Year: 2016

Several years after graduating in 1996, Meredith Dolhare found a new passion: running. Dolhare completed several marathons and 12 Ironman triathlons before setting her sights on far more arduous adventures. In 2013 she finished third in the Badwater Ultramarathon—a 135-mile race in 120-plus-degree heat that features a grueling climb from California’s Death Valley (279 feet below sea level) to the trailhead of Mount Whitney (8,360 feet). Read More

World War I marked the beginning of a great adventure that took Harvie Branscomb and Oliver Carmichael from Oxford, England, to Belgium, where they played a vital role in the largest hunger-relief effort the world had ever known. Read More

Three years ago Ro Coleman made the unlikely journey from inner-city Chicago to Nashville to attend Vanderbilt on a baseball scholarship. Read More

The miracle shot was a memorable moment for Josh Henderson, a Roanoke, Virginia, native who has persevered through several serious injuries to emerge as a key contributor during his sixth season at Vanderbilt. Having earned his B.A. in economics in 2014, he’s now working toward an M.Ed. in leadership and organizational performance at Peabody. He is the only graduate student on the team’s roster. Read More

I’m graduating in May, and while it will be hard to leave Vanderbilt, it will be even harder to leave The Commons. The Commons has been such a defining part of my Vanderbilt experience, and has been my home here since day one. Read More

Last August, Hannah Stahl won first place in the Westminster Kennel Club’s dog art contest—held several months before the club’s 140th annual dog show, in partnership with the New York Academy of Art—by wowing judges with Lucy, an oil-on-canvas painting of a leaping Staffordshire bull terrier. Read More

Hoping to ensure that the door to a Vanderbilt education is open to every talented student inspired Board of Trust member Dr. Robert Schiff Jr., BS’77, a Cincinnati pediatrician, to make a transformative $10,000,000 commitment to Opportunity Vanderbilt. Read More

Ruth and Eugene Lamb celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary Feb. 14. Read More

One hundred chapter leaders and Reunion chairs came together for the 2016 Reunion Kickoff and Chapter Leadership Conference in February. Read More

Since 2000, Dan Whittle, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, has been working to preserve Cuba’s natural resources, including pristine coral reefs and mangrove forests that form a thriving marine habitat. Read More

For more than 20 years, Dr. Brett Snyder has provided volunteer pediatric craniofacial care to children overseas and in his community. Read More

Former Commodore football player Derrick Gragg, BS’92, vice president and director of athletics at the University of Tulsa, was honored during halftime at the Vanderbilt–Kentucky men’s basketball game Feb. 27 by David Williams II, Vanderbilt athletics director and vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs. Read More

Vanderbilt supporters play a crucial role in advancing Vanderbilt’s mission to educate, discover and lead—and parents of current undergraduate students have a unique opportunity to give back and directly impact their student’s experience as a Commodore. Read More

Vanderbilt alumni share a passion for lifelong learning and often request educational programs. The Alumni Association is responding by sponsoring more Commodore Classrooms events in chapter cities. Read More

Kate Hendricks’ career in comedy started off slowly. In fact, she only realized she wanted to pursue comedy during an interview for a job at an ad agency. So she did what a lot of self-respecting comedians do: She moved to New York City and performed anywhere that would have her. Read More

Phila Rawlings Hach, one of the grande dames of Southern cooking, died Dec. 2, 2015, at the age of 89. Read More

Finding the inspiration to live a meaningful life is more a “slow, chip-away-at-it process” than a thunderclap of revelation, Senior Day speaker Soledad O’Brien told Vanderbilt’s Class of 2016 during her address. Read More

Vanderbilt student rocketeers have won NASA’s Orbital-ATK University Student Launch competition for the fourth year in a row. Read More

When Nathan Bird, BE’15, got married at the end of last year and sat down with his wife, Katherine, to plan their first budget together, it was important to him to set aside funds for Vanderbilt. “My wife and I knew we both wanted to give back to the various… Read More

I’m graduating in May, and while it will be hard to leave Vanderbilt, it will be even harder to leave The Commons. The Commons has been such a defining part of my Vanderbilt experience, and has been my home here since day one. After my first year I became… Read More