Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1 million endowment in the hopes that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the American Civil War.[11] Vanderbilt is a founding member of the Southeastern Conference and has been the conference's only private school since 1966.[12]
"Vandy" redirects here. For other uses, see Vandy (disambiguation).
The university comprises ten schools and enrolls nearly 13,800 students from the US and 70 foreign countries.[13][14] Vanderbilt is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".[15] Several research centers and institutes are affiliated with the university, including the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, and Dyer Observatory. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, formerly part of the university, became a separate institution in 2016. With the exception of the off-campus observatory, all of the university's facilities are situated on its 330-acre (1.3 km2) campus in the heart of Nashville, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from downtown.
Vanderbilt's undergraduate admissions are among the most selective in the United States, with an overall acceptance rate of 5.1% for the class of 2028.[16][17] Vanderbilt alumni, faculty, and staff have included 54 current and former members of the United States Congress, 18 U.S. Ambassadors, 13 governors, 8 Nobel Prize laureates, 2 Vice Presidents of the United States, and 2 U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Other notable alumni include 3 Pulitzer Prize winners, 27 Rhodes Scholars,[18] 2 Academy Award winners, 1 Grammy Award winner, 6 MacArthur Fellows, 4 foreign heads of state, and 5 Olympic medallists. Vanderbilt has more than 145,000 alumni, with 40 alumni clubs established worldwide.[19]
Undergraduate admissions statistics
6.7%
52.3%
730-770
760-800
34-35
![45th Vice President of the United States Al Gore (Div, 1971–72)[f]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Al_Gore%2C_Vice_President_of_the_United_States%2C_official_portrait_1994.jpg/128px-Al_Gore%2C_Vice_President_of_the_United_States%2C_official_portrait_1994.jpg)
Alumni who have served as heads of state, prime ministers, and heads of government include José Ramón Guizado, 17th President of Panama,[232] Thomas C. Jefferson, first Premier of the Cayman Islands,[233] Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, 15th Prime Minister of Somalia,[234] and Chung Won-shik, 21st Prime Minister of South Korea.[235]
Notable U.S. political figures who have attended Vanderbilt include two U.S. Vice Presidents (John Nance Garner[236] and Nobel Laureate Al Gore[237]), Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Attorney General James Clark McReynolds[238] U.S. Secretary of Commerce Mickey Kantor,[239] Director of the National Economic Council Allan B. Hubbard,[240] U.S. Commissioner of Education John J. Tigert,[241] U.S. Secretary of the Treasury John Wesley Snyder,[242] U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander,[243] two White House Chiefs of Staff, John R. Steelman[244] and Jack Watson,[245] as well as 53 members of the United States Congress, 18 ambassadors, and 13 governors, including Governor of Texas Greg Abbott[246] and Governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear.[247]
Other leaders in foreign government who graduated from Vanderbilt include Baso Sangqu, President of the United Nations Security Council;[248] Redley A. Killion, Vice President of Micronesia;[249] Pedro Pinto Rubianes, Vice President of Ecuador;[249] Yoo Myung-hee, Minister for Trade of South Korea,[250] Yeda Crusius, Governor of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul;[251] Wang Tso-jung, President of the Control Yuan of the Government of the Republic of China;[252] Soemarno Sosroatmodjo, Governor of Jakarta, Indonesia;[253] Kwon Hyouk-se, Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea;[254] and Ihor Petrashko, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine.[255]
Influential figures outside of elected office include civil rights movement pioneer James Lawson,[256] Nobel Peace Prize-winning father of microfinance Muhammad Yunus,[257] Scopes Trial chief counsel John Randolph Neal Jr.,[258] Chinese theologian T. C. Chao,[259] Watergate prosecutor James F. Neal,[260] Yun Chi-ho, Korean political activist and thinker during the Joseon Dynasty,[261] and Charlie Soong, who played a significant role in the Xinhai Revolution.[262]
Prominent alumni in business and finance include Time Inc. Chairman and CEO Ann S. Moore,[263] American Airlines Group CEO Doug Parker,[264] Hilton Hotels CEO Matthew J. Hart,[265] NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman,[266] J.P. Morgan & Co. CEO Henry C. Alexander,[267] American Express Chairman Ralph Owen,[268] founding engineer of Facebook Jeffrey J. Rothschild,[269] General Motors President Mark Reuss,[270] Bain and Company founder Bill Bain,[271] Boston Consulting Group founder Bruce Henderson,[272] Perot Systems Chairman Ross Perot Jr.,[273] Dollar General CEO Cal Turner Jr.,[274] iHeartMedia CEO Mark P. Mays,[275] Emerson Electric CEO David Farr,[276] Eastman Kodak President William S. Vaughn,[277] and Sotheby's CEO Michael Ainslie.[278] In addition, Vanderbilt has educated several heads of central banks, including Süreyya Serdengeçti (Central Bank of Turkey);[279] Syahril Sabirin (Bank of Indonesia);[280] Moshe Mendelbaum (Bank of Israel);[281] Ibrahim Eris (Central Bank of Brazil);[282] and Liang Kuo-shu (Central Bank of the Republic of China).[283]
In academia and the sciences, distinguished Vanderbilt alumni include University of Pennsylvania President Sheldon Hackney,[284] founding dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government Don K. Price,[285] Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Stanford Moore,[286] astronomers E. E. Barnard[287] and J. Davy Kirkpatrick,[288] Platonist philosopher Richard M. Weaver,[289] founder of New Criticism Cleanth Brooks,[290] mathematician Lawrence C. Evans,[291] Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare developer Herman Daly,[292] Haskell programming language designer Paul Hudak,[293] Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT Mriganka Sur,[294] founder of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and Chairman of the SpaceX Safety Advisory Panel G. Scott Hubbard,[295] Mendel L. Peterson, "the father of underwater archaeology",[296] John Ridley Stroop, who discovered the Stroop effect,[297] and NASA astronauts Michael L. Gernhardt[298] and Charles R. Chappell.[299]
Vanderbilt graduates in medicine have pioneered and attained several "firsts" within their fields, including Norman Shumway, first to perform a successful heart transplant in the United States,[300] Levi Watkins, first to successfully implant an automatic defibrillator in a human patient,[301] Mildred T. Stahlman, founder of the first NICU,[302] James Tayloe Gwathmey, the "Father of Modern Anesthesia,"[303] and Ernest William Goodpasture, who invented methods for growing viruses and rickettsiae, enabling the development of vaccination.[304]
Alumni have made significant contributions to literature. Most notably, the Southern Agrarians and Fugitive Poets were two overlapping groups of influential American poets and writers in the early 1900s based at Vanderbilt.[305] Three U.S. Poets Laureate are alums: Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Randall Jarrell. Warren later won the Pulitzer Prize twice for poetry and for All the King's Men. Other important novelists include James Dickey (Deliverance),[306] James Still (River of Earth),[307] Elizabeth Spencer (The Light in the Piazza),[308] and James Patterson, who topped Forbes's list of global highest grossing authors in multiple years.[309] Journalists who have attended Vanderbilt include Pulitzer Prize winners Ralph McGill and Wendell Rawls Jr., Morning Joe host Willie Geist, Vogue Director of Communications Hildy Kuryk,[310] NBC newscaster David Brinkley, CNN International anchor Richard Quest, and head writer of The Daily Show Zhubin Parang.[311]
In popular culture, Dinah Shore, James Melton, Rosanne Cash, Amy Grant, Kim Dickens, Logan Browning, Dierks Bentley, Joe Bob Briggs, and film directors Rod Daniel and BAFTA winner Duncan Jones all attended Vanderbilt,[312] as well as Academy Award winners Delbert Mann and Tom Schulman.[312][313]
Additionally, Vanderbilt counts among its alumni base current and former athletes in the NFL, MLB, and NBA, as well as on the PGA Tour. Alumni in the NFL include Jay Cutler,[314] Bill Wade,[315] Casey Hayward,[316] Ke'Shawn Vaughn,[317] and Trent Sherfield.[318] Vanderbilt's entrants into the NBA include Will Perdue,[319] Charles Davis,[320] Festus Ezeli,[321] Darius Garland,[322] Dan Langhi,[323] Clyde Lee,[324] Luke Kornet,[325] and Aaron Nesmith.[326] Vanderbilt baseball stars include Sonny Gray,[327] Walker Buehler,[328] Pedro Alvarez,[329] Dansby Swanson,[330] David Price,[331] Scotti Madison,[332] and Mike Minor.[333] Carter Hawkins, general manager of the Chicago Cubs, played baseball at Vanderbilt from 2004 to 2007.[334] Brandt Snedeker was the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 2007.[335] Olympians who attended Vanderbilt include Jeff Turner, member of the gold medal-winning 1984 United States men's Olympic basketball team,[336] gold medalist Shannon Vreeland in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay at the 2012 Summer Olympics,[337] and rower Peter Sharis in the men's coxless pair event at the 1992 Summer Olympics.[338]
