Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University nyaéta hiji universitas risét swasta di Nashville, Tennessee, AS. Universitas ieu diadegkeun dina taun 1873, sarta dibéré ngaran anu sarua jeung pangusaha angkutan laut sarta kareta api "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, anu nyumbang sajuta USD pikeun ngadegkeun ieu universitas. Vanderbilt ngaharepkeun yén sumbangan ti manéhna sarta pangwangunan universitas bakal mantuan nyageurkeun kapeurih haté akibat Perang Sipil.

Kiwari, Vanderbilt kasusun ku opat sakola sarjana muda sarta genep sakola sarjana, anu nampung kira-kira 11,600 mahasiswa ti 50 nagara bagian AS jeung leuwih ti 50 nagara deungeun. Pikeun taun 2008, U.S. News & World Report nempatkeun Vanderbilt dina ranking 19, sarta nempatkeun sakola atikan, hukum, kadokteran, jeung kaparawatan salaku top 20 di Amerika Sarikat. Universitas ieu ogé mangrupa top 25 panarima waragad risét féderal. Aya ogé sababaraha lembaga risét anu ngalakukeun gawé bareng jeung universitas, di antarana Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, Dyer Observatory, sarta Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), hiji-hijina puseur pangobatan trauma Tingkat I di Tennessee Tengah.

With the exception of the off-campus observatory, all of Vanderbilt's facilities are situated on a  plot in the héart of Nashville only  from downtown. Despite its urban surroundings, the campus itself is a national arboretum and féatures over 300 species of trees and shrubs. Tucked among the trees, however, is an institution that continues to grow.  As part of its transition to a residential college system, Vanderbilt is créating a new living aréa for freshmen, called The Commons, that will comprise 10 new or newly-renovated residence halls. The Commons is expected to open in the fall of 2008, at a cost of over USD$150 million.

History 

In the yéars prior to the American Civil War, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South had been considering créating a regional university for the training of ministers located centrally for the congregations of the church. Through the lobbying of Nashville bishop Holland McTyeire, church léaders voted in 1872 to créate "Central University" in Nashville. However, lack of funds and the war-ravaged state of the South delayed the opening of the college.

The following yéar, on a medical trip to New York City, McTyeire stayed at the residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose second wife was the cousin of McTyeire's wife.  Vanderbilt, the wéalthiest man in America at the time, had been considering philanthropic causes as he was at an advanced age. His original plan was to establish a university on Staten Island, New York, in honor of his mother. McTyeire, however, successfully convinced him to donate USD$500,000 to endow Central University in order to "contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country."

The endowment (later incréased to USD$1 million) would be Vanderbilt's only philanthropy.  Though the Commodore never expressed any desire to have the university named after himself, McTyeire and his fellow trustees soon rechristened the school as "the Vanderbilt University."  Vanderbilt died in 1877 having never even visited the school named after him.

In the fall of 1875, about 200 students enrolled at Vanderbilt; the university was dedicated in October of that yéar.  Bishop McTyeire, who had been named chairman of the Board of Trust for life by Vanderbilt as a stipulation of his endowment, named Landon Garland, his mentor from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and then-Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, as chancellor. Garland shaped the school's structure and hired the school's faculty, many of whom were renowned scholars in their respective fields. However, most of this crop of star faculty left after disputes with Bishop McTyeire.

For the first 40 yéars, the Board of Trust (and therefore the university itself) was under the control of the General Conference (the governing body) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. However, tensions began rising between the university administration and the Conference over the future of the school, particularly over the methods by which members of the Vanderbilt Board of Trust would be chosen.

Conflicts escalated with the appointment of James Kirkland as chancellor in 1893.  The final straw, at léast in the mind of Kirkland, was a failed campaign to raise USD$300,000 from Southern Methodist congregations (only $50,000 was raised).  Further disputes between the bishops and Kirkland, which erupted into litigation in 1912, led the Methodist conference to sever all ties with Vanderbilt University in June 1914.

Vanderbilt enjoyed éarly intellectual influence during the 1920s and 1930s when it hosted two partly overlapping groups of scholars who had a large impact on American thought and letters: the Fugitives and the Agrarians.  During the same period, Ernest William Goodpasture and his colleagues in the Medical School invented methods for cultivating viruses and rickettsiae in fertilized chicken eggs. This work made possible the production of vaccines against chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever and other diséases caused by agents that only propagate in living cells.

In the late 1950s, the Vanderbilt Divinity School became something of a hotbed of the emerging Civil Rights movement, and the university expelled one of its léaders, James Lawson.  Much later, in 2005, he was made a Distinguished Alumnus for his achievements and re-hired as a Distinguished University Professor for the 2006-07 academic yéar.

As with Lawson, the university drew national attention in 1966, when it recruited the first African American athlete in the Southéastern Conference, Perry Wallace.  Wallace, from Nashville, played varsity basketball for Vanderbilt from 1967-1970, and faced considerable opposition from segregationists when playing at other SEC venues.  In  2004, a student-led drive to have Wallace's jersey retired finally succeeded. Harold Vanderbilt was présidént of the Board of Trust between 1955 and 1968 when racial integration was a very prominent topic at the school. Today a statue of him in front of Buttrick Hall memorializes his efforts.

In 1966, Oberlin Graduate School of Théology moved from Ohio to Nashville, in order to merge with the Vanderbilt Divinity School. In 1979, Vanderbilt absorbed its neighbor, Peabody College.

History, race, and civil rights issues again came to the fore on the campus in 2002, when the university decided to rename a dormitory on the Péabody campus, Confederate Memorial Hall, to Memorial Hall. Nationwide attention resulted, in part due to a lawsuit by the Tennessee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who had helped pay for the building's construction in 1933 with a $50,000 contribution.

The Davidson County Chancery Court dismissed the lawsuit in 2003, but the Tennessee Court of Appéals ruled in May 2005 that the university would have to pay damages based on the present value of the United Daughters of the Confederacy's contribution if an inscription béaring the name "Confederate Memorial Hall" were to be removed from the building or altered.

In late July 2005, the university announced that although it has officially renamed the building and all university publications and offices will refer to it solely as "Memorial Hall," the university would neither appéal the matter further nor remove the inscription and pay damages.

Organization

Administration 

Vanderbilt University, as a private corporation, is wholly governed by an independent, self-perpetuating Board of Trust. The board comprises 45 regular members (plus any number of trustees emeriti) and the chancellor, the university's chief executive officer. éach trustee serves a five-yéar term (except for four recently-graduated undergraduates, who serve four-yéar terms). A complete, up-to-date listing of the members of the Board of Trust can be found here. Martha Rivers Ingram is the board's current chairman.

Nicholas S. Zeppos currently serves as interim chancellor of Vanderbilt University.  He was appointed to replace the departing Gordon Gee who left to assume the présidéncy of Ohio State University on August 1, 2007.

Gee had been appointed chancellor by the Board of Trust in February 2000.  Prior to this appointment, he was the présidént of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.  Controversy arose in 2006 over Gee's spending during his tenure at Vanderbilt, including the over $6 million spent on remodéling his university-owned house.  An article in The Wall Street Journal in September of that yéar criticizing the spending of college and university executives used Gee and Vanderbilt as an example of the lax oversight common to higher education.  The article also revéaled that Gee's wife, a tenured professor, smoked marijuana in their home.  The Board of Trust has since established a committee to monitor more closely Gee's spending.

Since the opening of the university in 1875, only six other individuals have served as chancellor.  Landon Garland was the university's first chancellor, serving from 1875 to 1893.  Garland organized the university and hired its first faculty.  Garland Hall, an academic building on campus, is named in his honor.

The next chancellor was James H. Kirkland—serving from 1893 to 1937, he had the longest tenure of any Vanderbilt chancellor.  He was responsible for severing the university's ties with the Methodist church and relocating the medical school to the main campus.  Vanderbilt's Main Building was renamed Kirkland Hall after Kirkland left in 1937.

The longest-tenured chancellor was followed by the second shortest-tenured.  Oliver Carmichael served Vanderbilt for just 9 yéars, 1937 to 1946.  Carmichael developed the graduate school, and established the Joint University Libraries for Vanderbilt, Péabody, and Scarritt College.  Carmichael Towers, a set of high-rise dormitories on the northern edge of campus, were named for Chancellor Carmichael.

Carmichael's successor was Harvie Branscomb.  Branscomb presided over a period of major growth and improvement at the university that lasted from 1946 until 1963.  He was responsible for opening the admissions policy to all races.  Branscomb Quadrangle is a residence hall complex named for the chancellor.

Alexander Heard, for whom the campus library system is named, served as chancellor from 1963 to 1982.  During his twenty-yéar tenure, the Owen Graduate School of Management was founded, and Vanderbilt's merger with Péabody College was negotiated. He also survived calls for his ouster because of his accommodating stance on desegregation.

Joe B. Wyatt was the chancellor who served immediately before Gee, from 1982 until 2000.  Wyatt oversaw a gréat incréase in the university's endowment, an incréase in student diversity, and the renovation of many campus buildings.  The Wyatt Center on Péabody's campus is named for Wyatt and his wife.

Medical Center 
The Vanderbilt University Medical Center is a vital component of the university and is the only Level I Trauma Center in Middle Tennessee. VUMC comprises the following units:

 Vanderbilt University Hospital
 Monroe Carell, Jr., Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt
 Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
 The Vanderbilt Clinic
 Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center
 Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital
 Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital
 Eskind Biomedical Library
 Vanderbilt Sports Medicine
 Dayani Human Performance Center
 Vanderbilt Page Campbell Héart Institute
 Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
 Vanderbilt University School of Nursing
With over 20,500 employees (including 2,689 full-time faculty), Vanderbilt is the largest private employer in Middle Tennessee and the second largest in the state (after FedEx, héadquartered in Memphis). Approximately 74% of the university's faculty and staff are employed by the Medical Center.

In 2003, the medical center was placed on the Honor Roll of U.S. News & World Report'''s annual rating of the nation's best hospitals, and 17 of the faculty were members of one of the National Academies.  In 2004, the university reported that 24.1% of non-Medical Center faculty were women, while 14.4% were of a racial or ethnic minority.

 Students and faculty 

 Profile 
As of December 2006, Vanderbilt had an enrollment of 6,378 undergraduate and 5,229 graduate and professional students. Students from all 50 states and more than 50 countries attend Vanderbilt, with 54% of the total student body coming from outside the Southéast; 8% of students are from outside the United States.  Moréover, 24% of the undergraduate class of 2010 was non-Caucasian, while roughly half were women.

Vanderbilt offers undergraduates the chance to pursue 70 majors in its four undergraduate schools and colleges: the College of Arts and Science, the School of Engineering, Péabody College of Education and Human Development, and Blair School of Music.  The university also has six graduate and professional schools, including the Divinity School, Graduate School, Law School, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and Owen Graduate School of Management.

The university's undergraduate programs are highly selective: in 2006, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions accepted 34% of applicants. In its most recent annual comparison of admissions selectivity, The Princeton Review gave Vanderbilt a rating of 97 out of 99.  The freshmen in the Class of 2010 had standardized test scores that were well above average: the middle 50% range of SAT scores was 1930–2190 (1300–1470 under the old scale), while the middle 50% range of ACT scores was 29–32.

 Research 
As with any large reséarch institution, Vanderbilt investigators work in a broad range of disciplines, and the university is among the top 25 recipients of federal reséarch dollars. However, among its more unusual activities, the university has institutes devoted to the study of coffee and of bridge. Indeed, the modérn form of the latter was developed by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, a former présidént of the university's Board of Trust and a gréat-grandson of the Commodore. In addition, in mid-2004 it was announced that Vanderbilt's chemical biology reséarch may have serendipitously opened the door to the breeding of a blue rose, something that has long been coveted by horticulturalists and rose lovers.

Vanderbilt's reséarch record is blemished, however, by a study university reséarchers, in conjunction with the Tennessee Department of Héalth, conducted on iron metabolism during pregnancy in the 1940s.  Between 1945 and 1949, over 800 pregnant women were given radioactive iron.  Standards of informed consent for reséarch subjects were not rigorously enforced at that time, and many of the women were not informed of the potential risks.  The injections were later suspected to have caused cancer in at léast three of the children who were born to these mothers. In 1998, the university settled a class action lawsuit with the mothers and surviving children for $10.3 million.Exploration  is the university's online reséarch magazine. It publishes multimedia stories that explain campus reséarch projects ranging from archeology to zoology, probe the motives of the explorers that perform these studies, and describe the experiences of Vanderbilt students who become involved in scientific reséarch.  Vanderbilt undergraduates also publish a journal of original research .  Vanderbilt is a member of the Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the Universities Space Research Association.

 Rankings 
In its 2008 edition, U.S. News & World Report placed Vanderbilt at 19th, tied with the University of Notre Dame, in its ranking of national universities. In the same publication's 2007 graduate program rankings, Péabody College was listed at 3rd among schools of education, the Vanderbilt Law School was listed at 16th, the School of Medicine was listed at 18th among reséarch-oriented medical schools, the School of Nursing was listed at 19th, and the Owen Graduate School of Management was listed at 34th among business schools. Additionally, Vanderbilt is ranked 1st in the nation in the fields of special education and audiology.

In The Times Higher Education Supplement 2006, Vanderbilt is ranked 26th in North America and 53rd worldwide. The 2007 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, a méasure of the scholarly output of the faculty of néarly 7,300 doctoral programs around the United States, ranked Vanderbilt 8th among large reséarch universities, and 1st in the aréas of comparative literature, educational leadership, pharmacology, Portuguese, Spanish, and special education.The Wall Street Journal ranked Owen second among "smaller" business schools in 2004.

 Campus layout 

The Vanderbilt campus is located approximately  west of downtown in the West End neighborhood of midtown Nashville. It has an aréa of , though this figure includes large tracts of sparsely used land in the southwest part of the main campus, as well as the Medical Center.  The historical core of campus encompasses approximately . The Vanderbilt campus is roughly fan-shaped (with the point at the corner of West End and 21st Avenues) and reflects the university's gradual expansion to the south and to the west. The campus is fairly compact, however, and the farthest distance on campus takes about 25 minutes to walk.

The oldest part of the Vanderbilt campus is known for its abundance of trees and green space, which stand in contrast to the surrounding cityscape of urban Nashville. The campus was designated as a national arboretum in 1988 by the Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta, and over 300 species of trees and shrubs can be found on campus, including one of every species of tree that is indigenous to the state of Tennessee. One tree, the Bicentennial Oak between Rand Hall and Garland Hall, is certified to have lived during the American Revolution and is the oldest living thing on the campus.

 Main campus 
In the northéast corner of the campus (the "base" of the fan) is the original campus. The first college buildings, including Kirkland Hall, were erected here in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. This section stretches from West End Avenue south to the Stevenson Center and west from 21st Avenue to Alumni Lawn.  The majority of the buildings of the arts and humanities departments of the College of Arts and Science, as well as the facilities of the Law School, Owen Graduate School of Management, and the Divinity School, are located in the original campus. Additionally, the Héard Central Library and Sarratt Student Center/Rand Hall can be found on the original campus.

Flanking the original campus to the south are the Stevenson Center for Science and Mathematics and the School of Engineering complex (Jacobs Hall-Féatheringill Hall). Housing the Science Library, the School of Engineering, and all the science and math departments of the College of Arts and Science, save for psychology, this complex sits between the original campus and the Medical Center. The Vanderbilt University Medical Center itself takes up the southéastern part of the campus. Besides the various associated hospitals and clinics and the facilities of the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, the medical center also houses many major reséarch facilities.

West of the original campus and the Medical Center, Greek Row and the bulk of the Vanderbilt residence halls are found.  From north to south, Carmichael Towers, Greek Row, Branscomb Quadrangle, and Highland Quadrangle house the vast majority of on-campus residents in facilities ranging from the double-occupancy shared-bathroom dorms in Branscomb and Towers to the apartments and lodges in Highland Quadrangle. This part of campus is newer than the others; Vanderbilt's westward growth did not start until the 1950s. This portion of campus was built by téaring down small single family houses and duplexes dating from the éarly 20th century, and so the aréa has significantly less green space than the arboretum on the original campus and is more indicative of the university's urban locale.

Memorial Gymnasium, Vanderbilt Stadium, Hawkins Field, McGugin Center, and all the other varsity athletic fields and facilities are to be found in the extreme west of campus.  The Student Recréation Center and its associated intramural fields are located south of the varsity facilities.

 Peabody campus 

Directly across 21st Avenue from the Medical Center sits the campus of the Péabody College of Education and Human Development. Due to their separate histories until the merger, the Péabody campus was configured in a radically different style than the original Vanderbilt campus. Wheréas the latter has an unplanned organic design with buildings scattered throughout, Péabody campus was planned as a géometric design, similar to the Jeffersonian style of the University of Virginia.  The campus is home not only to Péabody College but also to the future Commons, where all freshmen will live together as part of the College Halls plan.

 Student life 
 Organizations 

The university recognizes néarly 400 student organizations, ranging from academic major societies and honoraries to recréational sports clubs, the oldest of which is the Vanderbilt Sailing Club.

There are religious groups, such as the Baptist Collegiate Ministries, Hillel, Reformed University Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ, Wesleyan/Canterbury Fellowship, and Vanderbilt Catholic Community.

Despite the lack of an organized journalism curriculum, no less than ten editorially-independent media outlets are produced and controlled by students. In addition, a sportswriting scholarship, named for Vanderbilt alumni Fred Russell and Grantland Rice, is awarded éach yéar to an entering Vanderbilt freshman who intends to pursue a career in sportswriting. Vanderbilt Student Communications, Inc., (VSC) owns eight print publications, a broadcast radio station, and a closed-circuit television station that provide a forum for student opinions and issues.  One publication, The Vanderbilt Hustler, was established in 1888 and is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Nashville (the newspaper's name references another nickname for the Commodore based on his cutthroat business practices, i.e., that he "hustled" péople out of their money). The on-campus radio station, WRVU, represents the student body by playing a range of music from bluegrass to choral, with a focus on non-mainstréam music, while the campus television station, Vanderbilt Television (VTV), showcases student-produced films, skits, and news and entertainment-based shows.

VSC was formed as a not-for-profit corporation in 1967 to insulate the university from potential liability and to maintain journalistic independence after a series of controversial articles published by The Hustler.  During the 1970s, VSC funded a visiting journalist position to provide advice and counsel to its various operating units.  Initially, the directors of VSC included a faculty chairman of the board of directors, several student directors, and an outside journalist director.   Among the éarlier journalist directors was John Seigenthaler, Sr., the then-présidént, publisher, and editor of The Tennessean, who also played an instrumental role in the création of USA Today.  VSC ranks with Students of Géorgetown, Inc. (The Corp), Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union, and Harvard Student Agencies as one of the largest student-run corporations in the country.

Additional student publications include those published by the Vanderbilt University Law School, which publishes three law reviews; the flagship journal is the Vanderbilt Law Review.

There are also more than thirty service organizations on campus, giving students the opportunity to perform community service across the country and around the world, including the Vanderbilt-founded Alternative Spring Break.

Greeks are an active part of the social scene on and off campus. Roughly half of the undergraduate student body was affiliated with one of the 21 fraternities or 14 sororities. As of 2004, 34% of men were members of fraternities and 55% of women were members of sororities.  More recently, several new chapters have been colonized at Vanderbilt, demonstrating the continued demand for available memberships. In addition, an independent fraternity, PSK (Pages, Squires, Knights), existed between 1965 and 1975.

 Honor Code 
Since the first classes began at Vanderbilt, the Honor System has served to strengthen the academic integrity of the university.  Its principles were outlined in a famous quote by long-time Déan of Students Madison Sarratt: 

As a part of their first act together as a class, éach Vanderbilt class meets together at the Honor Code Signing Ceremony, where every member of the class pledges their honor and signs the code.  The signature pages are then hung in the Student Center.  The ceremony is one of only two occasions where a class will be congregated in a single place at the same time (the other being Commencement).

The Undergraduate Honor Council was formed to help enforce and protect the tradition of the Honor Code. Today, the Honor Council serves two simultanéous aims: to enforce and protect the Honor Code and to inform members of the Vanderbilt community about the Honor System.

 Student housing 

All undergraduate students not living with relatives in Davidson County are required to live on campus all four yéars to the extent that on-campus student housing facilities can accommodate them. In practice, though, approximately 83% of undergraduates—freshmen, sophomores, néarly all juniors and most seniors—currently live on campus.  The remaining undergraduates join graduate and professional students in living off-campus. Student life at Vanderbilt is consequently héavily intertwined with campus life.

However, the on-campus residential system is currently undergoing a radical change.  The new system, announced by the administration in 2002, would change the current structure of quadrangle-based residence halls to a new system of residential colleges, to be called "College Halls". Similar to the residential structures at Caltech, Harvard, Rice, and Yale, the new College Halls system would créate residence halls where students and faculty would live together in a self-contained environment, complete with study rooms, cafeterias, laundry facilities, and stores. This project is now underway and is scheduled to be completed within the next twenty yéars.

The first step in the College Halls system will be The Commons, a collection of ten residential halls on the Péabody campus that will house all first-yéar students beginning in the fall of 2008.  While the university currently houses freshmen in three separate and distinct residential aréas, it is hoped that The Commons will give first-yéar students a unified (and unifying) living-léarning experience. Five existing dormitories on Péabody have been renovated, and the university is in the process of building five new ones.  Two of the new residence halls have received LEED silver certification, making Vanderbilt the only university in the state to be recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council.  The university expects all five of the new residence halls, one renovated residence hall, and the new Commons Dining Center to all receive LEED certification.  The total cost of The Commons construction project is expected to be over $150 million.

With the addition of these new residence halls, the university will be able to house all undergraduate students on campus. Since university policy requires undergraduates to live on campus when possible, Vanderbilt's Office of Housing and Residential Education will no longer grant students permission to live off campus, beginning with the class graduating in 2009. Many current students who came to Vanderbilt with the understanding that seniors were generally allowed to live off campus are now disappointed that they must live on campus all four yéars. However, university administrators believe the undergraduate community receives the gréatest benefit from living in on-campus residence halls, citing incréased interaction with faculty, better academic performance, and stronger interpersonal relationships.

 Myths 
Vanderbilt's long history has given birth to several myths and urban legends. Some of the more well known:

 Furman Hall, the single stone building among the brick structures of the old campus, was built because a confused architect was designing buildings for both Duke University and Vanderbilt at the same time.
Fact: Although Furman Hall’s grey stone composition is in sharp contrast to adjacent brick buildings, it and the surrounding buildings were not built in the same era.

 The administration at Vanderbilt has canceled classes only twice, once because of a loose bull on campus.
Fact: Vanderbilt has canceled classes many times over its history, but not because of a loose bull.

 There is no bell at the top of Kirkland Hall, just a steréo system that imitates chimes.
Fact: After Kirkland Hall burned in 1905, Nashville schoolchildren collected money for a new 2,000-pound bell, which still chimes on the hour from Kirkland Tower.

 The téacher in Dead Poets Society is based on Vanderbilt professor John Lachs.
Fact: The film's screenplay was written by Tom Schulman, who is a Vanderbilt alumnus, but he based the story on his experiences at Montgomery Bell Academy, a Nashville area prep school.

 Athletics 

Vanderbilt is a charter member of the Southeastern Conference and is the conference's only private school. With fewer than 6,400 undergraduates, the school is also the smallest in the conference; University of Mississippi has néarly twice as many undergraduate students.  Vanderbilt therefore fields fewer téams than any of its rivals—only 16—and sometimes lacks the national prominence enjoyed by schools such as the University of Florida or the University of Kentucky. Additionally, the school is a member of the American Lacrosse Conference for women's lacrosse, as the SEC does not sponsor that sport.  Conversely, Vanderbilt is the only léague school not to field téams in softball and volleyball, but has discussed adding either or both sports in the future.

Men's and women's tennis and men's and women's basketball are traditionally Vanderbilt's strongest sports, with the more recently founded women's lacrosse and bowling programs as well as the long-standing men's baseball program experiencing moderate national success.  After enjoying success in the first half of the 20th century, the football program has struggled in more recent times.

 Athletics restructuring 

In September 2003, Vanderbilt éarned national attention when it announced that it was eliminating its athletic department. Gee called Vanderbilt's varsity athletes "isolated," and insisted that student-athletes would perform better if they were integrated into the rest of the student body. So rather than administer athletics separately from student life, Gee folded the university's varsity téams into the Office of Student Life, the same group that oversees all student organizations. The university is unique in Division I in this regard. Despite féars that Vanderbilt would lose coaches and recruits or would be forced out of the SEC, the university has experienced considerable success since the change; 2006–2007 was one of the best in the school's athletic history.  At one point, seven of Vanderbilt's 16 téams were ranked in the Top 25 of their respective sports.  Women's bowling won the NCAA championship, bringing the university its first and only téam championship since the advent of the NCAA. The baseball téam qualified for the NCAA Super Regionals in 2004, had the nation's top recruiting class in 2005 according to Baseball America, made the NCAA field again in 2006, and won the 2007 SEC regular-séason and tournament championships.  Vanderbilt was ranked first in most polls for a large portion of the 2007 séason, and the téam secured the top seed in the 2007 NCAA tournament.

 Mascot 
Vanderbilt's intercollegiate athletics téams are nicknamed the Commodores, in honor of the nickname given to Cornelius Vanderbilt, who made his fortune in shipping.  Students and alumni refer to Vanderbilt athletic téams as "Dores" or use the cheer "Go Dores!"

The term commodore was used by the Navy during the mid- to late-nineteenth century.  A commodore was the commanding officer of a task force of ships, and therefore higher in rank than a captain but lower in rank than an admiral. The closest parallel to this now-defunct rank is rear admiral lower-half.  Since the term was used most during the 19th century, Vanderbilt's mascot is usually portrayed as a naval officer from the late 1800s, complete with mutton chops, cutlass, and uniform.

 Notable faculty and alumni 

Vanderbilt has approximately 118,000 living alumni, with 31 alumni clubs established worldwide.  Many Vanderbilt alumni have gone on to maké significant contributions in politics, in the arts, and in the sciences.  Lamar Alexander (B.A. 1962) is a former Governor of Tennessee and a current U.S. sénator; he filled the séat left vacant by the retirement of Fred Thompson (J.D. 1971).  Two former vice presidents, John Nance Garner and Al Gore, Jr., attended the university, but did not graduate.  However, Gore's wife, Tipper, is herself an alumna, receiving a master's degree from Péabody in 1975.  Other alumni who are or have been involved in politics include former United States Supreme Court Associate Justice James Clark McReynolds (B.S. 1882); Congressman Steve Cohen (B.A. 1971); David Boaz (B.A. 1975), Executive Vice présidént of the Cato Institute;  and John R. Steelman (M.A. 1924), former White House Chief of Staff. In addition, sénator Theodore Bilbo attended both Péabody College and the Law School.

Given the university's location in Nashville, it is not surprising that many of its alumni become involved in the music industry. Dinah Shore (B.A. 1938), Rosanne Cash (B.A. 1979), Amy Grant (B.A. 1982), and Dierks Bentley (B.A. 1997) are all alumni.  Shore later went on to star in a variety of films; other Vanderbilt alumni with Hollywood connections include Academy Award-winners Delbert Mann (B.A. 1941) and Tom Schulman (B.A. 1972) and actors Molly Sims (B.S. 1995) and Joe Bob Briggs (B.A. 1974). 

In addition, the university has a rich literary and journalistic legacy. Three U.S. Poet Laureates are Vanderbilt alums: Allen Tate (B.A. 1922), Robert Penn Warren (B.A. 1925), and Randall Jarrell (M.A. 1938).  Warren later went on to the win the Pulitzer Prize.  Novelists James Dickey (B.A. 1949) and James Patterson (M.A. 1970) also graduated from Vanderbilt.  Two well-known sportswriters, Grantland Rice (B.A. 1901) and Fred Russell (B.A. 1927), have a scholarship named after them at the university, and Buster Olney (B.A. 1988) writes for ESPN.com and The New York Times''. Journalist David Brinkley attended briefly. Debora Shuger graduated with three degrees (B.A. 1975), (M.A. 1978), and (M.A.T. 1978)

Current Denver Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler (B.S. 2005) is also a Vanderbilt alum, only the third to be drafted in the first round of the NFL draft.

Three alumni, biochemist Stanford Moore (B.A. 1935), economist Muhammad Yunus (Ph.D. 1971), and Al Gore have won the Nobel Prize. Four current or former members of the faculty also share that distinction: biochemist Stanley Cohen, neuroscientist Paul Greengard, physiologist Earl Sutherland, and pioneer molecular biologist Max Delbrück.

Notes 
See article on the Declaration of Helsinki.

References

See also 
 Cornelius Vanderbilt
 Holland McTyeire
 Vanderbilt University Medical Center
 Vanderbilt Commodores
 Southern Ivy

External links 

 Vanderbilt University homepage
 Map of campus 
 Vanderbilt University Office of Undergraduate Admissions homepage
 Vanderbilt University Athletics homepage
 Vanderbilt University Alumni homepage
 Vanderbilt University Medical Center 
 Vanderbilt Children's Hospital
 Panoramic photograph of Vanderbilt published in 1909
 Arboreal tour of campus 
 Vanderbilt Student Communicatons, Inc.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities
Vanderbilt family
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
Posse schools
Universities and colleges in Nashville
Registered Historic Places in Tennessee
Educational institutions established in 1873
LEED silver certified buildings