The Vanderbilt Story

If you want to get a handle on the game of baseball, a good place to start is with the ball itself, specifically the seams that tie it all together. The 108 red stitches—used by pitchers to alter the trajectory of throws, depending on subtle changes in their grip—are the… Read More

In July 2004, Wes Powell received what he now refers to as “the Guantánamo call.” Life hasn’t been the same since. That same year the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that men imprisoned at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had a right to challenge their detention in… Read More

Frequently busy with meetings, planning sessions and administrative responsibilities, Alive Hospice President and CEO Anna-Gene O’Neal welcomes the chance to slip out of her office and spend time with residents and staff in Alive’s residence near downtown Nashville. On this particular rainy morning, she sits by resident Knox Ownby’s bed… Read More

Chandler Barnes talks about his vision for artificial intelligence and how technology can help solve global problems. Read More

Ann, MBA’96, and David Kloeppel’s, BS’91, MBA’96, story is in many ways a Vanderbilt romance—as students, they fell in love with each other and the university. Read More

Expect the unexpected when you walk into Kit Parker’s biophysics lab at Harvard. From cuttlefish skin camouflage to cotton candy machines used for wound dressings, his science is anything but ordinary. In fact, the young scientists inside are just as likely to be playing with crayons to visualize solutions… Read More

Amanda Havard doesn’t shy away from a challenge. Launch a startup targeting the public sector? Learn the ins and outs of Medicaid? Lead a health care company as a technologist? These questions did nothing to deter Havard. Drawing on her passion for technology solutions, Havard launched Health:ELT in 2014 with… Read More

In theory, solar energy is an elegant solution to serious impending challenges such as climate change and energy crises. In reality, it can be ugly, clunky and—most important—impractical; the places where we most need solar panels are where we have the least room for them. This was the problem Miles… Read More

Sylvia Bozeman enrolled in Vanderbilt’s graduate program in mathematics in 1968, one year after the program was integrated, and went on to become the first African American woman to earn a master’s degree in math from the university. Today she is a professor, emerita, of Spelman College in… Read More

This essay is adapted from The Long View: Essays, Poems, Stories (2015, Cordelia Hollis) by Susan Ford Wiltshire, Vanderbilt professor of classical studies, emerita. Wiltshire wrote this piece as a letter to her daughter, Carrie Wiltshire McCutcheon, JD’05, who is an attorney at Baker Donelson law firm in Nashville. Read More

It’s Homecoming Week and all of Vanderbilt is busy preparing for the weekend’s events. One of the main draws is the football game against Tennessee State University. But it’s more than just a three hour athletic event with all of the coordination takes place, especially from the police department. However,… Read More

Meet Kathryn Speckles, or “K-Specks” as she’s known to many on campus, though the spellings of her nickname can vary. You may have seen her rap at Spotlight as a part of Vandy Spoken Word, but she can also be found singing in Voce A Cappella, interviewing applicants for the… Read More

Sure, you’ve heard of the Cronut®. It’s the half-croissant, half-doughnut that took the world by storm a few years ago. But have you ever wondered why you’ve heard of it? It’s because of innovative attorneys like Candice Cook Simmons, who received her law degree from Vanderbilt in 2003. Read More

Wednesday is clinic day for Vanderbilt psychiatrist Sheryl Fleisch, M.D. The day is packed with patients, many with multiple physical and mental issues. Fleisch is dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved Vanderbilt T-shirt and a fleece jacket. She wears hiking shoes and carries a heavy backpack. There’s no white coat. No… Read More

Relentlessly courted by athletic powerhouses nationwide, Perry Wallace, BE’70, ultimately made the short trip across town to Vanderbilt—and changed the course of SEC history… 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. “My first day, I put on… Read More

For the past four years, Vanderbilt alumnae Alice Ann Barge, BA’48, and Mary Niederhauser, BS’64—along with their friends Laddie Neil (widow of alumnus Albert B. Neil Jr., JD’50) and Nancy Lee Pitts—have been honored guests at Bonnaroo, the giant outdoor music and arts festival held each June on a 700-acre… Read More

As a kid growing up in Florida, Allison Brown Jones grooved to the beat of Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang and Barbara Mandrell. Decades later, as senior vice president for artists and repertoire at Big Machine Label Group in Nashville, she’s influencing new generations of music fans. Read More

Temple Baker, BA’15, is not your typical Hollywood success story. He wasn’t a child star, shuffled from audition to audition by pushy parents, nor did he have much interest in becoming an actor during college. In fact, his only real stage experience was a fourth-grade production of Romeo and Juliet, in… Read More

Health care once seemed simple: You got sick, called a doctor, and paid the bill as best you could. Today health care accounts for nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. gross domestic product—about $3 trillion of economic activity annually. It’s also the largest item in the federal budget, making… Read More