The Vanderbilt Story

Jacques Cousteau said we protect what we love. I have been in love with nature—and aware of how precious it is—since the first Earth Day in 1970 when a group of ecologists took my first-grade class on a nature walk in a nearby park. Escaping the classroom into the relative… Read More

Bridgette Brown came to Vanderbilt for a world-class education but, in addition to finding a new home, she also discovered herself. Read More

As a Vanderbilt undergraduate, Alex Taylor, BS’97, never thought he’d join the family business. He also had no desire to follow his friends into the world of financial services, even though he was studying what he calls the “psychology of business” as a human and organizational development major at… Read More

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

Lucy Mensah, who graduated with a Ph.D. in English in 2016, is drawing on her humanities training and taking a path less traveled. 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

Alumna Lillian Harpole Hazelton keeps a family tradition alive by supporting a scholarship established by her mother for Divinity School students preparing for United Methodist Church ministry. Read More

Arts and Science senior Ryan "Sully" Sullivan applies his knowledge of public policy to his nonprofit organization to make a difference in the lives of rural Thai villagers. Read More

For the past 110 years, the hourly tolling of Kirkland Hall’s signature bell has alerted generations of students that they’ve overslept for economics class or that kickoff was imminent. For more than a third of those 110 years, the task of keeping the tower’s clock ticking has fallen to Paul Young. 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

New Professor of Economics Mattias K. Polborn is interested in how political institutions affect the “political equilibrium”—in particular, the competition between candidates in elections. Read More

New Instructor in Nursing Susanna Rudy brings to Vanderbilt a wealth of experience. She’s a board-certified nurse practitioner in emergency, family and adult-gerontology acute care who earned a master’s degree in forensic science before earning master of science in nursing and doctor of nursing practice degrees, the latter two from Vanderbilt. Read More