A green world perches on the top floor of MRB III, where the College of Arts and Science’s greenhouses are nurtured by greenhouse manager Jonathan Ertelt, MEd’99.

The greenhouses span seven rooms and are home to upwards of a thousand plant species—several of which are so recently discovered that they don’t yet have scientific names. Ertelt has collected, acquired, cultivated and maintained these plants and their environment for 17 years, sharing plant knowledge with students, faculty and researchers in a sort of living lab and library.

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This dried vine hanging from the ceiling is of the large genus Aristolochia, a genus with plants predominately from Central and South America. Now decorated with butterflies and feathers collected on Ertelt’s travels, the vine with a cork-like bark serves as a starting point for students’ questions as well as a sort of hanging sculpture.

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The baseball cap behind Ertelt’s desk is from Cooperstown, N.Y., home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ertelt’s son, Sam, a promising 14-year-old pitcher, played in the 2011 Cooperstown Dreams Park National Invitational Tournament, and his team was inducted into its American Youth Baseball Hall of Fame. Ertelt proudly wears the Hall of Fame ring he received as one of the coaches (or he did until the plating started to wear off).

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The plants in this terrarium are so sensitive that they would start to wilt within 10 minutes if the top was removed. The species, including a Gasteranthus villosus (the genus name translates as “belly flower”), are mostly gesneriads. Their natural environment is near streams in rainforest areas of high humidity. Ertelt describes them as being hard to find and hard to keep.

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Ertelt, who earned a master’s in education from Peabody, wears a T-shirt from the Gesneriad Society. The gesneriad plant family is one of his favorites because of the vast variety it encompasses, from African violets to lipstick plants and from thimble-sized to tree-sized specimens. It includes many common houseplants along with esoteric, rare species.

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Botanical paintings on the walls were done by Ertelt’s wife, Bonnie Arant Ertelt, BS’81, editor of Peabody Reflector. This work depicts Anthurium pseudospectabile, found in the Panamanian rainforest. The first one Ertelt ever saw was clinging to a tree too high for him to reach even holding a machete and standing on tiptoes, yet its 9-foot-long leaves draped the forest floor.

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The terrarium holds blue frogs that seem to be straight out of the movie Avatar. From Suriname, the frogs are Dendrobates tinctorius, commonly known as dart frogs because the toxin on their skin is used to make poison darts. Aside from their colors, the frogs are unique because—unlike tree frogs—they are active during daytime, which means they can sometimes be heard singing.

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Microscopes are used to identify plant pests, look for plant health problems and examine cellular structure. Ertelt prepares slides that show cytoplasmic streaming in the cells of plants for botany students, greenhouse volunteers and anyone else who is interested.

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Ertelt lives within biking range of campus and takes advantage of this most days of the year. Living close also makes it easier for Ertelt to come in on weekends and holidays to care for tender plants.

If the $1.94 billion raised in Vanderbilt’s recently concluded Shape the Future fundraising campaign seems like a mind-boggling figure, then consider this. Each gift has a purpose and fills a need. Each gift makes possible someone’s education, research, experience or growth. Alumni, parents, donors, corporations and foundations, faculty, staff and friends contributed more than $165 million to the College of Arts and Science as part of Shape the Future. These examples—there are hundreds more—demonstrate how generosity and belief in a liberal arts education are shaping Arts and Science now and in the future.

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Since the Shape the Future campaign started, the number of endowed faculty chairs in the College of Arts and Science increased to 78. One new chair is Sandra Rosenthal, the Jack and Pamela Egan Professor of Chemistry. In Stevenson Center, Rosenthal studies semiconducting nanocrystals, which might be used for new methods of drug delivery and more efficient light sources.

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If more entrepreneurs come out of Arts and Science, credit in part the Hoogland Family Foundation, spearheaded by Keith Hoogland, BA’82, and Susan Moore Hoogland, BS’82. The foundation supports entrepreneurial studies in the managerial studies program, based in the FEL Center building.

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One of campus’s most interesting buildings is the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center. Built in 2005, the structure was named for the late Board of Trust president through a lead gift by his daughter, Robin Ingram Patton.

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Douglas W. Grey, BE’83, understands the importance of financial research. In 2010, he established the Douglas W. Grey Faculty Research Fund in Economics, supporting the economics faculty in Calhoun Hall.

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Spanish classes in Furman Hall made Mike Malloy want to double major in the language. Now a senior, Malloy couldn’t have attended Vanderbilt without the Lummis Family Scholarship funded by Claudia Owen Lummis, BA’76, and Frederick R. ’76. More than $79 million for scholarships and financial aid was raised during the campaign—and the need for more continues.

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Family counselor Gayle Fambrough Snyder, BA’56, credits Vanderbilt with teaching her to think as a scientist. She’s helping draw outstanding psychology graduate students to do the same through the Gayle Fambrough Snyder Graduate Fellowship for clinical studies in Wilson Hall.

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Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamin included Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, now housed in Cohen Memorial Hall, on its national tour. That was made possible by a donation from Susan Braselton Fant, JD’88, and Lester
“Ruff” Fant, BA’63.

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Not all Arts and Science programs take place on campus. Donors such as Sandra and Roger Deromedi, BA’75, and Frances Von Stade Downing, BA’78, and John Downing, BA’78, have established funds that support travel and study abroad opportunities for undergraduates, grad students and faculty. Students can explore such opportunties at events like this 2011 Study Abroad Fair.

If a researcher can dream it, Bob Patchin and John Fellenstein can make it. They’re the full-time staff of the physics and astronomy department’s machine shop in Stevenson Center. Patchin and shop supervisor Fellenstein design and craft tools, instruments, devices and just about anything faculty and graduate students need for their research or teaching. The facility serves departments in the College of Arts and Science, as well as the School of Engineering.

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Every bit of space in the 3,000-square-foot machine shop gets used. Equipment includes four lathes, five mills (including two modern CNC machines), four drill presses, two surface grinders, five saws and six vacuums. The shop also has woodworking facilities, complete with table saw, jointer and panel saw. The wood shop made nonmagnetic items for John Wikswo, Gordon A. Cain University Professor and A.B. Learned Professor of Living Physics, to use for his SQUID magnetometer research.

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Patchin says he can make just about anything on this Italian-made milling machine (circa 1950s). He’s used it to craft tiny valves to go inside robotic arms for use by disabled veterans, and he used it to machine welded flanges onto pipes four inches across and 16 to 18 feet long.

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A tool and die maker, Patchin figures out how to build things others envision, either from scratch or by modifying existing items. The shop makes one-of-a-kind pieces, prototypes and equipment used in labs and demonstration classes. Patchin says he particularly enjoys “demo work,” creating or adapting the equipment used to demonstrate physics principles to classes. On his bench currently are components that professors will use to build a light bulb demo.

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A library of cutters provides the right shape, tool and hardness to cut almost anything, including materials for an engineering professor’s research with diamonds.

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This nearly 100-year-old universal shaping saw is nicknamed Old Betsy. “It’ll cut off large stainless-steel pieces very accurately, which is a tough job because the material is very hard, and that saves machining time later on,” Patchin says. “It’ll cut very closely, even as ancient as it is.”

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A WWII ordnance plant veteran, this lathe still puts piles of chips on the floor. Patchin modified the heavy machine to incorporate a programmable digital readout system.

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The shop’s previous supervisor had a keen eye for surplus equipment. Despite its scruffy appearance, this U.S. Navy surplus vacuum proved its worth when the shop worked on a project for Professor Victoria Green. They cut G-10 composite material, which has slivering and dust qualities somewhat like fiberglass, and they ran the vacuum constantly for nine months to clean up scraps. “It just sat there and gobbled it down, we’d empty it, and put it on every day, it was just great for that,” he says.

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The most unusual device he was ever asked to build, Patchin says, was a lizard track. A post-doctoral researcher in biological sciences wanted to keep his Anolis lizards healthy, so they constructed a running track. It used an electric drill to vary the speed. A close runner-up was crafting a worm-rooping stick for Ken Catania, associate professor of biological sciences, who was studying the phenomenon of worm grunting.

Watch: Want to know what the worm rooping stick was for? Associate Professor Ken Catania discusses worm grunting on Assignment Earth

It’s amazing how a scent or familiar walk can transport one back to student days. The Vanderbilt campus—known for its beautiful trees and plants, stately stone and brick buildings, and even its scrabbling squirrels—makes up as much of the college experience as do classes, professors, dorm life and even friends. Every year, the College of Arts and Science welcomes alumni back to campus. Many come in the autumn for Homecoming or Reunion. Some come for campus visits with their own soon-to-be-college students. Still others come to attend meetings or to speak to classes. When they come, many experience the feeling of being home again and a bond with the campus that ignites memories, experiences and emotion.

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This white oak, located at the top of Library Lawn between Buttrick and Garland, served as a meeting place for (from left) Kelly Collins Cunningham (BA’84, history), Mary Beth White Kirsch (BA’84, Latin American studies) and Ellen Haddock Chandler (BSN’84, M.Ed’89). As students, the three would meet when coming from different classes or heading off campus for a weekend brunch at the Laughing Man Cafe or Elliston Place Soda Shop.

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The three women met as freshmen in 1980 and stayed close throughout their college years and beyond. Kirsch, who lives in the Boston area, serves on the Board of Visitors for the College of Arts and Science.

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Originally from Houston, Cunningham now lives in the Grand Canyon State. Her observations about life at Vanderbilt reflect those of so many other alumni. “I look at my college years not so much as an educational experience in regard to academics as I do an education in friendship, identity and life,” she says. “Those years helped define me as an adult.”

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In addition to reuniting with her two friends, Chandler was visiting the campus with her family. Her daughter Julia just entered the College of Arts and Science as a first-year student. The Chandlers—Ellen and her husband, Jimmy (BS’79)—met while she was a senior at Vanderbilt.

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Since the campus holds special memories for so many alumni, the university tries to keep its Reunion and Homecoming celebrations on site. In 2009, more than 1,400 Arts and Science alumni attended Reunion events.

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The more than 6,000 trees and shrubs on the Vanderbilt campus helped the university receive the designation as a national arboretum in 1988. In 2005, Steven Baskauf, senior lecturer in biological sciences, created an interactive walking tour of the trees on campus. It can be found at http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/vu/frame.htm.

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White oak is common in Middle Tennessee. The third most common oak on the Vanderbilt campus, its leaves and acorn are symbols of the university.

Helping students where they live. That’s the goal of the College of Arts and Science’s Pre-major Academic Advising Resource Center (CASPAR). The innovative advising program has set up shop in room 225 of The Commons Center, heart of the university’s first-year living and learning center. That makes it easy for first-year students and those who have not yet selected a major to meet with academic (and overall college life) advisers.

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CASPAR Director Patricia Armstrong oversees a staff of six recent or soon-to-be Ph.D.s who work closely with undergraduates to help them thrive at Vanderbilt. A specialist in 17th-century French literature, she took on her CASPAR role in addition to serving as senior lecturer in the Department of French and Italian. Armstrong says one of the joys of her CASPAR work is advising students as they take on intellectual challenges at Vanderbilt.

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In the past, pre-major advising was assigned to faculty members located in separate academic offices all over campus. The CASPAR program was launched in fall 2009 to help students interact with their advisers more organically and to provide a uniform advising experience for new students.

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One of the advantages to offices in The Commons is that students feel free to stop by and talk with their advisers both formally and informally. Doctoral student and adviser Laura Taylor (left) and Josh Epstein, MA’04, PhD’08, (right) chat with student Eric Fram.

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Andrea Hearn, PhD’05, has been a pre-major adviser since 2007. She’s also a senior lecturer in the English department and was honored with the college’s Harriet S. Gilliam Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in 2009.

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First-year student Stephen Siao talks to his adviser, Charles Bowie, MTS’00, MA’06, PhD’08. Advisers are available to help students select classes and develop course schedules, but also help with the transition from high school to a major research university.

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Student Michael McGee is one of many who pass by on the way to other activities in The Commons Center. The CASPAR offices are open during the day when students gather to eat, pick up an espresso, work out, hang out, study or play. The center also has evening office hours by appointment.

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CASPAR advisers also help students understand AXLE requirements, the core curriculum that College of Arts and Science students must fulfill. Student Malika Watson credits her CASPAR adviser, Scott Zeman, PhD’09, for helping her select courses and navigate AXLE.

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Located on the second floor of The Commons Center, CASPAR offices are between The Commons’ post office and conference room 205, next to the building’s workout facilities. Meeting in the conference room are first-year student Trevor Anderson (pictured) and just out of view, advisers Christine Valiquette, MA’04, PhD’08, and Scott Zeman.

Tracking down associate professor of chemistry David Cliffel can be a challenge. In addition to teaching, the expert in electrochemistry and analytical chemistry oversees research in six labs in four buildings within the Stevenson Center. This lab on the fifth floor of Building 5 serves as home base for the Cliffel Research Group, his team of post-doctoral associates, graduate students and undergraduates. The group works with specialized instrumentation and processes unfamiliar to most, but its research may one day impact diabetes, vaccines and cancer.

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Graduate student Jennifer McKenzie uses a multianalyte microphysiometer to study the effects of bacterial toxins on cells. The Cliffel group developed multianalyte micro-physiometry, which allows researchers to explore the dynamics of metabolism in living cells occupying microfluidic chambers.

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This incubator holds cell cultures for physiometry experiments to reduce dependence on animal toxicology studies in cancer drug testing. That work recently received a grant from the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation.

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A carbon dioxide tank feeds the temporary storage of cell cultures. Cliffel’s main cell culture and biological toxin research lab is in a Stevenson Center Building 2 laboratory.

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Postdoctoral associate Jeremy Wilburn looks through an optical microscope to evaluate ultramicroelectrodes before they undergo scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) in the group’s laboratory on the ninth floor of Stevenson Center Building 7. SECM can determine the electrochemical activity of new materials and living cells with very high spatial resolution.

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Peter Ciesielski, a graduate student in the Interdisciplinary Materials Science program, uses a potentiostat to determine the performance of a solar cell that uses plant proteins to convert light into electrical energy. The research is part of a National Science Foundation-supported project.

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The bulletin board serves as a reservation system for the Cliffel group. With 20 team members, it’s necessary to schedule and reserve critical instruments days in advance. The periwinkle-colored syringe pumps are for microfluidic devices designed with help from the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education. Cliffel, who joined the College of Arts and Science in 2000, is also a fellow at the institute.

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Cliffel also serves as director of the Biomolecular Nanostructures Facility for the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (VINSE). The interdisciplinary facility brings together science and engineering faculty interested in bionanotechnology. In a lab on the sixth floor of Stevenson 7, Cliffel and his team work on the advanced synthesis of gold nanoparticles that mimic biological protein recognition. The project, supported by the National Institute of Health, may lead to the development of nanoparticle-based vaccines.

Inside Neely Auditorium, Phillip Franck, associate professor of theatre and chair of the VU Theatre department, works with faculty, staff and students during tech week for a recent production of The Country Wife. Tech week activities include installing the play’s set, hanging equipment from the lighting grid above, focusing lights to illuminate a scene and create a mood, and timing sound elements. For each of the department’s four productions, Franck conceptualizes and designs sets, lighting and sound in collaboration with the director, costume designer and technical director.

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Neely Auditorium was built in 1925 and originally served as Vanderbilt’s chapel and meeting place. It was redesigned in 1976 as a black box theater, but its gothic arches and columns remain part of the department’s classrooms, offices and workspaces. “Neely is really an interesting place to work,” Franck says. “It’s funky as frog fur. I give credit to the college for making it so professional. It would be tough to find a small theater as well-equipped as Neely.”

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For tech week, Franck sets up a worktable mid-auditorium and directs the installation of lights, sound and sets. During performances, lighting is managed from a booth above the audience.

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When he started as a theatrical lighting designer, Franck says, light changes were managed using analog equipment. Now Franck designs lighting plots on a laptop and coordinates with the professional computerized lighting and audio system. For The Country Wife, the computerized board executed changes for 154 lights.

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Franck teaches Theatre 212 Scenery and Properties and Theatre 213 Lighting and Sound, courses that explore the design aspects of theatrical production. Students do most of the production work on shows. Senior psychology and theatre major Elise Masur (center) and first-year student April Philley (right) touch up paint.

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To indicate the precise spot he wants a light focused, Franck uses a spear he discovered in the overflowing prop room. It allows him to view adjustments from a distance and indicate locations for modifications to the light beams. After he started using the spear, students insisted he obtain the companion Viking helmet.

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Much of the behind-the-scenes theatrical magic occurs in the dark, during both tech week and production. Franck’s glow-in-the-dark hardhat allows him to be seen and protected in case a student drops something from the lighting grid more than 22 feet above. The professional grid has a working load capacity of 22,000 lbs. of equipment.

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Franck designed The Country Wife stage to face the audience in what is known as proscenium style. Neely Auditorium accommodates any stage size, shape, placement or presentation.

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The Country Wife set uses Franck’s creative lighting and shadows to create mood and provide flexibility for scene setting. The experienced lighting designer also designs for professional theaters, including Tennessee Repertory Theatre.

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Senior Tyler Weaks (left) assists technical director Nate Otto (in red bandana) adjust the set. Weaks works as a staff carpenter in the department’s scene shop and plays Sir Horner in the play.

In central Peru, bioarcheologist Tiffiny Tung and her team examine human remains excavated during an earlier season’s dig. The assistant professor of anthropology is currently studying the Wari culture, a pre-Incan civilization that lived in the Andes about 1,400 years ago.

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For several years, Tung’s summer research base has been the archeology lab at Peru’s National University of Huamanga in Ayacucho.

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These trophy heads (human skulls that were modified after death and displayed or worn) were recovered from the Wari site of Conchopata. Iconographic depictions and strontium isotope tests on bones and teeth helped Tung and colleagues establish that the trophy heads were most likely of Wari enemies, rather than of venerated ancestors.

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Animals were often used as offerings in houses and tombs; the llama and guinea pigs skeletons serve as comparative samples for identifying animal bone fragments found at the dig. (The duck skeleton is part of another archeologist’s research; the lab is shared by a variety of researchers and students.)

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Carlos Mancilla Rojas, one of Tung’s Peruvian colleagues, has partially reconstructed these ceramic urns from pottery sherds found at the Conchopata archeological site.

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Kristina Kitko, BE’08, a Ph.D. student in Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering, molds dental casting material to make casts of cut marks on bone fragments. The casts will be analyzed with a scanning electron microscope at Vanderbilt. From that analysis, they’ll learn whether the marks were made by stone or metal tools, or if they indicate accidental damage caused by non-human agents.

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First-year anthropology graduate student Matthew Velasco measures a bone using an osteometric board. When femora (thigh bones) are measured, bioarcheologists can estimate stature.

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In addition to teaching, research and publishing, Tung also
consults for media such as the Discovery Channel, History
Channel and National Geographic. She was featured in the Discovery Channel’s 2005 series, Mummy Autopsy.

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Peruvian archeologist and graduate student Mirza del Castillo uses a magnifying lens to look for human-induced modifications such as cut marks or drill holes on skull fragments while Emily Sharp, BA’08, records the findings. They also search for evidence of healed fractures or lesions that would indicate disease.

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Tung’s work draws researchers from all over. Tung is on the dissertation committee of Christine Pink, a Ph.D. student at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Pink is comparing the morphology (shape and form) of human teeth, which are under strong genetic control, to document biological relationships between various Wari-era populations.

Professor of Art Marilyn Murphy’s spacious studio-office fills a corner of the third floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center. The space serves as photography studio for taking digital images of works, carpentry workshop for building crates for shipping canvases and artwork, library for reference works and images, supply storeroom, counseling center for interaction with students, and work studio for Murphy’s oil paintings, graphite drawings, and printmaking.

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“The Oasis” is one of 16 works exhibited in Murphy’s one-woman show titled Wind Mischief at the prestigious Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago. Gallery curator Carl Hammer personally chose the works to appear in the show. Each piece reflects Murphy’s oft-reoccurring themes of wind and flight. “The individual pieces hang together well as a body of work,” Murphy says.

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The near corner-to-corner windows let in the natural light requisite for capturing colors and tones.

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Vanderbilt gives faculty and staff a commemorative chair in recognition of 25 years of contribution to the university. Murphy’s rocker, black with gilded trim and featuring the university seal, provides needed seating.

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Murphy rescued the 1960s-era orange fiberglass chair when the art department moved from the Cohen Memorial Building. “It’s a great design, made by Herman Miller,” she says, not to mention wacky and eye-catching.

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The mechanical pencil on a chain is part of the approximately 100 in Murphy’s collection. A flea market find, it originally served as a pencil and a telephone dialer. “They all do tricks or have advertising,” she says of her collected pieces.

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As director of studio art when the new studio arts building was in the works, Murphy sat in on dozens of planning meetings. The architects and designers suggested carpeted floors, but Murphy insisted on a surface that would stand up to paint, plaster, ink, clay, chalk, and more. The spots under the camera lights are not from art materials, however. They appeared during the installation process.

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Her green apron is splashed with ink of all hues from the hours Murphy spends teaching printmaking and creating prints.

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Some of Murphy’s surrealistic graphite drawings begin here.  She’s known for her juxtaposition of everyday life with images and situations that are just a bit off kilter.

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Murphy teaches drawing and composition, painting (all levels), printmaking and relief printing. “I love to teach. Art can allow students to view the environment around them with greater awareness. Because drawing is learning techniques and strategies as well as developing ideas, anyone can learn to draw,” she says.

Photo by John Russell.