Vanderbilt Magazine

Civil rights leader E. Melvin Porter, one of the first African American graduates of Vanderbilt Law School and the first African American to be elected state senator of Oklahoma, died July 26 in Oklahoma City. He was 86. Read More

Drawing on her passion for technology solutions, Havard launched Health:ELT in 2014 with her business partner and father, L. Cade Havard. Read More

Huggins passed away in March at age 73 from complications of leukemia, and through his generosity, his legacy will live on through the Harold Louis Huggins Basketball Scholarship. Read More

As a Ph.D. student at MIT, Barr came up with the idea of creating transparent coating that would convert light into power. Today his company, Ubiquitous Energy, is in the business of making “solar technology invisible,” as Barr puts it. Read More

For the past 110 years, the hourly tolling of Kirkland Hall’s signature bell has alerted generations of students that they’ve overslept for economics class or that kickoff was imminent. And for more than a third of those 110 years, the task of keeping the tower’s clock ticking—and its 2,000-pound bell in good working order—has fallen to Paul Young. Read More

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM) has launched two new donor societies: the John E. Chapman, M.D. Society, which supports clinical programs and endowed faculty chairs, and the Discovery Circle, which supports the basic sciences. Read More

Virginia “Sis” Holladay, BA’46; Lillian B. Jenkins, BA’45; Mary Elizabeth “Libba” Johnson, BA’46; and Katherine White, BA’46 met at Vanderbilt in 1942 and still get together 70 years later. Read More

In each issue, Vanderbilt Magazine publishes a handful of social media posts from alumni, students, faculty, staff and Commodore fans that include the hashtag #Vandygram. Read More

Check out the latest book offerings from Vanderbilt alumni and faculty. Read More

A tenor who studied with Metropolitan Opera star John Alexander and currently studies with Robert White of Juilliard, Rich Miller is in his sixth year as president of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and is an advisory director of the Metropolitan Opera Association. As a Blair parent and member of the Vanderbilt Parents Leadership Committee and the Parents and Family Advisory Board, he and his wife, Carol, have made it possible for the Blair and Vanderbilt communities to access live streaming of the Met through a subscription service. Read More

It has been 47 years since Ben Shahn’s mosaic Peabody—1968 was dedicated in the Hobbs Human Development Laboratory on what was then the campus of George Peabody College for Teachers. The effort to commission Shahn, an artist well known for his advocacy for the poor, was spearheaded by Susan Gray, professor of psychology, emerita, and an advocate for children, particularly those held back developmentally by poverty. Read More

Michael Rinne (far right) as bassist Lum York, with actor Tom Hiddleston (center) as Hank Williams and members of the film version of Williams’ band, The Drifting Cowboys. Photo by Sam Emerson/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics   Bassist Michael Rinne, BMus’10, is a busy guy. He has recorded with artists Caitlin… Read More

Vanderbilt boasts two winners of Guggenheim fellowships this year: Beth Bachmann, writer-in-residence in English, received a fellowship in poetry, and John Powers, BA’01, assistant professor of sculpture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, received a fellowship in the fine arts division for his sculpture. Read More

Vibhuti Krishna, BA’16, who majored in art and in health, medicine and society, was presented the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award for 2016. Hailing from Solon, Ohio, she received $25,000 for a year of art research and travel, which will culminate in a solo show at Vanderbilt next year. Read More

First-year Peabody College students Aaron and Nicholas Ainsworth have stayed connected to their hometown of San Bernardino, California, in part by mentoring a class of sixth-grade students there, both in person and by video chat. Read More

Larry Daughtrey, legendary political reporter for The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, known as a tenacious watchdog at the state Capitol who always broke the story first, died May 12 of complications from lung disease. He was 76. Read More

Peabody College alumna Nera White powered the first national women’s basketball dynasty and became the game’s first female superstar—a dominance that led her into the Basketball Hall of Fame as one of the first two women to be enshrined there. She died April 13 in Gallatin, Tennessee, from complications of pneumonia at the age of 80. Read More

Before Commencement in May, 1,195 members of the Class of 2016 made gifts to the annual Senior Class Fund, representing a record-high 76 percent participation rate. Read More

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