Peabody Reflector

Peabody’s commitment to hands-on learning and community service gave recent human and organizational development graduate Palmer Harston the confidence to spend the next year helping children orphaned by AIDS in one of the poorest areas of South Africa. Harston, a May graduate who also majored in political science and was… Read More

Davis in Washington, D.C., in front of the Rwandan Embassy. The day then-sophomore Elizabeth Davis read an in-depth article about the horrific 1994 genocide in Rwanda—in 100 days in 1994, an estimated one million Rwandans were slaughtered in an ethnic bloodbath—was the day she tied her destiny to Africa. Read More

The spirit of Peabody is redefining Vanderbilt’s study abroad experience—with help from HOD students and faculty who want more than a tourist’s itinerary. Read More

The credit crisis and a faltering economy. Rapidly rising energy costs. War. These pressing issues dominate voters’ concerns in advance of the November 4 presidential election. With so many raging fires to fight, the nation seems to have less attention to devote to education policy. That does not mean voters do not care about education. In polls that ask them to assess the importance of various issues in their votes for president—as opposed to those more frequent polls that ask respondents to identify only one issue of top concern—education continues to receive high rankings. Read More

In reviewing the articles in this issue of The Reflector, I am struck by the theme of service, both at the macro and micro levels. Our primary feature is on the presidential election (macro), while several portraits of students and recent alumni shed light on engagement at local levels, though thousands of miles away. Read More

When it comes to human performance, what is expected shapes what we get. Experienced individuals—be they in business, the military, the clergy or elsewhere—know that a low bar virtually assures low performance. Read More

Vanderbilt Peabody faculty member Matthew Springer has been appointed by Assistant Secretary of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education Kerri Briggs to a new U.S. Department of Education advisory committee on teacher and principal performance pay programs. Springer is a research assistant professor in the Vanderbilt Peabody… Read More

Peabody doctor of education graduate Jonathan Eckert has been selected by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings for a Teacher Ambassador Fellowship with the U.S. Department of Education. Eckert is a seventh-grade science teacher at Poplar Grove Middle School in Franklin, Tenn. His selection was announced by Spellings on July… Read More

Dean Camilla Benbow served as a panelist at the National Science and Technology Summit held at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in August. Called for by the 2007 America COMPETES Act, the summit examined the direction of the U.S. science and technology enterprise and… Read More

The impact of the nation’s current economic downturn on low- and moderate-income students was the topic of an all-day national roundtable discussion on June 13 at Peabody. Assistant Professor Stella Flores discusses issues pertaining to college access at the roundtable held at Peabody in June. The panel was hosted by… Read More

Discovery Education and Vanderbilt University are partnering to launch a new research-based evaluation tool that measures the effectiveness of school principals. The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED), which is being exclusively distributed by Discovery Education, was created at Vanderbilt University through a grant from the… Read More

Peabody first-year student Natalie Wills shows off her new wheels as she prepares to say goodbye to mom, dad and sister during move-in weekend in August. Read More

Department of Human and Organizational Development Sandra Barnes, professor of human and organizational development and sociology of religion (Ph.D., 1999, Georgia State University; M.S., 1995, Interdenominational Theological Center; M.S., 1989, Georgia Institute of Technology; B.A., 1986, Fisk University) Torin Monahan, associate professor… Read More

Camilla P. Benbow received the 2008 Distinguished Alumna Award from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Past recipients have included Nobel Prize winner Peter Agre, acclaimed writer Russell Baker, actor John Astin, and world-renowned cardiologist Ben Carson. Dean Benbow earned her Doctorate of Education (Ed.D.) from Johns Hopkins in 1981 and… Read More

Remember when it cost just $38 for seven hours of coursework? No one here remembers that either, but we have newfound evidence that it was so, as this 1940 receipt indicates. Found in a book donation to the Goodlettsville Public Library, the receipt was sent to the Peabody… Read More

Calculators are useful tools in elementary mathematics classes, if students already have some basic skills, new research has found. The findings shed light on the debate about whether and when calculators should be used in the classroom.  “These findings suggest that it is important children first learn how to calculate… Read More

This summer Peabody’s Peggy Westlake, assistant to the director of the Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement, along with her husband, Mark, and daughter, Carolyn, traveled from Nashville to Key West, Fla., to Madawaska, Maine, to San Ysidro, California, to Blaine, Wash., and back to Nashville on motorcycle to… Read More

Standardized testing is an inescapable part of modern education; however, these tests often fail to meet the needs of students with learning disabilities. Vanderbilt Learning Sciences Institute researchers Stephen N. Elliott, Peter A. Beddow and Ryan J. Kettler have developed a decision-making instrument called the Test Accessibility… Read More

The new Peabody Research Institute (PRI) has been created to conduct research on children and families using a permanent staff of researchers and a high level of methodological expertise. Staff will collaborate with and support faculty on grants, including education research. The new center will be initially staffed with researchers… Read More

One of the things Peabody graduate Amy Cate, BS’03, likes best about teaching is the unpredictability. “It’s different every day,” she says. “You go in with a plan, but you never know what’s going to happen.” As a Spanish teacher at J.T. Moore Middle School, a public school in Nashville, Cate often tells her students, “Así es la vida”—“such is life”—presumably in order to help them deal with perennial travails such as homework or quizzes. Read More