Vanderbilt Magazine

If you are changing careers, targeting a new industry, considering a new functional area, or simply trying to select the right career for yourself, you are invited to participate in a new, comprehensive career coaching program offered by the Office of Alumni Relations in conjunction with Vanderbilt Career Services. The… Read More

Tisha Holloway was exhausted. She had been laboring in a North Carolina hospital for almost 26 hours to give birth to her first child, but the baby just wouldn’t come. “I tried to do everything right during my pregnancy,” the 27-year-old woman says. “I ate right, exercised, kept my… Read More

It is a tenet of the self-help faith: Follow your passion, and it will lead you down the road to professional success, personal fulfillment and financial reward. The alumni profiled in this issue turn this self-help cliché on its head. They have followed their passions, yes, but down an alternate… Read More

Marshall Eakin is the new director of the Ingram Scholarship Program. “Vanderbilt puts more emphasis on teaching than any major research university in the United States, except maybe Notre Dame and Georgetown,” he says. When he was in high school, Marshall Eakin spent a summer in Guatemala. This was no… Read More

(Photo: Herb Peck) “I have sometimes said that during the half dozen or so years from 1967 to 1973, I never relaxed once,” Vanderbilt’s fifth chancellor, Alexander Heard, once remarked. “That’s not technically true, of course, but I was constantly aware of the local and national matters that affected Vanderbilt’s… Read More

Allison Oubre (left) and Andrea Alvord on campus in their Navy ROTC uniforms. It was their first photo taken together. Dear Allison, It’s been a few weeks since we last wrote, and now we really have no need for letters. You are the ever-present friend. I am here in Slidell,… Read More

No carefully followed blueprint could ever replicate the serendipitous evolution of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” from exercise in parody to platinum record to cottage industry. Read More

What is poverty? And what is the best way to treat it? While the second question seems to be the more important, a poor fundamental understanding of the first obscures poverty’s underlying mechanism, often resulting in an ineffective and insensitive treatment. Unlike medicine, which often relies on discovery to… Read More

A competitive spirit burns in every Vanderbilt student. They wouldn’t be on campus without that drive to succeed at the highest levels of academia. But some students take that spirit even further. They have, in essence, two full-time jobs—student and athlete. Vanderbilt consistently ranks first in athlete graduation rates in… Read More

This speech was presented April 19, 2007, to members of the Vanderbilt Aid Society by Lyle Lankford, senior officer for university history and protocol at Vanderbilt University. From its very founding, Vanderbilt University has been obliged to women who came to the rescue to make dreams reality. It’s… Read More

Nurse Patti McCarver weighs Clayton Aaron Jenkins during an open house for Metro Nashville Public Schools’ new Employee and Family Health Centers, which are run by nurse practitioners from Vanderbilt School of Nursing. Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) has opened five new Employee and Family Health Centers to… Read More

The Big Chill Imagine a time when the entire universe froze. That is essentially what happened about 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was a quarter of the size it is today, according to a model published online May 6 in the journal Physical Review D. The model was… Read More

Moreadith Whiting Keegan Fellows Embark on Year of Travel New graduates Kathryn Moreadith and Rob Whiting are spending a year traveling the world as recipients of the university’s Michael B. Keegan Traveling Fellowship. Moreadith graduated in May from the Blair School of Music with majors in composition/theory and East Asian… Read More

The university has completed its first greenhouse-gas inventory and adopted an environmental commitment statement affirming the university’s dedication to environmental responsibility and accountability. “Vanderbilt is one among a small percentage of schools that has undertaken the completion of a GHG [greenhouse gas] inventory and made it publicly available,” says Judson… Read More

In 1969, Taylor Stokes entered Vanderbilt as the first African American scholarship athlete to suit up for the football team. Though he had dreamed of playing in the Big 10 or at Alabama, he accepted Vanderbilt’s invitation at the urging of his father. “My father was a visionary,” says Stokes,… Read More

Jacobson Dr. Harry R. Jacobson retired June 1 as vice chancellor for health affairs at Vanderbilt University. He is succeeded by Dr. Jeffrey Balser, MD’90, PhD’90, who last year was named dean of the School of Medicine. Since Jacobson assumed leadership in 1997 of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, VUMC’s… Read More

Guthrie Chris Guthrie, a seven-year veteran of Vanderbilt Law School and former associate dean for academic affairs, was named dean of the law school effective July 1. An expert on dispute resolution, negotiation, judicial decision making, and behavioral law and economics, Guthrie has agreed to a five-year appointment, subject to… Read More

Peabody College of education and human development celebrated the 30th anniversary of its merger with the university by announcing that six of its faculty are the recipients of named chairs. “The six professors receiving these chairs are high-impact individuals who make important contributions to the practice of education or psychology,”… Read More

Seeing Mexico Photographed (2008, Yale University Press) by Leonard Folgarait, professor of history of art. During the years 1910–35, Mexico underwent changes brought on by the Mexican Revolution and the forging of a new nation and government. Folgarait’s book looks at the photographs of four historically engaged artists—American Walter H. Read More

Guayasamín’s sketch for the mural “Family” for the Chapel of Man (serigraph) The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery was honored recently during a celebration of the 90th birthday of the renowned, late Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín at the Capilla del Hombre (Chapel of Man) in Quito, Ecuador. Given in recognition… Read More