Year: 2010

Watch video of Mike Vandenbergh, professor of law and director, Climate Change Research Network; Michael Bess, Chancellor’s Professor of History; and Beth Conklin, associate professor of anthropology, speaking at the Dec. 8, 2010, Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box. The financial crisis and difficult economic times have shifted the cultural spotlight away from global… Read More

Stormy Weather tracks evolution of African American marriages Long-neglected love letters between a domestic servant husband and his teacher wife have provided an important part of a new book that tracks how middle class African American marriages evolved in the early and mid 20th century. Stormy Weather: Middle-Class… Read More

Ezra Fitz (Photo credit: Daniel Dubois, Vanderbilt University) In late January of 2006, I was looking neither at tide pools, nor at stars. I was staring intently – just as I am now, as I’m writing this – into a computer screen, trying to cover a bone-white Word document with… Read More

Student achievement improved and teacher turnover declined in schools participating in the Texas state-funded District Awards for Teacher Excellence (D.A.T.E.) program, the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University has found. “Our findings suggest that, more often than not, participants in the D.A.T.E. program had a positive experience and… Read More

Nashville Jazz Band, directed by Jim Williamson, performing in Ingram Hall with the Blair Big Band. (Photo credit: Vanderbilt University / Steve Green) Proponents of creating a cultural tax district for Nashville would need to identify community-specific goals that address voters’ shared values and ideals, according to a report prepared… Read More

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

Ridley Wills II Ridley Wills II, BA’56, has lived most of his life in Nashville. Since retiring from a 25-year career with the National Life and Accident Insurance Co., he has spent much of his life researching and writing local history. Heritage, Highballs and Hijinks: Colorful Characters I Have Known… Read More

“I’d really like to go up into the Kirkland clock tower,” I said. It was last November, and I was having brunch with Charlie Taylor, a director of regional gifts in Vanderbilt’s Division of Development and Alumni Relations, in sunny southern California, where I live. Charlie makes periodic visits to… Read More

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Dr. Otis Rickman with the tools of his trade Prologue “Help me understand,” she said. My patient was the delightful silver-haired matriarch of a large family. I was seeing her in consultation for a pulmonary nodule in the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s Thoracic Oncology Clinic on a crisp afternoon in the… Read More

Morris Frank, ’29, once playfully recalled the time he got a free train ride. “The conductor told me he had watched me come down the platform, get on the train and take my seat, and he said that no blind man in the world could do that.” As proof, Frank… Read More

Scientists Virginia Shepherd and Charles Brau first met at a Vanderbilt basketball game. She has become a national figure in championing the role of academics in the lives of student athletes. In 1992, Virginia Shepherd was attending a conference where Bruce Alberts, then-future president of the National Academy of Sciences,… Read More

Neil Cargile (center) at a Florida club with Dorothy Koss (left) and Holly Armistead People saw Neil Cargile Jr. in a great many ways. For me, though, an enduring vision was the very first one. I was a junior or senior at Montgomery Bell Academy back then, and there he… Read More

Lawson Aschenbach, right, celebrates a Street Tuner championship in September with team co-driver David Thilenius at Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City. LAWSON ASCHENBACH, BS’06 “There’s no better feeling than crossing the finish line first,” says professional racecar driver Lawson Aschenbach. He started racing go-karts at age 8,… Read More

Thirty Vanderbilt alumnae from 13 states—and nearly all from the Class of 1982—gathered in May to celebrate their collective 50th birthdays with a “Women on Wheels” reunion and bicycle trip through California’s wine country. During the trip, which was organized by Liz Schwartz Hale, BSN’83, and her family’s Berkeley, Calif.,… Read More

MURRAY FISHER, BA’98 Murray Fisher, founder and program director of the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, has been interested since childhood in protecting the natural world and bringing back its former abundance and diversity. At his first job, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s environmental group Riverkeeper, Fisher shouldered… Read More

Dr. Melvyn Koby returns the watch he pilfered 50 years ago. DR. MELVYN KOBY, BA’60 Fifty years ago Vanderbilt senior Melvyn Koby made off with a little piece of Vanderbilt history: a pocket watch from the statue of Francis Furman that stands on the landing inside Furman Hall. “It… Read More

Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos goes crowd surfing with first-year students before the home football game against Northwestern University on Sept. 4. Northwestern squeaked by Vanderbilt 23–21 in the season opener. PHOTO BY JOHN RUSSELL… Read More

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt supports lifelong learning. Watch the Winter 2011 professors describe the upcoming classes. Osher is an organization that provides adults with educational programs, stimulating tours and trips, and a variety of social events. The program reflects the high academic standards espoused by the university… Read More

Cornelia Clark Sworn in as Tennessee Chief Justice The Hon. Cornelia A. Clark, BA’71, JD’79, became the second woman in the state’s history to serve as chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court when she was sworn into office Sept. 1. She took the oath at the historic Williamson County Courthouse in… Read More