Vanderbilt Magazine

Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips, BA’67, the first African American woman to receive an undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt and a member of the inaugural class of Vanderbilt Trailblazers, recently was interviewed by the American Chemical Society about her career as a chemist and the importance of making the physical sciences more inclusive for women and underrepresented minorities. Read More

Shatema Threadcraft, whose scholarship focuses on the intersection of race and gender, will join the departments of Gender and Sexuality and Political Science in the College of Arts and Science as associate professor in January 2021. Read More

Major Jackson, an accomplished poet and essayist, will join the Vanderbilt faculty as Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English in January 2021 after 18 years in the Department of English at the University of Vermont. Read More

Lisa Fazio, assistant professor of psychology and human development at Peabody College, shares a few tips on how to avoid knowledge neglect and spreading misinformation. Read More

David L. Tuleen, an emeritus chemistry professor who excelled first as a teacher and later as a university administrator, has died. Read More

Birch, the new chief legal officer and senior vice president of business affairs for the Tennessee Titans, recently was named chair of a new Vanderbilt Board of Trust ad hoc committee that is partnering with university leadership to evaluate and recommend policies around equity, diversity and inclusion. Here he discusses the work of the committee, the rise in athlete activism, and his favorite Nashville sports memory. Read More

Vaughan Jones, one of the world’s foremost mathematicians and a celebrated professor in the College of Arts and Science, has died. Read More

The Hon. Claudia Bonnyman, JD’74, discusses the role her great-grandfather, Gov. A.H. Roberts, played in Tennessee's ratification of the 19th Amendment and the battle for women's suffrage. 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

Under Jack Elder, EdS’73, the Tennessee Special Olympics program became recognized as one of the strongest and best managed. For athletes then and now, after five decades, Special Olympics is a chance to prove what they can do when given the opportunity. Read More

For television writer and producer Saladin Patterson, MA’96, an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from MIT was not the start of his career—at least not as he’d initially planned. Thanks to his on-campus job in tech support at Wilson Hall, Patterson plotted a career that led straight to Hollywood. Read More

The term “vinyl enthusiast” doesn’t do justice to Alapatt’s work. He has released dozens of new and almost-lost-to-history singles and albums through Now Again Records, launched in 2002 while he was general manager for the influential independent hip-hop label Stones Throw Records. Read More

The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron soar directly above Vanderbilt Stadium on May 14 during a series of nationwide flyovers, which included Nashville. Read More

Racial injustice is a different sort of virus infecting our country and requires a comprehensive treatment, writes Dr. André L. Churchwell, BS’75, vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer for Vanderbilt University. Read More

Now, more than ever, as we find ourselves in the midst of historic change, it’s critical that we work as One Vanderbilt, a vibrant, collaborative community, to embark on our next chapter, writes Chancellor Daniel Diermeier. Read More

In his opening address to the university on Sept. 24, 1930, Chancellor James H. Kirkland shared his thoughts on the serious purposes of university life during a time of country-wide unemployment and financial devastation. 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

Foster, the vice president of external affairs at YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee, leads the AMEND Together initiative, a prevention program dedicated to ending violence against women and girls by engaging men and boys to be part of the solution. Read More