Diversity Equity And Inclusion

Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University are launching a $17 million multiyear transformative program with support from the National Institutes of Health to accelerate diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the biomedical research community. Read More

Prolific scientist and champion for diversity in STEMM Antentor Hinton Jr. has co-published a cover story in the June edition of the journal Cell that addresses barriers to equitable science, including the toll that institutional racism takes on the mental health of Black individuals. Read More

Dawn Bennett has found paths to servant leadership throughout her life, but it was decades before she made a leap of faith and enrolled in Vanderbilt Divinity School. In January 2020, she was ordained by Bishop Kevin Strickland to remain in Nashville and build The Table, a faith collective centered on LGBTQIA+ people and vulnerable identities. Read More

The next Law School Dean's Lecture will be a dialogue between professor Barry Friedman of NYU Law and Vikrant Reddy, senior research fellow at Stand Together Trust. The two will discuss a range of current issues in policing, including use of force, militarization, racial disparities, surveillance and traffic stops. Read More

Vanderbilt professor Renã Robinson discusses the state of supporting Black professionals in STEM and how partners are critical to advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts in STEM for academic and corporate organizations. Read More

Join the Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for a tour of the upcoming exhibition of  Jeffrey Gibson’s The Body Electric. The tour will take place on Thursday, March 16, at 6 p.m. and will be led by staff at the Frist Art Museum. This tour is open to all Vanderbilt-affiliated community members, but a special invitation has been extended for faculty, staff and postdoc members of EDI’s various employee affinity groups.    Read More

Assistant Professors Julia Steed and LeTizia Smith were selected for a Vanderbilt University Sesquicentennial Grant for “Project SHARE: Sharing Strategies for Academic Faculty and Student Recruitment.” The project will evaluate new ways to recruit and retain faculty and students of color in Vanderbilt’s graduate health science programs. Read More

Renã Robinson, Dorothy Wingfield Phillips Chancellor’s Faculty Fellow and professor of chemistry, received $2.04 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to start a program that will help underrepresented minority faculty further their success in STEM. Read More

Vanderbilt University was awarded a grant by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence Community to improve outcomes and persistence in STEM among underrepresented students. Read More

Vanderbilt alumna G. Rumay Alexander will present the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing Dean’s Diversity Lecture on Tuesday, Nov. 15. Alexander will discuss providing health equity despite inequitable structures and systems. Read More

The Vanderbilt Blair School of Music has secured $5 million in funding for the pilot phase of a comprehensive scholarship, the Blair Community Scholars Program, which will recruit highly talented students from underrepresented and vulnerable backgrounds. Read More

Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurses are collaborating with Metro Nashville Public Schools to mentor high school students who have identified a future goal of becoming a registered nurse to be medical assistants or care partners. Read More

Alumna Prisca Mojica Rodriguez rebuilt the framework for understanding her identity after enrolling at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Now as a published author, she speaks at colleges and universities around the country and continues to monitor “Latina Rebels,” an Instagram account she started while at VDS, that now numbers more than 200,000 followers and functions as a place to question and explore the complexities of Latinidad. Read More

Vanderbilt University School of Nursing is creating the Academy for Diverse Emerging Nurse Leaders, a leadership development program for nurses new to health care leadership and academic positions who are from groups historically underrepresented in nursing. Read More

Imani Ellis, BA'12, went from being an NBC page to vice president in 10 short years. As the NBCUniversal’s vice president of communications, she leads a team that creates comprehensive press strategies and media campaigns for unscripted shows across the NBCU portfolio.  Read More

Angela Boutté, PhD'05, has been no stranger to breakthroughs in brain research and medical care. In January 2022, she became director of clinical chemistry for renegade.bio, a San Francisco-based public benefit corporation working to make diagnostic testing accessible to all. In 2019, she founded Aries Biotech to assist other brain disease and injury researchers with fine-tuning their work. Read More

World champion axe thrower Mark Mirasol, MEd’17, aims for success as he builds a business around the up-and-coming sport. Read More

Ebony Omotola McGee, professor of diversity and STEM education at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, calls for the dominant culture in STEM fields to step up to provide remedies for dismantling racism in her editorial, “Dismantle racism in science.”  Read More

Darwin Baluran, a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, sought to investigate the intermixture of ethnicities included under the “Asian” racial category—one of the nation’s fastest-growing groups—and the health of these groups in the United States. Read More