Fall 2008

When David Wasserstein, the first holder of the Eugene Greener Jr. Chair in Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt, spoke at the Nash-ville downtown public library recently, he drew quite a crowd. His noontime talk, “Islam and Europe—Sites of Conflict,” was intended to get people thinking about Europe’s longstanding relationship with Islam… Read More

Let’s say you’re the owner of a widget factory who’s worried about maintaining your talent pool as baby boomers begin retiring from the workforce in droves. In making your business attractive to employees, is your best bet to focus on (a) motivation-enhancing practices such as incentive pay plans, performance bonuses and… Read More

Binary stars, as every science-fiction aficionado knows, are pairs of stars that orbit around their center of mass. In the world of astrophysics, binary stars are important because observing their mutual orbits not only helps determine the mass of the binaries, but also, by extrapolation, the mass of many single stars. Read More

Who will save America? Which presidential candidate has the intelligence, charisma and acumen to fix our economy, deal with Iraq, address rising oil prices, eradicate poverty, lead democracy, and put the nation on a better moral track? It’s a trick question, and every four years we pound our heads… Read More

Worldwide, 15 to 20 percent of people suffer from migraines—excruciating headaches often presaged by dramatic sensations, or “auras.” By studying a rare inherited form of migraine, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have found clues to the biological basis of the debilitating disorder. In the July 15, 2008, edition of the Proceedings… Read More

Hoping to ward off the flu bug, these boys wear bags of camphor around their necks during the influenza epidemic of 1918. The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed nearly 50 million people worldwide, including many healthy young adults. With fears of another flu pandemic stoked by “bird flu” in Asia… Read More

Images from Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives. Vanderbilt panty-raid coverage in the 1958 Peabody Pillar yearbook On May 20, 1952, during my first year of graduate work at Vanderbilt, I phoned a nursing student who lived in Mary Henderson Hall, the nursing dormitory. I had casually… Read More

Change the “V” to a “P” on Pedro Alvarez’s cap: He has signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Baseball MLB Raids Commodore Roster in 2008 Draft Major League Baseball liked what it saw and snatched 18 Commodores (eight current, 10 signees) in the 2008 draft. Junior third… Read More

Who’s your all-time favorite Commodore? That’s the question the university asked alumni, fans and friends of the varsity athletic program when it set about creating the new Athletics Hall of Fame to recognize and honor outstanding achievement and celebrate its (black and) golden sporting heritage. Hundreds of nominations… Read More

Wirth will be wearing a newly designed uniform to complement her trusted old number. In the 1954 film White Christmas, the singing/dancing Haynes sisters (played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen) perform a number titled “Sisters.” The lyrics, in part, contain these lines: “Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters… Read More

Clash of Ideal and Real Stresses Med Students Moral distress—negative feelings that arise when one knows the morally correct thing to do but cannot take action because of system constraints or hierarchies—had been highly studied in the nursing profession but never among medical students, until Vanderbilt University School of Medicine… Read More

Owen Professor Leads Environmental Think-Tank Research Mark Cohen, the Justin Potter Distinguished Professor of American Competitive Business and professor of law at Vanderbilt, is taking on a new role as vice president of research for Research for Resources for the Future (RFF). RFF is an independent, nonpartisan research organization dedicated… Read More

Trauma Network Helps Families Cope: www.mytsn.org   For more than a month last year, Shawn Coltharp kept vigil while her 26-year-old daughter lay critically injured in Vanderbilt’s Trauma Center after a car accident. Coltharp wasn’t sure what to do or where to turn. Now patients and family members in… Read More

If anyone has the right stuff to handle the new wave of federal export control regulations that is crashing down on Vanderbilt and the nation’s other research universities, it’s Marcia E. Williams. An attorney, former airline pilot, business owner and classroom instructor, Williams, who has served as an assistant director of… Read More

In addition to being named to U.S. News & World Report magazine’s “honor roll” of the nation’s best hospitals, Vanderbilt Medical Center and its ongoing efforts to improve quality of care and patient safety were the subject of a 12-page story in the magazine’s annual “America’s Best Hospitals” issue published… Read More

Project scientists Joshua Pepper, Keivan Stassun and David James with the KELT telescope Vanderbilt astronomers have constructed a special-purpose telescope that will allow them to participate in one of the hottest areas in astronomy: the hunt for earthlike planets circling other stars. The instrument, called the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope… Read More

  Dr. Andy Norman meets with a former patient in Nigeria. Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s Institute for Global Health has received a one-year, $3 million federal grant to provide AIDS treatment and prevention services in Nigeria. It is the second major treatment grant the institute has received under PEPFAR, the… Read More

  “The two most important dates in everyone’s life [are] the day you were born and the day you realized why you were born. When I landed in New Orleans after Katrina, I knew why I was born.” ~Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré in a Sept. 18 address launching the Vanderbilt University School… Read More

Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently performed its third organ transplant in which organs were harvested from donors who were pronounced dead because of cardiac death. The new organ-procurement protocol differs from the longstanding practice of using an organ donor whose heart is still beating until the time the organs are harvested. Read More

Vanderbilt is No. 18 in this year’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition of annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report magazine. The university climbed one position from last year, tying with Emory University and the University of Notre Dame. Vanderbilt also ranked No. 14 among national universities in… Read More