Emeriti Faculty 2025

Associate Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences

Douglas Kilpatrick (“Patrick”) Abbot earned his B.Sc. from the University of Georgia in 1989, his M.Sc. from Simon Fraser University in 1994 and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2001. He joined the Department of Biological Sciences in January 2004, where he remained on the faculty for 20 years.

Abbot’s research spanned several fields in evolutionary biology and ecology. With funding from the National Science Foundation, he and his students published broadly on the evolution of social behavior in insects, an area pioneered by the late Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. Wilson, coincidentally, gave a lecture at Vanderbilt in 2003 in conjunction with the dedication of the building that the Department of Biological Sciences now occupies. Abbot’s lab grew to include National Science Foundation– sponsored projects on species interactions and biological diversity—specifically, how species that are tightly linked by antagonistic or mutualistic interactions function and jointly diversify. Working with colleagues at Vanderbilt and in Ohio, he contributed to a March of Dimes–funded consortium seeking to understand and answer fundamental questions about the biological and evolutionary roots of birth timing in mammals as a means to address preterm birth in humans. Over the years, he has published broadly in these fields and has served his scientific community as an author, editor and leader.

Abbot has been a dedicated mentor and educator. As an assistant professor, he joined his senior colleagues in one of the flagship courses offered by the department, Introduction to Biological Sciences, and continued to teach this course for many years. Thanks to a broad training in biology, he was able to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in a diversity of subjects, ranging from ecology to the evolution of behavior to a reading and discussion seminar for first-year biomedical graduate students in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program. The many Vanderbilt undergraduates that he trained in his lab are now leading successful careers of their own—as professors, doctors and financial consultants, and in other diverse professions.

Abbot has been actively engaged in service to his department and university and to national and international organizations. Highlights in the Department of Biological Sciences include serving as vice chair, director of undergraduate studies, and chair of the Graduate Program Committee. He was a member of the College Curriculum Committee, a member of the A&S Faculty Council and then chair of the council. He was rotating program officer in the Directorate of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation before joining the NSF permanently.

Professor Emeritus of Surgery

Dr. Naji N. Abumrad is a renowned surgeon and researcher with more than 40 years of experience. His career highlights include serving as professor of surgery at Vanderbilt University (1979–91), chair of surgery at SUNY Stony Brook (1991–96), and North Shore Health System (1996–2004), acting dean of the School of Medicine at SUNY Stony Brook (1994–96), chair of the Department of Surgery at Vanderbilt (2004–15), and now professor emeritus.

His research, which was continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health, focused on hormonal regulation of muscle metabolism and metabolic benefits of essential and of branched chain amino acids. While at Vanderbilt, this work led to his co-discovery, with his colleague Dr. Steve Nissen, of β-hydroxy-β-Methylbutyrate (HMB), a nutritional supplement for reversing sarcopenia in cancer patients. Currently, HMB is used in various nutritional products around the world. His third focus is obesity-related research, especially post-bariatric surgery and following the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists (since 2003).

Dr. Abumrad has received several recognitions, most notably The Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2004), which is a prestigious Congressional award for exemplary service and embodiment of American values, and induction as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow (2014), which honors distinguished contributions across scientific disciplines. Abumrad continues to contribute to medical research that focuses on innovative approaches to combat obesity and its related metabolic disorders, and he is an invaluable mentor to many faculty and trainees at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and other medical centers.

Professor Emeritus of Medicine

Thomas M. Aune earned his B.S. in chemical biology from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1973 and his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee (Memphis), Department of Biochemistry, in 1976. The title of his dissertation was “Peroxidase-catalyzed oxidation of thiocyanate ion.” His postgraduate training was at the Department of Biology at Stanford University under the direction of David Epel from 1977 to 1978 and at the Department of Pathology at Washington University in St. Louis under the direction of Carl W. Pierce, 1979–80.

Aune joined the faculty of the Department of Pathology at Washington University in St. Louis as assistant professor in 1981. From 1986 to 1988, he was a scientist in the Molecular Biology Department at Genentech Inc. in San Francisco. In 1988 he joined Bayer Inc. in West Haven, Connecticut, as head of the Immunology Section and principal staff scientist and held that position until 1995. In 1994, Aune began his move back to academia by joining the Department of Immunobiology at Yale University as a visiting scientist, followed by a faculty position at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1995 as associate professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology and Immunology. Aune was promoted to professor of medicine with tenure in 2007. Aune has also been associate professor, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine, 2000–present.

I credit James W. “Tom Thomas, M. D., who recruited me to Vanderbilt for facilitating my transition back into academic research, which includes continuous NIH research funding at Vanderbilt, publication of over 100 original research articles, reviews and textbook chapters, and successful training of numerous under-grads, Ph.D. candidates, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty. Whenever I felt uncertain about direction, whether research strategy, writing a grant, or mentoring students, I headed down to Tom’s office, knocked on the door, entered, and said “I need some vision”. Although our research interests did not overlap, I always left with the necessary ‘vision’ to successfully move forward and thank Tom for that. Of special note I would also like to thank all the students and staff who have worked with me in the lab. I have taken special pleasure watching all these students launch their own successful careers. These men and women have meant the world to me in my career. They are involved in science, research and medicine around the country. I wish the best to all of them and will enjoy following their successes.

Robert N. and Rachelle Buchanan and A.H. and Lucile Lancaster Chair in Dermatology Emerita and Professor Emerita of Dermatology

Thomas M. Aune earned his B.S. in chemical biology from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1973 and his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee (Memphis), Department of Biochemistry, in 1976. The title of his dissertation was “Peroxidase-catalyzed oxidation of thiocyanate ion.” His postgraduate training was at the Department of Biology at Stanford University under the direction of David Epel from 1977 to 1978 and at the Department of Pathology at Washington University in St. Louis under the direction of Carl W. Pierce, 1979–80.

Aune joined the faculty of the Department of Pathology at Washington University in St. Louis as assistant professor in 1981. From 1986 to 1988, he was a scientist in the Molecular Biology Department at Genentech Inc. in San Francisco. In 1988 he joined Bayer Inc. in West Haven, Connecticut, as head of the Immunology Section and principal staff scientist and held that position until 1995. In 1994, Aune began his move back to academia by joining the Department of Immunobiology at Yale University as a visiting scientist, followed by a faculty position at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1995 as associate professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology and Immunology. Aune was promoted to professor of medicine with tenure in 2007. Aune has also been associate professor, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine, 2000–present.

I credit James W. “Tom Thomas, M. D., who recruited me to Vanderbilt for facilitating my transition back into academic research, which includes continuous NIH research funding at Vanderbilt, publication of over 100 original research articles, reviews and textbook chapters, and successful training of numerous under-grads, Ph.D. candidates, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty. Whenever I felt uncertain about direction, whether research strategy, writing a grant, or mentoring students, I headed down to Tom’s office, knocked on the door, entered, and said “I need some vision”. Although our research interests did not overlap, I always left with the necessary ‘vision’ to successfully move forward and thank Tom for that. Of special note I would also like to thank all the students and staff who have worked with me in the lab. I have taken special pleasure watching all these students launch their own successful careers. These men and women have meant the world to me in my career. They are involved in science, research and medicine around the country. I wish the best to all of them and will enjoy following their successes.

Patricia and Rodes Hart Chair #5 Emeritus, and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Human Development

David A. Cole started his academic career as assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame in 1985, was promoted to associate professor in 1991 and full professor in 1996. In 2001 he accepted his current position at Vanderbilt and was awarded the Patricia and Rodes Hart endowed chair in psychology and human development in 2009. At Vanderbilt, he taught clinical courses in developmental psychopathology and family therapy and quantitative courses in introductory statistics and structural equation modeling. He served as director of graduate studies for 13 years and department chair for five years. Nationally, he also served as associate editor of the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science and sat on diverse grant review panels for the National Institute of Mental Health.

His clinical research focused on psychopathology of depression, addressing questions about the development of cognitive diatheses in young people. Specific questions focused on how adverse parenting and peer relations contribute to the development of cognitive precursors to depression. In adults, cognitive models of depression assume a preexisting depressive causal attributional style. But children’s understanding of causal relations undergoes dramatic developmental changes. Cole’s research revealed that adult models of depression require substantial modification when applied to youth of different ages.

Dr. Cole was also a methodologist, who identified problems with existing approaches to clinical/developmental questions and proposed alternative methods. These papers dealt with longitudinal approaches to mediation processes, the disentangling of traits versus states in longitudinal methods, and the (mis)interpretation of structural equation models. Often these concerns focused on existing measures of important psychological constructs. This led to the development and validation of new measures, some of which have been translated into dozens of languages and are now in use around the world.

Supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and several private sources, Cole has mentored 35 doctoral students of his own and has co-mentored more than 150 others, serving on their grants and committees. This work has resulted in 234 empirical publications, with another dozen currently under review.

As scholar, teacher, mentor and administrator, David Cole has served Vanderbilt well.

Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics

Dr. Mark Denison joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 1991 as an assistant professor on the Investigator Track in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases. He was promoted to associate professor of pediatrics with tenure in 1998 and then promoted to tenured professor in 2005.

Denison has been recognized with the Best Doctors in America award 16 times. He served as director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center from 2016 to 2019 (interim) and then from 2019 to 2023 (permanent). One of the premier pediatric infectious diseases divisions in the country, it incorporated multiple centers—such as the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program and the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center—and generated more than $30 million in research support each year. He shepherded the division during perhaps the most important time in its history during the COVID-19 pandemic, with division members making vital contributions in biosafety, clinical care, antiviral research and testing, and vaccine testing.

At Vanderbilt, Denison has been awarded the highest research awards—the Ernest W. Goodpasture, M.D., Award (2019) and the John H. Exton Award (2022). In 2021 he was awarded the Vanderbilt University Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished University Professor Award for his contributions to research and service.

Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of History

Marshall C. Eakin earned his Ph.D. at UCLA in 1981 after earning an M.A. and a B.A. at the University of Kansas and spending a year at the Universidad de Costa Rica. His specialization lay in Latin American history, with a particular emphasis on modern Brazil. He came to Vanderbilt as an assistant professor in 1983, then rose through the ranks to Distinguished Professor, over a career of extraordinary accomplishments and service that spanned 41 years.

He personifies the ideal of the scholar-teacher—someone who cares passionately about both aspects of his work, the archive and the classroom. Eakin has won nearly every teaching award that Vanderbilt has to offer—seven in total. This includes a Chair of Teaching Excellence and two alumni education awards, as well as a major teaching award from the Carnegie Foundation and the state of Tennessee.

Eakin pioneered service learning at Vanderbilt and for eight years directed the Ingram Scholars Program, which encourages undergraduate student scholars to combine a professional career with a commitment to community service and giving. He created three online video courses and has been a stalwart of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt for adults over 50 and the Vanderbilt Master of Liberal Arts and Science Program for working professionals and lifelong learners. He has given more than 200 presentations to local community groups. Twenty-five years ago, he spearheaded the creation of History 6300, The Art and Craft of Teaching History, which has now become a signature feature of the history graduate program.

He published five influential monographs on Brazilian and Latin American history, as well as a narrative history of Latin America and a general introduction to Brazil. He produced four edited volumes, and published 24 journal articles, review essays and book chapters. His scholarship has left a global imprint on the way we understand colonialism, mining, industrialization, and race and nationalism.

Eakin chaired the Department of History from 2000 to 2004 and again from 2018 to 2019, and has served as chair or commentator on more than 50 panels at scholarly conferences. He has given dozens of invited and keynote lectures, directed seven dissertations and 25 master’s theses, and served on 28 tenure and promotion reviews outside Vanderbilt. He was executive director of the Brazilian Studies Association for seven years and served long stints on the editorial boards of the journal The Americas and the Journal of Latin American Studies.

The faculty and students of the Department of History remember with deep gratitude and admiration the myriad contributions of this brilliant, gifted and extraordinarily generous colleague.

Professor Emeritus of Theatre

Phillip Franck earned a B.A. in communications and theatre arts with an emphasis in scenography from the University of Puget Sound and an MFA in theatrical design with emphases in lighting and scenic design from Northwestern University. He served as chair of the Vanderbilt Department of Theatre from 2020 until 2024 and from 2005 until 2011. He also served as Acting Chair in 2016–17 an Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2016 to 2017.

Franck has designed 170 shows since he joined Vanderbilt in 1998, including design work on 61 professional productions and 109 academic productions. In many of those shows, he designed both sets and lights and, in some cases, also designed sound and/ or projections. Franck has received a number of honors and awards during his time at Vanderbilt, including the Theatre Tampa Bay Award for Outstanding Lighting for a 2019 production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and for 2106’s production of Lee Hall’s The Pitmen Painters at American Stage in St. Petersburg, Florida, the First Night Nashville Theatre Award for his lighting design on Nashville Repertory Theatre’s production of A Raisin in the Sun, and The Tennessean Award for Best Lighting Designer for Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s productions of Romeo and Juliet and Camelot. Franck is a member of the professional design union, United Scenic Artists, Local 829.

Associate Professor Emerita of Classical and Mediterranean Studies

Kathy L. Gaca has had a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher. She earned her Ph.D. in classics from the University of Toronto in 1996, and following a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University she was appointed to the Vanderbilt faculty as assistant professor in 1997. She was promoted to her current rank in 2004. Over more than 25 years of teaching at Vanderbilt, Gaca has developed and taught a wide range of courses in the areas of ancient Latin and Greek language, philosophy, culture and history. She has contributed to the curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Alongside her wide-ranging teaching, Gaca has maintained an active program of research and publication. She describes her research interests as interconnected and related to her overall driving research interest in historically grounded ethics and political philosophy to address concerns of social injustice that are rooted in antiquity and remain problematic in the present day. Her publications and professional presentations (at national and international symposia and conferences) center on issues of gender, sexuality, warfare and violence. In 2003 she published The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (University of California Press), which also came out in paperback in 2017. It was widely reviewed and has continued to attract a broad readership. In 2006 she was co-editor (with L.L. Welborn) of the anthology Early Patristic Readings of Romans (published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark), to which she also was a contributor. The volume garnered positive reviews in several academic journals. Her current book project is titled, Religious Rape Conquest.

Professor Emeritus of Medicine

Douglas C. Heimburger joined Vanderbilt in 2009 as a professor of medicine in the Division of Epidemiology/Department of Medicine and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. As the associate director for education and training for VIGH from 2009 to 2019, he directed education and training programs for Vanderbilt students and trainees as well as research training opportunities for doctoral and postdoctoral trainees from low- and middle-income countries. He co-developed the Global Health Track in Vanderbilt’s Master of Public Health Program and has co-directed five National Institutes of Health–funded Vanderbilt-based global health training programs, including the UNZA-Vanderbilt Training Partnership for HIV-NCD Research and the Vanderbilt-Zambia Cancer Research Training Program (both partnerships with the University of Zambia ). Before joining the Vanderbilt faculty, he was a faculty member at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1981 to 2009, where he held various leadership positions, including serving as the director of the NIH-funded Cancer Prevention and Control Training Program that trained approximately 140 pre- and postdoctoral students and research fellows.

Heimburger’s primary research interests are nutritional influences on HIV treatment outcomes (including noncommunicable conditions) in African adults and global health research education and training. He has published 175 peer-reviewed research papers and many book chapters on clinical nutrition. He was the principal editor of three editions of the Handbook of Clinical Nutrition (Mosby Elsevier).

Heimburger earned his M.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1978 and completed a clinical nutrition fellowship and M.S. in nutrition sciences at UAB. He was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Zambia in 2006 and served on the advisory boards of multiple government and professional organizations, including the Fogarty International Center (NIH), the governing council of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, and the Food Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Professor Emeritus of Philosophy

Michael P. Hodges has taught thousands of Vanderbilt University students in a career spanning more than five decades. After joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 1970, he was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1973 and to full professor in 1991. He served as chair of the Department of Philosophy for nine years, from 1998 to 2007.

Hodges’ research focused primarily on the philosophy of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and on American philosophy. He published two books and many articles. His first book, Transcendence and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, was published in 1990 by Temple University Press, and his second book, with co-author John Lachs, was Thinking in the Ruins: Wittgenstein and Santayana on Contingency, published in 2000 by Vanderbilt University Press. Hodges’ teaching, research and publishing extended across the areas of philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, philosopher David Hume, the philosophy of literature, the philosophy of technology, and ethics. His broad range of work appeared in scholarly collected volumes and in leading journals, including Mind, Philosophical Studies, and The Review of Metaphysics.

During his distinguished career, Hodges also served in many leadership roles in the philosophical community. He helped to start the Tennessee Philosophical Association as a statewide association and served as its president. He also served as chairman of the Tennessee Humanities Council, president of the William James Society, and president of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics

Dr. James A. Johns joined the Vanderbilt Department of Pediatrics in what is now the Thomas P. Graham Division of Pediatric Cardiology in 1984 as its eighth fellow, and he joined the faculty as assistant professor in 1987. He was promoted to associate professor on the Clinician Educator track in 1996 and to professor in 2008. Dr. Johns has been caring for pediatric cardiology patients at Vanderbilt for more than 40 years, longer than any other physician in the history of the division, and he has been the longest serving clinical faculty member in the division. He has served in many leadership roles within the institution and the state of Tennessee, including the TennCare Pharmacy Advisory Committee, to which he was first appointed by the governor in 2008. He has served as a strong advocate for access to medications for children.

As the pediatric cardiology training director from 2002 to 2017, Johns directed the training of more than half of the fellows who have graduated from the Vanderbilt pediatric cardiology training program. He has contributed to the training of 101 of the 109 pediatric cardiology fellows trained at Vanderbilt. He was instrumental in the development of the pediatric cardiology research training program, Developmental Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease, first funded in 2011 by the National Institutes of Health. He has been a member of the Department of Pediatrics Katherine Dodd Faculty Scholars Program Advisory Committee since its founding in 2009. More than 45 junior faculty members in the Department of Pediatrics have been mentored through this program since its founding.

In addition to his training of pediatric cardiology fellows, Johns has been a vital part of the education of medical students in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine through clinical teaching and formal lectures. He has provided long-standing clinical supervision and teaching of trainees and medical students on the pediatric cardiology service and in the pediatric cardiology clinic as well. Johns was selected as a member of the Vanderbilt Academy for Excellence in Education in 2013, a testament to the quality of his contributions to teaching.

Senior Associate Dean Emerita for Administration

Rebecca R. Keck is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in nursing administration and an experienced, transformational healthcare executive. She has extensive experience in nursing administration in a multitude of clinical settings and academic nursing environments as well as a background in providing administrative leadership in defining operation standards and leading teams to achieve short-term and long-term goals. Her specialty area of focus is emergency preparedness and response.

Before she joined the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, Keck served in executive leadership as the associate hospital director of nursing finance and operations at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; divisional director of nursing support services at Albert B. Chandler Hospital, UK HealthCare (University of Kentucky); and director of medical/surgical services at Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. She has achieved board certification from the American Nurses Credentialing Center as a Nursing Executive-Advanced (NEA-BC).

During her 30-year career at Vanderbilt, she has led and been a part of numerous initiatives at both VUMC and VUSN. Key projects include providing educational/ administrative support to open the Life Gaborone Private Hospital in Botswana, South Africa; co-authoring the document for VUMC’s initial designation as a Magnet recognized institution by the American Nursing Credentialing Center; initiating the formalization of the Emergency Preparedness and Response department at VUMC; and being administratively responsible for the construction of the new 23.6 million, 29.947 square-foot state-of-the-art School of Nursing building at Vanderbilt.

Keck started her career as a staff nurse on a medical/surgical unit in Bowling Green, Kentucky. After completing her master’s in nursing, she was drawn to nursing administration and operations as an avenue to make a profound difference in delivering inclusive and equitable health care. After serving numerous years in nursing administration/operations, she redirected her career to educate the next generation of nursing professionals. She has served VUSN as a professor of nursing in the Nursing and Health Care Leadership master’s specialty and in the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program. In addition, she served as the senior associate dean for VUSN Faculty Affairs.

Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Professor of Law Emerita and Professor Emerita of Law

Nancy J. King joined the Vanderbilt Law School faculty in 1991 as an assistant professor. She became an associate professor in 1994 and was tenured in 1996. She also served as associate dean of research and faculty development in 1999 and became the Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Professor of Law in 2003. Additionally, she was the FedEx Research Professor in 2001–02 and was Touroff-Glueck Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School in fall 2015.

King is a renowned expert in criminal procedure whose work focuses on the post-investigative features of the criminal justice process. Over the course of her storied career, she has authored or co-authored two leading multivolume treatises on criminal procedure, the leading criminal procedure casebook, dozens of articles and book chapters, and several books. In 2005 she received the Chancellor’s Award for Research at Vanderbilt for her research on jury sentencing, “Jury Sentencing in Practice: A Three-State Study,” which she co-authored with Rosevelt Noble. In 2010 she received Vanderbilt University’s Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor Award, given each year to a single faculty member whose research has made distinctive contributions to the understanding of contemporary society.

In 2001 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed King to the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which drafts the rules of criminal procedure for the federal courts; she has served the Committee as Associate Reporter since her 2007 appointment by Chief Justice Roberts.

After graduating with a B.A. from Oberlin College, King earned her J.D. from the University of Michigan, where she was a recipient of the Henry M. Bates Memorial Scholarship, a member of Order of the Coif and managing editor of the Michigan Law Review. After graduating from law school, she clerked for the Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and for the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.

Associate Professor Emerita of Piano

Karen Ann Krieger served as collegiate piano chair at the Blair School of Music. Before she joined Vanderbilt in 1988, she was assistant professor of piano at Columbus State University in Georgia. Krieger also gained recognition as an award-winning television news director, news and weather anchor, photographer and producer at TV stations in Columbus, Georgia, and Nashville. Her most memorable experiences include covering Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, along with a performance for President Carter and performances with the Gregg Allman Band and the Duke Ellington band. Her music-related interviews include Gregg Allman, Emmylou Harris, Bruce Hornsby, Billy Joel, Dr. John, Al Kooper, Chuck Leavell, Michael McDonald, Steve Winwood and Reese Wynans.

Recognized as a performer and teacher, Krieger has given more than 100 workshops and concerts worldwide, including British Columbia, Cyprus, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and the former Yugoslavia. She is widely recognized for her presentations, performances and leadership at the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, and the Music Teachers National Association Conference.

Krieger has performed on both piano and accordion with the Nashville Symphony and on National Public Radio. Under the auspices of New York’s Columbia Artists and Allied Artists, she performed on both instruments across the United States with saxophonist Neal Ramsay.

She is the author of student solo and duet compositions and books on blues and rock ’n’ roll published by Alfred Music and FJH Music. Her keyboard harmony textbook, Group Piano: Proficiency in Theory and Performance, is a 2019 Hal Leonard publication. Krieger’s students have won and placed in local, state and national competitions in piano performance and composition, and many former students lead successful university teaching and performing careers.

“Make music, have fun, and remember it’s not about you, it’s about the music— make ’em listen, and you can’t go wrong” is Krieger’s oft-repeated mantra. She credits her teaching success to a well-rounded education at Western Illinois University where she earned a B.A. in piano performance with a minor in business, and an M.M. in piano performance at the University of Illinois.

University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity and Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History Emeritus

Peter Lake undertook his undergraduate and graduate work at Cambridge University, earning a Ph.D. in 1978. After two years as a junior research fellow at Clare College (Cambridge), he taught for many years at Bedford College and Royal Holloway (University of London) and then for 16 years at Princeton University, where he trained a generation of North American scholars in early modern English history. Since his arrival in the Vanderbilt Department of History in 2008, he has been an indefatigable colleague and an outstanding mentor to many Ph.D. students.

One of the world’s leading experts on Tudor-Stuart England, Lake is the author or co-author of 13 monographs, many of them focused on the intersection of religion and politics. Recent works include On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics During the Personal Rule of Charles I (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and Bad Queen Bess? Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford University Press, 2016). Also among his more recent work is a series of books co-authored with Michael Questier, including The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (Continuum, 2011) and The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (Yale University Press, 2002). In addition, Lake is one of the world’s leading authorities on the politics of Shakespeare’s plays. In How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage (Yale University Press, 2017) and in Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare’s Revenge Tragedies (Yale University Press, 2020), Lake emerged as one of the leading scholarly voices for a rigorous contextual understanding of the great playwright.

Lake has also edited or co-edited seven volumes and published more than 100 articles and book chapters in distinguished journals and collections. He has delivered several prestigious endowed lectures—including the Dr. Williams’s Trust Memorial Lecture (London), the James Ford Lectures in British History (University of Oxford), and the Prothero Lecture (Royal Historical Society, London)—and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust and the Institute for Advanced Study, among others. In 2018 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy.

Professor Emeritus of English

Jonathan Lamb was recruited to Vanderbilt from Princeton University in 2000 as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities. He is the author of six influential monographs that have defined the field of 18th-century British literary studies, the literature and culture of the South Seas, and the theory and history of emotions and sympathy in the Anglo-literary tradition. These books have been published by the top academic presses, including the University of Chicago, Cambridge, Oxford and Princeton. He has also edited five volumes of scholarly essays on a diverse range of topics—from the study of historical reenactment to the literature of exploration in the South Seas. The edited collections shined a light on emerging scholars and attracted new readers to the field of 18th-century British literary studies. He is one of the most productive and influential literary scholars of his generation on the 18th-century British empire.

His scholarly work has been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation (fellowship 2012–13) and by membership in the most prestigious learned societies in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, including the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the Royal Society of Arts, among others. Lamb was invited to continue serving on the editorial board of Eighteenth Century Studies beyond the standard three-year term, at the special request of the editor. Lamb has been commended for his insightful and generous reviews, and the significant role in enhancing the quality of published essays and supporting the development of graduate students and early career scholars.

Even in retirement he maintains an envious scholarly life, having recently given talks at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and Stanford University. He continues to serve on editorial boards and work with several graduate students at Vanderbilt while making significant progress on a new monograph entitled Ellipses. This project, which is nearly completed, tracks the impact of the Copernican Revolution and its destabilization of earthly norms on the orientation of British poetry and fiction in the ensuing decades.

Professor Emeritus of Medicine

Dr. Robert F. Miller earned a doctor of medicine from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1982. He completed an internal medicine residency and chief residency at Vanderbilt in 1986, one year of a pulmonary and critical care fellowship at the University of Washington in 1987 and two additional years of fellowship at Vanderbilt in 1989. He achieved board certification in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine and critical care medicine. Dr. Miller practiced at St. Thomas Hospital for 11 years before returning to Vanderbilt in 2001 as an assistant professor of clinical medicine within the Division of General Internal Medicine and Public Health. He attended on the Morgan and Rogers, medical intensive care unit and pulmonary consult services in addition to his outpatient pulmonary practice. He was promoted to associate professor in 2009 and professor in 2017. He became the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Medicine in 2017.

In 2004, Miller began seeing a cohort of post 9/11 deployers with respiratory symptoms following service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he is considered a national authority on deployment-related lung disorders and is a strong advocate for veterans’ health and disability benefits. He has testified in front of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs and is a resource to VA and Congressional leaders in post-deployment respiratory disorders. For 20 years, Dr. Miller has been a medical director for the Shade Tree Clinic, a nationally recognized model for student-run free clinics, and is credited with building this major program for the Vanderbilt School of Medicine.

Miller has authored/co-authored 40 peer-reviewed publications and has received 27 awards for teaching and service. The Vanderbilt School of Medicine presents the Robert Miller Service Award to medical students each year, and the Vanderbilt Department of Medicine has established the Robert Miller Society to support clinical practice faculty.

Professor Emerita of English

Vanderbilt’s Department of English was lucky to recruit Bridget E. Orr in 2002. A scholar of 18th-century British literature with a focus on theater, drama and public culture, Orr has authored two monographs Empire on the English Stage, 1660–1714 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and British Enlightenment Theatre: Dramatizing Difference (Cambridge University Press, 2020), a host of essays and book chapters, and is currently at work on a third book entitled Thespis in Chains. Orr’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Fulbright Program, among others.

Orr studies how British drama theatricalized the most pressing and complicated political issues facing British citizens in the 18th century. The chief topics in this period include the forging of a British empire, the imposition of colonial rule and the rise of chattel slavery.

Her scholarship considers how the theater of empire made people feel and how these feelings, in turn, informed political sensibilities and explicit political positions. Reading a vast array of historical materials, Orr explores how British citizens came to understand themselves through theater as sympathetically British. The plays Orr studies taught spectators how to recognize and, on occasion, feel sympathy for the minoritized and exploited people on whose labor and suppression the British empire was built.

Orr is also a scholar of New Zealand literary traditions, including the indigenous Maori writers and the impacts of British colonialism in the South Seas region. She studies exploration narratives of the 18th-century alongside more contemporary indigenous authors who critique Britian’s ongoing global project and offer competing narratives of history and progress.

In her undergraduate and graduate teaching, Orr makes the concerns of earlier periods of literary history interesting to students who come to understand how the British empire continues to shape the contemporary world. They have found reading drama with Orr fascinating and her enthusiasm for these texts infectious.

Professor Emeritus of Human and Organizational Development

Douglas D. Perkins’ work has impacted hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students, his department, Nashville, and community psychology and other fields in the United States and other countries around the world.

Perkins earned his B.A. at Swarthmore College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in community psychology at New York University. He was recruited to Vanderbilt as founding director of the Ph.D. Program in Community Research and Action in 2000, one of the first hires of the Department of Human and Organizational Development at Peabody College. A former NCAA athlete, he served on the VU Athletics Advisory Committee and represented Vanderbilt Faculty Senate at the national Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics. As director of the HOD Honors Program he expanded participation in the program four-fold.

Perkins was elected as a fellow of the Society for Community Research and Action and received SCRA’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Theory and Research. His work first gained international recognition for his ecological (multilevel), longitudinal studies of grassroots citizen participation, place attachment, urban disorder, crime and revitalization in New York City, Baltimore and Salt Lake City and for his development of the widely used Sense of Community Index and Block Environmental Inventory.

His research expanded at Vanderbilt to focus on social capital, organization change, collaboration, coalition development (in youth violence prevention and affordable housing contexts), and improving local public policy making (e.g., collaborations leading to the Barnes Housing Trust Fund). The mayor appointed Perkins to facilitate Nashville’s Task Force on Chronic Homelessness, which created the city’s Homelessness Commission. He created and directed HOD’s Center for Community Studies (2004–12). He also is associate editor of Psychosocial Intervention and serves on multiple editorial boards.

Perkins’ latest research assesses and analyzes the global development of 12 applied, community-focused professional and research fields. This work has been collaborative with many Vanderbilt students and international colleagues. In China he was visiting professor at three universities and directed the Field School in Intercultural Education. His Chinese collaborations and Chinese translation of his textbook helped lead to the development of community psychology as a field of study and research in China. In South Africa he directed another Field School, and he has taught courses in Germany, Bulgaria, and China, and has been a visiting scholar in Australia, Chile and Italy. Perkins’ publications have been cited almost 22,000 times, demonstrating his significant impact on multiple fields.

Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies

In a career spanning five decades, David H. Price has established himself as the premier scholar of Jewish-Christian relations in early modern Germany. Educated at the universities of Munich and Cincinnati as an undergraduate, he proceeded on to the University of Tübingen and then to Yale, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1985. After teaching at Yale, the University of Texas, and the University of Illinois, Price joined Vanderbilt in 2016.

Price is a prolific scholar who published six monographs, numerous critical editions and translations of Renaissance texts, three co-authored books, and articles in the most important journals of the field. His recent In the Beginning Was the Image: Art and the Reformation Bible (Oxford University Press, 2020) reshaped our understanding of how biblical art transformed Christianity in the Renaissance and Reformation. His newest book, Defending Judaism: Jewish Writing and Religious Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025) explores the decisive contributions of Jewish writers to the expansion of religious freedom in the Enlightenment. His abiding interest in images, objects and art also led to his involvement in three exhibitions that he curated or co-curated. A scholar of politics, literature, religion and the visual arts, Price is the interdisciplinary humanist par excellence.

Price received wide acclaim for his scholarly contributions, including the Berlin Prize at the American Academy in Berlin, only the latest of a host of awards recognizing his particular contribution to the study of Jewish-Christian relations and religion and the arts. But his love of books, manuscripts and prints as objects of study is also reflected in his fellowships with libraries at Yale, the University of Illinois, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt. Students and colleagues alike have found this love infectious as they have been shaped by his scholarship and teaching. They have also found in David Price, amid his intellectual brilliance, a uniquely kind, humble and welcoming spirit.

Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine

Wayne A. Ray is an internationally recognized pharmacoepidemiologist who was among the first to effectively use large, computerized health care databases to perform epidemiologic studies. His research has sought to advance public health by rigorous study of the clinical outcomes of widely used medications for which the knowledge base required for optimal prescribing was inadequate. His research has resulted in more than 200 publications that have advanced pharmacoepidemiology and improved therapeutic outcomes.

Ray joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 1974 as a research associate and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1985 and professor with tenure in 1991. He co-founded the Vanderbilt Master of Public Health Program in 1996, whose defining purpose was to train advanced health care professionals in the rigorous conduct of population-based research. He was the program director from its inception through 2010 and taught the foundational advanced epidemiology class through 2019.

Ray has received multiple awards and honors. In recognition of his methodologic expertise, he was the first to receive the Burroughs Wellcome Scholar in Pharmacoepidemiology Award and was inducted into the American Epidemiological Society. He received the Vanderbilt School of Medicine Innovation in Teaching Award for his crucial role in founding the Master of Public Health Program. For his contributions to public health through his pharmacoepidemiologic studies, he also was honored by the Vanderbilt School of Medicine with the William J. Darby Research Award for Translational Research that has Changed the Practice of Medicine Worldwide.

Professor Emerita of English

Nancy Reisman is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. Many of her works focus on the intimate mysteries of family life—the hurts, traumas and joys that are thought and lived but rarely expressed. When Trompe l’oeil (Tin House Books, 2015) hit the literary scene, The New York Times in its glowing review bid readers to linger with Reisman’s “heart-shaking” novel about an American family who suffers the accidental death of a child. Devastating, this novel also alerted the reader to “the sense of newness and possibility, of light and color, of almost reckless narrative daring. […] What you feel, in startling and almost painterly form is life itself.”

Reisman also published The First Desire (Pantheon, 2004), a novel translated into French and German, named a “Notable Book” of the year by The New York Times and Detroit Free Press, and was a finalist for five fiction awards, including the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Reisman’s short-story collection House Fires (University of Iowa Press, 1999) won the Iowa Short Fiction Award.

She has placed individual stories in many notable journals, and her creative practice has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Tennessee Arts Commission in addition to prestigious writer’s residencies.

Reisman was recruited to Vanderbilt from University of Michigan in 2005. At the center of our world-renowned MFA Program in Creative Writing, Reisman has shepherded hundreds of the most gifted writers through the degree and publishing process, helping to bring their work into the world. Recognized for graduate teaching in 2007 with the Vanderbilt English Graduate Student Association Award, Reisman also won the 2019 Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Students praise the time and care she takes with their creative writing, and they marvel at her pedagogy that is equal parts compassion and rigor.

In the classroom as in her creative work, Nancy Reisman cultivates perception and attunes us to the possibilities of “life itself.”

Professor Emerita of Pharmacology

Ann Richmond earned her Ph.D. from Emory University in 1979 and did postdoctoral work at Emory University School of Medicine. In 1983 she was appointed assistant professor of medicine at Emory where her research focused on the identification and characterization of melanoma growth stimulatory activity, later named CXCL1. After determining the cDNA sequence, chromosomal location for MGSA, and sequence of the gene with its promoter, her group continued to characterize its function in tumorigenesis, angiogenesis, wound healing and leukocyte trafficking.

In 1989 she joined Vanderbilt University as associate professor of cell biology with tenure. She later affiliated with the Department of Cancer Biology where from 2000 to 2018 she was vice chair of the department, followed by serving as director of the Program in Cancer Biology (2018–24) and as professor of pharmacology and dermatology. She is a fellow of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women and served as the Vanderbilt University assistant dean of postdoctoral affairs (2005–10) and as associate director of education for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (2004–2020). From 2012 to 2021 she was co– principal investigator for the Meharry Medical College/Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center/Tennessee State University Cancer Partnership program to eliminate cancer disparities. She served as president of the Society for Leukocyte Biology (2014–16), and throughout her career she was a permanent member of both National Cancer Institute and Department of Veterans Affairs study sections. She organized many scientific meetings and the first Gordon Research Conference on Chemotactic Cytokines.

Richmond was the Ingram Professor of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt (2005–25) and received the Associate Career Scientist Award from the VA (1988–2024). She received the Charles R. Park Research Award in 2014, the William S. Middleton Award for Excellence in Biomedical Laboratory Research in 2016, was named an AAAS Fellow in 2018, received the Dolores C. Shockley Partnership Award in 2018, and the Legacy Award from the Society for Leukocyte Biology in 2019. Richmond has been active in many professional societies and serves on several editorial boards. She has published more than 220 peer-reviewed papers, chapters and review articles, trained more than 80 undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and has been a champion for advancing training in cancer research in diverse populations.

Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics

Edward B. Saff earned his B.S. in applied mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1964 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Maryland in 1968. Saff was a Fulbright fellow at Imperial College London before joining the faculty at the University of South Florida, where he became Distinguished Research Professor. He also was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. Saff joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2001 as professor of mathematics and was promoted to Distinguished Professor in 2023.

At the University of South Florida, Saff founded and directed the Institute for Constructive Mathematics, served as associate director of the Florida Regional Center for Excellence in Mathematics, Science, Computers and Technology, and was a member of the Florida House of Representatives Special Task Force on Science, Mathematics and Computer Science. At Vanderbilt he was founder and director of the Center for Constructive Approximation and xecutive dean of the College of Arts and Science.

As part of the Center for Constructive Approximation, Saff is co-editor-in-chief of the renowned research journal Constructive Approximation. He has mentored 18 Ph.D. students and 13 postdoctoral researchers. Saff has served as a NATO collaborator to a French research team at Inria Sophia Antipolis, as co-director of an Australian Research Council Discovery Award, and as an annual visiting research collaborator at the University of Cyprus. He also received an Erskine Visiting Fellowshio to the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and a Pichorides Distinguished Lectureship to the University of Crete.

Saff’s research areas include approximation theory, numerical analysis and potential theory. He has published more than 290 research articles, co-authored nine books, and co-edited 11 volumes. He received an honorary doctorate from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He was elected as a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, as a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. In addition, he was the recipient of numerous National Science Foundation research grants as well as the Chancellor’s Research Award at Vanderbilt.

Professor Emeritus of Law

Herwig J. Schlunk clerked for a judge in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and worked for several years in the private sector before joining the Vanderbilt Law School faculty in 1999 as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 2002 and was granted tenure in 2004.

Schlunk’s scholarship has primarily focused on corporate income taxation, individual income taxation, and state and local taxation. At Vanderbilt Law School, he has taught Federal Tax Law, Corporate Taxation, Real Estate Finance and Development, Venture Capital, Taxes and Business Strategy, and more. His publications have appeared in the Notre Dame Law Review, Texas Law Review, Virginia Law Review and Tax Notes, among others. He has been a visiting professor at New York University Law School and University of Virginia Law School. He earned a J.D., MBA, M.S. and B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Senior Associate Dean Emerita for Academics

Mavis N. Schorn is a highly accomplished nurse-midwife, educator and scholar with an impressive career spanning over four decades. She earned a master’s in maternal-child nursing from Texas Woman’s University and a Nurse-Midwifery Certificate from Baylor College of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. in nursing science from the University of Kentucky in 2008. Schorn has held various academic and clinical roles throughout her career, most notably serving on the Vanderbilt faculty from 2002 to 2024. She rose in administrative positions, including director of the nurse-midwifery specialty (2006–12), assistant dean for academics (2010–13) and senior associate dean for academics at the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing (2013–24).

Schorn has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and book chapters on topics such as the management of the third stage of labor, postpartum hemorrhage and interprofessional education. She has secured more than $21 million in grant funding to support VUSN’s mission, including more than $19 million in training education or workforce development grants. She has also served as a grant reviewer for the Health Resources and Services Administration and has been an active member of several professional organizations, including the American College of Nurse- Midwives, the American Academy of Nursing and the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative.

Schorn has served on national, regional, state and local committees and held leadership roles in various organizations, including the Accreditation Commission for Midwifery Education and the Directors of Midwifery Education, as well as more than 20 different Vanderbilt committees and the Faculty Senate.

In recognition of her outstanding contributions, she has received numerous honors and awards, including Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Practice, fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, fellow in the American College of Nurse-Midwives, and the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the University of Kentucky College of Nursing.

Over the course of her career, Schorn has been a dedicated mentor to countless nursing and midwifery students, guiding them in their academic and professional pursuits. Her commitment to excellence, innovation and interprofessional collaboration has made her a highly respected and influential figure in the nursing and midwifery communities.

Professor Emeritus of Medicine

Dr. John S. Sergent has been a Vanderbilt faculty member for almost 50 years, and before that he was a Vanderbilt student. After earning his B.A. (1963) and M.D. (1966) at Vanderbilt, he completed residency at Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt, became an assistant professor at Cornell University, then returned to Vanderbilt in 1975 to join the faculty.

He has dedicated his career to patient care and medical education and received numerous local and national awards for his teaching, including having a teaching award named for him at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine. He served for a decade as the Department of Medicine’s vice chair for education and program director for the residency training program.

Dr. Sergent has been involved in the field of rheumatology at the national level, including serving as president of the American College of Rheumatology in 1993. He was editor or co-editor of numerous rheumatology publications and textbooks and chaired the American Board of Internal Medicine subcommittee on rheumatology from 1988 to 1990. He has presented visiting lectures across a wide range of settings, from the Kentucky Academy of Family Physicians to the Argentine Congress of Rheumatology.

Sergent’s contributions to the community also include seven years (1988–1995) as chair of the Department of Medicine at Saint Thomas Hospital and eight years as the inaugural chief medical officer of the Vanderbilt Medical Group (1995–2003).

Sergent also was an op-ed columnist for The Tennessean for 15 years, and his best columns have been collected in the book Healing Words (2009, Cold Tree Press). His columns often focused on the importance of patients and physicians learning about one another as people, despite vast differences in background and experiences.

Professor Emeritus of Surgery

Dr. Shaffer earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1978 and his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1982. After completing his training in general surgery and transplantation at the New England Deaconess Hospital, he joined the surgical faculty at the New England Deaconess Hospital (now Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) as Instructor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School in 1989, rising to Associate Professor in 1997. In 2001, he joined the surgical faculty at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine as Professor of Surgery and Division Chief, Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation, where he has also served as Surgical Director of the Adult Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program and Surgical Director of the Pediatric Kidney Transplant Program.

Dr. Shaffer has made significant contributions to clinical care, research, teaching and service, and under his leadership, the Vanderbilt kidney transplant program has become one of the largest in the nation. Shaffer led a multidisciplinary team to grow clinical volumes, increasing the number of yearly kidney transplants from 58 to 276 at the time he stepped down as division chief. Shaffer initiated programs to expand kidney transplant access, especially to underserved populations. These include laparoscopic donor nephrectomy, paired donor exchange, kidney transplants to HIV positive recipients, antibody desensitization for crossmatch positive donors, blood group A2 to B kidney transplants to increase access for African Americans, and kidney transplants from HCV positive donors. He restarted the pancreas transplant program and trained and mentored faculty to perform these complicated procedures. In recognition of his many clinical contributions, Dr. Shaffer received the 2025 Noel B. Tulipan Award for extraordinary performance of clinical service from the School of Medicine.

This growth positioned the program to participate in national research trials. He started a surgical research portfolio including multicentered clinical trials of novel immunosuppressive agents and novel uses of approved drugs. His additional publication topics include surgical outcomes, quality of life, transplantation access, surgical education and dialysis access. He has mentored trainees and junior faculty in these projects and most recently wasVanderbilt’s principal investigator on a trial— funded by the National Institutes of Health—that evaluates HCV positive donor organs in kidney transplantation.

Teaching is a priority for Shaffer. He received both major surgical teaching awards at Vanderbilt—the John L. Sawyers Award and the Robert S. McCleery Master Teacher Award. He has been named to the Chair’s List for Faculty Excellence in Teaching multiple times. Shaffer has served as president of the Tennessee Transplant Society, on the ASTS Standards on Organ Transplantation Committee, the United Network for Organ Sharing Membership and Professional Standards Committee, UNOS Regional 11 Councilor, and the UNOS/Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network Board of Directors.

Professor Emerita of Human and Organizational Development

Before coming to Peabody College, Sharon L. Shields earned a B.S. (1971) and M.Ed. (1974) in exercise science and education from the University of Louisville and taught middle school in Jefferson County, Kentucky.

Her academic journey at George Peabody College for Teachers began in 1974. She had been offered a graduate assistantship in the Department of Health and Physical Education to work on a rural health project while studying for her doctorate in curriculum and health and physical education. In 1976 she earned her Ph.D. Because Shields believed that she had benefited enormously from her educational opportunities, in the years that followed she endeavored to foster such opportunities for future generations.

Shields’ calling to higher education led her to take a faculty position at George Peabody College for Teachers in 1976. Doors opened that she never anticipated, and her passion for making a difference led her to embrace myriad opportunities. She earned full professorship of the practice in recognition of her compassionate and caring teaching and her impactful scholarship in health and human services, service-learning and advocacy for equal rights. Her leadership and service to many diverse organizations and communities have been recognized throughout her career with university and national/international awards.

Shields has served in many roles across the university. She was co-founder of the Kim Dayani Human Performance Center (now Dayani Center for Health and Wellness, part of Vanderbilt University Medical Center), assistant provost for academic service-learning, a faculty head of house on The Ingram Commons, interim director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies and interim director of the Susan Gray School, and most recently the senior associate dean of community and special projects at Peabody.

Whether teaching a Health Service to Diverse Populations class, advising students, mentoring faculty, serving on grants in North Nashville or the Dominican Republic, serving on the Faculty Senate or the Peabody Faculty Council, or engaging in equal rights issues for practice faculty and other causes, Shields has been a citizen of the university, committed to making a difference in society and in the world around her.

Her lifelong motto, “Trust the path, Live the journey,” continues to guide her and the many lives she has impacted along the way.

Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair #36, Emerita, and Professor Emerita of Human and Organizational Development

Marybeth (Beth) Shinn earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1978 and taught at New York University before joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 2008. Shinn studies how to prevent and end homelessness. She helped design the first experimental study of the Pathways Housing First model that has been adopted internationally to house people with long histories of homelessness and serious mental illnesses. More recently she helped lead the 12-site Family Options experiment showing that access to housing vouchers not only ends family homelessness but has radiating benefits for parents and children. She and her colleagues are now conducting a 12-year follow-up. With students, she developed a model used by New York City to target its homelessness prevention services. Current projects include screening for homelessness in Vanderbilt’s Emergency Department and evaluating an unconditional cash transfer program paired with voluntary peer advocacy for families with infants residing in homeless shelters in New York City. Her book with co-author Jill Khadduri, In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What To Do About It (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), argues that research shows us how to end homelessness, if we devote the necessary resources to doing so.

Shinn’s scholarship has been honored by the Society for Community Research and Action, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the Society for Research on Adolescence, and by Vanderbilt with the Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished University Professor Award. Nationally, she served as president of the Society for Community Research and Action and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Locally, she served on the Healthy Nashville Leadership Council, the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Task Force and Nashville’s Homelessness Planning Council.

Holland N. McTyeire Professor of History Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of History

Daniel Usner is one of the most important and prolific scholars of early American and indigenous history. After earning his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Duke University, he began his career at Cornell University, eventually becoming the director of the American Indian Program in 1999. Vanderbilt was fortunate to hire him in 2002 and to have him create an important new focus for the history department. The following year he was named the Holland N. McTyeire Professor of History.

Usner has received many awards, honors and fellowships over his long career. Among the awards supporting his scholarship were those from the American Council of Learned Societies, the School for Advanced Research, two named fellowships at The Huntington Library, the Newberry Library Consortium in American Indian Studies Fellowship, and the Bard Graduate Center Research Fellowship.

Those research awards contributed to many award-winning articles and books. His first monograph, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783 (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 1992) won the Jamestown Prize from the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association. Five more monographs followed on topics as diverse as indigenous languages, crafts such as weaving and basketry, and indigenous team sports in colonial New Orleans. He is currently completing an eighth volume tracking the marketing and museum acquisition of baskets woven by Chitimacha women in Louisiana. He calls this process “basket diplomacy” and argues that it recognized and saved an indigenous nation under assault.

Usner has provided generous service to his field, the profession and to the Vanderbilt Department of History. He has served on the councils or executive boards of the American Society for Ethnohistory, the Louisiana Historical Association, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, and the Southern Historical Association. Both the American Society for Ethnohistory and the Louisiana Historical Association elected Usner as president. He has also served as a reader/reviewer for numerous academic presses, scholarly journals and fellowship programs. His deep knowledge of and love for his hometown, New Orleans, has resulted in invitations to deliver a number of memorial lectures and keynote addresses. In 2023 he we awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Usner has been equally generous with service to Vanderbilt, serving as departmental chair and leading multiple departmental committees.

He also provided service tothe Robert Penn Warren Center, the Vanderbilt University Press, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, the Center for the Americas, and Habitat for Humany. He has been a valued adviser for NATIVe; organized or participated in 30 Teaching American History programs; and worked on projects for the National Park Service, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and New Orleans Tricentennial projects.

In addition to his accomplishments, service and scholarship, his warm personality and humble collegiality are very much appreciated and valued by his colleagues and students.

Valere Blair Potter Professor of Finance Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Management

Robert E. Whaley earned his bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Alberta and his master of business administration and doctorate from the University of Toronto. He joined Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management in 1978 as assistant professor, rising to tenured associate professor in 1983. Professor. After brief visits at the University of Alberta and the University of Chicago and twenty years at Duke University, he returned to Vanderbilt in 2006 as a professor and the director of the Financial Markets Research Center.

Whaley’s research interests are in the areas of exchange-traded funds, volatility index products, commodity index products, derivatives contract design and climate finance. Much of his past work focused on the valuation of option and futures option contracts and the efficiency of the markets in which they trade. He is an established expert in derivative contract valuation and risk management and has been a consultant for many major investment houses, security exchanges (futures, option and stock), governmental agencies, and accounting and law firms. Whaley developed the CBOE’s Market Volatility Index or VIX in 1993, the NASDAQ Market Volatility Index or VXN in 2000, and the BuyWrite Monthly Index or BXM in 2001. He co-developed the NASDAQ-OMX Alpha Indexes in 2010.

Natalie Overall Warren Chair in Biochemistry Emeritus

and Professor Emeritus ofBiochemistry

John D. York was raised outside of Chicago and earned a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Iowa in 1986. He joined Merck Research Labs (Stephen Gardell group, vampire bat natural products) for two years (1987–1989), and then followed Sally York to St. Louis in 1989 as she entered a Medical Scientist Training Program (M.D./Ph.D.), and he worked to support the family. In August 1990 he entered graduate school at Washington University, joined the laboratory of Dr. Philip Majerus in spring 1991 and earned a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology and biochemistry in October 1993 (inositide signaling). Postgraduate work included appointment as an instructor in spring 1994 and winning a prestigious Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences (1995–2001). York was recruited to Duke University in 1996 as an assistant professor of pharmacology and cancer biology, and of biochemistry as a Whitehead Scholar. Professional highlights included being selected as a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2000–12), receiving the 2002 ASBMB Schering-Plough Science Achievement Award, and in 2009 being appointed as the Cancer Biology Professor of Pharmacology and Biochemistry at Duke University Medical Center.

York’s research focused on intracellular signal transduction pathways (specifically inositide signaling) and their roles in disease. York and others demonstrated that inositides are a multifactorial ensemble of instructions that enhance signaling complexity and regulate a multitude of processes. In recent years, his laboratory focused on the role of inositol hexakisphosphate (IP6) as a structural cofactor required for protein stability, folding and function. In 2012 he was recruited to Vanderbilt as department chair and Natalie Overall Warren Professor of Biochemistry. During his time as Chair, York enjoyed playing a role in reshaping the the Department, Medical Center and University through faculty recruitment and leadership committees a. In 2021, York took a leave of absence and joined Impossible Foods as chief science officer. Impossible Foods is a mission-based hyper-growth startup company seeking to reduce climate change and restore biodiversity through plant-based meat. York returned to Vanderbilt as professor of biochemistry in 2022.