Publications

Vanderbilt University basketball player Christina Foggie, the top scorer, male or female, at her New Jersey high school and the top-rated recruit, came into her freshman season in 2010 doing all it took to make plays, taking the inevitable bumps and elbows from her opponents. At the sixth game of… Read More

Vereen Bell, an iconic figure in the Department of English, has been making waves at Vanderbilt for 50 years. And he shows no signs of letting up. “He’s a brilliant and caring teacher, a productive and admired scholar, a supportive if sometimes provocative and crabby colleague, and a witty, refreshingly… Read More

For much of the past century, the typical role of the school principal was to serve as the manager-in-chief, an administrator who made sure the boilers worked, the buses ran on time and new teachers were hired and placed in classrooms. Certainly, the principal disciplined children who misbehaved and awarded… Read More

A selected group of Medical Center leaders were asked about where they think the opportunities and challenges lie in the decade ahead, and the part that all of us play as we move ahead together. The strategy was to ask many people the same questions, on the theory that they… Read More

Experience, so they say, is the best teacher. But when it comes to cutting-edge laboratory-based research, hands-on work often is the exclusive purview of graduate students and faculty. So how does an undergraduate student interested in research go about obtaining the experience and exposure that can help launch a career?… Read More

For a guy from Middle Tennessee, Brent Turner, MBA’99, sure uses a lot of nautical terms. That may be the impact of having lived near the Puget Sound in Seattle for the past 12 years, but his choice of words is fitting nonetheless. Turner is helping steer the future of… Read More

Minutes from now, the newly conscious patient will flail softly in her bed and try to pull out her breathing tube. A nurse will be there to stay her hand. Right now, though, she’s slipping toward death. As she was being turned in her bed, her heart rate plummeted, and… Read More

What’s it like to work at Vanderbilt? That question comes up a lot when people find out where you work. And we each have our own answer, of course. Great co-workers, of course. Being involved in things that matter, that’s important. Whatever any person’s job, everyone here is part of… Read More

Songwriter Harlan Howard said it best: “Country music is three chords and the truth.” Out of that simple formula has come a genre that defines the Nashville sound and its worldwide community of listeners. Where the only cure for a broken heart is to sing about it. Where tractors and… Read More

They say everyone loves a winner, so musicians, like athletes and entrepreneurs, spend an inordinate amount of time preparing to outperform the competition. There’s no scoreboard or balance sheet. Musicians leave their progress lingering in the air to hear every time they perform. “There’s no way of avoiding competition,” says… Read More

Sometimes the best measure of success for a leader is what happens on his or her watch. Upon first meeting Bonnie Miller, M.D., the diminutive, soft-spoken senior associate dean for Health Sciences Education, you might not suspect the key role she played in bringing about the most significant curriculum change… Read More

Although clichés are passé, omnia vincit amor – love conquers all – is highly appropriate in describing the longtime relationship between third-year Vanderbilt medical student Sarah Proffitt and her boyfriend, Amos Clark. Proffitt and Clark grew up in the small town of Athens in East Tennessee where almost everyone knows… Read More

Dogs experience the world through their noses. With an average of 200 million scent receptors (compared to a measly 5 million in humans), dogs can pick up a scent from a mere handshake and follow trails that are years old. That was good news for the family of Johnny Hahn,… Read More

Two Peabody College graduate student researchers partnered with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to shine a light on the scourge of human sex trafficking, resulting in changes to Tennessee law. Read More

Nine-year-old Stevie Wintz stares down the pitches that sail over home plate and is rewarded with a walk to first base. Once safely on the bag, with the sound of “Party Rock Anthem” blaring from another field, he breaks into his signature dance moves – like his whole body is… Read More

Teach For America inspired Neily Todd to stay in teaching beyond her two-year term. She says she now goes through the day thinking about what’s best for her students. (Vanderbilt University) The October after his graduation from the College of Arts and Science was arguably one of… Read More

Every day, Vanderbilt students head into the university’s libraries to conduct research toward their degrees. For some of these students, the chance to do research in the library opens doors for their careers. That doesn’t surprise Carolyn Dever, dean of the College of Arts and Science. “Students benefit from their… Read More

An athlete may weigh 250 pounds, but all that bulk is controlled by a mere three-pound brain. Those three pounds control the other 247 pounds, the muscles and bones and heart and lungs that enable athletes to perform their feats of strength and agility. And Nashville’s professional athletes entrust their… Read More

Mario Ramos has a hard time containing his excitement about the freshly unveiled Americas MBA for Executives program at Vanderbilt. To hear him talk, you’d think that he’s among the inaugural class of 12 Owen students who’ll be traveling to Brazil, Canada and Mexico in the coming months to learn… Read More

America has a drug problem. But it’s not what you think; in fact this drug problem is probably happening in your community – even in your own home. The problem is the accumulation of prescription drugs with no good plan for disposing of them. As the number of prescriptions continues… Read More