In Class

Bob Whaley, known throughout the financial world as developer of the Market Volatility Index (“Fear Index”), returned in 2006 to the Vanderbilt Owen School faculty, where he had begun his teaching career 28 years earlier. By Rob Simbeck Bob Whaley gets excited about the place where research and the marketplace… Read More

“From a young age I knew what I wanted to do, and I’ve been fortunate enough to find opportunities to do it,” says Michael Goldfarb. When you first meet Michael Goldfarb, his soft-spoken demeanor and infectious enthusiasm immediately impress you. When you ask what it is that motivates him, his… Read More

Scientists Virginia Shepherd and Charles Brau first met at a Vanderbilt basketball game. She has become a national figure in championing the role of academics in the lives of student athletes. In 1992, Virginia Shepherd was attending a conference where Bruce Alberts, then-future president of the National Academy of Sciences,… Read More

“I used to be a little defensive about studying such weird-looking animals,” says Ken Catania, pictured holding a juvenile Nile crocodile. “But then I realized that what makes these animals so strange is their extreme specialization and, for that very reason, there is a great deal we can learn from… Read More

“My students may not expect to learn about Plessy v. Ferguson or Brown v. Board of Education, but these things and many others play into musical moments,” says Jim Lovensheimer, shown here with his faithful greyhound, Shoes. Experienced in the context of our day-to-day lives, pop music can seem ephemeral… 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

“My experiences as a NICU mom changed the way I practice medicine in a very fundamental way,” Judy Aschner says. When Dr. Judy Aschner was busy completing her third year of fellowship in neonatology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, a personal experience did more to shape the… Read More

 Collaborators in work and in life, Douglas and Lynn Fuchs together have reportedly attracted more federal funding than any other researchers in their field. In 1972, two Johns Hopkins University students started a Saturday school for poor children from their Baltimore neighborhood. With the help of college friends, they created… Read More

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

A Rhodes Scholar and senior minister for the historic Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore at age 26, Brad Braxton applies lessons he learned along the way as associate professor of New Testament and homiletics. He continues to guest preach as many as 25 sermons each semester. Photo… Read More

A childhood fascination with animal behavior led Owen Jones on a path to becoming one of the country’s foremost experts in the field of law and behavioral biology. Today he is one among a handful of academics in the country holding faculty appointments in law and biology and conducting… Read More

Ever since she graduated from Vanderbilt School of Nursing in 1975 with a master’s degree in psych-mental health nursing, Carol Etherington has been providing care to people grasping at life in the midst of unfathomable tragedy. She has responded to victims of the killing fields of Cambodia, floods in… Read More