Summer 2016

Check out the latest book offerings from Vanderbilt alumni and faculty. Read More

It has been 47 years since Ben Shahn’s mosaic Peabody—1968 was dedicated in the Hobbs Human Development Laboratory on what was then the campus of George Peabody College for Teachers. The effort to commission Shahn, an artist well known for his advocacy for the poor, was spearheaded by Susan Gray, professor of psychology, emerita, and an advocate for children, particularly those held back developmentally by poverty. Read More

Michael Rinne (far right) as bassist Lum York, with actor Tom Hiddleston (center) as Hank Williams and members of the film version of Williams’ band, The Drifting Cowboys. Photo by Sam Emerson/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics   Bassist Michael Rinne, BMus’10, is a busy guy. He has recorded with artists Caitlin… Read More

Vanderbilt boasts two winners of Guggenheim fellowships this year: Beth Bachmann, writer-in-residence in English, received a fellowship in poetry, and John Powers, BA’01, assistant professor of sculpture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, received a fellowship in the fine arts division for his sculpture. Read More

A tenor who studied with Metropolitan Opera star John Alexander and currently studies with Robert White of Juilliard, Rich Miller is in his sixth year as president of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and is an advisory director of the Metropolitan Opera Association. As a Blair parent and member of the Vanderbilt Parents Leadership Committee and the Parents and Family Advisory Board, he and his wife, Carol, have made it possible for the Blair and Vanderbilt communities to access live streaming of the Met through a subscription service. Read More

Vibhuti Krishna, BA’16, who majored in art and in health, medicine and society, was presented the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award for 2016. Hailing from Solon, Ohio, she received $25,000 for a year of art research and travel, which will culminate in a solo show at Vanderbilt next year. Read More

First-year Peabody College students Aaron and Nicholas Ainsworth have stayed connected to their hometown of San Bernardino, California, in part by mentoring a class of sixth-grade students there, both in person and by video chat. Read More

Larry Daughtrey, legendary political reporter for The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, known as a tenacious watchdog at the state Capitol who always broke the story first, died May 12 of complications from lung disease. He was 76. Read More

Peabody College alumna Nera White powered the first national women’s basketball dynasty and became the game’s first female superstar—a dominance that led her into the Basketball Hall of Fame as one of the first two women to be enshrined there. She died April 13 in Gallatin, Tennessee, from complications of pneumonia at the age of 80. Read More

Before Commencement in May, 1,195 members of the Class of 2016 made gifts to the annual Senior Class Fund, representing a record-high 76 percent participation rate. Read More

In 2014, Austin Schiff was named the first executive director of the Cincinnati Squash Academy, a nonprofit that seeks to transform talented students in underserved communities into scholar-athletes. He was only 24 years old. His charge: to build an organization from the ground up. Read More

To say that this has been a crazy year in politics is a laugh-out-loud understatement. We turn to the experts in Vanderbilt’s renowned political science department for insight not only into the 2016 presidential race, but also into the future of U.S. politics itself. Read More

Each year Vanderbilt selects a book for all incoming first-year students to read during the summer before arriving on campus. This year’s selection is Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South by Andrew Maraniss, BA’92. Here we present an excerpt adapted from Strong Inside, which is currently being made into a documentary film and a children’s book. Read More

Vanderbilt begins a new chapter in its proud basketball tradition as Bryce Drew and Stephanie White take the helm of the men's and women's teams. Read More

With a five-person crew, and after a year of planning, Aryeh’s Kitchen launched in May and is set for a larger debut when students return to campus in August. Read More

On April 21 members of the Vanderbilt community from across the globe participated in the first-ever Vanderbilt Giving Day, raising more than $1.6 million in just 24 hours. Read More

Whatever your political leanings, the acidic divisiveness between—and among—parties in this election cycle has left little for anyone to love. Luckily, I got a break from the daily shouting matches about finger lengths, email servers and Bernie Bros by digging into some of the fascinating, reasoned research around presidential politics being produced by members of Vanderbilt’s esteemed political science department for this issue’s cover story. Read More

In April Andrew East, BE’14, MBA’15, married Shawn Johnson, a gold-medal gymnast in the 2008 Olympics and winner of Dancing with the Stars in 2009. Overnight, East became one-half of a celebrity couple, and pictures of his wedding were splashed across the pages of People and numerous other celebrity magazines. Read More

Two players from the Vanderbilt men’s basketball team were selected in the first round of the 2016 NBA Draft: point guard Wade Baldwin (No. 17 overall to the Memphis Grizzlies) and center Damian Jones (No. 30 overall to the Golden State Warriors) Read More

Decked out in matching red “#BonnaGrannies” T-shirts and sparkly red and blue cowboy hats, the women, all in their late 80s and early 90s, pose for photos and take selfies with many of the 80,000 tattooed festival-goers one-fourth their ages. Read More