Year: 2009

Adrienne Outlaw This fall scholars from Vanderbilt debated the ethics of healthy people taking prescription drugs to enhance creativity as part of the yearlong Art Makes Place program. With a focus on contemporary artists who are making community-oriented, temporary and performance-based art for public spaces, the Vanderbilt panelists discussed… Read More

Billy Ray Caldwell, BA'85 President, Vanderbilt Alumni Association Another class of future alumni has arrived, and by all standards, the Class of 2013 is a historic one. As we learned at the Summer Send-Off Parties, where we welcomed new students into the Vanderbilt community, there were nearly 20,000 applicants for… Read More

Looking for ways to stay engaged with Vanderbilt? We’ve got ’em! You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating. There are many ways to get involved, including volunteering with Vanderbilt’s admissions interviewing process or summer send-off programs, serving as an online career adviser, becoming involved in the activities of your… Read More

From Atlanta to Seattle and even London, members of the 2009 incoming freshman class were welcomed to Vanderbilt at 41 Summer Send-Off Parties sponsored by local chapters of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association. A Vanderbilt tradition that dates back to 1968, Summer Send-Off Parties bring alumni, current students,… Read More

If you are changing careers, targeting a new industry, considering a new functional area, or simply trying to select the right career for yourself, you are invited to participate in a new, comprehensive career coaching program offered by the Office of Alumni Relations in conjunction with Vanderbilt Career Services. The… Read More

It is a tenet of the self-help faith: Follow your passion, and it will lead you down the road to professional success, personal fulfillment and financial reward. The alumni profiled in this issue turn this self-help cliché on its head. They have followed their passions, yes, but down an alternate… Read More

Tisha Holloway was exhausted. She had been laboring in a North Carolina hospital for almost 26 hours to give birth to her first child, but the baby just wouldn’t come. “I tried to do everything right during my pregnancy,” the 27-year-old woman says. “I ate right, exercised, kept my… Read More

(Photo: Herb Peck) “I have sometimes said that during the half dozen or so years from 1967 to 1973, I never relaxed once,” Vanderbilt’s fifth chancellor, Alexander Heard, once remarked. “That’s not technically true, of course, but I was constantly aware of the local and national matters that affected Vanderbilt’s… Read More

Marshall Eakin is the new director of the Ingram Scholarship Program. “Vanderbilt puts more emphasis on teaching than any major research university in the United States, except maybe Notre Dame and Georgetown,” he says. When he was in high school, Marshall Eakin spent a summer in Guatemala. This was no… Read More

Allison Oubre (left) and Andrea Alvord on campus in their Navy ROTC uniforms. It was their first photo taken together. Dear Allison, It’s been a few weeks since we last wrote, and now we really have no need for letters. You are the ever-present friend. I am here in Slidell,… Read More

No carefully followed blueprint could ever replicate the serendipitous evolution of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” from exercise in parody to platinum record to cottage industry. Read More

What is poverty? And what is the best way to treat it? While the second question seems to be the more important, a poor fundamental understanding of the first obscures poverty’s underlying mechanism, often resulting in an ineffective and insensitive treatment. Unlike medicine, which often relies on discovery to… Read More

Third through sixth graders in the Edgehill neighborhood will have the opportunity to interact with educational leaders from around the world Dec. 3 during Passport Day at the Edgehill Library. Read More

Once upon a time, there was a Peabody graduate who was nanny to four children. After washing the family dog one day, she was inspired to write a children’s picture book called The Great Dog Wash. She entered it in a contest and won! The book was published by a famous New York publishing house and put into 1.5 million boxes of Cheerios. The End. Read More

Eddie Gilbert has already had his 15 minutes of fame. However, competing on a Food Network reality show likely won’t be the last 15 minutes of fame for this high-octane personality with two degrees from Peabody. Read More

The Handbook of Research on School Choice edited by Mark Berends; Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives; Dale Ballou, associate professor of public policy and education; and Herbert J. Walberg, Routledge, April 2009. What difference do schools of choice make? A new book from the National… Read More

George Etta Brinkley Cohen climbed these marble stairs to her apartment on the second floor of Cohen Memorial for three years, from the time the building was finished in 1927 until her death in 1930. It is said that her spirit inhabits the structure. The building first housed the… Read More

Convocation marking founding of the John F. Kennedy Center in 1965. From left, Governor Clement, Rose Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center celebrated the life of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, lifelong champion of persons with intellectual disabilities and founder of Special Olympics, who died August 11… Read More

New research looking at comparison and the strategy of learning concepts before learning procedures as a way to help middle schoolers learn new math concepts has been co-authored by Bethany Rittle-Johnson, assistant professor of psychology and human development at Peabody. “We found that comparing different ways to solve a problem… Read More

Special education graduate student Karin Sandmel works with students from Currey Ingram Academy in Nashville who participated in a writing camp held on the Peabody campus in June. James Fraser, right, associate professor of human and organizational development, testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity on July… Read More