Winter 2017

• The Blair Big Band, directed by Ryan Middagh, director of jazz studies, was invited to play the recent annual conference of the Jazz Education Network, the professional organization for jazz musicians and jazz educators, in New Orleans. The conference features the finest professional and educational jazz musicians and… Read More

Polar, by a 26-year-old male diagnosed with schizophrenia, reflects how he presents himself to the world (right side) compared to how he feels (left side) An exhibit during the fall at Vanderbilt’s Department of Art displayed the works of clients from an outpatient mental health program in The… Read More

Sabrina Bradford (violin), Antonia Rohlfing (piano) and Blake Kitayama (cello) rehearse their chamber music piece at the Blair School. Photo by Anne Rayner Musicians learn not only how to play an instrument, but how to play in a group, be it a full orchestra or a quartet. Learning to… Read More

Painting 1909: Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Henri Bergson, Comics, Albert Einstein, and Anarchy (2017, Yale University Press) by Leonard Folgarait, professor of history of art In 1909, renowned artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) embarked on a series of stylistic experiments that had a dramatic effect on modern art. The book examines… Read More

The Observers, 2006, graphite on paper, 30 by 22 inches At the end of the spring 2017 semester, after 37 years of teaching Vanderbilt undergraduates drawing and painting, Professor of Art Marilyn Murphy will retire. From the beginning Murphy has brought an interesting point of view to her… Read More

Our fair institution has always prided itself on academic rigor, deservedly so. And while the battle wounds inflicted on me by a well-armed set of microeconomic curves 20 years ago haven’t fully healed, more and more I appreciate the demands that were placed on us at Vanderbilt. Read More

To show their appreciation for Head Coach Tim Corbin and their confidence in the continued success of the Vanderbilt Baseball program, many of his former players—an impressive 60 percent of them, in fact—as well as a number of other donors, recently contributed to a $12 million fundraising effort to support the construction of new baseball facilities at the university. Read More

Last July, after having risen through the company ranks over a 16-year career, Alex Taylor, BS'97, was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of Cox Enterprises, one of the nation’s largest media companies, with annual revenue of around $18 billion and more than 60,000 employees. Read More

Thirteen students met during the fall semester for a class called Historic Black Nashville. Taught by Jane Landers and Daniel Sharfstein, the course is part of a new initiative known as the University Courses program, a collaborative model that brings together faculty from different parts of the university to teach students from a variety of majors. Read More

This magnified image of a cancer cell dividing into two daughter cells placed 12th in the international 2016 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. Read More

Your article (wish it had been on the cover) caught my attention. I so appreciated the lessons learned—they seem timeless and still relevant. Thank you for taking time to share the story … and thanks, too, to the editor for including it. So important! Read More

Jessica Tribble, BS’08, loves collecting art—so much so that she turned it into a business. She’s the founder of Clara Arts, a full-service art advisory and management firm in New York City that connects contemporary artists with collectors. We asked Tribble to give us some insider tips about collecting art, and here’s what she said. Read More

When the sun shines at Vanderbilt’s Brownlee O. Currey Jr. Tennis Center these days, it means a little more to former player Marie Casares, BE’15. Two years ago, while Casares was still in school, the civil engineering major wrote a proposal to install solar panels atop the Currey Tennis Center and submitted it to Vanderbilt’s Green Fund, which designates money for student-led energy conservation projects. Read More

After playing in only three bowl games during its first century of football, Vanderbilt has now reached the postseason five times in the past nine seasons—most recently at the Independence Bowl played Dec. 26, 2016, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Read More

The Vanderbilt men’s golf team is entering its spring season as the unanimous No. 1 team in the nation, earning the top ranking from Golfweek, the Golf Coaches Association of America and Golfstat.com. Read More

In 2009 three friends and I co-founded Plastic Pollution Coalition at my dining room table, adding a fourth “R”—Refuse—to the traditional three: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Why “refuse”? Because disposable plastic is made from petroleum, is used for only brief periods and lasts forever, causing great harm to wildlife and humans. Read More

As many as 3,000 living alumni are either active military personnel or veterans who attended Vanderbilt as an undergraduate, and many got their start in the university’s Air Force, Army and Navy ROTC programs. In this issue we talk to four alumni whose lives have been shaped in various ways by both Vanderbilt and their military experience. Read More

Christina Sharkey Geist is many things: a mother, wife, brand strategist, small business owner, “mompreneur” and, now, a children’s book author. Read More

Five generations of Lillian Harpole Hazelton’s family have attended Vanderbilt—and higher education has played a particularly important role for the women in her family. Read More

After his law firm agreed to represent Guantánamo prisoners in 2004, Powell—a corporate litigator and antitrust lawyer for 20 years—received a phone call from the partner in charge of pro bono work at his firm. Hours later he was lead counsel to three French citizens who had been held in Guantánamo since early 2002. Read More