The Vanderbilt Story

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

To read Meredith Dolhare’s long list of athletic triumphs, it’s tempting to ask if there’s anything she can’t do. After transferring to join the Vanderbilt women’s tennis team in 1993 following a freshman stint at perennially top-ranked UCLA, Dolhare (along with then-new Head Coach Geoff Macdonald) helped lift the… Read More

In 1913 a farmer’s son named Oliver Cromwell Carmichael became the first Rhodes Scholar from Alabama. Just 21, he had earned an A.B. from the University of Alabama and had taught German and French there and at Florence Normal School. In 1914 a 20-year-old Methodist minister’s son named Harvie Branscomb… Read More

As a little girl growing up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Jedidah Isler was obsessed with the sky. “I really just thought it was beautiful,” she says, “and I remember feeling a sense of calm whenever I looked up.” Today that same sense of calm and wonderment continues to help fuel Isler’s… Read More

Hoping to ensure that the door to a Vanderbilt education is open to every talented student inspired Board of Trust member Dr. Robert Schiff Jr., BS’77, a Cincinnati pediatrician, to make a transformative $10,000,000 commitment to Opportunity Vanderbilt. Begun at the outset of the financial crisis in 2008, Opportunity… Read More

Kate Hendricks’ career in comedy started off slowly. In fact, she only realized she wanted to pursue comedy during an interview for a job at an ad agency. So she did what a lot of self-respecting comedians do: She moved to New York City and performed anywhere that would have… Read More

I’m graduating in May, and while it will be hard to leave Vanderbilt, it will be even harder to leave The Commons. The Commons has been such a defining part of my Vanderbilt experience, and has been my home here since day one. After my first year I became… Read More

When Deya Maldas signed up to be a tutor at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee, she didn’t know she was about to have the most transformative experience of her freshman year. Read More

Sam Reilly does some of his best thinking when he’s out for a run with his Vanderbilt cross-country teammates. It is one of the rare moments in his busy schedule when he can stretch his mind along with his legs. Read More

Sam Hoskins has spent the last four years living on The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons. From his introduction to the residential community as a first-year student in Gillette House to his last three years as a resident adviser in North House, Hoskins says The Ingram Commons has played a significant role in his journey of self-discovery. Read More

Michaela Novakovic’s majors take her from the grand to the microscopic on a daily basis. The Sorrento, Florida, native and Blair School of Music senior is a double major in harp and molecular and cellular biology. Read More

In his four years at Vanderbilt, Connor D. Henderson has become a strong advocate for expanded campus space and resources for student productions. Some of his favorite memories are of cultural showcases by the Vanderbilt performing arts community filled with music, dance and food. Read More

School of Engineering senior Gabrielle Tate—Gabbey to her friends—has the drive it takes to make U.S. automakers take notice. Read More