SEWANEE, Tenn. – The University of the South and Vanderbilt
University today announced a wide-ranging agreement that builds on a
history of both formal and informal relationships between the schools
and establishes official collaborations to expand educational options
for students and research opportunities for faculty. Sewanee Vice
Chancellor and President Joel Cunningham and Vanderbilt Chancellor
Gordon Gee met to sign the agreement this morning.
The Sewanee-Vanderbilt Partnership will encompass programs in
nursing, education, religion, engineering and student life, as well as
allow the institutions, just 90 miles apart, to share key resources.
Through the partnership, students at Sewanee will take specially
designated courses to prepare for entry into nursing and education that
will be recognized by both institutions and, if successfully completed,
can result in expedited admission to Vanderbilt’s graduate programs in
those areas. In addition, engineering students will have the
opportunity to earn bachelor’s degrees from both institutions.
"With the signing of today’s agreement, with the formalization of
the Sewanee-Vanderbilt Partnership, the strong ties between our two
schools become even stronger and the benefits become even greater to
the students and faculty at both institutions," Gee said.
"These new initiatives in cooperation and mutual support between
Vanderbilt and the University of the South will serve students and
faculty well at both institutions for many years to come, and we are
grateful for Chancellor Gee’s leadership in making them possible,"
Cunningham said.
An agreement between the Vanderbilt and Sewanee libraries will grant
students and faculty at each school borrowing privileges at the other
school’s library. Faculty from Sewanee who wish to travel to Nashville
for summer research will have the opportunity to be housed, along with
their families, on the Vanderbilt campus.
In the area of student life, staff and students from both schools
will collaborate in planning programs for students or arranging for
guest lecturers relating to multicultural issues, student leadership
and other areas. In addition, the two universities plan to cooperate
regarding the use of certain facilities at each institution for
particular events.
Vanderbilt’s Divinity School and Sewanee’s School of Theology will
build upon a history of collaboration and are developing plans for
exchanges of students and faculty and for partnering in other mutually
advantageous ways.
The newly established relationship between Sewanee and Vanderbilt’s
Peabody College will facilitate the entry of highly accomplished
students into the teaching profession. The partnership will expand the
options for teacher licensure for Sewanee students and enable them to
continue into graduate-level licensure programs at Peabody upon
successful completion of courses approved by both Sewanee education and
Peabody teacher education faculty. For its part, Peabody will be able
to identify and accept highly qualified Sewanee students into graduate
programs for licensure.
Although both schools offer teacher licensure programs in secondary
education, the partnership with Peabody’s Department of Teaching and
Learning will allow Sewanee students to pursue licensure in elementary,
early childhood, special education or school counseling.
Under the Vanderbilt Liberal Arts-Nursing 4-2 program, a student
will spend his or her first four years of college at Sewanee and the
remaining two calendar years at Vanderbilt studying in one of the
nursing specialty areas that Vanderbilt offers. In addition to a
bachelor’s degree from Sewanee, students successfully completing the
program will earn a master of science in nursing from Vanderbilt.
The engineering component of the agreement establishes what is known
as a 3-2 program leading to a bachelor of arts or science from Sewanee
and a bachelor of engineering from Vanderbilt. The student will spend
the first three years of his or her college career at the University of
the South in a pre-engineering program and the remaining two years at
Vanderbilt studying in one of the engineering programs.
Through the years, faculty at Sewanee and Vanderbilt have
collaborated on research and consulted with each other on issues
related to their respective disciplines. Numerous graduates of
Vanderbilt’s doctoral programs are members of the Sewanee faculty,
including in the departments of economics, psychology and religious
studies. In addition to the Vanderbilt units involved in the
partnerships announced today, faculty in other Vanderbilt schools, such
as the College of Arts and Science and the Blair School of Music, have
a history of collaboration with Sewanee. Among upcoming plans is
Sewanee-Vanderbilt sponsorship of the Southern Conference on Slavic
Studies, which is expected to attract more than 150 scholars to
Nashville in the spring of 2005.
Media contact: Elizabeth Latt, (615) 322-NEWS
Elizabeth.p.latt@vanderbilt.edu