Year: 2014

After a career spanning more than 60 years, most writers would be quite ready to retire, but Spencer is still working and enthralling new readers with her graceful fiction. Her seventh story collection, Starting Over: Stories, was published in January of this year to critical raves. Read More

At most conservatories and music schools, work with vocal coaches is restricted to graduate voice students. But at the Blair School of Music, undergraduate voice majors have the opportunity to work with two full-time vocal coaches—also known as collaborative pianists—who lend their input, ears and piano technique to young singers. Read More

Blair School of Music begins the academic year by continuing its 50-year celebration. On Sept. 13 it honored Roland Schneller, the longest-serving member of the Blair faculty and holder of the Chancellor’s Chair in Piano, with an evening of music. Read More

Wide receiver Jordan Matthews, BA’13, was selected 42nd overall by the Philadelphia Eagles in the second round of the NFL Draft on May 9. Read More

Tobacco smoking has been linked to approximately 2 million deaths among adult men and women in Asia in recent years, according to a new study that predicts a rising death toll. Read More

Bennett Landman, whose research lies at the interface of medical imaging, signal processing and statistical inference, has been focusing on large-scale medical image processing. Read More

Biomedical informatics is a science that draws connections between data and medicine, whether those data concern diseases, health care processes or human biology in the form of genomics and proteomics. Everyone who studies health records has the same goal: more precise medicine, leading to improved patient outcomes. Read More

Using the EHR (electronic health record) and natural language processing, the School of Medicine keeps track of each student’s exposure to patient problems across the curricular spectrum, allowing the school to advance students on a more individualized basis. Read More

Parents showed support for their Vanderbilt students like never before in the 2014 academic year, and as a result, a single challenge gift of $200,000 benefited multiple academic and student-life programs across the university. Read More

During the past two years, the number of Commodore Recruitment Programs (CoRPs) volunteers has more than doubled from 1,512 to 3,371 alumni. Read More

Janice Feagin Britton of Spanish Fort, Alabama, died Feb. 20 at age 92 after a lifetime of service and adventure. Read More

Walter R. Courtenay Jr., of Gainesville, Florida, died Jan. 30 at age 80. He was a leading authority on invasive nonindigenous fish, particularly those introduced into the United States. Read More

Cindy Zautcke of Milwaukee died June 4 at age 51. In teaching a class of 16 Nashville junior-high students who had all failed eighth grade at least twice, she came to understand her calling as a teacher. Read More

Duncan McDougall spent part of his 20s guiding expeditions of the physical world—whitewater and backcountry trips in places like Alaska and New Zealand. Since 1998, however, he has been leading expeditions of another kind, guiding children on a journey to literacy. Read More

Bruce decided to start his own series of field guides, called Wildsam, in 2012. The books are “packed with local lore, interviews, memoir, hand-drawn maps, personal essays and more,” according to the Wildsam website. Read More

In 2003, Todd Jackson was diagnosed with a brain tumor that was surgically removed and followed by 30 doses of radiation therapy. Last year another cancer, this time a grade IV brain cancer, surfaced, and Jackson died June 9, 2014, at age 40 in Nashville. During the decade between diagnoses, he did his best to ensure that researchers have the resources to create innovative cancer therapies. Read More

Simple heat treatments may give the frog immune system a boost and help it fight off a deadly fungal pathogen, according to a new study published July 10 in the journal Nature. Read More

The commonly held notion that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has eroded teacher job satisfaction and undermined job retention is off the mark, according to new Vanderbilt research. Read More

Private Property and Government Inaction | Probiotic Could Prevent Obesity | Freedom from Power Cords | Pickiness Doesn’t Always Pay Read More

The women’s golf team finished in a tie for 10th place at the NCAA Championship, while the men’s golf team finished in a tie for 16th. Read More