Summer2009

The Vanderbilt Alumni Association and the National Commodore Club have teamed up once again to sponsor tailgates at three away games during the upcoming football season. The three stops include Saturday, Sept. 26, at Rice University in Houston; Saturday, Oct. 10, for the Army game in West Point, N.Y.; and Saturday,… Read More

A yearlong slate of activities celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Association of Vanderbilt Black Alumni (AVBA) culminates Oct. 15–17 during Reunion and Homecoming Weekend. Bishop Walker The events kick off Thursday, Oct. 15, with a welcome mixer at the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, and will continue… Read More

The Alumni Travel Program visits India and the Taj Mahal in 2008. The Alumni Travel Program announces its schedule for 2010, offering the Vanderbilt community 11 all-inclusive getaways to diverse, culturally rich locales around the world. Each itinerary package is booked through trusted providers, and travelers are joined… Read More

The Robert Stempfel Jr. Collection of John Updike materials is on display in Special Collections at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library through August. The exhibit includes first editions of classic Updike books and ephemeral items like small-press editions of his stories created in limited numbers and signed by the… Read More

Billy Ray Caldwell Commencement is a high point of each year for the Vanderbilt community, and our 2009 ceremonies May 8 were especially joyous. The skies above Memorial Gymnasium were overcast, but the gathering inside was warm and ebullient. Chancellor Zeppos handed diplomas to the 3,380 graduates of… Read More

Jeanne Moses didn’t have a history of cancer in her family. She didn’t have symptoms—just backache and a bit of weight loss. Nothing unusual for a 45-year-old mother working two jobs. So she was stunned when her doctor delivered the news: Jeanne Moses—technical writer, theatrical costumer, daughter of the director,… Read More

Rodes Hart (left) and Orrin Ingram Rodes Hart and Orrin Ingram believe in Vanderbilt. As alumni, trustees, philanthropists and visionaries, they reflect on the opportunities—and challenges—of eliminating need-based loans and increasing scholarship endowment. Rodes Hart, who graduated from the College of Arts and Science in 1954 and now… Read More

The Vanderbilt Aid Society elected Elizabeth Boddie Elliston (above) as its first president and Mary Barbour Wallace (left) as its first secretary/treasurer. The “simple fare” served at their organizational meeting included chicken salad, scalloped oysters, beaten biscuits, sandwiches, individual ices and cakes, almonds, and pink and white mints. It began… Read More

The Zeta Beta Tau house as it appeared in the 1920 Commodore yearbook. (Courtesy of Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives) It was early December in Tucson, Ariz.—45 years and 1,600 miles from our undergraduate days at Vanderbilt. We came together, this graying group of sexagenarians, to recharge our… Read More

“My experiences as a NICU mom changed the way I practice medicine in a very fundamental way,” Judy Aschner says. When Dr. Judy Aschner was busy completing her third year of fellowship in neonatology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, a personal experience did more to shape the… Read More

Glacial melting. Amphibian and honeybee populations in precipitous decline. Ocean dead zones. Rain forests burned to make way for agricultural fields. Some days it’s hard to know which we should worry about first. Fortunately for the rest of us, the alumni you’ll meet here aren’t wringing their hands waiting for… Read More

In 2007 Vanderbilt received the largest research grant in its history: the $40 million Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). Additional funding since then has raised the grant to $50 million. Vanderbilt has used the CTSA funding from the National Institutes of Health to create the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical… Read More

Imagine a platoon of soldiers carrying personal digital assistants that can display the location of enemy shooters in three dimensions and accurately identify the caliber and type of their weapons. Engineers at Vanderbilt University’s Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) have developed a system that can give soldiers just such… Read More

Functional magnetic resonance imaging is revealing clues about visual memory. Vanderbilt researchers have discovered that early visual areas, long believed to play no role in higher cognitive functions such as memory, retain information previously hidden from brain studies. Researchers made the discovery using a new technique for decoding… Read More

As students at Jefferson Middle School in Oak Ridge, Tenn., go through their daily schedules, do they realize that Mr. Cox, their vice principal and athletics director, is a bona fide SEC basketball legend? That’s Phil Cox, BS’85, who at one time held the Vanderbilt scoring record with 1,724 points. Read More

The day that robots help children with autism to learn social skills is a step closer with the development of a system that allows a robot to monitor a child’s emotional state. “A lot of research going on around the world today tries to use robots to treat children with… Read More

Barnes Churches with predominantly black congregations are thriving in urban and suburban areas, and the most successful among them employ a variety of sophisticated marketing and programming strategies to draw members, a study by researcher Sandra Barnes finds. Her findings offer insights into what successful black churches have in common… Read More

The ability of breast milk to protect infants against respiratory viruses is gender-biased in favor of girls, reveal studies by Dr. Fernando Polack. Polack’s first study appeared last June in Pediatrics, and the second came out in February’s Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. The research took place at hospitals in Buenos… Read More

Under the direction of Head Women’s Basketball Coach Melanie Balcomb, the Commodores put together a season that culminated with the Southeastern Conference Tournament Championship, a trip to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament, and recognition by the state of Tennessee. Along the way, seniors Christina Wirth and Jennifer… Read More

Sophomore Curt Casali kept the competition off guard at first base as in this win against Western Kentucky. Commodores Finish 2009 Baseball Season with Strong Showing The Commodores found their bats and dug in defensively in postseason play to advance to the championship game of the SEC Tournament and the… Read More