Reflector Fall 2008

About the Peabody Reflector The Peabody Reflector is published biannually by Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development in cooperation with the Vanderbilt Office of DAR Communications. The magazine is mailed free of charge to all Peabody alumni, parents of current Peabody students, and to friends of Peabody who make… Read More

Over the past year, thanks to numerous alumni, parents and friends who stepped forward and made a gift to Peabody, our campaign has grown to $57.9 million. All of these gifts added to Peabody’s ambitious $60 million campaign goal as part of the university’s ongoing comprehensive campaign, Shape the Future. Read More

The opening of the exhibit “Creative Expressions XIV” in October will mark the 14th anniversary of the arts collaboration between the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center and The Mayor’s Advisory Committee for People with Disabilities. Its purpose is to showcase the creative talents of artists with disabilities... Read More

Vanderbilt basketball star Shan Foster is the kind of student who gives teachers hope that the next generation is in good hands. Read More

Austen Heim, who has studied and done volunteer service projects all over the world—Japan, New Zealand, London, China and Ecuador—now has a corporate job title that perfectly matches his skills. He is a human capital analyst at Deloitte & Touche in Manhattan. Read More

About 1,550 first-year students at Vanderbilt are now housed in The Commons in “houses” with names familiar to Peabody alums: North, West, East, Gillette and Memorial. In addition there are the newly constructed Murray, Stambaugh, Sutherland, Crawford and Hank Ingram Houses, built where the Married Student and Garrison… Read More

Next summer, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College will offer a number of short-term professional development programs building on the college’s experience and reputation for training administrators and senior practitioners. Read More

Since age 10, Brooke Vaughan has had a dream of climbing Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa. Seventeen years later—by way of Peabody—Vaughan is turning that dream into a far-flung mission, a way to focus her passion and compassion for Africa and the greater good.  In January, she will hike not one… Read More

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