The Vanderbilt Story

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. Read More

Thirty years ago John Elkington stood near the Mississippi River and looked east down historic Beale Street. The legendary jazz district, where blues pioneers W.C. Handy, Muddy Waters and B.B. King once played uniquely American music, resembled a war zone. The iconic area had become a wasteland of abandoned and… Read More

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 both have advanced society. Read More

In December 2010, a relatively unknown Maryland assistant football coach named James Franklin arrived in Nashville to occupy a hot seat that had scorched a long list of more seasoned men—that of Vanderbilt University’s head football coach. Read More

“It is often said that Africans excel in relationships. I have discovered over the past two years that it is true. I cherish the relationships that are slowly building here in Kijabe; I feel a part of the staff now, and we have a wonderful time talking, teasing, swapping Swahili…It… Read More

Graduates laughed, cried and left as Vanderbilt alums for life. Re-live Commencement 2013. [vucastblurb]… Read More

See how a student is saving young women from violence one download at a time. Music therapy hits the big time. Hear stars sing young patients’ songs. How hard does the football… Read More

Heartfelt songs penned by a group of patients of Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt while working with their music therapist are being released May 14 worldwide on a compilation CD featuring some of Nashville’s top recording stars. Read More

See a Vanderbilt student’s bright art idea! Hear why more students should double down on their majors Watch how a special cartoon comforts sick kids at the Children’s Hospital [vucastblurb]… Read More

When nine-time Grammy award winner Sheryl Crow personally called Professor Jennifer Gunderman asking her to join her touring band, she didn’t pick up the phone. “I didn’t recognize the number — it was blocked — so I let it go to voicemail,” Gunderman said. “She left a message, and the… Read More

For Alyssa Van Camp, a graduate student in the Peabody College of Education and Human Development and former undergraduate at Vanderbilt, bettering the world has been a lifelong pursuit. This spring, that pursuit was recognized as Van Camp participated in and won the Business for Good competition, hosted by the… Read More

Laura Reinbold (BE’82) is fond of saying that since coming to Vanderbilt University at age 17, she’s never lived much more than a mile from where her parents deposited her on West End. Then again, she didn’t need to go far to leave her mark. Read More

Vanderbilt students talk about what they did over spring break 2013. Video by InsideVandy. Read More

The Hustler caught up with alumnus Austin Bauman, owner of Green Fleet Hub, to hear about his career experience in the post-Vanderbilt world. Read More

On the Discovery network’s show Moonshiners, whiskey makers stay one step ahead of the law as they tend backwoods stills. Troy Ball is also a moonshiner, but the similarities between her and the Appalachia moonshiners featured on the show are few. Ball’s whiskey is legal and, by all accounts, some of… Read More

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 at all. By 2010, though, the… Read More

JAMES PATTERSON HAS SOLD MORE BOOKS WORLDWIDE THAN ANY AUTHOR DURING THE PAST THREE YEARS. NOW HE’S SET HIS SIGHTS ON CULTIVATING THE NEXT GENERATION OF READERS. Read More

Not long after he arrived at Vanderbilt nine years ago, Keivan Stassun, professor of astronomy, began building on a newly forged alliance with Fisk University, a historically black college just two miles from the Vanderbilt campus, in an effort to increase the number of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans… Read More

It’s 7 p.m. on a Wednesday evening, and Wyatt Smith is still in his classroom. The day started 12 hours ago, back when his green tie was firmly in place and his khakis were neatly pressed – before the classes, parent phone calls, and the three-hour Mandarin lesson for 13… Read More

In 2011, Tennessee welcomed 1,236 refugees from 17 different countries, most of them settling in Nashville. As is true for the entire nation, the largest groups came from Bhutan, Burma and Iraq. All of them had in common, as the United Nations puts it, having fled their country and being… Read More