Fall 2009

In September, nine VUMC nurses starred in Hey, Florence!, a musical about the day-to-day lives of nurses. Hey, Florence!, a musical reflecting the day-to-day life of nurses at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, premiered in September in Langford Auditorium. Directed by renowned Australian playwright Craig Christie, the 60-minute show starred nine… Read More

Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked the World (2009, Sterling Publishing) edited by Mike Evans and Paul Kingsbury, BA’80 Filled with photos from the event itself as well as visual exploration of the social context in which Woodstock happened, this well-researched coffee-table tome provides new information, including complete set lists… Read More

Duncan Jones (left) and actor Sam Rockwell on the set of Moon Speaking by phone from Liberty Studios in London, 38-year-old former Vanderbilt student Duncan Jones seems unaffected by the flurry of media attention he’s receiving for his directorial debut, the science-fiction film Moon. Produced for $5 million (a… Read More

Designed by the New York firm of McKim, Mead and White, Cohen Memorial on the Peabody campus has always been dedicated to the arts. Nashville art collector George Etta Brinkley Cohen gave the hall to Peabody College in 1926 and occupied an apartment on the second floor until… Read More

Born with the 20th century in the American South, jazz has been called the only music entirely original to the United States. Yet no less a figure than Duke Ellington once said, “It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley… Read More

The results of a recent online survey of nearly 10,000 Vanderbilt alumni revealed valuable information regarding alumni perceptions, involvement, and how the university can better serve and communicate with its graduates. The Office of Alumni Relations and the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board of Directors commissioned the survey, which was conducted in… Read More

Each year one undergraduate member of that year’s graduating class is selected to serve as a young alumni trustee—a full voting member of the Vanderbilt Board of Trust for a term of four years. In 1968, Vanderbilt became the first university to institute this tradition. The selection process, coordinated by… Read More

Adrienne Outlaw This fall scholars from Vanderbilt debated the ethics of healthy people taking prescription drugs to enhance creativity as part of the yearlong Art Makes Place program. With a focus on contemporary artists who are making community-oriented, temporary and performance-based art for public spaces, the Vanderbilt panelists discussed… Read More

Billy Ray Caldwell, BA'85 President, Vanderbilt Alumni Association Another class of future alumni has arrived, and by all standards, the Class of 2013 is a historic one. As we learned at the Summer Send-Off Parties, where we welcomed new students into the Vanderbilt community, there were nearly 20,000 applicants for… Read More

Looking for ways to stay engaged with Vanderbilt? We’ve got ’em! You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating. There are many ways to get involved, including volunteering with Vanderbilt’s admissions interviewing process or summer send-off programs, serving as an online career adviser, becoming involved in the activities of your… Read More

From Atlanta to Seattle and even London, members of the 2009 incoming freshman class were welcomed to Vanderbilt at 41 Summer Send-Off Parties sponsored by local chapters of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association. A Vanderbilt tradition that dates back to 1968, Summer Send-Off Parties bring alumni, current students,… Read More

If you are changing careers, targeting a new industry, considering a new functional area, or simply trying to select the right career for yourself, you are invited to participate in a new, comprehensive career coaching program offered by the Office of Alumni Relations in conjunction with Vanderbilt Career Services. The… Read More

Tisha Holloway was exhausted. She had been laboring in a North Carolina hospital for almost 26 hours to give birth to her first child, but the baby just wouldn’t come. “I tried to do everything right during my pregnancy,” the 27-year-old woman says. “I ate right, exercised, kept my… Read More

It is a tenet of the self-help faith: Follow your passion, and it will lead you down the road to professional success, personal fulfillment and financial reward. The alumni profiled in this issue turn this self-help cliché on its head. They have followed their passions, yes, but down an alternate… Read More

Marshall Eakin is the new director of the Ingram Scholarship Program. “Vanderbilt puts more emphasis on teaching than any major research university in the United States, except maybe Notre Dame and Georgetown,” he says. When he was in high school, Marshall Eakin spent a summer in Guatemala. This was no… Read More

(Photo: Herb Peck) “I have sometimes said that during the half dozen or so years from 1967 to 1973, I never relaxed once,” Vanderbilt’s fifth chancellor, Alexander Heard, once remarked. “That’s not technically true, of course, but I was constantly aware of the local and national matters that affected Vanderbilt’s… Read More

Allison Oubre (left) and Andrea Alvord on campus in their Navy ROTC uniforms. It was their first photo taken together. Dear Allison, It’s been a few weeks since we last wrote, and now we really have no need for letters. You are the ever-present friend. I am here in Slidell,… Read More

What is poverty? And what is the best way to treat it? While the second question seems to be the more important, a poor fundamental understanding of the first obscures poverty’s underlying mechanism, often resulting in an ineffective and insensitive treatment. Unlike medicine, which often relies on discovery to… Read More

No carefully followed blueprint could ever replicate the serendipitous evolution of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” from exercise in parody to platinum record to cottage industry. Read More

A competitive spirit burns in every Vanderbilt student. They wouldn’t be on campus without that drive to succeed at the highest levels of academia. But some students take that spirit even further. They have, in essence, two full-time jobs—student and athlete. Vanderbilt consistently ranks first in athlete graduation rates in… Read More