Editor’s Letter

As the campus buzzes with the arrival of new students (and the university made sure they were outfitted with solar eclipse glasses), I think about the spectrum of history embodied in an institution like Vanderbilt. What school traditions or past stories will ignite the imaginations of these newest Commodores? Read More

When I think of Vanderbilt, my mind immediately goes to my friends and classmates. But what about alumni from the graduate and professional schools, staff and faculty members, sports fans, even prospective students? Each one of these individuals helps make the Vanderbilt community a special place filled with smart, capable people willing to lend a hand when needed. Read More

Our fair institution has always prided itself on academic rigor, deservedly so. And while the battle wounds inflicted on me by a well-armed set of microeconomic curves 20 years ago haven’t fully healed, more and more I appreciate the demands that were placed on us at Vanderbilt. Read More

Like most readers of Vanderbilt Magazine, I often flip to the Class Notes section first. After scouring the Class of ’96 for any juicy nuggets, I branch out to overlapping years, searching for names that ring a faint bell. Read More

Whatever your political leanings, the acidic divisiveness between—and among—parties in this election cycle has left little for anyone to love. Luckily, I got a break from the daily shouting matches about finger lengths, email servers and Bernie Bros by digging into some of the fascinating, reasoned research around presidential politics being produced by members of Vanderbilt’s esteemed political science department for this issue’s cover story. Read More

In the fall of 1902, Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, a zoologist with the U.S. Public Health Service, got a hunch that parasites were causing large swaths of the South’s rural poor to suffer an array of debilitating symptoms. Read More

Picasso continually pushed against prevailing artistic conventions, even his own previous work, to forge new creative paths that somehow remained unmistakably his own. That same idea of building upon the past to push further into the future runs deeply through this issue of Vanderbilt Magazine. Read More

About a week after my first issue as editor of Vanderbilt Magazine came off the press, a wondrous, forgotten little device on my desk started to ring … and ring … and ring some more. In a world brimming with text messages, email and social media posts, I hadn’t fielded so many phone calls in perhaps a decade. Read More

To quote the great Bob Dylan, the times they are a-changing. When I graduated in 1996, Vanderbilt’s admittance rate sat a shade below 60 percent. For this year’s incoming class, it was 11.6 percent. Read More

For nearly 30 years now, Vanderbilt has enriched my life immeasurably. I am retiring this spring—in the same year that Vanderbilt Magazine celebrates its first 100 years of publication. Read More

Our Amy Grant story is one of several in this issue with a Nashville flavor. Ann Marie Deer Owens’ cover story, “Beloved Community,” showcases Vanderbilt Divinity School graduates who’ve played a significant role in developing and leading local nonprofit organizations that have an impact on the quality of life for all Nashvillians. Read More

Our appetite for “world’s greatest” data has only grown through the centuries, stoked in recent years by electronic media, instant feedback and infographics. Read More

“I just met Sidney DeLair, BA’75, who told this wonderful story of his time living in Kissam,” began an email I received from Donna Sir Johnson, MS’79, last spring. Read More

In the Vanderbilt Magazine office, we frequently receive phone calls from parents of recent graduates. Usually they’re moms calling because their child (most often a son) hasn’t gotten around to notifying us about a change of address, so the parents are still getting Vanderbilt Magazine at home. Of course we’ll update the address, we assure them. Often there’s a pause, and then, almost shyly, another request: Could Mom and Dad keep receiving a copy of the magazine, too? Read More

I seldom venture anywhere without some Vanderbilt link popping up. For this issue of the magazine, it was a 50-cent copy of Deliverance at a Pasadena flea market and a conversation with a stranger about James Dickey. Read More

Ella and Ed J. Albrecht live it up on their 35th anniversary—just past the midway point in their 66-year marriage. My Grandma Albrecht was an indefatigable snoop. Born in 1901, she married my grandfather when she was 18, and in 11 years they produced seven children—who in… Read More

Credit: GWENDA KACZOR Our cover story marks the fifth anniversary of Nicholas S. Zeppos’ tenure as chancellor. While reading Jim Patterson’s account of the past five years, what struck me most was the number of major changes at Vanderbilt during that short span of time,… Read More