Like most true stories, this one is a bit more complex, and it certainly hasn’t ended for Shellie Braeuner. Like all good tellers of tales, she started early and has built on her craft.

“According to my parents, I was telling stories from the moment I could talk,” Braeuner says. “When the National Geographic would come, I would look through all the different pictures and string them together into a story. To this day, my sister swears I always knew how to read.”

As a master’s student in human development counseling, Braeuner used stories therapeutically while working with adolescents. After becoming a nanny, she used stories to help her young charges deal with a move out of state.

“We would use Bambi, because those were the little figures that were in the McDonald Happy Meals at the time,” Braeuner says. “They didn’t know anyone, so I would tell stories about Bambi—what was it like, how do you think he felt when this or that happened—and they could act them out.

“The family I nanny for said,‘You really need to publish some of these stories,’” Braeuner says. “My family had been telling me this all along, but I had pooh-poohed the idea, because they’re my family. But when they said it, I thought, well, maybe so.”

After moving back to Nashville with the family about five years ago, Braeuner made a concerted effort to become a professional children’s book writer. She joined the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and started attending workshops and conferences, learning from published writers, editors and illustrators. One editor encouraged her to enter more contests, which led to her entering the Cheerios Spoonful of Stories on the last day of the contest.

“I didn’t have a lot of time to agonize over every word” Braeuner says. “They said what they really liked about it was its energy, its humor and that it’s as simple as possible.”

Now, Braeuner not only has more confidence in herself and her work, she also has an agent.

“I’ve got a couple of picture books, a middle-grade novel, and I’m working on a young adult novel,” she says. “I’d love to have the kind of writing career where kids could enjoy my books in their parents’ laps and then move on to enjoy my books at other ages.”

That would make for a very happy ending.

Gilbert, whose degrees are in human and organizational development (HOD), has packed a lot of living into his 30 years. Active in all sorts of student organizations at Vanderbilt, he began watching the Food Network and working for the alternative rock band Llama while at Peabody. After graduation, he became tour manager for the band. He then joined the prestigious William Morris Agency in Hollywood as a recruiter. Accustomed to interviewing dozens of people a month for jobs at William Morris, he breezed through a series of interviews and two on-camera cooking demonstrations to make the final field of 10 for the fifth season of The Next Food Network Star.

His star was on the ascent when he won a challenge competition in which the contestants were all required to create a tasty “man food.” Esquire men’s magazine has since printed Gilbert’s winning recipe. He grilled a New York strip steak and served it with his special Tennessee Drunken Braised Brussels Sprouts and Bacon Hash, topped with spicy Caribbean chutney. Despite his winning recipe, he was eliminated at the end of the third episode.

“To this day I still don’t feel that I deserved to go home, but I have no regrets about the decisions I made and I stand behind every dish I put on a plate,” he says. “HOD gave me the courage to trust in myself, trust my instincts and recognize and execute when there was an opportunity to really shine.”

He was first inspired to cook while camping in Moab, Utah. Fellow campers loved his Croque Madame, a sandwich made of cheese, ham and mustard, fried in a skillet and topped with an egg cooked “over easy.” When he returned to Los Angeles, Gilbert attended a culinary school for a while and then decided the best way to learn was on the job in a restaurant kitchen.

The filming of The Next Food Network Star ended in February, and all 10 contestants were sworn to secrecy until April. The season finale aired August 2 and drew 4.7 million viewers. Gilbert has since done a couple of celebrity chef stints, some catering, judged a cooking contest and is designing a menu for a Los Angeles restaurant. He also maintains his Web site: www.foods4dudes.com.

He’s considering a move to New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, or somewhere in the South—possibly Nashville—to resume his restaurant work.

Stay tuned for Eddie Gilbert’s next 15 minutes of fame.

edited by Mark Berends; Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives; Dale Ballou, associate professor of public policy and education; and Herbert J. Walberg, Routledge, April 2009.

What difference do schools of choice make? A new book from the National Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt explores that question from a variety of angles. The book brings together top research on major forms of school choice, including charter schools, vouchers, home-schooling, magnet schools, private schools, virtual schools, supplementary education services and tuition tax credits. The chapters explore choice from a range of perspectives–historical, political, sociological, economic, legal and psychological–at schools in this country and abroad.

Teach the Way the Brain Learns: Curriculum Themes Build Neuron Networks

by Madlon T. Laster, MA’67, Rowman and Littlefield Education, June 2009.

Teach the Way the Brain Learns discusses organizing learning experiences under themes. Once the brain has stored basic concepts in the curriculum, the storing-by-association system of the brain attaches new information to those basic concepts, building new ones as students have learning experiences that involve them in integrated subject matter. This book provides ways for teachers to link subjects and areas of learning for various teaching situations and takes readers from simple correlation through using published thematic units now available, on to developing their own interdisciplinary themes or developing themes with other colleagues.

Late Winter

by Bill Brown, lecturer in English education, Iris Press, 2008.

The idea of home, the magic of story and the healing power of nature inform the poems in Late Winter. These poems often mine the darkness of loss, war and our culture’s constant barrage of status and style. Even so “a closed heart can’t greet a winter sky. Even a rain puddle is filled with it, and a horse trough, and the slow current of creeks.” Late Winter opens with a search for home. By the book’s end, Brown believes that, with the power of memory
and love, home can be born like a covenant in each of us, and that “some ancient hope, like winter light, is allied with the gravity of stars.”

The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World

by Anthony Rao, PhD’89, and Michelle Seaton, William Morrow, August 2009.

Recognizing why young boys have more struggles early on, how their development is different than girls, and how these natural differences make early school experiences challenging, this guide to raising boys into happy and healthy young men urges parents, educators, pediatricians, psychologists and other developmental experts to reevaluate and radically alter how to deal with young boys. It teaches parents how to rear their sons with respect for their natural development, thus giving them the best shot at growing into confident and healthy men ready to make unique contributions to
the world.

George Etta Brinkley Cohen climbed these marble stairs to her apartment on the second floor of Cohen Memorial for three years, from the time the building was finished in 1927 until her death in 1930. It is said that her spirit inhabits the structure.

The building first housed the Peabody fine arts department and following that, Vanderbilt art studio classes until the new Bronson Ingram Studio Arts building opened. The construction of an addition and the building’s first renovation in 50 years have enabled the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, the Department of the History of Art and the Department of Classical Studies to take residence . . . in addition to Mrs. Cohen’s ghost.

“We found that comparing different ways to solve a problem helped middle-school students become more flexible problem solvers and better understand the concepts behind the methods,” Rittle-Johnson said.

Rittle-Johnson

Rittle-Johnson and her colleague and co-author, Jon Star, assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, also found that comparing different solution methods was more effective than comparing different problems solved using the same solution. Overall, students should not just learn one way to solve a math problem; rather, they should learn multiple ways and be encouraged to compare the benefits and drawbacks of each, she said.

The findings are summarized in two studies, one recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology and the other in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

“In a past study, we found that seventh graders who compared two different ways to solve equations were both more accurate and more flexible in their equation solving. In our recent studies, we found similar benefits for fifth graders learning about estimation,” Rittle-Johnson said.

Rittle-Johnson has also co-authored a study finding that students benefit more from being taught the concepts behind math problems rather than the exact procedures to solve the problems. The findings offer teachers new insights on how best to shape math instruction to have the greatest impact on student learning.

The research by Rittle-Johnson and Percival Matthews, a Peabody doctoral candidate, was published recently in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

“Teaching children the basic concept behind math problems was more useful than teaching children a procedure for solving the problems. These children gave better explanations and learned more,” Rittle-Johnson said.

“This adds to a growing body of research illustrating the importance of teaching children concepts as well as having them practice solving problems.”
In math class, teachers typically demonstrate a procedure for solving a problem and then have children practice solving related problems, often with minimal explanation for why things work.

“With conceptual instruction, teachers explain a problem’s underlying structure. That type of instruction enables kids to solve the problems without having been taught specific procedures and also to understand more about how problems work,” Matthews said. “When you just show them how to do the problem they can solve it, but not necessarily understand what it is about. With conceptual instruction, they are able to come up with the procedure on their own.”

The study also examined whether having the students explain their solution to problems helped improve their learning. To test this, the researchers used the conceptual teaching approach with all students, and had one group explain their solution while the other did not. They found no discernable difference in performance between the two groups. While self-explanation has been found to be beneficial in previous studies, Rittle-Johnson and Matthews found that when the students were given a limited time to solve the problem, the benefit disappeared. This led them to suggest that part of the benefit of self-explanation may come from the extra time a student spends thinking about that particular problem.

“Self-explanation took more time, which left less time for practice solving the problems,” Matthews said. “When time is unlimited, self-explanation gives students more time to repair faulty mental models. We found conceptual explanation may do the same thing and make self-explanation less useful.”
Rittle-Johnson is an investigator in the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development and in the Peabody Learning Sciences Institute. Research for both studies was funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Convocation marking founding of the John F. Kennedy Center in 1965. From left, Governor Clement, Rose Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and Sargent Shriver

The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center celebrated the life of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, lifelong champion of persons with intellectual disabilities and founder of Special Olympics, who died August 11 at age 88.

The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center is one of 14 Eunice Kennedy Shriver Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Centers (IDDRCs) supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The NICHD and its IDDRC national network were renamed in honor of Mrs. Shriver in March 2008 in recognition of the impact that she had for almost five decades on the lives of individuals with developmental disabilities and their families. Her vision and unrelenting efforts helped to establish the NICHD in 1962. Mrs. Shriver was a member of NICHD’s first advisory council, and it was under its guidance that the IDDRCs were established.

“The Kennedy and Shriver families were essential to the founding of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center,” said Elisabeth Dykens, director of the center. “Named in honor of President John Kennedy, ours was the second founded, made possible not only by a federal construction grant but also by matching gifts from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation and Peabody College. Rose Kennedy, Sargent Shriver, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver all attended the Convocation marking our center’s founding on May 29, 1965. The Kennedys and Shrivers have never wavered in their commitment to and advocacy for persons with intellectual and other developmental disabilities.”

Special education graduate student Karin Sandmel works with students from Currey Ingram Academy in Nashville who participated in a writing camp held on the Peabody campus in June.

James Fraser, right, associate professor of human and organizational development, testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity on July 29. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters invited Fraser to testify. Fraser’s testimony included his research on public housing, recommendations on federal public housing policy and management, community building, and the future of public housing stock. Fraser studies urban redevelopment, particularly how cities remake themselves in response to globalization, and how citizens participate in these efforts.

The research by Judy Garber, professor of psychology at Peabody and professor of psychiatry, was published in the June 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Garber presented the findings at a JAMA media briefing in New York City June 2.

Garber

Garber and her colleagues worked with 316 at-risk teens in the study. Approximately half of the teens were randomly assigned to an eight-week cognitive behavior group program in which they were taught problem-solving skills and ways to identify and challenge unrealistic and overly negative thoughts. The researchers found that the group in the cognitive behavior program had an 11 percent lower incidence of depression than the group that did not receive the intervention.

The second key finding was that those within the cognitive behavior group who had a currently depressed parent were three times more likely to experience a bout of depression than their cohorts in the group who did not have a currently depressed parent.

“Current parental depression could be a marker for several, non-mutually exclusive factors such as higher levels of stress in the family, more chronic or severe parental depression, and/or greater genetic vulnerability,” Garber said. “It is likely that a combination of these and other factors are involved. We are in the process of examining possible correlates of current parental depression.”

Garber and her colleagues suggest clinicians working with depressed parents should also inquire about their children’s well-being, and vice versa.
Only about 25 percent of depressed youth receive treatment and at least 20 percent develop recurrent, persistent and chronic depression that is very difficult to treat. Teenagers who experience depressions can have trouble with schoolwork, relationships, substance abuses and are at higher risk of suicide. Adolescent-onset depression also often predicts chronic depression in adulthood.

Garber is an investigator in the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development.

A related report from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine argues that health and social service professionals who care for adults with depression should not only tackle their clients’ physical and mental health but also detect and prevent possible spillover effects on their children. To achieve this new family-focused model of depression care, federal and state agencies, nonprofits and the private sector will have to experiment with nontraditional ways of organizing, paying for and delivering services, the committee that wrote the report said.

Compas

“This report is designed to place the problem of depression and its effects on parents and children on the national health care agenda,” said report co-author Bruce Compas, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Peabody. “The report summarizes research that documents the adverse effects of parental depression on children’s mental health and outlines an agenda for research and health care services for the prevention of mental health problems in children of parents with depression.”

Emerging evidence for effective preventive interventions is highlighted, including two separate preventive interventions for children of depressed parents tested in randomized clinical trials supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and conducted at Peabody College and other locations (one of which is Garber’s study mentioned above).

Major depressive disorder affects 16 percent of Americans in their lifetime, and young parents are at particularly high risk.

It is estimated that 7.5 million parents in the U.S. suffer from depression, affecting more than 15 million children who live with these parents.

Children of depressed parents are at four times greater risk to develop depression and as many as 75 percent of these children develop some form of mental health problem. Effective tools and strategies exist to treat and prevent depression, but only one-third of adult sufferers get treatment.

For more information on Garber’s research: www.jamamedia.org.
Full report by NRC: www.iom.edu/?ID=69567

Associate Dean Timothy Caboni with Peabody junior Wyatt Smith, Vanderbilt Student Government president, at Peabody’s barbecue welcoming new graduate and professional students to campus in August.

Montgomery Bell Academy football player Fitz Lassing helps Susan Gray School student John Cobb try on equipment as Sophia Nyman looks on. MBA and Pearl Cohn High School competed in the 59th Annual Vanderbilt Orthopaedics Clinic Bowl Classic on Aug. 22, which benefited the Susan Gray School. Student football players from both schools made several visits to the school to develop a deeper appreciation for the game’s impact.

Clark

Douglas Clark, associate professor of science education in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Clark, who received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2000, comes to Peabody from Arizona State University.

Sun-Joo Cho, assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology and Human Development. Cho, who received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2007, completed post-doctoral studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
Laurie Cutting, associate professor of special education in the Department of Special Education. Cutting, who holds a Patricia and Rodes Hart Chair in the department, received her Ph.D. from Northwestern in 1999. She comes to Peabody from the Johns Hopkins University.

Engel

Mimi Engel, assistant professor of public policy and education in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations. Engel received her Ph.D. from Northwestern in 2008.

Deborah D. Hatton, associate professor of special education in the Department of Special Education. Hatton, who will lead the visual impairments program, received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995. She comes to Peabody from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Horn

Ilana Horn, associate professor of mathematics education in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Horn received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002. She comes to Peabody from the University of Washington.

Joseph McLaughlin, associate clinical professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology and Human Development. McLaughlin received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt in 1979 and has been in private practice.

Pratim Sengupta, assistant professor of science education in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Sengupta received his Ph.D. from Northwestern in 2009.

Turner

William L. Turner, professor of human and organizational development in the Department of Human and Organizational Development. Turner, who holds the Betts Chair of Education and Human Development, received his Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic and State University in 1990. He comes to Peabody from the University of Minnesota.

Loss

Christopher Loss, assistant professor of public policy and education, has accepted an invitation to serve as a fellow for the Teagle Foundation’s new National Forum on the Future of the Liberal Arts. The forum is a three-year program designed to identify and prepare a core national group of emerging academic leaders to guide the future of the liberal arts. Loss specializes in 20th century American history with an emphasis on the social, political and policy history of American higher education. The Teagle Foundation is a philanthropic organization with a focus on engaging students in liberal arts education.

Saegert

Susan Saegert, professor of human and organizational development, received the American Psychological Association’s Committee on Socioeconomic Status 2009 Award for Distinguished Leadership at the association’s annual conference in August. Stephen N. Elliott, professor of special education, received the Senior Scientist Award from Division 16 of the American Psychological Association at the conference.

Elliott

Saegert is director of Peabody’s Center for Community Studies. Her research involves affordable housing, the mortgage crisis, how to improve distressed housing and neighborhoods, women and the environment, crowding, urban stress and the role of housing in health. Elliott, who holds the Dunn Family Chair in Educational and Psychological Assessment, is director of the Learning Sciences Institute and the interdisciplinary program in educational psychology.

David Lubinski, professor of psychology and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center investigator, and Greg Park, Peabody graduate student, each won awards from the Mensa Educational Research Foundation. Lubinski won the Mensa Award for Research Excellence, Senior Investigator, for the 2006 psychological science paper, “Tracking exceptional human capital over two decades,” of which he was the lead author.

Park won the Mensa Award for Research Excellence, Junior Investigator, for the 2007 psychological science paper, “Contrasting intellectual patterns for creativity in the arts and sciences: Tracking intellectually precocious youth over 25 years,” of which he was the lead author.

The Mensa Educational Research Foundation gives out six awards for research excellence for a scientific article each year, three to senior investigators and three to junior investigators.

Dennis Davis was selected to receive a 2009 Adolescent Literacy Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Education. Davis is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Teaching and Learning, development learning and diversity program and a member of ExpERT.

Registering for VUconnect is easy. You’ll create your user ID and password using a 4-digit VUconnect code. If Vanderbilt has your e-mail address on file, you should have received this code in June via e-mail. Then go to www.vuconnect.com/register to get started. (Your code will help you create a password; it is not your password.)

Registered Dore2Dore users will need to create a new user ID and password for VUconnect. The user name and password you had for Dore2Dore will not automatically register you for VUconnect, and Dore2Dore is no longer active. Biographical information from Dore2Dore has been automatically transferred to VUconnect. Alumni with an @alumni.vanderbilt.edu e-mail address will continue to have e-mail forwarding service. Users of OwenConnect, the Owen Graduate School of Management’s online community, will need to also register for VUconnect to gain access to this comprehensive Vanderbilt online community.

Vanderbilt is committed to the privacy of its alumni, and registration for VUconnect is only open to Vanderbilt alumni and students.

Questions? Email vuconnect@vanderbilt.edu or call the Help Desk at (615) 322-5578. Help is available weekdays 8:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Central time.

“The six professors receiving these chairs are high-impact individuals who make important contributions to the practice of education or psychology,” Dean Benbow said. “Rewarding them with an endowed chair is our way of recognizing their accomplishments and of signifying to the world that Peabody is a place where great intellects gather and interact.” Nineteen faculty members currently hold endowed chairs.

“This is a great moment for Peabody College,” said Provost Richard McCarty, whom Benbow credited with making the new chairs possible. “Everyone at Vanderbilt celebrates your accomplishments, and we are inspired by your success.” The new chairs were awarded to:

Bickman

Len Bickman, Betts Chair. Bickman is professor of psychology and psychiatry, director of the Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement and an investigator in the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. Bickman is a nationally recognized leader in program evaluation and research on mental health services for children and adolescents.

He has published more than 15 books and monographs and 180 articles and chapters.

Cole

David Cole, Patricia and Rodes Hart Chair. Cole is chair of the Department of Psychology and Human Development, professor of psychology and an investigator in the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. Cole’s scholarly interests encompass developmental psychopathology and childhood depression. He also studies the assessment of childhood disorders and the prediction of adolescent suicide.

Ellen Goldring, Patricia and Rodes Hart Chair. Goldring is professor of educational policy and leadership and chair of the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations. Her research focuses on understanding and shaping school reform efforts that connect families, communities and schools and the changing roles of school leaders. She is editor of a new book, From the Courtroom to the Classroom: The Shifting Landscape of School Desegregation.

Guthrie

James Guthrie, Patricia and Rodes Hart Chair of Educational Leadership and Policy. Guthrie is professor of public policy and education, director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy, executive director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt and served as chair of the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations for 10 years. Guthrie is a widely acknowledged expert on school finance, legal issues of equity and adequacy and education reform strategies.

Rich Lehrer, Frank W. Mayborn Chair. Lehrer, professor of science education, is an internationally recognized scholar in the field of mathematics and science education. His research, which he conducts in direct partnership with kindergarten through middle school teachers, applies knowledge of young children’s thinking about space and geometry to teach mathematic and scientific concepts built upon everyday experiences.

Joseph F. Murphy, Frank W. Mayborn Chair. Murphy is professor of education and associate dean of Peabody College. He is a nationally recognized scholar in the field of school administration and a leading advocate for school leadership reforms. He has authored or co-authored 15 books and two major monographs in this area and edited another 12 books. In February 2009, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards announced that he will serve as chairman of a steering committee to develop an advanced certification for educational leaders.

Also at the meeting, Kimberly Paulsen, associate professor of the practice in special education, was awarded the annual Peabody Award for Excellence, this year presented for advising and service. The 2009-2010 Faculty Council was also announced. It includes Donna Ford, Brian Griffith, Rogers Hall, Stephen Heyneman, Craig Smith, Rich Milner, Paul Speer, Dan Levin and Georgene Troseth.

“William Troutt is one of American higher education’s most talented leaders,” Dean Benbow said. “His leadership of Belmont University was simply brilliant, and now he is steadily moving Rhodes College up the ranks of national liberal arts colleges. He is an intelligent and charismatic leader and a role model for college presidents nationally.”

Troutt earned his Ph.D. in higher education from Peabody in 1978, one year prior to Peabody’s merger with Vanderbilt. He received his master’s degree from the University of Louisville (1972) and his bachelor’s degree from Union University (1971) in Jackson, Tenn.

Troutt served for 17 years as president of Belmont University in Nashville. At the time of his election to the Belmont presidency he was 32 and the youngest college president in America. Troutt was named president of Rhodes in 1999.

On being named Distinguished Alumnus, Troutt said, “I am so honored to receive this award. It is especially meaningful to return to Peabody at a time when it has just been recognized as our nation’s best.”

In April, Peabody was named the No. 1 graduate school of education in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.

Troutt also delivered the Commencement address as part of Peabody’s diploma awards ceremony for students receiving master’s or doctor of education degrees.

Troutt has written research articles for the Peabody Journal of Education, The Journal of Higher Education and New Directions for Institutional Research. He is currently completing a book on leadership.

Troutt and his wife, Carole, are the parents of Carole Ann Schmidt of Atlanta, Ga., and Jackson Cunliffe Troutt of Austin, Texas.

The National Science Board sets policy for the National Science Foundation and advises the president and Congress on national science and engineering research and education policy.

Benbow was nominated to the board by President George W. Bush and confirmed by Congress in 2006.

Chancellor Alexander Heard signs the historic Peabody-Vanderbilt merger agreement in the spring of 1979.

Alexander Heard, an adviser to three U.S. presidents who, as Vanderbilt’s fifth chancellor, guided the university smoothly through the stormy period of the 1960s and 1970s without the unrest and violence that afflicted many college campuses, died July 24 at his home after a long illness. He was 92.

“For more than 40 years, Alex Heard was a powerful presence at Vanderbilt University,” Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos said. “Through his intellect and calm demeanor, he raised Vanderbilt’s stature on the national stage during his 20-year administration. And even after he stepped down as chancellor he graciously made himself available to his successors for advice and guidance. I was gratefully one of the beneficiaries of his wisdom, and his loss is one I feel deeply.”

Under Heard’s leadership, Vanderbilt grew and prospered, adding three schools to the seven it already contained, including Peabody College.

“The Peabody merger with Vanderbilt was a huge event for both institutions, with long-lasting repercussions,” Dean Camilla Benbow said. “Chancellor Heard was highly sensitive to Peabody’s position and to his credit, the merger paid off. Alexander Heard had the foresight to see what an asset Peabody might become, and he took care to preserve those areas of greatest strength. The results today seem obvious, although at the time they were far more of a gamble. In retrospect, we can all be grateful to him.”

Heard had been serving as dean of the graduate school at the University of North Carolina when Vanderbilt tapped him for its top job in 1963, succeeding Harvie Branscomb. A giant in the field of political science, Heard was the recipient of 27 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities over the years and published numerous books on the presidential election process.

Heard is survived by his wife, Jean Keller Heard, and four children: Stephen, a Nashville attorney; Christopher, an acknowledgements coordinator for Vanderbilt’s development office; Frank, a Florida businessman; and Cornelia Heard, Valere Blair Potter Professor of Violin at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music; and two grandchildren: Alexander Michael Heard of Boca Raton, Fla., and George Alexander Meyer of Nashville.

A memorial service was held on July 29 in Benton Chapel on Vanderbilt’s campus. Donations may be made to the Alexander Heard Memorial Fund at Vanderbilt. By arrangement with the university, Heard’s ashes will be interred at Benton Chapel.

This fall we added nine new members to our faculty in positions across all five departments. Two of these outstanding scholars, Laurie Cutting (special education) and William Turner (human and organizational development) hold named endowed chairs. Bruce McCandliss, another endowed chair holder who joined us in January, is profiled in this issue. Our ability to recruit faculty of national repute is just one of the outcomes of Vanderbilt’s Shape the Future campaign.

Another campaign result is support for student financial aid. Vanderbilt’s commitment to replace need-based loans with grants is one of the factors that led to a record number of applications for undergraduate admission last year. The result was the most selective class of entering students in the university’s history. Proactive recruitment strategies and Peabody’s high reputation as a graduate school have resulted in similar increases in the number and quality of students in our master’s and doctoral programs.

Our goal as a college is to ensure that Peabody students—from undergraduates to doctoral candidates—have the best possible learning experience while here. Our agenda for 2009-10 focuses on issues of quality, on the creation of rich learning environments for our students, on enhancing the characteristics that make Peabody distinctive, and on translating excellence into contributions to the world around us.

Evidence of those contributions can be seen in the work of Professors Dale Farran, David Dickinson, Ann Kaiser, Carin Neitzel, Debbie Rowe and Georgene Troseth, whose research on early language development is described here. All of them are having positive effects on the well-being and learning of children during early childhood, which has long been an area of emphasis at Peabody.

A strong sense of community is another defining characteristic of the college. Social media have certainly created many more spaces for Peabody students, faculty, alumni, parents and friends to communicate or simply to keep up with everything happening here on campus or around the world. Readers of the Reflector may wish to follow us on Facebook or Twitter. YouTube makes the intellectual life of Peabody and Vanderbilt available long after graduation, while LinkedIn is presenting new possibilities for career development.

As always, I am grateful for the interest and support for our work shown by all those who care deeply about Peabody College.

Camilla P. Benbow
Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development

Bonnie Arant Ertelt, Editor
Donna Pritchett, Art Director
Amy Blackman, Designer
Lew Harris, Assistant Editor
Nelson Bryan, Class Notes Editor
Lacy Tite, Web Edition Design & Development

Contributors: Kurt Brobeck, GayNelle Doll, Jennie Edwards, Kara Furlong, Jennifer Johnston, Liz Latt, Camilla Meek, Melanie Moran, Jim Patterson, Jan Read and Cindy Thomsen

Camilla Persson Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development

Timothy Caboni, Associate Dean for External Relations and Professional Education

Kerry McCartney, Associate Dean for Development and Alumni Relations

©2009 Vanderbilt University

On the cover: Children in Project Lift Off, a pre-kindergarten summer camp developed by Peabody professors in partnership with the Downtown YMCA of Middle Tennessee, have fun while boosting their language and literacy skills for kindergarten in the fall. Read more about Peabody’s pre-K research (p. 14) and Project Lift Off (p. 16) in this issue. Photo by John Russell; artwork by Ruby Blackman and Phoebe and Isabelle Robertson.

The Peabody Reflector is published biannually by Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development in cooperation with the Vanderbilt Office of DAR Communications. The magazine is mailed free of charge to all Peabody alumni, parents of current Peabody students, and to friends of Peabody who make an annual gift of $25 or more to the College. Correspondence, including letters to the editor and Class Notes submissions, should be mailed to: The Peabody Reflector, Office of DAR Communications, PMB 407703, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37240-7703 or by email to reflector@vanderbilt.edu.

Innovative developmental cognitive neuroscientist Bruce McCandliss, winner of a presidential early career award and principal investigator for several National Institutes of Health grants, has joined Peabody College to continue his research into educational neuroscience, the study of how a child’s brain might influence educational experience and how educational experiences might influence a child’s brain.

McCandliss joined the Peabody College faculty as Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Psychology and Human Development earlier this year. His specific research focus—looking at how brain mechanisms influence performance and how teaching drives changes in the brain—may have a profound impact on how children, especially struggling learners, are taught.

His appointment complements Peabody’s existing strengths in combining teaching and learning theory with scientific research. “Peabody faculty members have long worked at the forefront of developmental science,” says Camilla Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development. “As researchers increasingly rely on new tools and technologies to advance our understanding about how humans grow and learn, the addition of Bruce McCandliss to our ranks will ensure that Peabody continues to make valuable contributions to the knowledge base. We are delighted to have him with us.”

McCandliss, 43, holds a doctorate in psychology with a special emphasis on cognitive neuroscience. He has also obtained advanced post-doctoral training in the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activity underlying reading and language development in children. He comes to Vanderbilt from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, where he was one of the founding faculty members of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology. For the last decade, he has focused on how children’s brains activate when working on specific tasks, how their brain structures influence their learning and how teaching methods can alter brain function.

As a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, McCandliss focuses his research on how brain development and cognitive development relate to each other. He uses fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging in his research, brain-imaging tools that tell him how individual differences in brain structure impact learning in particular domains, like reading or mathematics.

“Vanderbilt is the ideal place to do this research because here I am at Peabody, the best school of education in the United States, and the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science—this amazing place with state-of-the-art imaging science and faculty—is right across the street,” he says. “It’s the ideal opportunity to bring together research on education and neuroscience.”

McCandliss has applied a scientific approach to measuring mental ability since his early years as an undergraduate honors student in the late 1980s. “I’m interested in how individual differences in brain structure impact learning in particular domains, like reading or mathematics,” he says. “We must keep in mind that it was only 5,000 years ago that humans started connecting language to letters, and this transformed our world as well as our minds.

“Creating new abilities such as reading and mathematics in a child’s mind and brain via education may be one of the most fundamental enhancements of intellectual activity and capacity and has a profound impact on how the brain organizes language and thought. We are now able to study this by combining social science (psychology and education) with natural science (biology and physics that enable brain imaging). Together these create a new field of educational neuroscience.”

His work was recognized in 2006 when he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor given by the U.S. government to outstanding researchers in the early part of their independent careers. The award recognized McCandliss’s research into the biological basis for language development, developmental disorders such as dyslexia, and his approach to using insights of cognitive neuroscience, including brain imaging, to help develop methods to alleviate reading disabilities.

His research shows that tailored educational techniques can improve reading skills in children, and his laboratory research with adults shows how different teaching strategies can lead to different patterns in brain activity. He collaborated with educational researchers to co-develop a software program called Reading Works that helped struggling young readers in Pittsburgh and New York City inner-city public schools jump more than a grade level in reading ability in just a few months. His more recent work has begun to unravel how we can understand the remarkable differences that exist in how easily children learn to read through understanding the differences in how children’s brains are wired.

By using MRI scans to measure “white matter tracts”—the large masses of fibers that connect one part of the brain to another—he is able to relate anatomical differences that exist in specific brain structures to differences in how well children progress through the task of learning to read. His future research directly examines a question he is quite excited to learn the answer to: How does the process of educating the brain, via schooling activities, change the structure of the brain?

In addition to the PECASE project, McCandliss brings to Vanderbilt several million dollars in federally funded research projects from NIH, as well as a recently awarded $1 million NSF study into how first-graders learn math.

“My most recent project is looking at brain-based research focused on understanding how children differ in math-related skills before school entry and how these skills change as the results of schooling activities,” he said. “The three-year study will focus on first graders and how they learn math during this critical year.”

Why first graders? Because first grade is a year of incredible growth in students’ classroom engagement in reading, math skills and writing. McCandliss is in the process of working with Nashville-area schools to recruit students for the study.

In

a paper by McCandliss and several other scientists published in Developmental Science in 2006, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were used to illustrate that among children of equivalent phonological skill, yet diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, a child’s experience affects the relationship between language skills and reading-related brain activity.

The main question in the grant is: How do individual differences in children’s brain mechanisms for number abilities relate to gains in learning first-grade mathematics, and how might first-grade instruction drive changes in such brain mechanisms? It’s the duality of that question that interests McCandliss.

“I want to look at how the process of learning and using symbols such as numbers and letters changes the white matter tracts in their brains and to explore how brain activity reorganizes over the course of learning,” he says. “Children are so incredibly variable, both in terms of how quickly they come to master educational material such as math and reading and in their brain structures. My new research will try to measure these differences at the beginning and end of the school year to predict outcomes and also capture the impact of learning experiences on brain structures.

“Are we talking about a future in which every single child gets a brain scan?” he continues. “No, of course not. We hope to use this research to gain basic insights into principles of learning and what encourages learning, and hopefully we can apply those insights to enhance education to help all children develop skills in these key areas of mathematics and reading and help them perform these key skills even better.”

The overall goal of McCandliss’ research is to understand how reading and math skills develop and also how children develop the ability to pay attention so that they can learn.

“I have three overall goals in trying to bring together research on education and neuroscience,” McCandliss says. “The first is to understand the development of reading skills from the basics to full content comprehension. Second, I want to study how we learn math, which is a culturally developed system to understand numbers, space and time. How does learning this system lead to changes in specific brain structures and expand our mental abilities? We don’t really know that yet.

“Third, I want to learn about children’s general attention skills and how these play out in learning and education. We need to understand attention as a basic cognitive skill that differs from child to child, and is engaged differently by different educational approaches and activities. Attention is the gateway to learning, as generally, we learn most effectively those things that we pay attention to.”

Across each of these domains, a key aspect of this research is understanding why children differ and for McCandliss, educational neuroscience gets at the heart of this question by bringing natural science observations of brain mechanisms into the mix.

“We’re starting to learn how children differ within particular educational domains, such as reading and mathematics, and how such differences may be linked to variation in brain structures and patterns of brain activation,” he says. “The chance to explore these topics in children as they progress through education is a really exciting opportunity, and a really exciting time in science.

“The hope here is that we will be able to adapt our educational approaches to these new insights about the individual needs of students. For example, for a struggling reader who is having problems decoding and mapping words, we can use brain imaging to help answer the question, ‘Why do they struggle?’ And in answering this question we can focus new research on strategies to help them overcome that struggle.”

Her findings helped lead to the establishment of Head Start, a national school readiness program.

Today, language development for preschoolers is once again making national headlines with President Obama pledging to devote billions of dollars to early childhood education. It would be the largest federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965, according to The New York Times.

Many states are putting money into pre-K education as well. Tennessee’s Gov. Phil Bredesen instituted voluntary pre-K in 2005, channeling $213 million into a program that serves 18,000 young children with thousands more on the waiting list.

Current research by early language development specialists at Peabody into curricula, programs and methods that work continues to provide a vital foundation for educators and decision makers.

Gray, a developmental psychologist and Peabody professor for whom Peabody College’s Susan Gray School is named, focused on children at risk for school failure because of poverty, and that effort continues among Peabody
researchers such as Dale Farran.

Other early childhood education researchers at Peabody search for new ways to help children with motor or cognitive delays, autism, congenital defects such as cleft palates, children who learned another language first, and typically developing children who have slipped through the cracks.

There are ongoing large-scale outcome studies involving multiple school systems and smaller scale experiments designed to find out how children learn language and why and what works best. All are equally important to informing future public policy decisions, researchers say.

“Sometimes research does not uphold what you might advocate,” said Farran, professor of education and psychology. “That doesn’t mean that we stop advocating ways to treat children well or stop caring about children and thinking about how to make their lives better.”

Starting young

Baby instructional videos are a good example of a well-intentioned teaching tool aimed at young children that doesn’t pan out.

In Georgene Troseth’s lab, a toddler watches a video of Troseth hiding Pooh Bear under a table. But when led into the same room, configured in exactly the same way, he can’t find the stuffed animal.

That was an early example of groundbreaking research findings by Troseth, associate professor of psychology, and others showing that while television shows and videos can serve an educational function for children older than three, those aimed at children younger than three are not effective teaching tools. Babies and toddlers don’t understand that what they see in a video represents something in real life.

“What I’m looking at is how and under what conditions very young children begin to realize that nonlinguistic symbols represent something else,” Troseth said.

Troseth’s current research explores whether videos are effective teaching tools for children with autism. She has ongoing research to find out how videos might better be used for instruction, such as training parents and teachers to stop videos to ask questions and launch discussions, much as they would when reading a book.

For children under three, parents provide critical feedback and narration as children develop early language skills, say Troseth and others at Peabody.

“Parents are children’s first language teachers and most parents are very good teachers,” said Ann Kaiser, professor of special education and Susan Gray Professor of Education and Human Development. “When parents’ teaching doesn’t work, it’s usually because the child needs a different kind of teaching or more support to learn language.”

Kaiser directs several projects aimed at teaching strategies to parents to help support their children’s language development. She also is interested in finding ways to identify and help children with potential language learning difficulties before they reach kindergarten. Kaiser’s new research project targets children in the 24- to 36-month age range who are typically developing cognitively but have delayed language production and comprehension.

“This is a population of kids who don’t qualify for early intervention because they only have language delays. The usual prescription is: Wait and see. Some of those kids will be just fine, and some will not be just fine,” Kaiser said.

Generally, children who enter school with lower language abilities don’t do as well in school as their peers with typical language—but that’s not true for every child, Kaiser said. Some catch up to their peers after a period of time because they learn from the language-rich environment. Identification of those who won’t catch up without systematic early intervention is critical.

“Persistent low-language kids over time are more likely to have reading problems,” Kaiser said. “So we want to figure out: Who are these children? How can we predict which kids will have persistent language problems over time? And how can we get intervention for them earlier?”

“It’s all about efficiency,” Kaiser said. “How can we, in a way that’s developmentally appropriate, accelerate development for these kids? Can we get them back on a trajectory that looks like typical development by the time they get to kindergarten so they can take advantage of the learning environment and run with it?”

Language talk

In one project, Kaiser and David Dickinson, professor of education and chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning, are following 445 children in the Head Start program in Birmingham, Ala.

Some of those classrooms have implemented a curriculum co-authored by Dickinson called Opening the World of Learning (OWL), which provides guidance to teachers helping children build vocabulary and basic literacy skills.

Some of the classrooms that used the OWL curriculum also use Kaiser’s Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) for children with lower language abilities. EMT was developed primarily for children with significant language delays such as children with autism and Down syndrome. It has been used in other studies with children at risk for language delays.

“One interesting thing that we’re doing is seeing if we can identify critical ingredients in classroom interactions that relate to children’s growth” with a focus on what teachers are doing that works well, Dickinson said.

The researchers have found that explicit talk about vocabulary is associated with faster learning. He noted, “Getting teachers to talk explicitly about language requires a real shift in the standard ways of teaching and interacting with young children.”

While it can be challenging to demonstrate that a particular program substantially affects children’s language learning, Dickinson said new findings from a study combining results from eight different programs that served more than 3,000 children and used OWL have shown evidence for the first time that specific conceptual teaching practices aimed at 4-year-olds have measurable impact on language skills by the end of fourth grade.

An increased impact

Debbie Rowe, associate professor of early childhood education, and others have been studying ways to help preschool children learn language and master other tasks by developing better writing skills, which some research has shown are just as important to school success as early reading skills.

Rowe and Dickinson are co-investigators on a project for Early Reading First (ERF), a Bush administration initiative designed to create “spires
of excellence” in preschool classrooms. The project uses both the OWL curriculum and strategies for integrating writing experiences into the children’s daily work and play. A third component targets

English language learners, who make up about a third of the classroom population of the study. That project, in partnership with the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, the Nashville Public Library and the YMCA, involves 13 preschool classes.

The graduates of the preschool classroom attend a summer camp at the Y designed to provide fun social interactions and re-expose them to learning opportunities before they begin kindergarten (see “Project Lift Off,” p.16). This is an important component for children heading to kindergarten from homes where English is not the primary language.

As part of the project, parents are provided with materials to help enrich learning at home. The project also shares critical data regarding the students’ progress with teachers on an ongoing basis. It is the kind of data that has been used to evaluate the OWL curriculum in at least nine other programs.

“We have seen very encouraging patterns of increasing impact across the range of language and literacy,” Dickinson said. “This doesn’t mean this curriculum is what’s critical. It is part of the picture of adequate funding for sustained coaching and attention to quality as well as ongoing evaluation and assessment as part of the whole ERF approach.”

Carin Neitzel, assistant professor of early childhood education, has worked with Rowe and Dickinson on the ERF project and with Rowe in conducting a three-year longitudinal study of children ages 2 to 5. The study aims to find ways to engage children in writing at an earlier age.

While the conventional wisdom is that children learn to read first and then write, contemporary research shows that preschoolers can learn “in a much more holistic way,” Rowe said.

“Kids learn how to write the same way they learn to talk,” Rowe said. “If we invite children to write words and respond to their meanings, they make amazing discoveries about how print works.”

Tools and training are key

Training teachers and providing them with tools, such as curricula, is critical to the success of any pre-K program, Farran said. “These curricula provide a way of organizing the year and making it logical for children,” Farran said

Farran and Neitzel both are interested in whether children taught to be self-regulated learners in preschool fare better later on, with more success in learning language and other skills. There is a growing body of research about children who are self-regulated learners, who tend to know when it’s appropriate to ask for help and are able to follow directions and sustain attention Farran said. She and her colleague, Mark Lipsey of the Peabody Research Institute, have launched a study in some Tennessee and North Carolina preschools that seeks to determine how to encourage that style of learning.

“Those skills are almost as predictive as early reading,” Farran said. But better outcome measures are needed as well as stricter measurement guidelines, which are part of the current study.

Farran is among researchers at Peabody who welcome the renewed emphasis on pre-K education. But she approaches the subject with caution.

“As popular as universal pre-K is, we have very little in the way of longitudinal studies,” she said. “A lot of what we rely on for informing legislation came from small studies in the 60s. The issue is how you go to scale once we find things that work in very small environments. We have a lot of scaling up going on right now.”

Farran and Lipsey directed a recently completed study that followed pre-K children in six rural Middle Tennessee counties through the third grade to find out if children using specialized language learning curriculums scored higher on standardized tests. The children were taught in public schools by licensed teachers in quality facilities using three different groupings of materials: a literacy-based curriculum, a development-based curriculum and what Farran termed “business as usual.”

Farran found that children provided the literacy or development curricula by teachers trained to use them fared better than those exposed to more traditional preschool methods. Rural children, even from poor families, tend to have better “entering skills” than children in cities. The next step is to carefully look at urban school systems, she said, where the poverty, overstimulation, grit and chaos of cities creates a more challenging learning environment for young children.

Lipsey and Farran have received funding to evaluate Tennessee’s pre-K system longitudinally to determine whether quality preschool curricula have an effect on standardized testing by third grade (see sidebar, right).

“This is very hard to do. Tennessee’s system is not universal and there are fewer preschools than children who want them,” she said, adding that enlisting local school systems in randomized studies is difficult.

The study has two parts, one of which relates to practices in the classroom and the other to literacy education.

Farran said it’s important not to commit to one kind of research, curriculum or technique. She holds up Susan Gray as a model of someone who cared about children and constantly thought about ways to make their lives better.

“When you go back to Susan Gray and the work that she did in the ’60s here, there’s a long, stellar history that we need to maintain,” Farran said. “She was an incredible combination of a serious researcher and a staunch advocate.”

Performance pay for teachers is indeed a viable way of improving the very stature of the profession. It has long been felt that undifferentiated, lock-step salary schedules serve equally well as disincentives. Highly motivated individuals who believe their growth and development will be impeded by preset pay scales are not likely to consider education as their career of choice. In providing identical salaries to all personnel with like degrees and like experience, districts simply succeed in rewarding mediocrity. Equitability may shoot for that proverbial golden mean, but in reality, the best teacher gets no more than the slacker. The process could be compared to giving everyone in class a “C.”

Master teachers need performance-based remuneration. This is why Matthew Springer’s report deserves widespread recognition. Paying teachers for their performance can also help retention.

As Springer points out regarding a study in question, “The probability of turnover increased sharply among teachers receiving no bonus. . . .”
There is no denying that past attempts to reward master teachers have met with numerous difficulties. Assessment has always been a major stumbling block. Opponents of merit pay contend there is no way to judge performance objectively or to clearly quantify the end results of teaching. How then to determine the gifted and talented among the faculty? Sustainability of effort is yet another cause for concern.

As the Springer report suggests, however, we must not let the difficulties of the task deter us from providing incentives that could attract the best minds to the profession.

Robert F. Schambier, EdD’85
Peoria, Ariz.

More research by Springer on performance pay initiatives can be found at: http://snipurl.com/performpay

Lessons Learned

As parent of a first-year student whose child will be entering Vanderbilt this fall, I am trying to get a feel of what the atmosphere and environment is like there. Reading your article makes me feel more and more comfortable each day knowing there are faculty members [like Professor Sharon Shields] who love and enjoy the students.

Caroline Fofana
Dallas, Texas

What a wonderful example of intergenerational living and learning!

Marie Hardenbrook
Assistant Professor of the Practice of Secondary Education
Peabody College

Editor’s Note: The Rev. Dr. Alan Shields, affectionately known as “Pop” to members of The Commons community, died July 28. “What a life gift to have Alan Shields as my dad—and what a wonderful gift to be able to share the inaugural year of The Commons with him. We had a wonderful time here together, and he considered this community our family,” Sharon Shields said. “I will be forever grateful to Vanderbilt for affording us the privilege to live and serve together on this campus.”

On a mission

Thank you for the article about Jackie Page. I attended Peabody with her as well as being a friend in a local church group. She was so bright and an inspiration to all around her. What a wonderful mind and heart in a limited physical body!

Pam Cravens Hackleman
BS’63, MA’64
Houston, Texas

What a whirl

The photograph “Spring Whirl” by John Russell was striking and brought back vivid memories of my time at Peabody. The magazine is top quality; please keep up the good work!

Joan C. Fingon, EdD’90
Los Angeles, Calif.

Please extend my compliments to John Russell for this outstanding photograph. My daughter graduated from Vanderbilt in 2003 with a degree in human and organizational development, and I remember visiting on a day similar to the one pictured here, sharing lunch on one of the benches and thinking what a magnificent view it was. Now I have a photograph to view to help remind me of that pleasant day. If ever there would be a copy available to purchase, please let me know.

Kathleen Harlan
Terre Haute, Ind.

Editor’s Note: This photo, among many other Vanderbilt shots, is available for sale from Replay Photos at www.replayphotos.com/vanderbiltphotos/

Warren and Cathy Rice Gorrell have endowed two scholarships at Peabody–the Warren and Cathy Rice Gorrell Scholarship and the Gorrell-Rice Family Scholarship.

Warren Gorrell has always known that a great education is the first step toward success. Warren and his wife, Cathy, have made that first step a little easier for deserving Peabody students by endowing two scholarships.

“We were just so impressed by everything we saw at Vanderbilt while our daughter, Courtney, was there,” Warren says. “We believe that it’s incredibly important to make opportunities available to people who can’t afford them.” They have endowed the Warren and Catherine Rice Gorrell Scholarship and the Gorrell-Rice Family Scholarship.

“I understand that some people like to support bricks and mortar projects,” Cathy says. “But I would ask them to focus more on what’s happening inside the building—because if you can help a student get through school, it’s such a wonderful gift.”

Stefanie Tollefsen received a scholarship to Peabody as a result of the Gorrell family’s generosity.

Stefanie Tollefsen, Class of 2013, couldn’t agree more. The first-year student from Chicago is a beneficiary of the Gorrell’s generosity.

“I’m really honored to have this scholarship,” she says. “So many people want to come here, and I’m one of the lucky ones that got the chance.”

“We funded one four-year scholarship, and it was just so gratifying that we created the second one,” Cathy says.

“We felt like we were really making a difference, and when we asked each other if we should do it again, the answer was an easy yes.”

Vanderbilt’s expanded financial aid program is another factor in the Gorrell’s commitment to the school.

“It’s very compelling to support a program that reduces a student’s debt load. With the state of the economy, it’s more difficult for people to afford Vanderbilt,” Warren says. “This is a time when you can make a really big, really direct difference to someone.”

For Stefanie, who is majoring in human and organizational development, the scholarship makes it possible for her to experience that difference through the quality of her Vanderbilt education.

“Even though I don’t know exactly what I want to do,” Stefanie says, “I know that my Peabody degree will absolutely put me on the right path. I really want to do something I’m passionate about. I want to do something I love.”

“The theme running through a lot of social media is the idea of a conversation,” says Melanie Moran, associate director of the Vanderbilt News Service and director of Web communications at Vanderbilt. “Professional communication no longer exists in the form of an organization putting out news and just expecting people to eat it up. It is now two-way; audiences expect to be able to share their thoughts.

“Every student, faculty member, staff and neighbor of the university now can report about what we’re doing,” Moran says. “Conversations about Vanderbilt are taking place all the time online, which is different from the past, because these conversations are viewable, searchable, dynamic and ongoing.”

Tweet, tweet

Associate Dean for Professional Education and External Relations Timothy Caboni sees the power of social media in its ability to “provide us with opportunities to develop deeper relationships with our alumni and friends that otherwise would be impossible or highly unlikely.”

Current and former students are a large part of the more than 1,300 people following Caboni’s Twitter feed, which he uses to maintain relationships and share information among professional colleagues.

“I think it is remarkable that my former students are able to share with me—in real time—the things they are experiencing in their administrative positions at colleges and universities across the nation. It is humbling and rewarding to watch them make use of what they learned during their time here,” Caboni says.

“For prospective and current students who follow me on Twitter, I think it gives them a unique window into the daily life of an academic administrator and faculty member. Additionally, it demonstrates in a tangible way what is so unique about faculty/student interactions at Peabody and what makes us different from our competitor institutions.

“In addition to sharing with students articles I come across in my daily reading that I might not otherwise bring into the classroom,” Caboni says, “Twitter enables me to interact informally with advancement and fundraising practitioners at many other institutions who can use the resources I reference.”

Open face

Once a student-oriented social networking site, Facebook is now open to everyone. The site claims to have more than 250 million active users and is the most active social networking site. The fastest growing group of Facebook users is people 35 years and older.

The Peabody Facebook page was launched in January and is a place for communicating news stories and events to alumni, current students and anyone interested in following Peabody. Alumni can post responses or simply become a fan and receive updates.

Later this year, Peabody Career Development plans to offer special networking pages for alumni of specific programs such as organizational leadership and human resource development on LinkedIn, a social media site for professionals. These groups are planned to be a place where current students can contact and interact with program alumni.

“We believe that employers and Vanderbilt alumni want to connect with the well-educated graduate students of Peabody, and the LinkedIn groups are a central part of our strategy to get them together,” says Jeff Henley, director of Peabody Career Development.

Web users are not only interested in making connections, of course. Many want access to the intellectual content generated by colleges and universities. Alumni long used to attending lectures or panel discussions during reunions or at Homecoming can now access presentations by faculty or guest speakers whenever they wish.

Vanderbilt was one of the first universities in the nation to launch its own branded YouTube channel to present videos of significant events, and Peabody College has a section for its own faculty and guest speaker videos within the channel.

“YouTube has been really fantastic for getting our content out to a broad audience,” Moran says. “People share what they find with friends and colleagues.

“YouTube is easy to use, free, and it enables us to be creative in producing videos about things that are happening on campus, telling stories that might not otherwise be told.”

An avid user of social media, Caboni acknowledges that it has both benefits and limits. “As the audience for Peabody’s social media presence grows, we’ll be trying more ways to increase interactions and outreach with alumni,” he says. “But we don’t think it will ever take the place of tailgating at Homecoming.”

Peabody College continues to produce great leaders and cutting-edge research thanks to the generosity of alumni, parents and friends. We are grateful to all of our donors for their commitment to Peabody, which was named the No. 1 graduate school of education in the United States by U.S.News & World Report.

Thanks to you, Peabody surpassed its original $60 million goal as part of Vanderbilt’s Shape the Future campaign and has now extended that goal to $75 million with an emphasis on need-based scholarships. Your generosity has allowed us to bring new faculty to Peabody, to recognize our current talented faculty, to support vital programs and research, and to provide scholarships for students who could not otherwise attend Peabody.

Our 2008-2009 Donor Roll recognizes our donors, reflecting gifts made to Peabody College between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009. Where known, alumni of Peabody College and Vanderbilt University are listed by their full name. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this report. If an error has been made, we offer our sincerest apology and ask that you bring it to our attention by contacting the Peabody College Development and Alumni Relations Office at (615) 322-8500.

Cornelius Vanderbilt Founder’s Level

(Annual gifts of $25,000 and above)

Anonymous
Community Foundation/Middle Tennessee
Anne and John C. Doscas
Karen and Douglas M. Dunn
Debra and Thomas W. Erickson
Andrea E. Fayer
Cathy and J. Warren Gorrell Jr.
Patricia Ingram Hart and H. Rodes Hart
John Templeton Foundation
Sarah and James C. Kennedy
Courtney and John W. Madden
Rita and John P. Madden
Kelly and Steven H. Madden
Nashville Alliance for Public Education
Courtney and R. Scott Pastrick
J. E. Reeves Jr.
Cammie and John G. Rice
Mary Jo and Brian C. Rogers
Mary and William T. Schleyer
Julie C. Stadler and George B. Stadler
Anne Marie and Hans F. E. Wachtmeister
Lisa and Edward I. Weisiger Jr.

Chancellor’s Council

(Annual gifts of $10,000–$24,999)

Laurie and David J. Benjamin
Beth and Karl B. Canavan
Charles Kurz II
Dorothy J. Kurz
Frances and John O. Downing
Tricia Louise Everest
Mary K. and Thomas B. Finan
Joyce and Lee S. Neibart
Bonnie T. Leadbetter
Margaret L. McAllen
Frances and Paul D. Rubacha
Catherine Eaton Schwab
The George Frederick Jewett Foundation
Cynthia and Allan R. Williams

The Susan B. Riley Scholarship

“Let us be up and doing!”

For Peabody alumni who graduated between the ‘30s and ‘60s, Susan B. Riley was a fixture on campus. A professor of English, she was the first woman to chair an academic department outside of home economics or nursing and the first woman to serve as dean of the Graduate School at Peabody. A striking figure who taught full-time at Peabody from 1929 until her retirement in 1965, she has been described as regal, a demanding mentor, a fascinating lecturer and a fair and compassionate instructor.

Back in 2001, when the Reflector published an article on favorite professors, a number of alumni wrote about Professor Riley’s influence on them. “She made the words on a page come alive,” one alumna wrote. “Dr. Riley’s romance with words stays with me still.” She “wasted not a minute,” this alumna wrote. “Noting that we had much to cover in one short term, [she] added briskly, ‘So, let us be up and doing!’”

Professor Riley’s tenure at Peabody was long and productive. Her legacy is one that still reaches into classrooms: A Peabody alumnus endowed the Susan B. Riley Scholarship in her memory in 2006, allowing students like second-year student and Riley scholarship recipient Maggie Elizabeth Bowers, of Covington, Ky., to be influenced by instructors like Professor Riley—instructors who make lasting impressions and turn out exceptional teachers.
For more information about giving to Peabody and supporting scholarships, contact Kerry McCartney, associate dean for development and alumni relations, at (615) 322-8500. Make a gift to Peabody online.

Dean’s List

(Annual gifts of $5,000–$9,999)

Ann and Peter P. Appert
Alison and Norman Axelrod
Mrs. Thomas G. Barksdale
Sara and Michael David Bernstein
Barbara and Russell L. Brown
Campbell and Donald W. Burton
Jana and Brian Cogburn
Anne-Marie and Peter G. Embiricos
Teri and William T. Gimple
Iris and Frederick S. Green
Anneal and L. Cade Havard
Sarita and Robert Brooks Hixon
Kathryn and Jack L. Howard
Cynthia and G. Kent Kahle
Janet and Mark S. Landau
Louis Draughon Foundation
Lisa and Cary J. Malkin
Debra and James Kenneth Marston
Jane and Michael A. McLain
Jan and Rex V. McPherson II
Susan and Robert B. Mintz
Cheryl and Gerald T. Nichols
Eleanor and Charles D. Owen III
Margaret and William R. Pfeiffer
Kellye and William B. Pyle
Susan and Matthew Ross
Georgia Gwin Sewell and
Jerry Turner Sewell
Elizabeth and Rodney E. Slifer
United Way of Metro Nashville
Wendy S. Tucker and Jonathan F. Wing

Educator’s Circle

(Annual gifts of $2,500–$4,999)

Margaret and Antonio J. Almeida
Katherine and Thomas C. Alsup
Jane Rogers Bryan
Joan and James William Cocke
Cherrie Forte Farnette
Page and Henry Rodes Hart Jr.
Katherine and James P. Hickey
Robin and Arnold Roger Kerbis
Paula Johnson Martin
National Council-Teachers Of English
Jere and Alton W. Phillips Jr.
Hal Reed Ramer
Nora and D. Tate Rich
Emma and David Leon Robertson
Elizabeth and Michael J. Schoenfeld
Ellen and Charles E. Sheedy
Betsy and Stephen I. Silverman
Jacqueline and DeWitt C. Thompson
Antoinette and Gerrit Vreeland
Dudley and John W. White
Betsy and Stephen I. Silverman
Jacqueline and DeWitt C. Thompson
Antoinette and Gerrit Vreeland
Dudley and John W. White

The 2009 Roundtable Donor Society Dinner

The 2009 Roundtable Donor Society Dinner recognizing the generous
support of those who provide annual gifts of $1,000 or more to Peabody was held October 1 in the Wyatt Center Rotunda as a prelude to Vanderbilt’s Family Weekend. The annual dinner honoring educators was a great success as it toasted Peabody’s No. 1 ranking as the best graduate school of education in the country. Ann P. Kaiser, holder of the Susan W. Gray Chair in Education and Human Development and professor of special education, was guest speaker for the event.

Bob Innes, Sharon Innes, Bill Peery, Katherine Peery, Kelly Madden and Steven Madden. The event was held in the Wyatt Center Rotunda (bottom right).

David Whitfield, April Whitfield, Rodes Hart Jr., Page Hart, Patti Smallwood and Brian Smallwood

Members

(Annual gifts of $1,000–$2,499)

Graham Nelson Abell
Regina and Jonathan S. Adler
Olympia Ammon
Helen Clark Atkeson
Margaret J. Sieck and Robert H.B. Baldwin Jr.
Edith McBride Bass
Thomas Arthur Battan
John G. Beaton
Diane and Paul R. Becker
Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski
Lynn and Terry W. Bird
Makeba Williams Boatwright
Edward J. Boling
Brian Bowling
Stephanie and James P. Brakefield
Lisa K. Herrington and Timothy C. Caboni
Lisa Hooker Campbell and John P. Campbell III
Maymee and Harvey E. Cantrell
Caren and Arturo Constantiner
Reba and Estill Cornet
Sarah Keith Cutchins DeMoss
Robert Southgate Elam Sr.
Nicholas W. Emigholz
Kay and Dan A. English III
Donna and Jeffrey B. Eskind
Carolyn and William W. Featheringill
Shellye and Kevin Terrence Geshke
Suzanne and James D. Goudge
Ruby Stovall Hawkins
Betty and James Clark Hilliard
Dennis Wayne Hirsch
Ellen E. Hrabovsky
Maria Cheng Hsieh
Mary Lee and Granbery Jackson III
Virginia P. Johnson and
Richard L. Johnson
Ann and Clifford Stephen Jury
Carol and Curtis R. Kayem
Mary and David B. Kimerling
Sheila and Frank S. King Jr.
Hillary H. Ling
Anne and Leonard L. Long Jr.
GaBriella Castillo and Gerald J. Longa
Edward Ralph MacKay
Robert G. Manice and family
Anne and Richard Allen Maradik
Larrie Del and Joseph G. Martin
Sara and Allen Polk McDaniel
Suzanne Bigham McElwee
Ann Marie and Martin F. McNamara
Sally and William H. Meadows
Tina and Thomas M. Melo
Mark F. Mills
Denise and William Monteleone Jr.
Ives and Eddie P. Ort
Mary and M. Carr Payne Jr.
Lynn and Eugene B. Pennell
Marek M. Pienkowski and family
Nancy and Richard G. Rhoda
Terrie Leigh Rice
Margaret Louise Riegel
Delphine and Kenneth L. Roberts
Samuel Rothrock and family
Sarah and William H. Rowan Jr.
Susan and Ralph R. Russo
Patricia and Edwin S. Ryan Jr.
Leona Schauble
Mildred E. Scheel
Carolyn and Chester A. Schmidt
Elaina and J. Ronald Scott
Susan and Eugene B. Shanks
Sharon Lee Shields
Diana L. Shields
Jacqueline B. Shrago
Tonya and Lawrence David Singer
Lori and Harmon W. Skurnik
Patti and Brian Scott Smallwood
Sue and Paul R. Spellman
Beth and Joel Spenadel
Alice and Kenneth W. Starr
Cathy and William E. Turner
United Way of Williamson County
George Minister VanMeter
Susan and Eugene H. Vaughan Jr.
Sarah and Andrew Warner
Blanche and Lloyd C. Warr
Linda and William R. Welborn
Rhonda and J. Russell Welch
Kenneth Whitted
Irene and W. Ridley Wills II
Annick Margot Winokur
Ruth A. and Mark Wolery

Young Alumni Members

(For alumni out of school less than 10 years - $500 or more)

Elizabeth and Brooks Patrick Barge
Jennie and Michael T. Bucciero
Natalie Hill Hardee
Ruth Mayer Johnson
Elizabeth Brunner Kline
Charles Kurz III
Tracey and David Vincent Power Jr
Pamela Michelle Soberman
Lauren Wilson Young

Donors

(Annual gifts of $250–$999)

Judy and Donald E. Alford
Mary Lauren and Lawson C. Allen
Jo Anne Craig Anderson
Christopher A. Andreoff and family
Mary and Peter Charles Applebome
Vera Wiseman Archer
Nadene and John Milton Archield
Edward R. Atkinson Jr.
Nora and R. Timothy Axt
Jane and George William Baxter
Betty Grice Bibb
Lovetta R. Blanke
Diane Page Boes
Glen David Bowman
Leonard Bradley
Nancy and Jeffrey R. Brant
Holly and Gordon Lane Brewer
Cheryl and Theodore Ralph Brown
Mary Ann Brown
Eliza and Stuart Todd Brunson
Amy R. Burgess
Rebecca Robin Burgess
Jane and Thomas S. Burns
Georgia and W. Stanley Campbell
Beth and William Lynn Campbell
Kathleen and John S. Cantieri
Lisa Marie Carlson
Lynn and G. Edward Cassady III
Jean F. Casson
Patricia Ann Chamings
Diana and Andrew J. Claydon
Alice and Gillis Byrns Coleman
Betty Sue Cook
Gayle and William Richard Cooper
Lydia and Roger D. Fish
Catherine LaSala Crecion
Dorothy and Allan Sidney Curtis
Deborah Davies
Corbette Starr Doyle
George W. Duke
Anne Oser Edmunds
Joan White Ehlers
Thomas Morris Elmore
Elizabeth Arnold Epting
Kay and Frank Failla
Dale C. Farran
Jimmie Robinson Felder
Marie Christine Zufelt and
John Brian Fetherstonhaugh
Ruth and Jose C. Figueroa Jr.
Robert Louis Fischer
Bradley and Robert Fredric Fogelman II
Hannah Bonner Fowler
Shirley and James Francis
Laura and Jeremy Harmon Freeman
Ruth Ella French
Whitney Mason Fried
Anita and John Friedmann
Kathryn and William G. Fry
Janet and Walter J. Fuchs
Laurie and Steven P. Germansky
Debby and Richard E. Giss
Daniel R. Glasser
Lane P. Goldsmith
Mack Lewis Graves
Elizabeth and Daniel M. Gray
June and Wayne H. Griest
Patricia Keil Grimm
Katie and David Christopher Grosek
Nancy and Thomas Grote
Kimberly and Eric Albert Gustafson
Jerry W. Hale
Claudia W. Hamilton
Karen and Ryan W. Hanemann
Karen and Mathew J. Hanson
Stacey and Anthony Lee Harwell Jr.
Fred S. Hatchett
Mary and Edmund Healy
Ralph Edwin Helser
Lynita and Donald P. Hetzel
Anita and James R. Hicks
Peggy B. Hobbs
Clifford A. Hofwolt and family
Belle M. Holm
Renee and Gary M. Holt
Doris and William Loyd Hooper, Sr.
Rebecca Louise Huss-Keeler
Patricia and Howard W. Jones
Shelley and Matthew C. Jones
Ann P. Kaiser
Jane and Woodward A. Kay
Brian Timothy Kelly
Donald King
Morgan and Charles Yates King Jr.
James William Klenke
Gloria and Roger Dale Knight
Sandra G. Koczwara
Cathy and Steven Krieger
Marguerite and Brian Landry
Bennie Ray Lane
Eva-Lynn and Michael J. Langan
Warren Martin Larson
Debbie and Ronald J. Lazarov
Dr. John Willis Lea IV and
John Garland Leatherwood
Ralph G. Leverett
Amy and Robert C. Lewis
Conrad Gale Lucas II
Tami Machado
Nancy and John P. Marino
Rachel McCall
Lisa and Clayton S. McCarl
Lynne L. McFarland
Margarett and Sam S. McKeel
Donna B. McNamara
Patricia Castles Meadows
Julie James Meshri
Mary Ann Michael
Donna and Thomas M. Miller
Haroldine and Jack Willis Miller
Jayne Ann and Roberts Clay Milling II
Mary Evelyn Mitchell
Beverly I. Moran
Grace Eleanor Mowbray
Doris W. Mowrey
Joyce and Wallace J. Munden
Harold Douglas Murphy
Lisa and Roy E. Naturman
Kathryn and Henry S. Nelson
Mary Ottilie Nicholas
Jane K. Norris
Janis and Fletcher R. Norris
Robert McCrary Parish
Betty and Franklin Parker
Mr. Charles E. Parrish and
Sharon Bennett Pattillo
John Dwight Perry Jr.
Ann Phillips
John Plummer and Tim Kaltenbach
Lisa and Kenneth Maurice Pulce Jr.
Mary Suzanne Ratliff
Nancy and Charles F. Rice
Karen and John J. Rieser
Sal D. Rinella
Victoria J. Risko
Tracy Vaughn Robb
Laurie Anne and William D. Roberts
Beverly and Joe Tom Rodgers
Brooke and Courtney Gantt Rosen
Regina and Peter Rousos
Beverly and James Robert Russo
Charles Scanlon
Amy and Edmund Joseph Schmidt III
Rachel Huseman Schneider
N. Marshall Schools
Karen Napoli Schulz
Leslie and Mikhael Shor
David Lee Shores
Stephanie F. Silverman
Lavinia N. Smerconish
MaryAnn Smith
Susan Ward Stare
Amy and Jamie Stark
Inessa and Alex Svidler
Carol and Thomas D. Swepston
Carol G. Thigpin
Katherine Mitchell Tucker
Mary Katherine VanHooser Weck
Michael Andrew Verdone
Michael Patrick Ward
Elizabeth and Peter D. Washburn
Tommie and Earle Huddleston West
Philip Todd Westbrook
Carol Westlake
James Ray Whittington
Catherine and John Bruce Williams Jr.
Julie and Dudley D. Wooley
Carol and Richard K. Wray
Karen and Ronald W. Young
William Darell Zink

* Deceased

Rodes Hart and Orrin Ingram are leading Vanderbilt’s Shape the Future campaign.

Rodes Hart and Orrin Ingram believe in Vanderbilt. As alumni, trustees, philanthropists and visionaries, they reflect on the opportunities—and challenges—of eliminating need-based loans and increasing scholarship endowment.

Rodes Hart, who graduated from the College of Arts and Science in 1954 and now serves as chair of Vanderbilt’s $1.75 billion Shape the Future campaign, joined the Vanderbilt Board of Trust in 1979, becoming trustee emeritus in 2007.

Orrin Ingram received his bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt in 1982. A member of the Board of Trust since 2002, he chairs its Medical Center Affairs Committee and serves as vice chair of the Shape the Future campaign. He also chairs the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center Board of Overseers and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Board.

These two leaders answered questions about Vanderbilt’s commitment to replace need-based undergraduate loans with scholarships and grants—and the $100 million philanthropic effort, Opportunity Vanderbilt, that will sustain this historic expansion of financial aid.

Why is Vanderbilt’s expanded financial aid initiative, with its emphasis on scholarships rather than loans, so important?

Hart: It’s the right thing to do. Scholarships replace the burden of student loans, and those loan obligations can adversely impact students’ career choices or their plans for advanced or professional education. We want to ensure that financial need is not a deterrent for highly qualified students who want to attend Vanderbilt.

Ingram: When a class is made up of individuals of all economic, geographic and cultural backgrounds and experiences, that blend enriches the learning environment for the whole class—and every student.

Opportunity Vanderbilt is seeking $100 million in new gifts to support this financial aid initiative. Why not postpone this, given the current economy?

Ingram: By waiting we could be denying someone who is qualified a chance to attend our university. Though we are certainly mindful of the current economic climate, Vanderbilt’s strategic decisions and philanthropic priorities focus on what’s important to sustain the university’s mission over the long term. And increasing Vanderbilt’s scholarship endowment is crucial to that mission.

What has been Peabody’s progress toward the Opportunity Vanderbilt goal?

Hart: Peabody has set a goal of $6.5 million for new gifts to scholarship endowment for its undergraduates. To date, $3.04 million in gifts and pledges has been made by alumni, parents and friends.

Why not incur student loans in order to receive an education of the caliber Vanderbilt offers?

Hart: The young people Vanderbilt educates will be the leaders who will guide our country and positively influence societies throughout the world. But debt will influence their choices.

Vanderbilt has been addressing the challenge of student debt for many years, and since 2000, students’ loan burdens have been reduced by 17 percent. Scholarship giving to our Shape the Future campaign has had a vital role in those debt-reduction efforts, and Vanderbilt’s expanded financial aid announcement builds directly on the university’s long-term focus on this issue of student debt.

Approximately 54 percent of Peabody’s students receive some sort of financial aid. And it’s important to keep in mind that even as we eliminate loans in our financial aid packages, all families still have an expected financial contribution, and some families will meet that contribution through loans—so this expanded financial aid initiative does not make Vanderbilt cost-free.

How do you think the educational needs of your children and grandchildren are/will be different from those of your generation?

Ingram: Thank goodness I’m not in college right now. When I was in school, I was being prepared to compete with other companies inside the United States. My children are going to have to compete with businesses both within the U.S. and globally.

Hart: When I was in school, we used a slide rule. The tools of today are completely different. To maximize education today and tomorrow, students need a broad educational experience to cope with the fast pace of change and expansion of knowledge.

What makes Vanderbilt an important institution in today’s world?

Hart: There’s no doubt that Vanderbilt is equipping its students for leadership roles in an increasingly complex world—and Vanderbilt does that very well.

Ingram: Vanderbilt recognizes that big, important, game-changing breakthroughs and discoveries typically come at the interdisciplinary crossroads. At Peabody you will find neuroscientists partnering with educators to understand how students learn. Special education researchers combine forces with pediatricians and social psychologists to further discoveries that may help those with developmental disabilities. Students may pursue interdisciplinary majors across departments at Peabody or across departments between Peabody and the Blair School of Music, the College of Arts and Science or the School of Engineering. With this interdisciplinary approach, we’re finding ways to make the world a better place by having such bright students learn and collaborate with a great faculty, across all the arts and sciences.

Some might wonder if Vanderbilt and Peabody really need their support or whether a small gift can make any kind of difference at a big university with a sizable endowment. What do you tell alumni and others when you encounter that?

Ingram: You’d be surprised at what a difference a little can make in somebody’s life. A lot of “littles” can add up to be a lot. Our endowment per student isn’t as large as many other schools’—so every penny counts. Vanderbilt receives more than 85,000 gifts each year from alumni, parents and friends who give in amounts from $10 to $10,000.

Hart: Every gift is important and every gift makes a difference. Of course we need large contributions to reach the Opportunity Vanderbilt goal of $100 million and our overall Shape the Future goal of $1.75 billion—but we need gifts at every level. It will take success at all levels of giving to reach the goal—and I think you would agree with me that this program can reduce concern about affordability, especially for our education students, and make it possible for those who seek to impact others as teachers to receive a great education.

Bonnie Arant Ertelt, Editor

Donna Pritchett, Art Director

Michael Smeltzer, Designer

Lew Harris, Assistant Editor

Nelson Bryan, Class Notes Editor

Lacy Tite, Web Edition Design and Development

Contributors: Geordie Brackin, Kurt Brobeck, Xiu Cravens, Jennie Edwards, Jennifer Johnston, Melanie Moran, Ann Marie Deer Owens, Jim Patterson, Jan Read, Sharon Shields, Ned Andrew Solomon, Courtney Taylor, J. Luke Webb

Camilla Persson Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development

Timothy Caboni, Associate Dean for External Relations and Professional Education

Kerry McCartney, Associate Dean for Development and Alumni Relations

©2009 Vanderbilt University

On the cover: A mural painted in 2003 by youth from the Preston Taylor YMCA Boys and Girls Club at the McKissack Family Resource Center in Nashville, Tenn. Photo by John Russell. For more about the mural, see p. 18.

The Peabody Reflector is published biannually by Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development in cooperation with the Vanderbilt Office of DAR Communications. The magazine is mailed free of charge to all Peabody alumni, parents of current Peabody students, and to friends of Peabody who make an annual gift of $25 or more to the College. Correspondence, including letters to the editor and Class Notes submissions, should be mailed to: The Peabody Reflector, Office of DAR Communications, PMB 407703, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37240-7703 or by email to reflector@vanderbilt.edu. 

Trying to find the highest-quality program for their child can overwhelm parents choosing an early childhood education program. NAEYC accreditation is a mark of quality that families can look for when making this decision. 

To achieve NAEYC accreditation, early childhood education programs volunteer to be measured against stringent national standards for education, health and safety. More than 8,000 early childhood education programs around the U.S. were accredited under the old system, and each must reapply for accreditation to meet the new standards. 

The Susan Gray School was granted the new NAEYC accreditation in November. The accreditation is valid through November 2013. 

To learn more: http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/sgs.

“We are very pleased by this ranking, which speaks to the high quality of the college and especially our faculty, our students and our staff,” said Dean Camilla Benbow. “Along with our alumni, who do great work in the world, they are the ones to be congratulated.”

Peabody moved up one spot from its No. 2 ranking last year, and now sits atop a list boasting Stanford, Columbia, Harvard and Johns Hopkins in the top 10. In addition to the overall ranking, Peabody’s programs in special education and administration/supervision were each ranked No. 1. Peabody’s educational policy and elementary education programs each ranked No. 5, its educational psychology program was No. 7 and higher education administration No. 8.

“We measure our own success by the knowledge we discover; our support for practitioners; the leaders we prepare for classrooms, universities and other organizations; and our engagement with the world around us,” Benbow said. “Our goal is to change lives through education and human development, and we do that very effectively.”

Professor Bruce McCandliss conducts studies using fMRI and other technologies that place him on the leading edge of developmental cognitive neuroscience. He moves to Vanderbilt from the Sackler Institute of Weill Medical College at Cornell. McCandliss holds a Patricia and Rodes Hart endowed chair in the department.

Connie Vinita Dowell, MLS’79, is Vanderbilt’s first dean of libraries.

Under Dowell’s leadership, Vanderbilt will initiate a comprehensive study of its libraries, with a view toward launching a major library-enhancement effort. The Heard Library system has a collection of more than three million volumes and an annual budget exceeding $20 million.

“Being asked to return to Vanderbilt in this capacity is truly a dream come true,” Dowell said. “Vanderbilt’s generosity to me as a student paved the way for my entire career.” 

At San Diego State University Dowell was responsible for the overall guidance and leadership of the library, which has a collection of almost two million volumes.

Prior to going to San Diego, Dowell was employed at Connecticut College for six years, starting as college librarian in 1993 and then dean. In 1998 she became vice president/CIO and oversaw the merger of libraries and computing. Connecticut’s faculty elected her to chair their academic strategic plan for the college.

Dowell earned her master’s in library science from Peabody College in 1979, the same year that Peabody merged with Vanderbilt. She had received her bachelor’s degree in 1977 from Middle Tennessee State University, where she double majored in mass communications and social work.

Dowell is a three-time recipient of the John Cotton Dana Public Relations Award from the American Library Association’s Library Administration and Management Association, and has participated in numerous panels. In 2006, she gave the Library Science Alumni Lecture at Peabody on “Libraries: Rapid Change, Enduring Values.” 

The Susan Gray School for Children dedicated the new Finan Family Playground as part of Peabody homecoming weekend activities last October. Above, Kelly Finan, BS’09, with assistance from David Williams, vice chancellor for university affairs and athletics, cuts the ribbon. The playground was made possible by Tom and Mary K. Finan, parents of Kelly, Vanderbilt Athletics and other donors. It is the school’s first barrier-free, fully accessible playground for preschoolers ages 3-5. It includes wheelchair-accessible swings, a fort, two motor-skill learning centers, rockers, garden boxes, a play station and an outdoor classroom.

Frist was joined at the announcement by Gov. Phil Bredesen, Tennessee Commissioner of Education Tim Webb, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and other education, community, political and business leaders, including Vanderbilt representatives. 

“Vanderbilt has been asked to serve as the research partner for this innovative effort. In this role, Peabody faculty will have the opportunity to present research on current education challenges and initiatives and to provide input on action plans that may arise out of the commission’s work,” Dean Camilla Benbow said in a message to Peabody College faculty.

Benbow noted that James Guthrie, professor of public policy and education and chair of the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations, will serve as Vanderbilt’s primary liaison to the collaborative and that steering committee meetings will often be held on the Vanderbilt campus. 

Former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist with Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen announce the creation of SCORE, a new statewide education initiative for which Peabody will serve as research partner.

SCORE will have several components. A steering committee of education, community, political and business leaders from across the state will hold 10 public meetings lasting through October to learn about best practices from across the country and within Tennessee. The information gathered will be used to produce a strategic plan for state education reform.

Project teams will initiate statewide and local education projects dealing with such topics as teacher quality, school leadership, technology and community engagement. Project implementation will begin by the end of this year. 

In addition to Vanderbilt, SCORE partners include the Tennessee Department of Education, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, Tennessee Education Association, Cornerstone Foundation, Hyde Foundation, Ingram Industries, Stand for Children, Niswonger Foundation, Tennessee Farm Bureau, Tennessee Business Roundtable, Tennessee Board of Regents, Tennessee School Board Association and United Ways of Tennessee.

“The subject of teacher pensions is a critical and understudied area for education reform, both because of the effects on the teacher workforce and on school finance. Districts are looking for new ways to recruit and retain high quality teachers in their on-going efforts to raise student achievement and narrow achievement gaps, and the structure of retirement benefits is a potentially important factor,” said Matthew Springer, NCPI director and research assistant professor of public policy and education at Peabody. “Many states and districts also face increasing costs for their current retirement benefit systems—possibly exacerbated by recent developments in the value of pension funds.”

The conference, “Rethinking Teacher Retirement Benefit Systems Benefits,” was hosted jointly by NCPI, the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The papers commissioned for the conference, as well as more information about the issue and speakers, are available on the NCPI Web site: www.performanceincentives.org/conference/conference2009.asp. 

Murphy

 Joseph Murphy, professor of education at Peabody, is serving as chairman of a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards’ steering committee overseeing a national effort to develop an advanced certification for educational leaders. This initiative will include an advanced certification for both principals and teacher leaders. 

The National Board, the organization that provides advanced standards and certification for classroom-based teachers and other educators, is creating national core propositions and standards for what educational leaders should know and national evidence-based assessments to measure educational leaders against those standards. 

“Effective leadership is a critical factor in school success,” Murphy said. “Advanced certification for principals and teacher leaders will support excellence within the profession and, most importantly, promote student success.” 

The certification effort is supported by policymakers, administrators, principals and teachers and is expected to launch in 2011. 

“The National Board has built strong standards and assessments for advanced teacher certification, which places our organization in a unique position to carry out the same for educational leaders,” said Joseph A. Aguerrebere, National Board president and CEO. “You can have accomplished teachers in a school building, but creating a collaborative culture of learning and achievement requires the support and leadership of an equally accomplished principal and other teacher leaders.” 

In a recent National Board survey, 83 percent of school leader respondents and 69 percent of district leader respondents expressed interest in advanced principal certification. Both school- and district-level leaders were most interested in a certification that would better prepare principals to lead systemic instructional improvement.

National Board certification for K–12 teachers is part of a growing education reform movement that is reshaping the country’s public schools. In a congressionally mandated report, the National Research Council of the National Academies confirmed that National Board certified teachers advance student achievement and learning, stay in the classroom longer, support new and struggling teachers and assume other school-based leadership roles. The research council acknowledged that students taught by National Board certified teachers make higher gains on achievement tests than students taught by non-board certified teachers.

“These rankings demonstrate the important work done at Peabody College as well as the extent of expertise among its faculty,” Dean Camilla Benbow said. 

The article, “The Effects of Frequent Curriculum-based Measurement and Evaluation on Pedagogy, Student Achievement, and Student Awareness of Learning,” by Lynn Fuchs, professor of special education, Nicholas Hobbs Professor of Special Education and Human Development and co-director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Reading Clinic, tops the American Educational Research Journal list at No. 1.  

Doug and Lynn Fuchs are responsible for three of the five most cited research articles.

Two articles by Lynn Fuchs and Douglas Fuchs, professor of special education, Nicholas Hobbs Professor of Special Education and Human Development and co-director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Reading Clinic, “Effects of Curriculum-Based Measurement and Consultation on Teacher Planning and Student Achievement in Mathematics Operations” and “Peer-assisted Learning Strategies: Making Classrooms More Responsive to Diversity” are ranked No. 3 and 4, respectively. 

Benbow’s article, “Consequences in High School and College of Sex Differences in Mathematical Reasoning Ability: A Longitudinal Perspective,” is listed as the 26th most frequently cited article, and the Fuchs were acknowledged again at No. 33 for their work, “A Conservative Approach to Special Education Reform: Mainstreaming Through Transenvironmental Programming and Curriculum-based Measurement.”

Three additional Peabody faculty, James W. Guthrie, professor of public policy and education, director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy and chair of the department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations; Kathleen V. Hoover-Dempsey, associate professor of developmental science; and Howard M. Sandler, professor of developmental science, are all listed in the top 50 most cited lists for the Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Review of Education Research journals respectively. In the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, Dale Ballou, associate professor of public policy and education, is ranked among the top 10.

To learn more: http://aer.sagepub.com/reports/mfc1.dtl