Vanderbilt Magazine

Credit: KAT CHADWICK There may be a biological basis for separate doll and dump-truck aisles in the toy store. In a study of baby mice, researchers at Vanderbilt and the University of Southern California found that males and females respond differently to the hormone arginine-vasopressin (AVP), which… Read More

Credit: GARY WATERS Prison Time Cuts Life Expectancy For every year spent in prison, overall life expectancy decreases two years. A new study by Evelyn Patterson, assistant professor of sociology, looked at New York parolees released between 1989 and 2003 and found a 15.6 percent… Read More

CREDIT: Adam Kuykendall/University of Maine Lu Zeph believes people with disabilities have both a civil and a human right to develop their abilities in an inclusive community. “The disability rights movement is rooted in the Civil Rights Movement,” she states. Both faced similar opposition, she says, and… Read More

Credit: JR ANDERSON Deena Dill is probably one in a million—a busy actress and producer who’d rather work light-hearted sitcoms and game shows than become the next Meryl Streep. “Game shows are certainly not a niche most people in the industry gravitate toward, but it’s what I… Read More

CREDIT: Rancard Solutions Ltd. During a 1997 summer internship, Vanderbilt mechanical engineering student Kofi Dadzie had a brilliant idea: Enormous opportunities awaited someone who could bring a combination of business principles and information technology to his homeland, Ghana. “As a developing country, Ghana … did not boast… Read More

Students from Birmingham, Ala., arrive at the Beijing airport during the summer of 2012. Wyatt Smith is in the middle of the back row holding the pink sign. (Courtesy of Wyatt Smith)   BY WYATT SMITH, BS’10 Three months into my Teach For America experience, I received a phone… Read More

The parents of Vanderbilt patient Tyson Wohlford had this photo taken to express gratitude for his care at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. (Credit: Dixie Pixel Photography) Vanderbilt Celebrates 30 Years with Children’s Organization This year marks one of the most influential partnerships in Vanderbilt’s… Read More

Sean Davidson (Credit: John Russell) Opening Dores to New Career Opportunities Sean Davidson, BS’10, was planning for a career in investment banking. A meeting with alumnus Andrew Grobmyer, BS’91, at an Opening Dores dinner changed all that, and today Davidson is working as a health care consultant… Read More

Credit: Ken Bennett/Wake Forest University Walter J. Harrelson Old Testament Scholar Walter J. Harrelson, distinguished professor of Hebrew Bible, emeritus, and former dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School, of Winston-Salem, N.C., died Sept. 5, 2012. He was 92. An internationally acclaimed Old Testament scholar, he served four years… Read More

PHOTO: Richard Danielpour, standing, rehearses with Blair School of Music Dean Mark Wait at the piano prior to the debut of Danielpour’s Dec. 4 premiere of 12 new piano études. PHOTO BY JOHN RUSSELL   What are the odds a conversation about 12 new piano études will veer off to… Read More

The Rev. Mark Forrester, MDiv’83, has been named university chaplain and director of the Office of Religious Life. Forrester has been a United Methodist chaplain affiliated with Vanderbilt’s Office of Religious Life since 1994. He assumed the new role Sept. 1 at a critical point in… Read More

BY KATHY WHITNEY HEART PHOTO BY ROBERT CLARK / INSTITUTE   A 53-year-old patient arrives at Vanderbilt University Hospital early one morning for a procedure to open up a blockage in his left anterior descending artery by placing a single stent to his heart via the radial artery in his… Read More

Marc Panu (JOHN RUSSELL)   Four years ago Marc Panu walked on to Vanderbilt’s football team. He sweated through the sweltering summer training camp. He spent grueling hours lifting weights. He studied game plans and watched endless film. His reward was slow in coming. In 2009 he didn’t play… Read More

Most people think of printmaking as a means to multiples, but Nicole Pietrantoni, BS’03, uses the techniques of printmaking—specifically screen printing—as a means to an end. Pietrantoni, who won Vanderbilt’s prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award in 2003, screen-prints on acrylic plates, stacks the plates in… Read More

In May 2012 Vanderbilt broke ground on College Halls at Kissam, two residential colleges that together will house about 660 upperclassmen starting in 2014. Tony Fort considers the project to be among the most ambitious during his 27 years at the university. “This is the single… Read More

Mia Bransford, a nurse in the pediatric emergency department at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, was one of the few trained health care workers on the scene last July when a mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., left 12 dead and 58 injured. Bransford, in Colorado for a… Read More

ILLUSTRATION BY EDEL RODRIGUEZ   A tradition among first-year students to read and discuss a common text has inspired an effort to foster dialogue about gender and sexuality across the Vanderbilt community. Themes explored in the 2012 Commons Reading, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, is being… Read More

EDITOR’S LETTER By GayNelle Doll   Let’s say you’ve lived for quite some time in a custom-built home you really like and a neighborhood you love. Through the years this house has become a beloved gathering place with great memories in every room. Sure, the place could use a facelift—trim back… Read More

James Patterson, MA’70, breathes rare air. His books line the walls in airport shops. They’re tucked into beach bags amid the towels and sunscreen. They’re on sidewalk kiosks and bedside tables around the world. In 2010 he sold more books than John Grisham, Stephen King and Danielle Steele combined. Read More

BY ROB HAMMOND, BA’71 ABOVE PHOTO: President John F. Kennedy reads the program for Vanderbilt's 90th anniversary convocation in 1963. (Photo by Cecil Stoughton) When I was in sixth grade, John F. Kennedy became one of my boyhood heroes. During his 1960 campaign he came to my hometown of LaGrange, Ga.,… Read More