After Herschel Gower retired in 1985 as an English professor at Vanderbilt, he figured he’d take it easy and refinish furniture. “I’ve done no refinishing at all,”Gower says.”Working for one’s wife is certainly hazardous.” The two now live in Dallas, where Dona is executive director of the Athena Foundation andRead More

Nicotiana tabacum. It’s a lovely plant, really–large, bright green leaves on a central stem that reaches 6 feet or more.Mid-season, a fat cluster of nearly white tube flowers crown the stem. It’s a hardy plant, too, resistant to both heat and drought. Perfect for the land I call home. IRead More

We never know when one small incident will change lives. It was reading a National Geographic article one September afternoon during my sophomore year at Vanderbilt that changed mine. Reading the article “Twenty-First Century Slaves” in my dorm room that day, I was horrified and heartbroken to learn there areRead More

The day of the Virginia Tech shootings, I realized that the weather was gorgeous in Nashville– almost as gorgeous as it was on Sept. 11, 2001, in Washington, D.C. There’s something sick in the fact that I made that comparison.Why couldn’t I just focus on the thing in front ofRead More

Ever since she graduated from Vanderbilt School of Nursing in 1975 with a master’s degree in psych-mental health nursing, Carol Etherington has been providing care to people grasping at life in the midst of unfathomable tragedy. She has responded to victims of the killing fields of Cambodia, floods in Poland,Read More

On the surface, the group of freshmen who showed up at Vanderbilt in the fall of 1973 didn’t seem that different from any other.They were bright, to be sure. Eager and excited about starting this new adventure called college.And as they unpacked, settled in, and started finding their way around,Read More

Women’s Golf: Allen Named Head Coach Greg Allen has joined the Vanderbilt sports community as the new women’s golf coach. He comes to Vanderbilt from the University of Arizona, where he had coached the women’s team since 2000. During his tenure his teams won two Pac-10 conference championships and finishedRead More

Tate Rich, BA’76, JD’79, still chuckles when reminded of the interception he returned 35 yards for a touchdown against UT-Chattanooga on Sept. 13, 1975.That play ranks in the Vanderbilt record books as one of the top-15 interception returns in school history.”I tell people I was a prototype for Lawrence Taylor,”heRead More

Player of the Year and Coach of the Year honors, Southeastern Conference Tournament and regular-season championships, and a fistful of All-American selections showcased 2007 as the best year for Vanderbilt baseball in the history of the program. The Commodores spent most of the season ranked No. 1 in the nation.Read More

The Vanderbilt defense takes the field and gathers around player number 47. The 6-foot-4, 235-pound middle linebacker sets the defensive formation, and waits for the offensive play to begin and his opportunity to crush it.And when the ball is whistled dead and the bodies are sorted out, number 47, JonathanRead More