Issues

In 2014, Austin Schiff was named the first executive director of the Cincinnati Squash Academy, a nonprofit that seeks to transform talented students in underserved communities into scholar-athletes. He was only 24 years old. His charge: to build an organization from the ground up. 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

The Vanderbilt women’s tennis team advanced to the Final Four in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in an attempt to repeat their national championship, but ended the season with a loss to Stanford. The Commodores, the No. 6 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, ended with a 23–6 record. Read More

With a five-person crew, and after a year of planning, Aryeh’s Kitchen launched in May and is set for a larger debut when students return to campus in August. Read More

On April 21 members of the Vanderbilt community from across the globe participated in the first-ever Vanderbilt Giving Day, raising more than $1.6 million in just 24 hours. Read More

Whatever your political leanings, the acidic divisiveness between—and among—parties in this election cycle has left little for anyone to love. Luckily, I got a break from the daily shouting matches about finger lengths, email servers and Bernie Bros by digging into some of the fascinating, reasoned research around presidential politics being produced by members of Vanderbilt’s esteemed political science department for this issue’s cover story. Read More

In April Andrew East, BE’14, MBA’15, married Shawn Johnson, a gold-medal gymnast in the 2008 Olympics and winner of Dancing with the Stars in 2009. Overnight, East became one-half of a celebrity couple, and pictures of his wedding were splashed across the pages of People and numerous other celebrity magazines. Read More

Two players from the Vanderbilt men’s basketball team were selected in the first round of the 2016 NBA Draft: point guard Wade Baldwin (No. 17 overall to the Memphis Grizzlies) and center Damian Jones (No. 30 overall to the Golden State Warriors) Read More

Decked out in matching red “#BonnaGrannies” T-shirts and sparkly red and blue cowboy hats, the women, all in their late 80s and early 90s, pose for photos and take selfies with many of the 80,000 tattooed festival-goers one-fourth their ages. Read More

By the end of his first year, Donny Everett—Vanderbilt’s hard-throwing, right-handed pitcher—had already become one of the most beloved student-athletes on campus. Then, in early June, on the eve of the NCAA Regional tournament played on campus at Hawkins Field, the unthinkable happened. The Clarksville, Tennessee, native drowned at Normandy Lake, about 70 miles southeast of Nashville. Read More

Seven years ago Steve Kamb, BA’06, combined his love for geek culture with his longtime interest in fitness to create NerdFitness.com, an online resource for deskbound geeks like himself who wanted to get in shape. Read More

Sure, you’ve heard of the Cronut®. It’s the half-croissant, half-doughnut that took the world by storm a few years ago. But have you ever wondered why you’ve heard of it? It’s because of innovative attorneys like Candice Cook Simmons, who received her law degree from Vanderbilt in 2003. Read More

Forty-six years ago Perry Brandt arrived at Vanderbilt for a seven-year experience that remarkably changed the trajectory of his life. Read More

The Vanderbilt University Alumni Association Board of Directors announces new leadership and the addition of eight new members. On July 1, Perry Brandt, BA’74, JD’77, replaced Patti White, BA’76, as president, and Dan Lovinger, BA’87, became president-elect. Each will serve a two-year term. Read More

The Vanderbilt University Alumni Association Board of Directors is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2016 awards that recognize the diverse talents, accomplishments and volunteer support of outstanding alumni. They will be honored at an Oct. 20 ceremony during Reunion. Read More

As senior vice president for artists and repertoire at Big Machine Label Group in Nashville, Jones represents a who’s who of music stars, including Taylor Swift, Florida Georgia Line, Reba McEntire, and popular newcomers such as Thomas Rhett. Read More

Last spring Carter Hawkins, BS’07, learned about Vanderbilt’s plans to upgrade its baseball facilities. He was among the first former student-athletes to contribute, pledging a leadership-level gift to the $10 million project that will renovate and enhance training areas in Memorial Gym and build out new operations and team spaces for students and coaches. Read More

In part because much of their work remains classified even after 70 years, the contributions of a group of young Vanderbilt physicists to the Manhattan Project have never received the level of recognition they deserve. Read More