by Emily Snell | Dec 14, 2012 | Uncategorized
Dr. Brandi Kellett knows life is a balancing act. The adjunct English professor, PTO president and mom of three also knows it’s OK to have an imperfect life. “I don’t have to be right, and I don’t have to be strong. Weakness and failure are part of the gig,” she said, illustrating that by looking at the Bible. “In Corinthians, when God says to Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in weakness,’ it doesn’t say, ‘I’ll be strong until you get back on your feet, but like really, you need to get your crap together.’ It says, ‘My strength is only made perfect when you are not.’” In other words, human frailties are part of the overall plan and are part of the life experience, she said. “As I’ve become more accomplished in my professional life, my marriage and parenting, and my church and all these different arenas, I’ve actually learned to take myself a lot less seriously,” she said. Along the way, she has realized humility goes a long way toward helping a person live with honesty and integrity, “which is what I think it’s all about.” “I’ve learned that [humility] is actually the key to compassion for other people, which is why it matters so much,” she said. “It doesn’t matter because God wants a bunch of meek, little people walking around. He knows that humility is the key to living well with others. And it really doesn’t happen without it. It’s the key to empathy and kindness and community, I think.” Kellett said even her new role as PTO...
by Hunter Patterson | Mar 12, 2012 | News Slider
Soulforce members are trained to face hate and discrimination when they arrive on a Christian campus. However, they were met with optimism and gratefulness during their three sessions with the Lipscomb community on Monday. Soulforce is a “national non-profit that works nonviolently to end the religious and political oppression of LGBTQ people.” Since 2006, Soulforce has used their Equality Ride to initiate conversations and promote dialogue on Christian college campuses that “discriminate against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer individuals and their allies.” On Saturday, the Equality Ride bus rolled into Nashville. Since then, members of Soulforce have met with students, faculty and administration from Lipscomb as well as other faith-based universities in Nashville such as Trevecca and Belmont. Soulforce said the university has been very hospitable to its group. This is not always the case for the LGBTQ organization when they approach a campus asking for dialogue and discussion. Last week in Atlanta, the group encountered resistance from Carver Bible College when trying to establish a dialogue on their campus. On its blog, the group says they were forced to stay on the sidewalk outside the gate. Because of the decision to lock them out, their communication with students was limited to singing and holding up signs that could be seen through the windows of Carver’s chapel. Attending Monday’s event at Lipscomb came with strict guidelines. All attendees were told to arrive at least 10 minutes early and to have their Lipscomb IDs in hand. The doors closed on the hour, every hour, to prevent any sort of interruption during the session. Students and faculty who arrived late...
by Emily Snell | Feb 23, 2012 | News Slider
The engineering department will serve free popcorn and drinks to any Lipscomb students who attend a showing of “Wall-E” Thursday night at 7 p.m. in Ezell 301. After the movie, there will be a panel discussion with Dr. Lee Camp and Dr. Steve Nordstrom about “engineering gone wrong.” The movie and discussion are just one aspect of this year’s Engineering Week, which is themed “God: The Ultimate Engineer.” Kirsten Heikkinen, student chair of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, said Engineering Week, or E-week, is a nationwide effort to recognize engineers and their work. “It really just gets what we do out there, broadcasts what we do and brings interest into the field,” said Heikkinen, a senior double majoring in mechanical engineering and applied math. “A lot of professionals participate, lots of schools, and we also do a lot of things with grade school kids too.” Heikkinen said the organizers of Lipscomb’s E-week decided to show “Wall-E” in order to facilitate discussion about how to use technology responsibly. “Technology is a part of all our lives, it’s not just engineers,” she said. “We want to discuss how you should use technology in an ethical manner. ‘Wall-E’ kind of shows how, if you don’t use technology responsibly, it could have a huge effect on how we live. We just want to get that message out there.” Levi Hobbs, vice chair for Lipscomb’s chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, agreed, saying the movie provides a comical illustration of what happens when people don’t use technology appropriately. “With our theme about God as the ultimate engineer, it’s really important...
by Anne Paquin | Jan 14, 2012 | News Slider
Jan. 14 kicked off the start of a service oriented week to honor the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Students from Lipscomb, Belmont and Vanderbilt universities collaborated on the week’s first service project, all helping to paint Fire House 19 near downtown Nashville through the Hands on Nashville service group. Students spent their Saturday morning painting the old fire house that has been forgotten since 1993. Other projects to honor Dr. King included working with Feed the Children and the American Red...
by Hunter Patterson | Nov 18, 2011 | News Slider
The Internet is changing…sort of. Earlier this year one of the biggest blogging sites, Tumblr, starting adding the infinite sign to the beginning of its URLs because it had ran out of numbers. Now, the Internet is adding domains with the suffix “.xxx” specifically for pornographic sites. The change has sparked universities across the nation to buy up their respective domains, protecting their names from being tarnished. The URLs are coming cheap now, too. Both Vanderbilt and the University of Tennessee and Knoxville bought their addresses for less than $200 each. Vanderbilt registered “vanderbilt.xxx” and four other domain names: “commodores.xxx,” “vandy.xxx,” “vanderbiltuniversity.xxx” and “vanderbiltcommodores.xxx.” Not Lipscomb, though. Other schools and big businesses are buying up the domains quickly, sparking the launch of the .xxx top-level domain. The domains will become available to public within the next month. Per usual, though, those with trademarks got the first chance to purchase the URLs and safeguard them. Lipscomb has decided not to purchase the domains, no matter the price, because the “.xxx domain is intended for material that is counter to any university’s mission,” said Kim Chaudoin, director of university communication and marketing at LU. Chaudoin said there are two schools of thought among institutions of higher education. “One is that an institution would reserve the domain to protect its trademark and brand identity,” she said. The other is that the domain is not intended for the university and does not represent what the university was founded upon. Vanderbilt would be in the first school of thought. Maggie Huckaba, the university’s diretor of trademark licensing, told The Tennessean Vanderbilt wanted to trademark...
