Year: 2010

Connie Vinita Dowell, Vanderbilt’s dean of libraries, is kicking off the Heard Library’s new exhibits program with a bang—or maybe with a Frug. “We have a fabulous collection of ’60s materials on many topics,” Dowell says. “Now’s a good time to let people see it.” Cases exhibit everything from the… Read More

Wangari Maathai, the 2004 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the environmentally conscious Green Belt Movement, will receive Vanderbilt University’s prestigious Nichols-Chancellor’s Medal in May 2011 when she will address graduating seniors and their families during Senior Day. Read More

Do videos targeted to babies really teach? New Vanderbilt research gives a clear answer. Plus, a Supreme Court justice comes to campus and why one ‘Dore is playing for the New York Times. [vucastblurb]… Read More

Misa Criolla – a performance of musical works by the late Argentine composer and pianist Ariel Ramirez – will take place Dec. 5 in the Scarritt Bennett Center’s Wightman Chapel. The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 5 p.m. The English translation of Misa Criolla… Read More

Libraries can be intimidating places. The young James Baldwin thought so. Read More

Divinity grads aim to compensate for the chaos in contemporary society. Read More

Freak accidents sever limbs. Tumors disfigure faces. And reconstructive plastic surgeons team up for their toughest challenges. Read More

Muslim and Christian scholars will consider the most revered woman in both traditions during a discussion at the Scarritt-Bennett Center. Mary (in the Christian tradition) or Maryam (the Muslim tradition) – the mother of Jesus – is mentioned more in the Qur’an than the New Testament. During the interfaith panel… Read More

Clinical pharmacologist Nancy Brown, M.D., relaxes in her chair, leans on an elbow and gives each speaker her utmost concentration. A dozen or so biomedical scientists attend Brown’s weekly research meetings, held in a small conference room tucked amid laboratories high in the Robinson Research Building. Five or six young… Read More

Tony N. Brown’s office is in Garland Hall, exactly where one might expect to find a scholar in the College of Arts and Science. But the associate professor of sociology might not be in, as his teaching, research projects and secondary appointments take him all over campus. It’s a good… Read More

Four years ago Christopher Parks found himself facing an all-too-common dilemma. He and his mother, who was in the midst of cancer treatments, were sitting in her living room going through a stack of her medical bills and those of his father, who had died recently. It is a telling… Read More

In 2002, having recently undergone board certification as a neurosurgeon, Robert J. Singer, M.D., sat down at his kitchen table with some butcher paper and a few drafting instruments and began designing electric guitars. Once he had completed a dozen designs, he engaged a factory in Korea to make the… Read More

When she was studying Shakespeare and Milton at Vanderbilt in the late 1970s, Nora Wingfield Tyson never dreamed she’d be making history one day. But last July in a cavernous aircraft-carrier hangar in Norfolk, Va., Rear Adm. Tyson did just that when she became the first woman in U.S. Navy… Read More

Misa Criolla – a performance of musical works by the late Argentine composer and pianist Ariel Ramirez – will take place Dec. 5 in the Scarritt Bennett Center’s Wightman Chapel. The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 5 p.m. The English translation of Misa Criolla… Read More

A collaboration between Vanderbilt and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools on an Early Reading First project for preschool children has yielded “spectacular” results in a preliminary study, according to project leaders. “The big picture is that high-quality language and literacy instruction in pre-K can make a big difference,” says Deborah Rowe,… Read More

In this corner, weighing in at 150 pounds: Homo sapiens, creator of the bug zapper, the citronella candle, the rolled-up newspaper and Deep Woods Off! And in the opposite corner, weighing in at less than 5 milligrams: Anopheles gambiae, transmitter of 250 million new cases of malaria each year, possessing… Read More

U.S. health care exacts a heavy toll not only in terms of dollars, but also in the demand we exert on the world’s supply of surgeons. A decline in the number of international medical graduates practicing general surgery in the United States is contributing to a “crisis of urgency” as… Read More

Hearing loss now affects nearly 20 percent of U.S. adolescents age 12 to 19, a rise of 5 percent during the past 15 years, according to a new Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study co-led by Dr. Ron Eavey, director of the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center and the… Read More

Between 2003 and 2005, Vanderbilt physicians treated more than 50 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division based in Fort Campbell, Ky., with a common complaint. Each soldier had a history of shortness of breath, and each one—a former supremely fit soldier—was having trouble passing a running test. They also shared… Read More

First-year student R. Adams Cowley during a fall men’s lacrosse practice Soccer: Three Named ‘Players to Watch’ The Top Drawer Soccer website has included three Vanderbilt players in its “Top 20 Women’s College Players to Watch” list for the Eastern Division of the Southeastern Conference: seniors Molly and Megan Kinsella… Read More