Vanderbilt Magazine

During the past year and a half, hard-working volunteers have encouraged classmates to come back and give back to Vanderbilt. This past fall, the university welcomed 5,777 Vanderbilt alumni, spouses and friends to campus for Reunion and Homecoming. Our volunteers worked hard to meet fundraising goals and, in the end,… Read More

Cairo seemed like a sure bet for Sloane Speakman’s study abroad. After all, “no real political movement had taken place in the last 30 years.” My study-abroad experience began much like anyone else’s. I spent months preparing personal statements, making travel plans, and preparing for the cultural transition. I would… Read More

Goodman is interviewed by anchor Chuck Roberts on CNN’s companion news channel HLN. DEANNE GOODMAN, BA’04 Deanne Goodman calls herself a “backpack journalist”—and she could well be the face of 21st-century journalism. As local editor for AOL Patch in Carlsbad, Calif., Goodman shoots video, takes photos and writes news… Read More

Kyser Miree (front) during a ski trip with his fraternity brothersWhen one of their own was murdered less than a year after he walked across the stage to receive his diploma, Kyser Miree’s Vanderbilt friends reacted with shock and grief. And then they got busy working on a way to… Read More

Vanderbilt is closing in on its initial goal of raising $100 million in gifts and pledges by June 30, 2011, for Opportunity Vanderbilt, the university’s initiative to eliminate need-based loans in financial aid packages. At press time donors had contributed $99 million for additional endowed scholarships. The university first announced… Read More

Amelia Winger-Bearskin, right, performs “Flowers” in Manila, Philippines, for the 2010 Tama Tupada International Action and Media Art Festival. When performance art is bad, it’s really bad, Assistant Professor in Art Amelia Winger-Bearskin says by way of explaining why people seem to hate her chosen art form. Because people know… Read More

The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (2011, Penguin) by Daniel J. Sharfstein, associate professor of law The idea of someone transitioning from black to white, without science or surgery, seems hard to grasp on the surface. Yet, Vanderbilt Law School… Read More

Editor GayNelle Doll Art Director and Designer Donna DeVore Pritchett Editorial Associate Editor and Advertising Manager Phillip B. Tucker Arts & Culture Editor Bonnie Arant Ertelt, BS’81 Class Notes and Sports Editor Nelson Bryan, BA’73 Photography and Imaging Director, Photography Services Daniel Dubois Photographers… Read More

Ridley Wills II Ridley Wills II, BA’56, has lived most of his life in Nashville. Since retiring from a 25-year career with the National Life and Accident Insurance Co., he has spent much of his life researching and writing local history. Heritage, Highballs and Hijinks: Colorful Characters I Have Known… Read More

“I’d really like to go up into the Kirkland clock tower,” I said. It was last November, and I was having brunch with Charlie Taylor, a director of regional gifts in Vanderbilt’s Division of Development and Alumni Relations, in sunny southern California, where I live. Charlie makes periodic visits to… Read More

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Dr. Otis Rickman with the tools of his trade Prologue “Help me understand,” she said. My patient was the delightful silver-haired matriarch of a large family. I was seeing her in consultation for a pulmonary nodule in the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s Thoracic Oncology Clinic on a crisp afternoon in the… Read More

Morris Frank, ’29, once playfully recalled the time he got a free train ride. “The conductor told me he had watched me come down the platform, get on the train and take my seat, and he said that no blind man in the world could do that.” As proof, Frank… Read More

Scientists Virginia Shepherd and Charles Brau first met at a Vanderbilt basketball game. She has become a national figure in championing the role of academics in the lives of student athletes. In 1992, Virginia Shepherd was attending a conference where Bruce Alberts, then-future president of the National Academy of Sciences,… Read More

Neil Cargile (center) at a Florida club with Dorothy Koss (left) and Holly Armistead People saw Neil Cargile Jr. in a great many ways. For me, though, an enduring vision was the very first one. I was a junior or senior at Montgomery Bell Academy back then, and there he… Read More

Lawson Aschenbach, right, celebrates a Street Tuner championship in September with team co-driver David Thilenius at Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City. LAWSON ASCHENBACH, BS’06 “There’s no better feeling than crossing the finish line first,” says professional racecar driver Lawson Aschenbach. He started racing go-karts at age 8,… Read More

Thirty Vanderbilt alumnae from 13 states—and nearly all from the Class of 1982—gathered in May to celebrate their collective 50th birthdays with a “Women on Wheels” reunion and bicycle trip through California’s wine country. During the trip, which was organized by Liz Schwartz Hale, BSN’83, and her family’s Berkeley, Calif.,… Read More

MURRAY FISHER, BA’98 Murray Fisher, founder and program director of the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, has been interested since childhood in protecting the natural world and bringing back its former abundance and diversity. At his first job, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s environmental group Riverkeeper, Fisher shouldered… Read More

Dr. Melvyn Koby returns the watch he pilfered 50 years ago. DR. MELVYN KOBY, BA’60 Fifty years ago Vanderbilt senior Melvyn Koby made off with a little piece of Vanderbilt history: a pocket watch from the statue of Francis Furman that stands on the landing inside Furman Hall. “It… Read More

Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos goes crowd surfing with first-year students before the home football game against Northwestern University on Sept. 4. Northwestern squeaked by Vanderbilt 23–21 in the season opener. PHOTO BY JOHN RUSSELL… Read More