while in Haiti is to use our athletic abilities as a tool for teaching the kids in Haiti and showing Christ’s love through the talents that God has given us,” said Katie Bunker, a junior from Cedarville, Ohio. Every aspect of this trip calls for teamwork, even the fundraising. The teams hosted a 24-hour relay on Friday, Nov. 2, where track and cross country teammates ran for a full 24 hours, switching runners during allotted times. The runners tracked their miles, and people who wanted to help the team raise money donated a certain amount of money per mile. This year, the team ran a total of 160 miles, raising about $2,500 for their trip. “It’s an event...
