Arts And Science

Vanderbilt’s undergraduate, graduate and professional schools are taking on the challenges of an ever-evolving world with dozens of new courses and programs for the 2026–27 school year. Here are some of the new academic ways the university is preparing students to combine knowledge and vision to create future impact. Read More

Gabrielle Goodwin, a freshman at Vanderbilt University, turned a childhood frustration with hair barrettes falling out into a patented product and thriving business. Working with her mother, she created GaBBY Bows, a double-snap barrette designed to stay securely in place, and later launched a company focused on promoting confidence and entrepreneurship among young girls. Now a student at Vanderbilt, Goodwin continues to grow her business while mentoring aspiring young entrepreneurs and encouraging others to turn their ideas into opportunities. Read More

Birdsong performed by males has a direct role in evolution—its main functions are to attract mates and defend territory from rival males. But female birds sing, too, and their abilities may reflect generations of cooperation in breeding and parenting. “Birdsong … sits at the intersection of genetics, learning, culture and social interaction,” says Associate Professor Nicole Creanza, who has just published a paper about female birdsong with postdoctoral scholar Kate Snyder. “By studying how cooperation and territorial behavior influence communication in birds, we gain insight into how social complexity shapes evolution more generally,” Snyder adds. Their research was funded through a Vanderbilt Scaling Success Grant. Read More

Jason Merchant, a national leader in higher education and vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Chicago, will be the new Searcy Family Dean of the College of Arts and Science. An internationally renowned, award-winning professor in the field of linguistics, Merchant will also hold an endowed chair in philosophy at Vanderbilt. Read More

Among the artifacts librarian Mary McSparran selected from Vanderbilt’s Special Collections and University Archives for a pop-up exhibit last fall were a NASA space suit and a journal listing books about UFOs. Neither would seem a likely choice for a literary salon, where the exhibit was on display, but this was no ordinary discussion of writers and their works. The gathering was part of a growing collaboration between Special Collections staff and Vanderbilt faculty, in which the curators and archivists play an active role in teaching by offering students access to unique materials that bring their coursework to life. Read More

Being able to tell whether an image is real or generated by AI may be something you’re born with: object recognition. “It’s a stable trait that helps people meet new perceptual challenges,” study author Professor Isabel Gauthier said. “We were shocked to see how intelligence or even technology training did not help accurately judge if a face is AI.” Object recognition has been linked to success in a wide range of tasks, such as X-ray analysis and cancer cell categorization. Read More

Svalbard, Norway, a cluster of islands north of the Arctic Circle, is rich with paradox. A former international whaling base and subsequent site of extractive coal mining, Svalbard is now home to the Global Seed Vault, which stores more than one million seed duplicates to safeguard the world’s food supply. Described as a “geopolitical unicorn,” Svalbard is, at once, an open haven for artists and researchers seeking to generate new knowledge and climate interventions by learning from its landscapes, as well as a target for international meddling because of its prime access to satellite data from above and rare earth minerals below. Site of both extraction and regeneration, attracting both a spirit of collaborative inquiry and pursuits of global dominance, Svalbard’s paradoxical singularity inspired Vanderbilt faculty Jana Harper, Lutz Koepnick and Jonathan Rattner to embark on a three-week research trip in summer 2025 to witness its rapidly changing landscapes and experiment with artistic methods to address the effects of planetary overheating.   Read More

Vanderbilt University has announced its fall 2025 recipients of the Seeding Success, Scaling Success and Rapid-Advancement MicroGrant Program awards, providing internal funding to help faculty launch new research directions, strengthen proposals and compete for major external grants. Read More

Two seniors in the College of Arts and Science and one Peabody College senior have been named 2026-2027 recipients of the Wattles Fellowship. The fellowship offers three women graduates from Vanderbilt University a one-year, fully integrated position in the London corporate risk management and insurance market. Read More

The VCL Scholars serve as an integral part of the Vanderbilt Center for Languages' mission of fostering interdisciplinary work. Applicants may propose a program of research for publication, conference presentation, or the creation of a new academic initiative. The Vanderbilt Center for Languages (VCL) is particularly interested in funding proposals that generate knowledge that benefits a broad constituency. A $3500 salary supplement is provided to all Scholars.  Read More

Two members of the Class of 2025, Benedict Ballman and Rui Huang, have been chosen for the 11th cohort of the highly selective Schwarzman Scholars international graduate fellowship program. The Schwarzman Scholars program focuses on tackling the world’s greatest challenges and “redefining global leadership for the 21st century.” Scholars from universities around the world join for a one-year master’s in global affairs at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Read More

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy is the new U.S. institutional home for the Comparative Study of Election Surveys, a leading global resource for understanding elections and democratic governance. This move strengthens Vanderbilt’s leadership in global democracy research, building on three decades of international collaborations and the CSES’s reputation as the premier source of comparative electoral survey data. Read More

Field work led by Associate Professor Tiffany Fracchia recently solved an 80-year-old mystery for the family of a missing World War II soldier. In 2022 and 2023, Fracchia and her students excavated remains from the site of a 1944 B-17G crash near Neron, France. They were later identified by the Department of Defense as U.S. Army Air Force 1st Lt. Gerard J. Melofchik of New York, and his family finally held a memorial for him in November. “Hearing that we were able to bring some peace and answers to another military family … was really rewarding for me,” said Alyssa Bolster, BA’22. Read More

Whether Major Jackson is teaching, writing or critiquing, at the center of his work is a voracious hunger for artful language—underpinned by a commitment to painting the quotidian in new and unexpected ways. Read More

Some people may worry about being bitten by a snake or spider, but have you ever considered what would happen if a small black hole tried to pass through your body? An article by Professor of Physics Robert Scherrer in the International Journal of Modern Physics D poses and answers that very question. Scherrer set out to find what the gravitational effects would be if a primordial black hole passed through the human body, helping scientists better understand the properties of dark matter. Read More

A new study led by Aditya Kurre, BA’22, and Associate Professor of Biological Sciences and Guggenheim Fellow Larisa DeSantis has revealed the specific diet of two species of giant ground sloth, uncovering the vital roles they played in their environments. Their findings could help scientists restore ecosystems that once thrived thanks to these massive mammals. Read More

As conversations about the value and nature of higher education continue at colleges and universities nationwide, a new national Vanderbilt Unity Poll finds that Americans are largely united on the fundamental value of higher education—and in their distaste for the influence of politics and the cost of college degrees.  Read More

Get to know the Class of 2026 Outstanding Senior winner and incredible nominees and hear what inspires the winner most. Read More

Vanderbilt supports new faculty every step of the way—by connecting them with senior faculty who serve as mentors, observe their classes and provide valuable feedback, and proofread their grant proposals to make them stronger. These professors who joined Vanderbilt in the past few years shed light on how the university has helped them succeed.  Read More