Vanderbilt Magazine – Featured

Brothers André, Keith and Kevin Churchwell, who were together for 15 years at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, are among the most accomplished physicians and administrators in the country. All three credit their father, Robert Churchwell, the first Black reporter at the Nashville Banner newspaper, as the inspiration for their success. Read More

In a spirit of expanding our knowledge, I offer the following observations about how we made decisions as an organization, built trust within our community, and bolstered Vanderbilt’s reputation as an institution willing to confront difficult circumstances with hard work, compassion and commitment. Read More

General Motors' announcement that it would phase out combustion engines—the heart of its cars and trucks for more than 100 years—and move to an all-electric fleet by 2035 could have monumental implications for the global auto industry and broad efforts to combat climate change. The success of the initiative will depend on Vanderbilt alumni who hold key positions in the company. Read More

Vanderbilt’s partnership with the recently opened National Museum of African American Music promises the potential of community-building discussions involving music, race, history and storytelling. Read More

By Graham Hays As an otherwise unremarkable women’s soccer practice at the University of Pennsylvania came to a close more than a decade ago, Darren Ambrose was frustrated. Maybe even ticked off.The Ivy League program’s coach at the time, Ambrose wasn’t mad about a defensive miscue, an errant… Read More

The remarkable success of the COVID-19 vaccines began in a Vanderbilt lab decades ago, with the groundbreaking research of alumnus Dr. Barney Graham. Read More

By Lisa Robbins and GayNelle Doll The following is adapted from the story “Deep Roots, Strong Tree,” which originally appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Vanderbilt Magazine. During his gubernatorial campaign, Lamar Alexander donned a red and black plaid shirt and walked across much of Tennessee to meet voters. Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the entire Vanderbilt community to change its routines. But because of the live-performance nature of music schools, the Blair School has implemented numerous precautions to ensure that faculty and students remain safe—all while maintaining a semblance of the highly personalized instruction for which Blair is known. Read More

In January 2020, the accelerating spread of SARS-CoV-2 made it apparent that VUMC’s two-bed Contagious Disease Response Unit, created for the rare victim of Ebola or other more-isolated emerging pathogen, would not suffice if Nashville were to be hit hard. So administrators began planning for a major outbreak. Read More

In 2020–21, Vanderbilt is welcoming an impressive group of educators and researchers to its faculty, including 26 full-time, tenure-track and tenured faculty members across nine of the schools and colleges. Read More

Beshear, the first-term Democratic governor of Kentucky, was elected last November by a margin as thin as a surgical mask, just in time to steer his largely Republican state through a runaway pandemic, the resulting economic damage, and America’s most consequential reckoning with racial injustice since the 1960s. Read More

This election night, Sam Feist, BA’91, will perform one of his more unusual duties as head of CNN’s Washington Bureau. Assuming the results are clear-cut, he will—in consultation with CNN’s statisticians and political scientists—call the winner of the presidential race for the network. It is a responsibility he has held since 2004, and one that he does not take lightly. Read More

Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams are both writers-in-residence at Vanderbilt—Randall in the Department of African American and Diaspora Studies and Williams in the Department of Medicine, Health and Society. And neither is afraid to shine a light on complicated questions around race. Read More

The VBI recently marked its 20th anniversary, a span that has seen the institute’s wide-ranging missions—including administering the university’s Neuroscience Graduate Program, as well as postdoctoral training and community outreach—steadily coalesce under a single umbrella. Read More

The past decade in particular has been marked by a dramatic increase in music cognition inquiry, as about 100 laboratory groups around the world, including at Vanderbilt, are working across disciplines to understand music’s relationship to the brain, behavior and health, and to develop effective intervention strategies. Read More

As the combination of neuroscience and law—or “neurolaw” as some call it—has been gaining traction in courtrooms in recent years, Professor Owen Jones and his colleagues have used the burgeoning field to ask deeper questions about the criminal justice system itself. Read More

VU319, an investigational drug product developed by Vanderbilt researchers, targets one of medicine’s most bedeviling challenges: improving memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Read More

In a wide-ranging interview, Chancellor Daniel Diermeier discusses growing up as a first-generation student in a divided Germany, taking the helm during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the collaborative culture that has fueled Vanderbilt’s success. Read More

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to upend lives in countless ways, members of the Vanderbilt community have shown remarkable resilience in the face of the crisis. Read More

Vanderbilt Magazine raises a glass of its own to the tenacious, accomplished and always adaptable Class of 2020. Cheers to you all. Read More