Winter 2014

It was a special treat to find in your latest issue the article by Bronwen Dickey about her father, James Dickey, BA’49, MA’50. She nailed him and that entire era of Deliverance. Read More

Paired with former Australian pro Mark Philippoussis at the Necker Cup, Trista Fredell played against some of tennis’ biggest stars, including John McEnroe. Read More

With this handy cheat sheet, get ready to dazzle your friends the next time somebody asks which Vanderbilt family members had ties to your alma mater. Read More

The theme for this year’s Impact Symposium, set for March 17–19, is “Exploring Our Contemporary Civil Rights and Responsibilities.” Speakers include Gen. Colin Powell, former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), and former U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Read More

The earthquake that rocked the Washington, D.C., area Aug. 23, 2011, left the National Cathedral with $26 million worth of damage, which will take years to fix. Read More

The Littlejohn Undergraduate Research Program expands opportunities for students from summer-only experiences to full academic-year endeavors. Read More

Tricia Rose Burt's one-woman show, How to Draw a Nekkid Man, was selected for the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival. Read More

SpaceX launch engineer Sam Nackman is responsible for designing and overseeing construction of the launch pad’s hydraulic, fuel and nitrogen systems. Read More

John F. Brock III, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises—along with his wife, Mary, and their three children—have established an endowment to support an oncology fellowship at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Read More

Todd Jackson, BA’96, EMBA’08, and Evan Mack, BMus’03, are the recipients of the Alumni Volunteer Award and the Young Alumni Professional Achievement Award, respectively. Read More

The Vanderbilt Alumni Association is seeking nominations not only for the Distinguished Alumni Award but also for five additional awards. Read More

After 56 years of marriage, Walter Paul Gibson Jr. and Mary Jane Knowles Gibson died just three weeks apart last summer. Read More

F. Sheldon Hackney served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and as president of both the University of Pennsylvania and Tulane University in New Orleans. Read More

Rabbi Randall M. Falk was at the forefront of religious leadership in Nashville and made significant contributions to Jewish life, the civil rights struggle, community-building among the city’s increasingly diverse population, and to Jewish–Christian relations. Read More

Ellen Fanning joined Vanderbilt’s faculty in 1995 and served as chair of the Department of Molecular Biology from 1999 to 2002. Read More

Gifted children are likely to be the next generation’s innovators and leaders—and yet, the exceptionally smart are often invisible in the classroom, lacking the curricula, teacher input and external motivation to reach full potential. Read More

Recent work has shown that in addition to the reduction in stomach size, many metabolic and hormonal changes likely underlie the beneficial effects of bariatric surgery. Read More

Cancer researchers have been searching for biomarkers that indicate which patients should be treated aggressively and which patients can be followed through active surveillance. Now researchers at Vanderbilt and the University of Alberta in Canada have identified a biomarker for a cellular switch that accurately predicts which prostate cancer patients are likely to have their cancer recur or spread. Read More

Not enough has been done to protect the economy from the boom and bust cycles that brought the United States to the brink of disaster in 2008–09, says a Vanderbilt economist. Read More

The iPad may hold the key to enabling children with autism spectrum disorders to express themselves through speech. | Children hospitalized for pneumonia have similar outcomes, including length of stay and costs, regardless of whether they are treated with “big gun” antibiotics or more narrowly focused antibiotics such as penicillin. | It’s time to drop the requirement that inventions be “useful” in order to merit a patent, says Sean B. Seymore. Read More