Year: 2009

“The Madonna and Child and St. John” by an unknown artist In 1956, Vanderbilt’s Permanent Collection was founded by a generous gift from renowned art collector Anna C. Hoyt of Boston. Hoyt, who had been a print curator at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, had a particularly fine eye for… Read More

 Rick Hilles, acclaimed poet and assistant professor of English at Vanderbilt, was named one of 10 recipients of the 2008 Whiting Writer’s Awards given for “writers of exceptional talent and promise in early career.” Author of the award-winning poetry collection Brother Salvage, Hilles received a $50,000 prize from the Mrs. Read More

Transformative Literature When Ann Neely, faculty director of the Ingram Scholars program, went to Cape Town, South Africa, last July to visit three of her students involved with a Vanderbilt service-learning project, she never dreamed that she would be inspired to create a new service-learning course of her own. During… Read More

Last fall I had lunch with a friend whose only child is a sophomore at another university that we refer to around here as one of our “peer” schools. “Oh, Ethan seems happy, and his grades are good,” my friend replied when I asked about her son. “But I hate… Read More

David Carlton David Carlton, associate professor of history at Vanderbilt, has devoted his career to studying the industrialization of the South. He is the author of Mill and Town in South Carolina, 1880–1920, which is still in print after a quarter century. More recently, he was co-author, with Peter A. Read More

Nocturnal Naughtiness Regarding Vanderbilt panty raids, I disagree with Paul Conkin’s statement [Fall 2008 issue, Collective Memory, “Boys Gone Wild”] in his final paragraph: “Never again would such a raid take place at Vanderbilt. The last panty raid [occurred] in 1959 … .” In reality, pages 34–35 of… Read More

Editor GayNelle Doll Art Director and Designer Donna DeVore Pritchett Editorial Associate Editor and Advertising Manager Phillip B. Tucker Arts and Culture Editor Bonnie Arant Ertelt, BS’81 Class Notes and Sports Editor Nelson Bryan, BA’73 Production and Design Assistant Director, Photography Services… Read More

I knew Neil Brake was a remarkably gifted photographer as soon as I saw his portfolio. From the day he came to work at Vanderbilt eight years ago, he dogged the campus like it was his beat and as if he were competing for a front-page hot spot. Years of… Read More

At 1:16 p.m. on an unseasonably warm Middle Tennessee Saturday in late December, the page goes out to the crew of LifeFlight 1, which is based in Lebanon, Tenn.: “ADULT LVL ONE: SCENE: Vanderbilt LifeFlight 1: ETA 10: 18 yom c/c MVA, pt is ett’d poss head inj. BP109/57: HR110:… Read More

illustration by liz asher/www.lizasher.com Clarksville, Tenn., a city of 125,000 on the Tennessee–Kentucky border, is best known for its proximity to the sprawling Fort Campbell Army Base. The town takes pride in attracting new industry and bills itself as the “Gateway to the New South.” But Clarksville is also a… Read More

The largest open dump in Latin America, La Chureca was named one of the “20 Horrors of the Modern World” in a contest sponsored by the Spanish magazine Interviu. For outright squalor and heartbreak, the city dump of Managua, Nicaragua, where 1,500 people live daily on rotting scraps, could serve… Read More

Talk about pent-up demand—Commodore fans have been waiting 53 years for a scene like this. Head Football Coach Bobby Johnson gets a dousing during the final moments of a nail-biting Music City Bowl game on New Year’s Eve. The 16–14 win over Boston College capped Vanderbilt’s first post-season football… Read More

“Jenny,” as I’ll call her, came in for a follow-up appointment the other day. You probably don’t know Jenny personally, but you read about her all the time. That’s because Jenny is a statistic, a faceless number. Jenny is an outgoing, always smiling 40-year-old who has been badly crippled with… Read More

Ellen Pearson, second from right, and her family hang themselves out to dry. “Gripes, kudos, inspired ideas for future stories? Put ’em here,” read the Vanderbilt Magazine voluntary subscription card I received in the mail last year. Having long fancied myself an enlightened environmentalist with a throbbing social consciousness, I… Read More

As Vanderbilt University School of Nursing celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding this year, the nursing profession is struggling to meet the demands of a prolonged and severe nursing and faculty shortage. Alumni from the 1940s can attest that the current shortage is not the nursing profession’s first. In… Read More

 Collaborators in work and in life, Douglas and Lynn Fuchs together have reportedly attracted more federal funding than any other researchers in their field. In 1972, two Johns Hopkins University students started a Saturday school for poor children from their Baltimore neighborhood. With the help of college friends, they created… Read More

It is hard not to feel slightly out of place now that I have returned to Vanderbilt’s campus. War is a difficult reality to face, and the experience brings irreversible changes within a person.  I am a senior in the College of Arts and Science, with a major in… Read More

Brighton Beach Memoirs, which debuts April 3 at Neely Auditorium at Vanderbilt University, is a semi-autobiographical, bittersweet comedy recalling the years of Tony-award winning playwright Neil Simon's family's struggle in New York during the Great Depression. Read More

Vanderbilt University experienced a decrease in crime in 2008 according to the latest figures compiled by the Vanderbilt Police Department for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's annual Crime on Campus report to be released in March. Read More

Hundreds of volunteers worked thousands of hours — and Reunion 2008 topped all records. Nearly 7,000 Vanderbilt alumni, family and friends came back to campus in October. And they gave back, too. Reunion gifts added up to more than $41 million—exceptional generosity that’s already making a difference across campus for… Read More