Vanderbilt Magazine

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

Seth Soloway, who was previously executive and artistic director of the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, State University of New York, has been appointed associate dean of presenting and external relations and director of the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts at Vanderbilt Blair School of Music. Read More

The inaugural Vanderbilt Changemakers event featured a discussion with Owen Graduate School of Management alumni Nat Robinson, MBA’07, JD’18, and Tori Samples, BMus’12, MBA’18, about the company they created to provide virtual banking services to refugees and migrants. Read More

A series of trans-institutional courses designed through the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities is using Vanderbilt’s campus as a living lab, giving students—future historians, architects, archaeologists, curators and engineers among them—unique hands-on experiences. Read More

Pain, healing and resilience are themes woven into Nashville artist Ashley Mintz’s new online exhibit supported by Vanderbilt Divinity School. The visual collection, "Resilient Souls: We Rest Then We Rise," will run in a fully virtual format Feb. 1–March 12 in celebration and reflection of Black History Month. Read More

Ruth Grace Zibart, professor of French, emerita, and the first woman to serve as associate dean of the College of Arts and Science, died in Nashville on Dec. 26. She was 101. Read More

Geoffrey Fleming, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and vice president of Vanderbilt University Medical Center Continuous Professional Development, died Dec. 8. He was 50. Fleming was diagnosed with metastatic cholangiocarcinoma in August 2019. Read More

Derrick Gragg, a former student-athlete on the Vanderbilt football team, is the NCAA's new senior vice president for inclusion, education and community engagement. Read More

Blair Academy at Vanderbilt, the  music education program for children, youth and adults at Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music, has developed creative new approaches to build curriculum and share music, despite the challenges of music instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, enrollment for the adult program in particular has increased. Read More

Multidisciplinary researcher Robert Barsky has added a new approach to his studies on migration with the launch of "Contours Collaborations." The digital journal is sharing stories about borders and border crossings through the lens of art. Read More

Iris W. Buhl, a longtime community educator, volunteer and philanthropist in Nashville, died Aug. 11, 2020. She was 77. Read More

After decades influencing political and social change, both locally and nationally, Memphis attorney James S. Gilliland died Feb. 24. He was 86. Read More

A tradition of giving in her first year at Vanderbilt has led Julie Babbage to continue giving back to her alma mater in a myriad of ways. Read More

Vanderbilt University alumni were offered the unique opportunity this fall to hear two of the country’s foremost political science experts, John Geer and Jon Meacham, discuss the U.S. presidential election in the four-part webinar series, “The 2020 Election: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Read More

David Potts and his wife, Frances Candi Potts, recently documented their intent to establish the Potts Scholarship to provide financial support for undergraduate students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics at the College of Arts and Science or the School of Engineering. Read More

GreenLight Medical CEO Austin Dirks bills his company as a smarter way to evaluate new medical technology, using a cloud-based system that pulls together quality and value-based data to streamline collaborative purchasing decisions in hospital and health care systems. Read More

Class of 1999 alumni Chris Murdock and Tom Milic started a recruiting company with a new way of doing business that has grown into a firm with international reach. Read More

A profile of Monique Nelson-Nwachuku, winner of Vanderbilt’s 2020 Alumni Professional Achievement Award, who is chairman and CEO of UniWorld Group, the country’s longest-standing multicultural marketing agency. Read More

Last spring, as thousands of health care employees worked tirelessly to do good in the wake of COVID-19, Houston native Ben Schecter and several Vanderbilt friends, including fellow Class of '18 alumna Allie Golden, decided on a model that would help struggling local restaurants and serve health care workers at the same time. Read More

Quarterly message from Tim Warnock, BA'84, president of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board Read More