Missy Pankake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abby Larson, whose wedding planning blog Style Me Pretty has showcased nearly 20,000 weddings since its launch in 2007, offers tips on how to personalize your big day. Read More

The Vanderbilt community is mourning Taylor Force, 28, a student at the Owen Graduate School of Management who was killed in a terrorist attack March 8 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Read More

Vanderbilt’s new [IM]Perfection Project—a joint initiative of the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center and the Office of Wellness Programs & Alcohol Education designed to address mental health issues around the fear of failure—brought the perfect speaker to campus in February to help launch the effort: best-selling author and researcher Brené Brown. Read More

What’s remarkable about the M.F.A. program at Vanderbilt is that, although it’s among the best in the nation, it's not cutthroat like other highly regarded programs. In fact, Vanderbilt has adopted a model that seems the very opposite—one that fosters a tight-knit community based on feelings of cooperation and unity. Read More

With the completion of several major projects in recent years like The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons, the Student Life Center, Warren and Moore colleges—along with the new Engineering and Science Building, now nearing completion—Vice Chancellor for Administration Eric Kopstain says several factors make this is an ideal time to embark on a new land-use plan. Read More

Traditional players in the legal industry continue to face significant challenges in adapting to the new terrain after the Great Recession. But at the same time, the shifting landscape has created substantial opportunities for new kinds of players—especially those with a technology focus. Read More

The Biophotonics Center is a state-of-the-art laser laboratory that serves as a kind of hub of cross-disciplinary research at Vanderbilt. Forty faculty members from across the university and VUMC—working on topics ranging from astrophysics to cancer treatments—have an affiliation with the center. Read More