Fall 2017

Rocky Boyer’s War: An Unvarnished History of the Air Blitz that Won the War in the Southwest Pacific (2017, Naval Institute Press) by Allen D. Boyer, BA’78 In Rocky Boyer’s War, Allen Boyer offers a wry, keen-eyed, and occasionally disgruntled counterpoint history of the hard-fought, brilliant campaign that won World… Read More

In this feature, Vanderbilt Magazine highlights just a few of the wide-ranging research endeavors being undertaken by the university’s current chair holders—from the creation of low-cost, potentially lifesaving materials that can warn of structural failures to discoveries explaining the mechanisms of addiction. Read More

Collado represents a distinct departure from earlier presidents at Ithaca. For one, she is the first person of color to head the college—in fact, she is the first Dominican–American in the history of higher education to lead any four-year institution. Read More

By Bonnie Arant Ertelt, BS’81 The Skyscraper Window (1934) by American painter Childe Hassam was loaned to Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts for a 2000 exhibit. It is one of more than 1,000 works of art in the Peabody College Collection. When George Peabody College for Teachers… Read More

After four years of planning, a committee led by Susan R. Wente, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, designed a business curriculum that builds upon the achievements of the Managerial Studies program by drawing on strengths from across Vanderbilt. Read More

Learning doesn’t end after those classroom hours. In many ways, that’s when it begins. Especially now, when public dialogue is increasingly discordant, our imperative to teach and model reasoned, civil discourse from all viewpoints and perspectives is more urgent than ever. Read More

Markoff, founder of Vosges Haut-Chocolat and Wild Ophelia, offers several tips for converting something you love into your life’s work. Read More

Brian Jones, BA’02, writes about how traveling the world has changed his life. Read More

Few people in the university’s history have been as loyal to Vanderbilt as long and as selflessly as Stella Scott Vaughn. She grew up on campus and was one of Vanderbilt’s earliest woman graduates. She served as the university’s first female physical-education instructor and coach, working her first nine years without pay. She also took on the unofficial role as dean of women students. Read More

PHOTO BY AARON CLAMAGE, PHOTOGRAPHER IN WASHINGTON, D.C.   This year’s recipient of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association’s Young Alumni Professional Achievement Award, Zakiya Smith, BS’06, has dedicated her career to easing the complications and financial burden associated with paying for a college education—first as a senior… Read More

Lee Conell (photo by Susan Urmy) Lee Conell, MFA’15, is not the sort of writer who cultivates a high profile. While she’s excited about the upcoming launch of her first story collection, Subcortical, she finds the public role of author far removed from the drive that compels her… Read More

Samuel T. McSeveney, professor of history, emeritus, and a Vanderbilt faculty member for nearly 30 years, died Aug. 5 in Nashville. He was 86. McSeveney was an expert on late-19th-century American history—particularly the Gilded Age and political history of New York City and the Northeast—and was the author… Read More

More than 4,000 visitors interested in making everything from wool yarn and origami to robots and supercomputers visited Vanderbilt’s Wond’ry at the Innovation Pavilion on the first weekend in October for the Nashville Mini Maker Faire, the largest in the event’s five-year history. Read More

Vanderbilt faculty are among the many reasons our students have been voted the happiest in the U.S. We all have professors we remember with fondness and admiration. For me, two were life-changing. Professor Robert Birkby was rough, tough, demanding, intimidating—and beloved by his students. He did not suffer… Read More

Grace Jackson, a second-year soccer standout from Atlanta, gives new meaning to the phrase“VU for Life.” Read More

L. Hall Hardaway Jr., chairman of the board of Hardaway Construction Co., Vanderbilt School of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus, and an emeritus Vanderbilt trustee, died Sept. 20, 2017, in Nashville. He was 84. Having earned his Vanderbilt degree in civil engineering, he first worked as a field superintendent with… Read More

Will the Count be caught cheating? Will Cherubino really be voted off? And who, exactly, will marry Figaro? Vanderbilt Opera Theatre cast members were filmed by students from the Department of Cinema and Media Arts for webisodes to preface VOT’s Marriage of Figaro, produced at Blair in November as a… Read More

Ann Cook Calhoun (photo by John Russell) Ann Cook Calhoun, Vanderbilt professor of English, emerita—an internationally renowned Shakespeare scholar and a powerful force for making the Bard’s plays accessible to everyone—died Aug. 13, 2017, in Nashville after a brief illness. She was 82. Calhoun held leadership roles in… Read More

Michael Quaranta (Photo copyright Mehosh Photography) Touring Nashville’s Standard Candy Co., famous for its century-old Goo Goo Cluster candy bar, a pair of Owen Graduate School of Management classmates had an oddball bolt of inspiration. “Wouldn’t it be great to have something similar for dogs?” recalls Craig O’Sullivan. Read More

Alphabet card, France, early 19th century; from the George Clulow–U.S. Playing Card Co. Gaming Collection, Vanderbilt University Special Collections The George Clulow and United States Playing Card Co. Gaming Collection—one of the world’s premier collections of books about card games, games of chance, playing cards and chess—has been acquired… Read More