The immersive experience component of Immersion Vanderbilt is designed to complement your academic journey with practical, engaging opportunities that will enrich your learning and prepare you for future success. Your immersive experience is your opportunity to explore, innovate, and connect with real-world challenges and opportunities.
Immersive experiences offer you the chance to step beyond the classroom and engage deeply with your field of study. Students are encouraged to pursue multiple immersive experiences during their academic career. Experiences completed through tagged classes, pre-approved programs, and faculty and staff led cohorts appear on the Immersion Vanderbilt tab located in students’ academic records in YES. Independent experiences are added to YES through student submission of the Independent Experience Form. Immersive experiences can be completed within or outside of your home school/college in a few different ways:
Students who choose study abroad for their immersive experience will travel beyond Vanderbilt to deepen their skills, enhance their knowledge, expand their horizons, and increase their sense of independence and self-confidence. Whether studying abroad on programs or through other opportunities, students develop professionally and academically, interculturally, and personally. Some possible ways to engage include:
Students pursuing innovation, arts, and design may want to develop the next life-changing phone application, find a groundbreaking solution to a global problem, direct a play, create a work of art, or write a best-selling novel. Innovation, arts, and design at Vanderbilt is supported by many partner offices and academic departments, including but not limited to:
Undergraduate research can take place in any discipline and can occur on campus, in the field, abroad, or at another institution. Opportunities include faculty-directed or mentored bench science, fieldwork, data science, literature review, creative arts-based research, technology research, etc. Please note: shadowing or other primarily observatory practices may not qualify as an immersive experience.
Both paid and unpaid internships are invaluable opportunities for students to gain research or work experience, grow their knowledge of the profession and themselves, build professional connections, and ultimately determine if the field is right for them. Students who complete an internship often have a competitive edge in the workplace.Undergraduate students are encouraged to learn about their options and opportunities by scheduling a coaching appointment with an expert in the Career Center!Please note: shadowing or other primarily observatory practices may not qualify as an immersive experience.
Different from service learning or volunteer work, community and civic engagement require ongoing and intentional interactions between the student and the people or entity that are central to their immersive experience.
Leadership and professional development training provides students with opportunities to practice critical skills in leadership and team building, identify the qualities, behaviors, values, and standards of a specific profession, and effectively adjust to existing experiences and situations. Pre-professional training, project development and management, and formalized leader training or certifications:
Schedule an appointment with Immersion Vanderbilt.