Year: 2017

When the sun shines at Vanderbilt’s Brownlee O. Currey Jr. Tennis Center these days, it means a little more to former player Marie Casares, BE’15. Two years ago, while Casares was still in school, the civil engineering major wrote a proposal to install solar panels atop the Currey Tennis Center and submitted it to Vanderbilt’s Green Fund, which designates money for student-led energy conservation projects. Read More

After playing in only three bowl games during its first century of football, Vanderbilt has now reached the postseason five times in the past nine seasons—most recently at the Independence Bowl played Dec. 26, 2016, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Read More

The Vanderbilt men’s golf team is entering its spring season as the unanimous No. 1 team in the nation, earning the top ranking from Golfweek, the Golf Coaches Association of America and Golfstat.com. Read More

In 2009 three friends and I co-founded Plastic Pollution Coalition at my dining room table, adding a fourth “R”—Refuse—to the traditional three: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Why “refuse”? Because disposable plastic is made from petroleum, is used for only brief periods and lasts forever, causing great harm to wildlife and humans. Read More

As many as 3,000 living alumni are either active military personnel or veterans who attended Vanderbilt as an undergraduate, and many got their start in the university’s Air Force, Army and Navy ROTC programs. In this issue we talk to four alumni whose lives have been shaped in various ways by both Vanderbilt and their military experience. Read More

Christina Sharkey Geist is many things: a mother, wife, brand strategist, small business owner, “mompreneur” and, now, a children’s book author. Read More

Five generations of Lillian Harpole Hazelton’s family have attended Vanderbilt—and higher education has played a particularly important role for the women in her family. Read More

After his law firm agreed to represent Guantánamo prisoners in 2004, Powell—a corporate litigator and antitrust lawyer for 20 years—received a phone call from the partner in charge of pro bono work at his firm. Hours later he was lead counsel to three French citizens who had been held in Guantánamo since early 2002. Read More

Last fall, lovers of reading and writing of all ages gathered in Denver for a Commodore Classroom that doubled as a writing workshop led by Rick Hilles, associate professor of English, who also teaches in the university’s acclaimed MFA Program in Creative Writing. Read More

The manager of West Coast promotions for Warner Music Nashville, Braun recently was a guest volunteer on the Vanderbilt Alumni Association’s DoresAtWork Twitter account. DoresAtWork is a monthly series that invites Vanderbilt alumni to share their work-life experiences. Read More

Wilford launched Smokingpipes.com in the summer after his sophomore year. It was the dawn of the Internet era, and technology promised to jolt an industry bound by its tweedy tradition. Eighteen years later Smokingpipes.com is among the world’s top pipe retailers, with $15 million in sales in 2016—and this at a time when smoking is at an all-time low in the United States. Read More

Growing up in Staten Island, New York, Erica Santiago, BS’10, never dreamed of being able to attend Vanderbilt. A four-year, full-tuition Posse Scholarship she received through Vanderbilt’s partnership with the Posse Foundation changed that. Read More

In each issue, Vanderbilt Magazine publishes a handful of social media posts from alumni, students, faculty, staff and Commodore fans that include the hashtag #Vandygram. Check out social.vanderbilt.edu anytime to see what’s happening in the Vanderbilt community. Read More

Dr. Arthur S. Booth Jr., a prominent member of the Atlanta medical community for more than 30 years, died June 18, 2016, at Hospice Atlanta, which he co-founded. He was 76. Read More

Frances Isley Hardie, former head of collections and acquisitions at Vanderbilt’s Jean and Alexander Heard Library, of Nashville, died Jan. 8, 2017. She was 90. Read More

An international monetary expert and one of the most esteemed economic minds of the last century, J. Dewey Daane died Jan. 3 in Nashville at the age of 98. Read More

For the past 15 years, David Owens, professor of the practice of management and innovation at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management, has taught a course on New Product Design and Development, designed primarily for MBA candidates and engineering undergraduates—but available to any students with an interest in the subject. With the recently opened makerspace at the Wond’ry, this year marked the first time the class was able to spend most of its time actually building and refining prototypes rather than taking in lectures and PowerPoint slides. Read More

Playful practices that include the art of juggling are central to Play, Subversion and Change, a class geared toward Divinity School students preparing to lead communities of faith and learning. Read More

Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music hosts the 2017 Backun International Clarinet Competition March 9-11, welcoming young musicians from around the world competing for $15,000 in awards. Read More

Vanderbilt University Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos remarks on the death of Vanderbilt alumnus and Tennessee state Sen. Douglas Henry Jr. Read More