by Emily Snell | Aug 31, 2011 | News Slider
Hurricane Irene struck the East Coast last weekend, leaving a long trail of destruction including at least 43 deaths and nearly $7 billion in damage. Days after the storm, it was estimated that almost 3 million people were still without power. Flooding remained a problem in many areas, while others have begun to clean up downed trees and other debris. Families of several Lipscomb students felt the force of Hurricane Irene. Ryan Whitley, a junior in business management from Rockland County, N.Y., said his family had some flood damage and was without power on and off for a few days. He said his relatives in New Jersey had a flood in their basement. “The whole thing was basically under water.” Whitley, whose family lives near the Hudson River, said he was relieved that the storm wasn’t worse. “I’m glad my family is safe,” he said. Other families in Whitley’s home area were not so blessed. One young boy was playing in some floodwater when a power line fell in the water, Whitley said. An adult attempted to save the boy but was killed by the high voltage. The child is still in critical condition. Whitley said he thought the storm “caught people off guard,” explaining that normally when hurricanes hit the Eastern Seaboard, his area only gets a little rain. Winter storms are usually what people in Whitley’s town prepare for, he said. “The worst we get is usually a blizzard, and we’re prepared for that,” he said. “It’s snow; it just get plowed. Something like water, you can’t do too much with.” Hannah Lavoie, a sophomore social work major...
by Hunter Patterson | Aug 26, 2011 | News Slider
Early Friday morning inside Allen Arena, Lipscomb hosted the first Nashville Business Breakfast of the fall semester. Tennessee’s newest governor, Bill Haslam, was the featured speaker of the event. Others speaking at the event were SGA president Daniel Wakefield and Lipscomb president Randy Lowry. Amongst the numerous white collar businessmen and women were several members of the Lipscomb faculty. Walt Leaver, Jim Thomas, Tom Seals and Joe Ivey – to name a few. Several of those in the audience were present for the first time. This was pointed out during the introduction when it was announced that the crowd at Friday’s breakfast was twice the size of any other they had seen in the past. Wakefield officially started the event by offering an invocation. Following him was President Lowry who pointed out the audience’s only federally elected official, congressman Jim Cooper. Lowry highlighted the accomplishments of the university over the recent months and told a very light-hearted story about his predecessor, Steve Flatt. Turns out, when renovating Fanning over the summer, workers found several lost items behind the bookshelves in the rooms of the dormitory. One of the items was a letter written by Flatt. The letter was to a girl. A girl that, turns out, is not his wife. Lowry was quick to point out that it was not anything sinister, for Flatt had not yet met his wife. Lowry then introduced the day’s featured speaker, Gov. Haslam. Haslam was greeted with a standing ovation. He began in normal speaking fashion with a joke. “It’s great seeing everyone show up for something like this at the beginning of...
by Hunter Patterson | Aug 25, 2011 | News Slider, Sports
Hard nosed, honest, tough and a leader. All the words have been used to describe Coach Pat Summitt for over 30 years. Now, just days after she announced that she had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, those words have never rang truer. Coach Summitt has been the head coach of the Lady Vols at the University of Tennessee since she was 22. Yes, some of her players were older than her. She drove the van to away games. She and her players slept in locker rooms because money was tight. Some ladies even made the team based on the fact that they owned a vehicle. For Coach Summitt, those were the tough times. Now, Lady Vol fans and admirers of the Basketball Hall of Fame coach are calling this a hard time. Summitt refuses to, though. “There will be no pity party,” Summitt told the Washington Post in an interview on Sunday. “I’ll be sure of that.” Summitt says she had felt that something was off for a while, saying she “just felt something different.” Once her Lady Vols were eliminated from the Regional final of the NCAA tournament she visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. seeking any sort of explanation to why she had these lapses of memory. Those lapses were everything from forgetting what time she needed to be at the gym, losing her car keys more than once per day and forgetting what type of scheme or play to run at a certain time during a game. “I think last year there was some adjustment in games,” Lipscomb’s women’s basketball coach Frank Bennett said....
by Hunter Patterson | Jun 9, 2011 | News Slider
For most students at Lipscomb, Advance means making friends, winning Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and revealing secrets during intense games of fruit basket turnover. For Jim Thomas, however, Advance runs much deeper than that. Dr. Thomas, a communications professor and an assistant to the president, started the Advance program 22 years ago with hopes of keeping incoming freshman at Lipscomb for the entirety of their college careers. “I see myself as more of a problem solver as opposed to someone who has great creativity,” Dr. Thomas said. “I always wondered why Lipscomb students transferred to Harding and vice versa.” After looking at the data, which had been complied after 20 years of research, Thomas soon found out that nearly 50 percent of those who start college never get their degree. Thomas then began to wonder if students were simply not as smart as they had thought upon entering college. “Surprisingly it is the brighter students who tend to drop out and never graduate,” Thomas said. “What is making the student say, ‘I’m just not going to do this?’” The main thing that Dr. Thomas found out was that most of the students’ decisions were made very early on in the college experience. He then concluded that if students were able to have a pleasant freshman year it was more likely they would finish college by walking the line and shaking the hand of the president instead of leaving during Spring break and never returning. “Having started at Lipscomb as a transfer student in 1967, I came in thinking that our registration process had a real problem with it,” Thomas said. “We...
by Jimmy McCollum | Jun 6, 2011 | News Slider
Lipscomb University’s Journalism Camp kicked off on Sunday with a session on building a newscast. Instructors Brian O’Neal and Ray Harris let the students take turns as camera ops, audio directors and anchors. J-Camp is co-hosted by the department of communication and journalism and the Tennessee High School Press Association. Click on the photos below for a...
