Big and Bold: 2017-18 Annual Impact Report

SERVING AS CHANCELLOR of this great university is a privilege and honor. It’s also a calling to advocate for the role of higher education. At Vanderbilt, our mission is to teach, to discover, to cure, to innovate. Simply put, what we do here at Vanderbilt makes a difference every day in the world around us.

Working together, committed to our common mission, our dedicated community brings the best of Vanderbilt to the world around us.

We’ve been tested over the past year by narratives spun about higher education—that it’s irrelevant, out of touch and out of reach. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s our responsibility to stand up, tell our story and fight for our values as we continue to respond to humanity’s greatest challenges and provide solutions to its most pressing needs.

This report highlights our overall efforts from the past year to demonstrate our values and drive impact against our mission. How we’re making a Vanderbilt education affordable and accessible. How we’re fostering a distinctive learning community as we develop the leaders of tomorrow. How our research advances knowledge and changes lives. How we’re demonstrating our commitment to diversity and inclusion. How we’re expanding our margin of excellence to make an impact locally and globally.

Working together, committed to our common mission, our dedicated community brings the best of Vanderbilt to the world around us. Thank you for your continued support as we move Vanderbilt forward.

Sincerely,

Nicholas S. Zeppos, Chancellor

STUDENT-ATHLETE ACCOMPLISHMENTS

RESIDENTIAL COLLEGES

“THESE BUILDINGS ARE BEING BUILT TO INSPIRE, TO CREATE COMMUNITY AND TO GENERATE KNOWLEDGE, AND THEY ARE BUILT TO LAST.”
NICHOLAS S. ZEPPOS

RESIDENTIAL COLLEGES extend the rigorous, immersive undergraduate experience beyond the classroom into a 24/7 environment, providing places of community, of discovery, of learning and of human transformation. This year, we announced our largest-ever capital investment, the $600 million West End neighborhood, soon to be home to four new residential colleges, including the E. Bronson Ingram College opening this fall.

OUR COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE is impossible to achieve without a resilient, supportive community. Vanderbilt puts a priority on the wellbeing of its students, faculty and staff—through our research for new therapies, our Student Care Network launched in July 2018 and designed to deliver the right care at the right time, and our GO THERE campaign, which kicked off in 2017, focused on reducing stigma around mental illness.

THE LIFEBLOOD OF VANDERBILT has always been its world-class faculty. Their cross-disciplinary research yields constant discovery with widespread impact in the real world. Drug discovery that includes personalized cancer treatments. Smart prosthetic limbs that adjust themselves. Breakthroughs in brain research involving development, learning, addiction and more.

We fuel this discovery by recruiting a diverse mix of rising stars, investing in their scholarship early and often, and supporting them throughout their careers here.

OUR $50 MILLION TRANS-INSTITUTIONAL PROGRAMS initiative propels our faculty’s momentum to innovate and collaborate across disciplines with seven new projects funded in 2018. Through our Chancellor Faculty Fellows program, we’ve invested more than $4 million in newly tenured faculty since 2015 and added 12 new fellows in 2018.

AT A TIME WHEN MANY UNIVERSITIES are shrinking their graduate programs, in 2017 we began rolling out our $300 million commitment to expand graduate education and research. This fall, we welcome the first cohort of 86 Russell Hamilton Scholars into one of the nation’s most extensive graduate student scholarship programs.

Knowing that innovative teaching and research require cutting-edge facilities, Vanderbilt continues to make major investments in our campus environment. These new academic spaces support our world-class faculty as they collaborate in pursuit of discovery.

AS GROWING IDEOLOGICAL GAPS continue to tear at the fabric of our nation, we at Vanderbilt embrace diversity in all its forms. We believe that diversity is our competitive advantage. The grand problems facing society today require complex solutions that are discovered only when everyone has a seat at the table. That’s why Vanderbilt is focused on building a welcoming, inclusive community—enrolling a diverse student body, recruiting outstanding leaders in diversity to key positions, and establishing executive-level roles focused on equity, diversity and inclusion.

OUR INNOVATIVE LAND-USE PLAN, FutureVU, incorporates our mission of research, teaching and discovery with our core values to provide a campus environment that reflects our commitment. Last summer, we fulfilled a pledge made in 2016 to remove the word “Confederate” from the pediment of Memorial Hall. We held the inaugural Wrestling With Our Past conference in March to continue examining wounds still present in our society from the Civil War.

AT ITS CORE, VANDERBILT’S MISSION is to improve the world around us. Our goal is to be an engine of innovation, a society of curiosity and a convener of ideas. Our focus is both on our campus and the surrounding community, from the city of Nashville to planet Earth.

Vanderbilt is an integral part of Tennessee’s strong economy—both in the traditional sense and also as an incubator for competitive advantage in the state and across the nation. Vanderbilt develops human capital, supports innovation and entrepreneurship, and cultivates clusters in knowledge industries.

WITH OUR CHANCELLOR’S LECTURE SERIES, Senior Day and other speeches and events, we welcome thought leaders to our city who can inspire us with insights on key issues of the day. By encouraging thoughtful, respectful discourse, we can learn from each other and ultimately strengthen the fabric of our society.

To further our impact on society, we are raising our global profile, sharing our faculty research on a broader platform and bringing more international scholars to campus. Our International Strategy and Faculty Voices in the Public Sphere committees provide a strategic framework for future efforts.

OUR PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE IS BUILT on a bedrock of financial strength. Vanderbilt continues to move ever forward, thanks not only to our innovative leadership who carefully steward our resources, but also to the friends, parents and alumni who continue to invest their time, talent and money in Vanderbilt.

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