Vanderbilt University
Programs
Description
Vanderbilt has boldly replaced all need-based undergraduate student loans with scholarship and grant assistance. New scholarship gifts are essential to sustaining this commitment. This initiative, called Opportunity Vanderbilt, is helping to ensure that young people of every background can attend Vanderbilt, creating a dynamic learning community that benefits every student. The university's decision to replace need-based loans with scholarship support gives talented Vanderbilt undergraduates opportunities to consider career choices and educational dreams without the prospect of significant debt. Generous donors have risen to the challenge, making gifts and pledges that have exceeded $250 million for undergraduate scholarship endowment. There is still more to be done to support the full financial aid needs of our talented students. In scholarship endowment, Vanderbilt still ranks far below many of its peer institutions. About 64 percent of Vanderbilt undergraduates received financial aid last year. To secure the future of this program, we need to shift the costs of it from the operating budget to a larger endowment. Working together through Opportunity Vanderbilt, we are strengthening and growing our undergraduate scholarship endowment, creating new opportunities for Vanderbilt today and for future generations of talented students.
Program Areas Served
None
Vanderbilt has boldly replaced all need-based undergraduate student loans with scholarship and grant assistance. New scholarship gifts are essential to sustaining this commitment. This initiative, called Opportunity Vanderbilt, is helping to ensure that young people of every background can attend Vanderbilt, creating a dynamic learning community that benefits every student. The university's decision to replace need-based loans with scholarship support gives talented Vanderbilt undergraduates opportunities to consider career choices and educational dreams without the prospect of significant debt. Generous donors have risen to the challenge, making gifts and pledges that have exceeded $250 million for undergraduate scholarship endowment. There is still more to be done to support the full financial aid needs of our talented students. In scholarship endowment, Vanderbilt still ranks far below many of its peer institutions. About 64 percent of Vanderbilt undergraduates received financial aid last year. To secure the future of this program, we need to shift the costs of it from the operating budget to a larger endowment. Working together through Opportunity Vanderbilt, we are strengthening and growing our undergraduate scholarship endowment, creating new opportunities for Vanderbilt today and for future generations of talented students.
Program Areas Served
None
Description
Residential colleges are central to realizing Vanderbilt's vision for providing undergraduate students with a transformative educational experience. The aim is to provide a rich and diverse intellectual community that cultivates lifelong learning through close proximity to faculty, staff, and graduate students who live, learn, and work in partnership with students. Driven by the educational experience of the Residential College system, which in addition to residential colleges includes The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons and Living Learning Communities - they represent a cohesive and growing network of residences that spark creativity, build community, support student success, and extend educational opportunities beyond the classroom.
Program Areas Served
None
Residential colleges are central to realizing Vanderbilt's vision for providing undergraduate students with a transformative educational experience. The aim is to provide a rich and diverse intellectual community that cultivates lifelong learning through close proximity to faculty, staff, and graduate students who live, learn, and work in partnership with students. Driven by the educational experience of the Residential College system, which in addition to residential colleges includes The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons and Living Learning Communities - they represent a cohesive and growing network of residences that spark creativity, build community, support student success, and extend educational opportunities beyond the classroom.
Program Areas Served
None
Description
Immersion Vanderbilt, an initiative of the Academic Strategic Plan, calls for each undergraduate student to participate in an intensive learning experience that takes place in and beyond the classroom, culminating in the creation of a tangible final project. Students can engage in one of four tracks: civic and professional, creative expression, international, or research. Immersion Vanderbilt will help students explore their passions, transform ideas into action, and make a difference in the world. Vanderbilt students have an intense curiosity, substantial leadership skills, and the deep desire to leverage all opportunities available to them. Immersion Vanderbilt encourages students to capitalize on these traits by pursuing rigorous and compelling projects. The Immersion Vanderbilt initiative was developed during the 2013-14 Academic Strategic Planning process in the Undergraduate Residential Experience steering committee and then with the Executive committee. The Academic Strategic Plan sought to advance the living-learning environment by educating the whole person and cultivating lifelong learning. Immersion Vanderbilt helps to meet this critical goal.
Program Areas Served
None
Immersion Vanderbilt, an initiative of the Academic Strategic Plan, calls for each undergraduate student to participate in an intensive learning experience that takes place in and beyond the classroom, culminating in the creation of a tangible final project. Students can engage in one of four tracks: civic and professional, creative expression, international, or research. Immersion Vanderbilt will help students explore their passions, transform ideas into action, and make a difference in the world. Vanderbilt students have an intense curiosity, substantial leadership skills, and the deep desire to leverage all opportunities available to them. Immersion Vanderbilt encourages students to capitalize on these traits by pursuing rigorous and compelling projects. The Immersion Vanderbilt initiative was developed during the 2013-14 Academic Strategic Planning process in the Undergraduate Residential Experience steering committee and then with the Executive committee. The Academic Strategic Plan sought to advance the living-learning environment by educating the whole person and cultivating lifelong learning. Immersion Vanderbilt helps to meet this critical goal.
Program Areas Served
None
CEO/Executive Director/Board Comments
| We believe that by investing in ideas born here, and creating the space for them to grow and multiply, we can help advance innovation that will move both Nashville and society forward. By applying our knowledge, our capacity for discovery and our spirit of collaboration, Vanderbilt can help solidify Tennessee's position as a dynamic region that is admired as much for its quality of life as for its economic horsepower. What's more, we can help ensure inclusive prosperity that touches everyone and leaves no one behind. We are doing this in a variety of ways, from bolstering Vanderbilt's contributions to the region's innovation ecosystem, to partnering with local businesses on neurodiverse hiring and connecting with Nashville-area schools school leaders to bring about greater equity in K-12 education… …We also continue to explore best practices for teaching, whether that involves pilot programs testing new technologies in the classroom or by supporting additional research and learning opportunities for our undergraduates. As you have heard me say often: At Vanderbilt we are proud, but not satisfied. Yes, we have reached important milestones. And at the same time, we have only begun to realize our potential. This isn't something any of us can accomplish alone. We'll do it together, as One Vanderbilt. Our sense of community is one of our most defining characteristics. But it is important to remember that community does not equal consensus. The basic purpose of a university is simple: We provide students with a transformative education, while providing all of you with an environment that allows you to pursue pathbreaking research and creative expression that changes how we see ourselves and the world. This purpose requires a climate in which students and faculty can feel free to ask hard questions, debate complex issues, and challenge conventional wisdom… …Vanderbilt's campus must be a proving ground where ideas can be tested and prevailing thought challenged. Because diverse perspectives form the rich soil from which insight and impact grow… …A university must always proceed from clear values. But its values must be understood as the basis for fulfilling its mission, and not as the imposition of a monolithic opinion on the university community. Principled neutrality is simply the exercise of intentional restraint in the service of our mission… As the motto on our university seal has it, crescere aude. Let us dare to grow. The spirit of "daring to grow" is inherent to our Vanderbilt way of life, and it extends to every member of our community. It is behind every groundbreaking discovery made by our faculty members, whether in the laboratory, clinic or conference room or within a single line of music or stroke of paint. It lives among our coaches and student-athletes as they continually raise the bar for their own accomplishments. It is exemplified by our staff members, whose dedication to our collaborative culture of excellence helps to create the environment in which we all thrive. And it is especially present among our alumni as they help one another to strive for, and achieve, new ambitions. At Vanderbilt, we learn for life. " - Chancellor Daniel Diermeier |
