Alumni
Harris Laughrey
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Most of Harris’s time in high school was spent on Sustain Our Seniors, a service-project he founded which helped senior citizens live at home. This program currently serves senior citizens throughout Carroll County and West Tennessee. Harris was also co-founder of the Books for Babes program in his community. This program promoted awareness on the benefits of parents reading to their children.
During his time at Vanderbilt, Harris has become involved in several different aspects of the community involving tutoring and working with the homeless. During his first year he worked with Big Brothers where he was paired with an eight-year-old whom he tutored and worked with in afterschool activities. In addition, he has worked with Youth Encouragement Services to tutor children after school. He is on the board of Grassroots at Vanderbilt, an organization that aims to serve the poor, hungry, and homeless in Nashville and will be serving as the President his senior year. Through this organization he worked weekly in the Dismas house for ex-convicts, and has helped to create and head a new Food Rescue Program that takes surplus food from the dining services at Vanderbilt and delivers it to homeless organizations in Nashville. He looks forward to expanding Grassroots and expanding the organization.
For his summer project, Harris got the opportunity to travel to Juneau, Alaska and work with a nonprofit organization called Discovery Southeast. Through this organization he helped to create a 9-week curriculum for a young children’s program in the summer. He also helped to create a Health and Nature section of Discovery Southeast in order to educate the citizens of Juneau on the benefits of nature and worked on a new teacher education program. He has currently been working with Youth Encouragement Services to hopefully bring a similar program to Nashville.
Finally, Harris graduated from Officer Candidate School with the Marines and will be commissioned as an officer upon graduation. Harris is very honored to be a part of the Ingram Scholarship Program and is excited to continue his service throughout Vanderbilt and the Nashville community.