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Senior Day Speaker

In 2006, Vanderbilt Law School graduate Ed Nichols and his wife, Janice, in honor of Edward Carmack and Lucile Hamby Nichols, created and endowed The Nichols-Chancellor’s Medal. The medal includes a cash award and is one of the university’s highest honors. It is given to individuals who define the 21st century and exemplify the best qualities of the human spirit.

Our 2013 Nichols-Chancellor’s Medal recipient and Senior Day speaker will be Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison

Senior Day – Thursday, May 9, 2013
Location – Memorial Gym
Time – 11 a.m. – Noon

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

In 2006 The New York Times named Beloved by Toni Morrison the best novel of the past 25 years.

Morrison, born in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, is the winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for the same novel, which was made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993 and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Morrison grew up in the Midwest, steeped in black culture. She graduated from Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A. 1955). She taught writing and worked as an editor while launching her writing career, eventually settling onto the faculty of Princeton University from 1989 to 2006, when she accepted emeritus status.

Morrison’s debut novel was The Bluest Eye in 1970, “soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue and her poetically charged and richly expressive depictions of black America,” according to the official website of the Nobel Prize.

Morrison continues to produce fiction, most recently Home in 2012. She has also written children’s literature, criticism, the libretto for an opera and non-fiction.

Watch live streaming video of Senior Day beginning at 10 a.m. Central Time at www.vanderbilt.edu

About Memorial Gym

  • The main gym where Senior Day will be held is NOT air conditioned. Wear comfortable clothes in the event of unusually warm weather.
  • Holding seats is not permitted inside Memorial Gym as seating is limited.
  • Senior Day will be streamed live on the Vanderbilt homepage and will also be available to watch after the event.
  • Attendees with special needs:
    • Those with special needs and requiring the use of a wheelchair will have priority seating on the East side of the gym. Guests with wheelchairs must enter gym at the pickup location (below). The East side entrance is not handicapped-accessible and there is no access to the gym floor.
    • Wheelchair pickup will be located on the corner of Jess Neely Drive and 25th Ave. South (same corner as the baseball field and across from 25th Ave. Garage).
    • More information available here.

View Past Senior Day Speakers »