Features – VMAGAZINE

Fitzpatrick and Lédeczi developed an introductory computer programming class that, by one account, ranks as the fifth most popular free online course of all time. They have taught more than 170,000 students in 192 countries and racked up more than 2 million lecture views. Read More

To show their appreciation for Head Coach Tim Corbin and their confidence in the continued success of the Vanderbilt Baseball program, many of his former players—an impressive 60 percent of them, in fact—as well as a number of other donors, recently contributed to a $12 million fundraising effort to support the construction of new baseball facilities at the university. Read More

Last July, after having risen through the company ranks over a 16-year career, Alex Taylor, BS'97, was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of Cox Enterprises, one of the nation’s largest media companies, with annual revenue of around $18 billion and more than 60,000 employees. Read More

Thirteen students met during the fall semester for a class called Historic Black Nashville. Taught by Jane Landers and Daniel Sharfstein, the course is part of a new initiative known as the University Courses program, a collaborative model that brings together faculty from different parts of the university to teach students from a variety of majors. 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

Expect the unexpected when you walk into Kit Parker’s biophysics lab at Harvard. From cuttlefish skin camouflage to cotton candy machines used for wound dressings, his science is anything but ordinary. Read More

This essay is adapted from The Long View: Essays, Poems, Stories (2015, Cordelia Hollis) by Susan Ford Wiltshire, Vanderbilt professor of classical studies, emerita. Wiltshire wrote this piece as a letter to her daughter, Carrie Wiltshire McCutcheon, JD’05, who is an attorney at Baker Donelson law firm in Nashville. Read More

Dr. Tiara Aldridge was able to pursue a Vanderbilt education—and achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a physician—thanks in part to the Levy Scholarship. (JOE HOWELL) As a talented high school senior in Stone Mountain, Georgia, Tiara Aldridge, BA’10, MD’14, always dreamed of becoming a doctor one day. But… Read More

For the past 110 years, the hourly tolling of Kirkland Hall’s signature bell has alerted generations of students that they’ve overslept for economics class or that kickoff was imminent. And for more than a third of those 110 years, the task of keeping the tower’s clock ticking—and its 2,000-pound bell in good working order—has fallen to Paul Young. Read More

To say that this has been a crazy year in politics is a laugh-out-loud understatement. We turn to the experts in Vanderbilt’s renowned political science department for insight not only into the 2016 presidential race, but also into the future of U.S. politics itself. Read More

Each year Vanderbilt selects a book for all incoming first-year students to read during the summer before arriving on campus. This year’s selection is Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South by Andrew Maraniss, BA’92. Here we present an excerpt adapted from Strong Inside, which is currently being made into a documentary film and a children’s book. Read More

Vanderbilt begins a new chapter in its proud basketball tradition as Bryce Drew and Stephanie White take the helm of the men's and women's teams. Read More

Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater cast Baker in his latest film, Everybody Wants Some!!—a “spiritual sequel” to his 1993 cult classic Dazed and Confused—about a college baseball team in Texas in the ’80s. Read More

Jedidah Isler, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Vanderbilt’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, has emerged as an increasingly high-profile advocate for diversity among science, technology, engineering and mathematics researchers. Read More

With a greater focus on how the health care system functions, particularly in the wake of the 2009 Affordable Care Act, Vanderbilt has adjusted its own research and teaching programs surrounding public health and health policy. Read More

During the coming decades—probably a lot sooner than most people realize—the next great wave of technological change will wash over our lives. Its impact will be similar in sweep and rapidity to the advent of computers, cellphones and the Web, but this time around, it is not our gadgets that will be transformed—it is we ourselves, our bodies, our minds. 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

Situated 20 miles southwest of Denver, and nestled between two state parks that offer stunning views of the Rocky Mountains, Sterling Ranch doesn’t look like much now. But during the next 20 years, the five-square-mile, $4.3 billion planned community will take shape as a futuristic city. Read More

Vanderbilt has always sent a handful of players to the major leagues, but in recent years there’s been a noticeable trend of more Commodores making it to the pros. Read More