Summer2008

Vanderbilt researchers have received a five-year, $5.7 million federal grant to study the human brain using one of the world’s most powerful magnets. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering grant represents the renewal of a Bioengineering Research Partnership grant originally awarded for $4 million in 2002 to… Read More

U.S. ARMY PHOTO/STAFF SGT. RUSSELL LEE KLIKA June 28, 2006, Iraq. As the Humvee passed through the streets, Command Sgt. Maj. David Allard spotted the Taliban in their distinctive cloaks. Nothing unusual about that–yet something told Allard to look back. He shifted his weight forward and turned his head… Read More

Photo by Daniel Dubois. “There were no rules, there was no hierarchy, there was no management. “ –Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, on how his firm rallied after 658 of 970 employees perished in the World Trade Center. Lutnick spoke at Commencement for the Owen… Read More

www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinicaltrials Asthma? Sleep apnea? A spare tire around your waist? Whatever the malady, chances are Vanderbilt is studying it in a clinical research trial. This new Web site aims to at least triple the number of volunteers for clinical trials of new vaccines, cancer treatments, and a multitude of… Read More

Scott Avett of the Avett Brothers Band performs at Rites of Spring, an annual student-produced music festival to celebrate the end of the academic year. Headline acts for the April 18-19 event were Spoon and Lil Jon. PHOTO BY JENNY MANDEVILLE… Read More

Photo by Daniel Dubois. RNA Interference Heals Growth Deficiency Disorder Vanderbilt researchers have demonstrated for the first time that a new type of gene therapy called “RNA interference” can heal a genetic disorder in a live animal. Their study, published last fall by the journal Endocrinology, shows that RNA… Read More

    Photo by Steve Green     Coach Johnson Honored for Suicide Prevention Work Head Football Coach Bobby Johnson was recognized during a ceremony in March for his efforts toward youth suicide prevention when The Jason Foundation presented him with its Grant Teaff “Breaking the Silence” Award. The award… Read More

A full-time and fully staffed office to support the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community at Vanderbilt will launch this fall. The K.C. Potter Center, named in honor of a former dean of residential and judicial affairs at Vanderbilt who was supportive of the GLBT community, will replace a part-time… Read More

Richard McCarty Photo by Daniel Dubois. Richard McCarty, a distinguished psychologist who has led the largest school at Vanderbilt University for the past seven years, has been named provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Richard embodies Vanderbilt’s values of excellence and fairness,” said Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos in… Read More

Illustration by Normand Cousineau Although manufacturers are responsible for much of the greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States, individuals largely contribute to the problem of climate change, too. So what can be done about it? A diverse group of experts at Vanderbilt University has created the Climate… Read More

Monroe Carell Jr. during one of his frequent visits to the hospital that bears his name Photo by Dana Johnson. ­­­Monroe J. Carell Jr., BE’59, a Nashville executive admired as much for his philanthropy as for his business acumen, died June 20 after a courageous battle… Read More

It took 5,000 pounds of sweet, ripe Driscoll strawberries to feed the masses at Vanderbilt’s Commencement on May 9. More than 3,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students received their degrees, and thousands more family and friends joined them at the Strawberries and Champagne Celebration following graduation exercises.   Photo by… Read More

Pamela King Ginsburg’s first day as a law school student turned out to be even tougher than she expected. It was almost as if she had “PICK ME” stamped on her forehead. In class after class that day, professors singled her out as the very first student they called… Read More

Editor GayNelle Doll Art Director and Designer Donna DeVore Pritchett Editorial Associate Editor and Advertising Manager Phillip Tucker Arts and Culture Editor Bonnie Arant Ertelt, BS’81 Class Notes and Sports Editor Nelson Bryan, BA’73 Production and Design Assistant Director, Photography… Read More

Echoes from the Holocaust I especially appreciated “In the Face of Destruction” by Lisa Robbins [Spring 2008 issue]. Harry Kahn, his wife Hannah Westfield, Erich Westfield, Ernest Freudenthal and others were classmates and friends of mine. Through them I learned about a world far beyond my small… Read More

The Blue Star: A Novel (2008, Little, Brown and Company) by Tony Earley, Samuel Milton Fleming, Associate Professor of English It’s been eight years since readers met the character of 10-year-old Jim Glass, the anchor of Earley’s acclaimed debut novel, Jim the Boy. In The Blue Star,… Read More

Noah Walcutt, a 2008 engineering school graduate, won this year’s $25,000 Margaret Wooldridge Hamblett Award with this interactive sculpture that combines art, music and engineering for therapeutic purposes. Photo by Steve Green. When the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center was completed in 2005, it provided… Read More

Tom Kimmel, singer-songwriter and artist-in-residence for the “God in Music City” project, with artist Lisa Silver at the project’s culminating concert at Second Presbyterian Church. Photo by Steve Green. One Saturday last February, a curious busload from Vanderbilt got a taste of that old-time religion–and many of the… Read More

Illustration by Ellen Russell Sadler.   Joe B. Wyatt had been chancellor for four years when I came to work at Vanderbilt in 1986, and he had a reputation as an excellent steward of Vanderbilt’s finances. The Texas native didn’t look the part of the academic, with his athletic… Read More

Michael Lee Woodard Michael Lee Woodard, BS’90, came to Vanderbilt in 1978 on a football scholarship. In 1982 he left college to enter military flight training, later returning to complete his education. Woodard has spent his adult life involved in military flying all over the world and has also… Read More