Fall 2018

Ten years ago we launched one of the nation’s boldest financial aid programs, Opportunity Vanderbilt, which replaced need-based loans with grants and scholarships. Our goal was to attract more and more supremely talented students to take part in our cherished undergraduate experience, regardless of their economic circumstances. Read More

In an age of Cambridge Analytica, uncanny Facebook algorithms and NSA wiretapping, it seems every time we turn around, there is a new assault on that once most precious of commodities: our privacy. In reality, however, what we choose to reveal and what we keep private has long been a source of debate. Read More

As 70-year-old Williams nears the end of a 15-year run leading Vanderbilt athletics—and his 27th year as a senior administrator in higher education—he is ready to hand over leadership of a department that has made enormous strides during his tenure. Read More

John Pregulman, BA’80, has spent the past five years taking photographs of Holocaust survivors. To date, he has photographed 679 survivors in 33 cities in the U.S., as well as in Krakow, Prague and Tokyo. Read More

In this excerpt from his memoir, Cal Turner Jr., a 1962 Vanderbilt graduate who was Dollar General’s CEO from 1965 to 2003, discusses the breakthrough concept that helped launch a small-town family business toward national success. Read More

Ecclesiastes, left, and Ramsey are working together to rejuvenate and transform a long-neglected, 25-block New Orleans corridor that stands in the shadow of an elevated expressway constructed more than 50 years ago. Photo by Greg Miles When Nyree Ramsey visited New Orleans in 1995, three words came to… Read More

Hildebrandt retired from competitive swimming the day her senior season ended at Vanderbilt. Or so she thought. Nearly 40 years later, she found herself competing in the U.S. Masters Swimming Nationals, a long-course pool meet featuring the best amateur adult swimmers from across the country. Read More

A little more than two months after he spoke to nearly 11,000 people at Vanderbilt’s 1968 student-led Impact Symposium, presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy was assassinated in California. Frye Gaillard writes about serveing as Impact’s chairman and Kennedy’s host at Vanderbilt. Read More

Although legal and copyright issues continue to hinder access, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive—a repository of television news recordings from the past 50 years—is a national archival treasure. Read More

Glazier discusses the evolving business model of the music industry—one that’s gone from selling tens of millions of CDs in thousands of stores to now getting billions of streams from just a handful of companies—and what music listeners can expect on the horizon. Read More

Works by Middle Eastern women artists build bridges of understanding Mother, by Emirati artist Maitha Demithan, was created by the process of scanography, using digital scanners to generate images and then collaging the images together. In the exhibit catalog the artist states that the piece depicts a mother as… Read More

Photo by Ashley Hylbert Shortly after graduating from law school, Bailey Spaulding got a harebrained idea: She’d open a brewery and name it the Jackalope Brewing Co., after the mythical rabbit–antelope hybrid that she believed in as a kid. Seven years after the business was launched in Nashville’s… Read More

The Vanderbilt Alumni Association has named H. Rodes Hart, BA’54, the recipient of the 2018 Vanderbilt University Distinguished Alumnus Award. Read More

Photo by Philip Franck In October, Vanderbilt University Theatre opened its 2018–19 season with The Language Archive by Julia Cho, a comedy that explores what is lost and found in the gaps between what is meant and what is said. “One of the most interesting aspects… Read More

Photo by Tomas Loewy Dean Whiteside, BMus’10, of Miami—shown conducting that city’s New World Symphony PULSE concert—is the 2017–18 winner of the American Prize in Conducting in the Professional Orchestra division. After earning his undergraduate degree at Blair, the New York City native trained in Vienna at the… Read More

Natalie Vlach, BMus’18. Photo by Joe Howell As a young girl, Natalie Vlach, BMus’18, fell in love with her electronic keyboard. Unlike some childhood infatuations, however, Vlach’s passion for piano endured and deepened, leading eventually to her winning the Linde B. Wilson Scholarship at the Blair School. “Blair… Read More

Joshua Moore is the voice of the Versify podcast. Photo by Anne Rayner When listeners tune in to Nashville Public Radio’s Versify podcast, they’re greeted by the voice of host Joshua Moore, a second-year master of fine arts candidate in Vanderbilt’s creative writing program. Versify—which can be found… Read More

courtesy of AETN.com Florence Price was the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra—in 1933. Bringing together the European classical tradition in which she was trained and the haunting melodies of African American spirituals and folk tunes, Price’s music has experienced… Read More

Jack Wei-chieh Lin is making an impact on global investors. In May he was appointed managing director and head of Asia Pacific client coverage for MSCI Inc., a leading provider of indexes and portfolio construction as well as risk-management tools and services for global investors. MSCI’s clients rely… Read More

Chancellor Zeppos (center) chats with New York-area alumni at the event. Photos by Teri Bloom Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos recently shared an update on Vanderbilt’s strategic priorities with alumni, parents and friends at a special Metro New York Vanderbilt Chapter event, highlighting the opening of E. Bronson Ingram College,… Read More