On Campus
Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the international best seller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, spoke Nov. 18 at the Student Life Center in a lecture sponsored by the Vanderbilt Speakers Committee. In their book, which has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide, Dubner and fellow author Steven D. Levitt tackle the riddles of everyday life by applying basic economics.


Kudos

James E. Auer, director of the Center for U.S.-Japan Studies and Cooperation at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, has been honored with the Order of the Rising Sun, a decoration conferred by the emperor of Japan in recognition of contributions to the promotion of relations between Japan and the United States.

Mark Cannon, associate professor of leadership and organizational studies, was invited by the Albert Shanker Institute to participate in the panel discussion “Teacher Pay and Staffing Policies: What Works, What Doesn’t” held in Washington, D.C. Cannon discussed current research on the use of incentive pay for improving individual and system performance. The discussion was part of the institute’s Seminar Series for Union Leaders, Policy Experts and Superintendents.

Elisabeth Dykens, associate director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, has been named interim director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center following the resignation of Pat Levitt, who has accepted a position at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. A nationwide search for the new director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center is under way.

Roland “Ron” Eavey has been named chair of Vanderbilt’s Department of Otolaryngology and director of the Bill Wilkerson Center for Otolaryngology and Hearing and Speech Sciences, effective February 2009. Eavey succeeds founding chair Robert Ossoff, who announced last year he would transition into a new role at Vanderbilt this December. Eavey comes from Harvard University, where he has been director of ear, nose and throat pediatric services at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary at Harvard since 1981.

Leonard Folgarait, professor of history of art, delivered the lecture “Pablo Picasso, Henri Bergson and Gertrude Stein” at the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and at Leiden University in Leiden, the Netherlands. In addition, his book, Seeing Mexico Photographed: The Work of Horne, Casasola, Modotti and Alvarez Bravo, has been published by Yale University Press.

Vivien Green Fryd, vice chair and professor of history of art, is among a select group of scholars helping design an exhibition as part of the Otis College of Art and Design project “A Public Center of One’s Own: The Woman’s Building’s Contribution to the Arts in Los Angeles.” The project will explore the role of the Woman’s Building, a major site of activity especially during the 1970s, in the feminist art movement in Southern California. Research for the project will begin in 2009 and culminate in a scholarly exhibit and catalog in 2012.

Patricia A. Helland, assistant dean and director of strategic initiatives in the Dean of Student’s office, has been named interim director of the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center. A search for a new director of the women’s center is under way.

Dawn Iacobucci, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Marketing, has been named associate dean for faculty development at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management. Iacobucci will have responsibility for all faculty evaluation, promotion and tenure recommendations and will closely collaborate with directors of the school’s degree programs on curriculum development.

Ara Pachmayer has been named director of Vanderbilt’s Global Education Office, which provides international learning and global engagement experiences for students. Pachmayer comes from Arizona State University, where she was associate director of the Office of Study Abroad and worked in international education for 10 years.

Laura Pevahouse, assistant director of development at Vanderbilt Medical Center for programs of the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center and the Vanderbilt Eye Institute, has been named director of development for the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. Pevahouse will coordinate short-term and long-term planning and procurement of major gifts for the center.

Beth Price, oncology operations strategist for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and Vanderbilt Medical Group, has been named to the newly created position of chief executive officer of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.

Karen Sandmel, a Vanderbilt doctoral student in special education advised by Professor of Special Education Karen Harris, was selected through a competitive process to participate in the inaugural cohort of Doctoral Seminars in Special Education Research, an online seminar and discussion series designed to foster connections among students at different universities and contribute to raising the standard of research in the field of special education.

John Sloop, professor of communication studies and associate dean of the College of Arts and Science, has been awarded the 2008 Charles H. Woolbert Research Award for the article “The Critique of Vernacular Discourse,” published in Communication Monographs. Sloop shares the award with co-author Kent Ono, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The National Communication Association presents the award annually to a member or members who have published a journal article or book chapter that has stood the test of time and become the stimulus for new conceptualizations of speech communication phenomena.



Holidays: Mark your calendar with these important dates and holiday events
All events are free and open to the Vanderbilt community unless otherwise noted. For more information, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/calendar.

Dec. 2-14 – Sarratt Holiday Arts Festival
Gift sale at the Sarratt Gallery featuring crafts and art work by Sarratt Art Studios faculty and invited guests.

Dec. 4-5 – Rand Hall Bookstore Faculty/Staff Appreciation Days
From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., faculty and staff receive an extra 10 percent off bookstore merchandise by showing a Vanderbilt ID.

Dec. 4 – Hanging of the Green
Peabody College’s annual ceremony adorning the Wyatt Center with greenery is from 4 to 5 p.m. A gingerbread house-building contest in the Wyatt Center lobby precedes the ceremony.

Dec. 5 – Vanderbilt Alternative Gift Fair
From 3 to 6 p.m. at St. Augustine’s Chapel, attendees can make a gift to a social service organization in the name of a loved one, or purchase fair trade handmade crafts that aim to improve the livelihoods of their creators.

Dec. 6 – Sarratt Holiday Arts Festival Reception
From noon to 3 p.m., enjoy live performances by VU student groups and jazz guitarist Mel Deal at the Sarratt Gallery, while perusing handmade jewelry, pottery and more as part of the annual gift sale.

Dec. 7 – Vanderbilt Concert Choir and Chamber Singers
From 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., the Vanderbilt vocalists will treat guests to a concert of holiday music, both old and new, at the Sarratt Cinema.

Dec. 8 – Curb Youth Symphony Winter Concert
The event from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at Ingram Hall will feature Derek Shyr, piano, and Carol Nies, conductor.

Dec. 9 – Last day of undergraduate classes for fall semester

Dec. 9 – Christmahanukkwanzaa!
Celebrate three major holidays in one night at this event sponsored by Lambda, Hillel and the Black Student Alliance. Beginning at 8 p.m. at the Schulman Center, enjoy traditional food, music and holiday observances.

Dec. 10-18 – Undergraduate reading day and exams

Dec. 10 – Blair Winter Jazz Concert
This ticketed event from 8 to 10 p.m. at Ingram Hall features the Blair Big Band and the Nashville Jazz Orchestra. Admittance is free to students with a Vanderbilt ID.

Dec. 12 – Blair Children’s Chorus Winter Concert
Hazel Somerville will direct this performance, scheduled from 7:30 to
9 p.m. at Ingram Hall.

Dec. 19 – Undergraduate residence halls close at 9 a.m.

Dec. 19 – Employee Turkey Giveaway
Employees may bring a Vanderbilt ID to Langford Auditorium from 6 a.m. to midnight and pick up a free turkey. Shuttles will run between Kirkland Hall and Medical Center North from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. A limited number of tofu turkeys will be available.

Dec. 24-25 – University holidays for Vanderbilt employees

Jan. 1 – University holiday for Vanderbilt employees

Jan. 3 – Undergraduate residence halls open at 8 p.m.

Jan. 7 – Undergraduate classes begin for 2009 spring semester

In the News

Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute named to top 100
Vanderbilt Medical Center has been recognized for the first time among the top 100 U.S. hospitals that are setting the nation’s benchmarks for cardiovascular care. The study, “2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success,” was conducted by Thomson Healthcare and appeared in the Nov. 17 issue of Modern Healthcare. The study examined the performance of 970 hospitals by analyzing clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with heart failure and heart attacks and for those who received coronary bypass surgery and angioplasties.

Vanderbilt launches online innovation Web site
Vanderbilt has launched a new e-commerce Web site that allows users to purchase innovative software, courseware and other digital products over the Internet. The VU e-Innovations Web site (http://vuinnovations.com) features technologies developed exclusively at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt’s Office of Technology Transfer and Enterprise Development is responsible for expediting the commercialization of technologies and certain copyrighted works developed at Vanderbilt. In the last fiscal year, Vanderbilt has received more than $8.4 million in revenues from licensing technology and innovations that were developed by Vanderbilt researchers.

Researchers recover antibodies to 1918 flu pandemic
Ninety years after the sweeping destruction of the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed nearly 50 million people worldwide, researchers at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt have recovered antibodies to the virus – from elderly survivors of the original outbreak. The study, led by James Crowe Jr., professor of pediatrics and director of the Vanderbilt Program in Vaccine Sciences, and colleagues at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, was published online in the journal Nature. In 2005, researchers from Mount Sinai and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., resurrected the 1918 virus from the bodies of people killed in the outbreak. The bodies, and the virus, had been preserved in the permanently frozen soil of Alaska. The researchers collected blood samples from 32 survivors ages 91-101 years and found that all reacted to the 1918 virus, suggesting they still possessed antibodies to it. Crowe’s team was then able to isolate exceedingly rare B cells – the immune cells that produce antibodies – from eight of those samples and grow them in culture. Seven of those samples produced antibodies to a 1918 virus protein, suggesting that their immune systems were waiting on standby for a long-awaited second outbreak. In addition to revealing the surprisingly long-lasting immunity to such viruses, these antibodies could be effective treatments if another virus similar to the 1918 flu breaks out in the future.

VU, Metro, community agencies partner to win $3.4 million in pre-k funds
Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development, in partnership with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and other community agencies, has won a three-year, $3.4 million federal grant to enhance language and literacy skills in pre-kindergarten classrooms. Deborah Rowe, associate professor of early childhood education, and David Dickinson, professor of education, are the project’s co-leaders. The project, “Enhanced Language and Literacy Success,” will provide professional development, literacy coaches, classroom materials and other programmatic supports for pre-k teachers and their students. Classroom implementation will begin in January. The Nashville project is one of just 31 funded nationally by the U.S. Department of Education through its Early Reading First grant program.

On Campus
Students arranged 4,000 miniature American flags on Alumni Lawn Nov. 11 in honor of Veterans Day and in memory of U.S. servicemen who have lost their lives in the Iraq War.



compiled by Kara Furlong

Send your news and notes to notes@vanderbilt.edu.

Posted 12/01/08