Featured

Kate Daniels has long been captivated by the connection between writing and the healing process. After earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, Daniels worked as a nurse’s aide at UVA Medical Center while she was in the process of applying to graduate school. The job was grueling,… Read More

Photography by Marc Olivier Le Blanc The opening poem in Focal Point, the debut collection by Jenny Qi, BA’11, navigates the fraught emotional space between a loving daughter’s grief over her mother’s death and a scientist’s clear-eyed inquiry into the disease-cancer-that caused it. Qi writes of “nights at a microscope in… Read More

Illustrations by Gary Bates From the Civil War to the battle over civil rights, the United States has seen levels of conflict in the past that have threatened to tear the country apart. But watching the violent attack on the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, Professor of Political Science… Read More

Brothers André, Keith and Kevin Churchwell, who were together for 15 years at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, are among the most accomplished physicians and administrators in the country. All three credit their father, Robert Churchwell, the first Black reporter at the Nashville Banner newspaper, as the inspiration for their success. Read More

Years before Vanderbilt basketball head coach Shea Ralph’s generation helped set a standard for women who aspire and act to change the world through sports, her mother, Marsha Lake, traveled to the Soviet Union as part of a team that represented the United States on the world stage for the first time in the Title IX era.   Read More

Moments after Vanderbilt defeated Alabama to reach the final of the 2021 SEC Men’s Golf Championship at Sea Island Golf Club in Georgia, Scott Limbaugh served up a seemingly innocuous answer to a question posed in a television interview. “We liked our matchups a lot,” Vanderbilt’s head coach told the… Read More

Vanderbilt professors Sheila Ridner and Barbara Murphy have contributed to the development of a first-of-its-kind device to treat head and neck lymphedema, a chronic disease common after cancer treatment that causes fluid buildup in the body and can complicate normal functions. Read More

In a spirit of expanding our knowledge, I offer the following observations about how we made decisions as an organization, built trust within our community, and bolstered Vanderbilt’s reputation as an institution willing to confront difficult circumstances with hard work, compassion and commitment. Read More

General Motors' announcement that it would phase out combustion engines—the heart of its cars and trucks for more than 100 years—and move to an all-electric fleet by 2035 could have monumental implications for the global auto industry and broad efforts to combat climate change. The success of the initiative will depend on Vanderbilt alumni who hold key positions in the company. Read More

Vanderbilt’s partnership with the recently opened National Museum of African American Music promises the potential of community-building discussions involving music, race, history and storytelling. Read More

By Graham Hays As an otherwise unremarkable women’s soccer practice at the University of Pennsylvania came to a close more than a decade ago, Darren Ambrose was frustrated. Maybe even ticked off.The Ivy League program’s coach at the time, Ambrose wasn’t mad about a defensive miscue, an errant… Read More

Vanderbilt University this week announced that fall semester classes will be offered in person. University leaders continue to monitor the pandemic to inform the full fall semester plan, and additional information will be shared in the coming weeks.  Read More

The remarkable success of the COVID-19 vaccines began in a Vanderbilt lab decades ago, with the groundbreaking research of alumnus Dr. Barney Graham. Read More

By Lisa Robbins and GayNelle Doll The following is adapted from the story “Deep Roots, Strong Tree,” which originally appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Vanderbilt Magazine. During his gubernatorial campaign, Lamar Alexander donned a red and black plaid shirt and walked across much of Tennessee to meet voters. Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the entire Vanderbilt community to change its routines. But because of the live-performance nature of music schools, the Blair School has implemented numerous precautions to ensure that faculty and students remain safe—all while maintaining a semblance of the highly personalized instruction for which Blair is known. Read More

In January 2020, the accelerating spread of SARS-CoV-2 made it apparent that VUMC’s two-bed Contagious Disease Response Unit, created for the rare victim of Ebola or other more-isolated emerging pathogen, would not suffice if Nashville were to be hit hard. So administrators began planning for a major outbreak. Read More

In 2020–21, Vanderbilt is welcoming an impressive group of educators and researchers to its faculty, including 26 full-time, tenure-track and tenured faculty members across nine of the schools and colleges. Read More

Beshear, the first-term Democratic governor of Kentucky, was elected last November by a margin as thin as a surgical mask, just in time to steer his largely Republican state through a runaway pandemic, the resulting economic damage, and America’s most consequential reckoning with racial injustice since the 1960s. Read More

This election night, Sam Feist, BA’91, will perform one of his more unusual duties as head of CNN’s Washington Bureau. Assuming the results are clear-cut, he will—in consultation with CNN’s statisticians and political scientists—call the winner of the presidential race for the network. It is a responsibility he has held since 2004, and one that he does not take lightly. Read More

Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams are both writers-in-residence at Vanderbilt—Randall in the Department of African American and Diaspora Studies and Williams in the Department of Medicine, Health and Society. And neither is afraid to shine a light on complicated questions around race. Read More