(John Russell/Vanderbilt)

The women’s golf team advanced to the NCAA Championship for the fourth consecutive season for the first time in program history with a third-place finish at the West Regional. The top eight teams from the 24-team regional advance to the finals, which takes place May 21-24 in Athens, Ga.

(Photo courtesy of the women's soccer team/Vanderbilt)

The Vanderbilt women’s soccer team has embarked on an eight-day tour of Brazil. Two exhibition games against local club sides in Rio are sandwiched among numerous cultural activities.

Conner Harrell at bat (John Russell/Vanderbilt)

No. 1 Vanderbilt held off a late rally en route to a 7-6 win over Alabama at Hawkins Field to push the Commodores win streak to 14 games.

(Vanderbilt University/Daniel Dubois)

Don’t forget! Vanderbilt’s Family Night with the Nashville Symphony is Tuesday, May 21.

This fun annual event will take place 6 p.m.-7:30 p.m. on Commons Center Lawn on the Peabody Campus. Bring your family, picnic basket and a blanket to enjoy a musical feast – free of charge – as the Nashville Symphony Orchestra performs for the Vanderbilt community.

New this year, popular food truck vendors Deg Thai, Retro Sno and Riffs Fine Street Food for guests who wish to purchase gourmet meals and treats.

In the event of rain or extremely hot weather, the Ingram Performance Hall at Blair will be the alternate concert site.

For updates, check the Employee Celebration website.

Contact: Midori Lockett, symphony@vanderbilt.edu.

Josh Clinton and John Geer present results from the Vanderbilt Poll in 2012 (Vanderbilt)

The results of the latest Vanderbilt Poll of public opinion in Tennessee covering a variety of issues of interest to citizens and lawmakers will be presented 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 21, at a news conference in the Student Life Center. A representative sample of 813 registered voters were asked about a series of pressing issues facing the state including the Internet sales tax, wine in grocery stores, the lottery, health care, education, guns, public awareness of the Department of Children Services and the public’s priorities as compared with that of state legislators. Approval ratings for Gov. Haslam, the state legislature, Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker and President Obama will also be revealed.

The Vanderbilt Poll is supported by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt and is co-directed by John Geer, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science, and Josh Clinton, associate professor of political science.

WHAT: John Geer and Josh Clinton, co-directors of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt, will present data from a May poll of Tennesseans. A mult-box will be available on site.

WHERE: The lower level meeting rooms of the Student Life Center on the Vanderbilt Campus, 310 25th Ave. S. Limited parking for media will be available in the Student Life Center garage beneath the building and accessed from the driveway in the rear.

WHEN: Tuesday, May 21, 12:30 p.m. Box lunches will be provided.

“It may indeed be time to embark on the process that will give us the ‘Next Great Copyright Act,’ as was done three times in the past (Copyright Acts of 1790, 1909 and 1976),” said Daniel Gervais, director of the Vanderbilt Intellectual Property Program at Vanderbilt Law School, in prepared testimony.

“So much has happened since 1976 when personal computers, the Internet, the digitization of music and the phenomenon of social media were not yet realities.”

Gervais testified before the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives.

Daniel Gervais (Vanderbilt Law School)

“America is at its best when it produces and exports intellectual property,” Gervais testified. “As the transition to the digital realm continues, it is absolutely essential to get copyright policy right.”

Copyright should allow professional creators to get a fair return on their creative investment when their work is successful in the marketplace, in Gervais’ view.

“It should also allow many sustainable business models to flourish in producing, exporting and providing access to U.S. copyrighted material around the world,” he said.

It is urgent for the United States to be a leader in discussions about global copyright, which has come to look more like a patchwork of rules than a coordinated strategy of laws, Gervais said.

The full version of Gervais’ prepared testimony will be posted at Gervais’ website.

Golden (Vanderbilt)

Thom Golden, senior associate director of undergraduate admissions, has received the New Leader Alumni Award from Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology.

Lara Jazmin, a graduate student in chemical and biomolecular engineering, has been selected to attend the 63rd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates, to be held in Lindau, Germany. The annual gathering convenes Nobel laureates in chemistry, physics and physiology/medicine for open and informal meetings with students and young researchers. This marks the sixth year in a row a Vanderbilt student has been selected to attend, with Jazmin the 13th student overall selected from Vanderbilt since 2002.

Levine (Vanderbilt)

Amy-Jill Levine’s interview with U.S. Catholic, titled “A Jewish take on Jesus,” has received an award of excellence from the Associated Church Press, the oldest interdenominational religious press association in North America. Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies. Judges in the competition said the Q&A was “framed by excellent questions that elicit thoughtful, insightful responses that illuminate both the subject and the topic.”

Saff (Vanderbilt)

Ed Saff, professor of mathematics, has been elected a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The distinction will be officially conferred to him at the
 International Conference on Constructive Theory of Functions in 
Sozopol, Bulgaria, in June.

Steve Schach, professor of computer science, emeritus, has published a historical spy thriller, Old Bach is Come, available from Wandering in the Words Press.

Karen Swoopes, an administrative assistant at Peabody Library, was selected by her peers as Member of the Year of the Nashville Chapter of the International Association of Administrative Professionals.

Michael Zoorob, a College of Arts and Science sophomore, presented a paper examining the impact of U.S. aid on Pakistan at the Midwest Political Science Association annual conference held in Chicago. Zoorob, an honors student from Brentwood, Tenn., wrote and submitted the paper as part of an independent study course under the direction of Assistant Professor of Political Science Carol Atkinson.

(iStock)

Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab.

That possibility has been raised by the results of a recent experiment conducted by Vanderbilt physicist Julia Velkovska and her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider located at the European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland. Evidence of the minuscule droplets was extracted from the results of colliding protons with lead ions at velocities approaching the speed of light.

According to the scientists’ calculations, these short-lived droplets are the size of three to five protons. To provide a sense of scale, that is about one-100,000th the size of a hydrogen atom or one-100,000,000th the size of a virus.

“With this discovery, we seem to be seeing the very origin of collective behavior,” said Velkovska, professor of physics at Vanderbilt who serves as a co-convener of the heavy ion program of the CMS detector, the LHC instrument that made the unexpected discovery. “Regardless of the material that we are using, collisions have to be violent enough to produce about 50 sub-atomic particles before we begin to see collective, flow-like behavior.”

These tiny droplets “flow” in a manner similar to the behavior of the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that is a mixture of the sub-atomic particles that makes up protons and neutrons and only exists at extreme temperatures and densities. Cosmologists propose that the entire universe once consisted of this strongly interacting elixir for fractions of a second after the Big Bang when conditions were dramatically hotter and denser than they are today. Now that the universe has spent billions of years expanding and cooling, the only way scientists can reproduce this primordial plasma is to bang atomic nuclei together with tremendous energy.

A three-dimensional view of a p-Pb collision that produced collective flow behavior. The green lines are the trajectories of the sub-atomic particles produced by the collision reconstructed by the CMS tracking system. The red and blue bars represent the energy measured by the instrument's two sets of calorimeters. (CMS Collaboration)

The new observations are contained in a paper submitted by the CMS collaboration to the journal Physics Letters B and posted on the arXiv preprint server. In addition, Vanderbilt doctoral student Shengquan Tuo recently presented the new results at a workshop held in the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas in Trento, Italy.

Scientists have been trying to recreate the quark-gluon plasma since the early 2000s by colliding gold nuclei using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This exotic state of matter is created when nuclei collide and dump a fraction of their energy into the space between them. When enough energy is released, it causes some of the quarks and gluons in the colliding particles to melt together to form the plasma. The RHIC scientists had expected the plasma to behave like a gas, but were surprised to discover that it acts like a liquid instead.

When the LHC started up, the scientists moved to the more powerful machine where they basically duplicated the results they got at RHIC by colliding lead nuclei.

In what was supposed to be a control run to check the validity of their lead-lead results, the scientists scheduled the collider to smash protons and lead nuclei together. They didn’t expect to see any evidence of the plasma. Because the protons are so much lighter than lead nuclei (they have only one-208th the mass), it was generally agreed that proton-lead collisions couldn’t release enough energy to produce the rare state of matter.

“The proton-lead collisions are something like shooting a bullet through an apple while lead-lead collisions are more like smashing two apples together: A lot more energy is released in the latter,” said Velkovska.

Shengquan Tuo, right, Julia Velkovska and graduate student Dillon Roach in Vanderbilt's CMS Center, a room set up with telecommunications equipment that allows them to monitor of the detector's performance and directly download data. (Courtesy of Physics Department / Vanderbilt)

Last September, the LHC did a brief test run to make sure it was adjusted properly to handle proton-lead collisions. When the results of the run were analyzed, team members were surprised to see evidence of collective behavior in five percent of the collisions—those that were the most violent. In these cases, it appeared that when the “bullet” passed through “apple” it released enough energy to melt some of the particles surrounding the bullet hole. They appeared to be forming liquid droplets about one tenth the size of those produced by the lead-lead or gold-gold collisions.

However, the initial analysis was limited to tracking the motion of pairs of particles. The researchers knew that this analysis could be influenced by another well-known phenomenon, the production of particle jets. So, when the scheduled proton-lead run took place in January and February, they searched the data for evidence of groups of four particles that exhibit collective motion. After analyzing several billion events, they found hundreds of cases where the collisions produced more than 300 particles flowing together.

According to Tuo, only two models were advanced to explain their observations at the workshop. Of the two, the plasma droplet model seems to fit the observations best. In fact, he reported that the new data is forcing the authors of the competing model – color glass condensate, which attributes the particle correlations to the internal gluon structure of the protons themselves – to incorporate hydrodynamic effects, meaning that it is also describing the phenomenon as liquid droplets.

U.S. members of the CMS collaboration are supported primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.

Stella Flores (Steve Green/Vanderbilt University)

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hand down a much-anticipated decision that could alter the way universities consider race in the admissions process and ultimately shape the future of affirmative action.

In the case Fisher v. University of Texas, the plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, a white woman who was denied admission to the university, claims the school’s use of race in its admissions policies is unconstitutional.

Vanderbilt University’s Stella Flores, a leading expert on college access policies, says race-neutral policies do not work at the same level of affirmative action. Her research, conducted with the University of Houston’s Catherine Horn, shows institutions would lose educationally critical diversity without such policies.

“Peer-reviewed research overwhelmingly shows that race-neutral methods of admissions do not yield racial and ethnic diversity on college campuses, and in fact, multiple statistical analyses of the effects of race-neutral policies show that the level of race and ethnic diversity decreases under these plans,” said Flores, assistant professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development.

Flores cites two main reasons for maintaining race as a factor in the admissions process:

Changing demographics

Demographics are rapidly changing, with Hispanics making up the largest minority in Texas as well as the nation as a whole. Studies show that increases in Hispanic representation are actually due to demographic growth that would have occurred without any policy changes and are therefore not a result of successful educational policies employing race-neutral methods. Moreover, any visible shifts in demographic representations have occurred at non-selective institutions and not elite colleges and universities.

“While demographic shifts in the U.S. population are present in K-12 public schools, they are far less present in our selective college classrooms,” Flores said. “Demography is important in higher education because the completion of college degrees is going to have a big impact on our economy. If students within the largest minority group – and what will one day be the largest ethnic group altogether in various states – are not accessing and completing college, local and state economies are likely to feel the repercussions of an under educated population.”

Percent plan not reaching disadvantaged populations for selective institutions

Texas’ “percent plan strategy” guarantees university admission to all students who graduate in the top select percentage of their high school class. However, research from Flores and Horn, combined with other research on this topic, shows that even under the most optimal conditions, the percent plan has yielded limited results in terms of underrepresented minority enrollment at selective public institutions.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the percentage of underrepresented minority students who qualify for the top 10 percent plan over time; however, the percent plan seems to hit advantaged groups more effectively than disadvantaged groups,” Flores said. “The only instances we’ve seen where these [percent plans] work is when there are extremely targeted scholarship programs toward heavily diverse schools, and these effects are still limited.”

Flores was one of 21 researchers nationwide who developed an amicus brief summarizing key research on affirmative action in anticipation of the Fisher v. University of Texas case.

Flores investigates the impact of state and federal policies on college access and completion for low-income, immigrant and underrepresented populations. She has written on the role of alternative admissions plans and financial aid programs in college admissions, demographic changes in higher education, the role of the Hispanic Serving Institution in U.S. higher education policy, and Latino students and community colleges. Her work has been cited in the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court Gratz v. Bollinger decision (dissenting opinion) and in various amicus briefs in the Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger Supreme Court cases on affirmative action in higher education admissions.

Flores’ research has been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Foundation.

Amy-Jill Levine (Daniel Dubois/Vanderbilt)

Amy-Jill Levine forgot “after about the first 12 minutes” that she was inside a prison back in 2005 when she first taught at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. “I didn’t know what to expect, but what I found was extraordinary,” said Levine, University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt. “We opened up the conversation, and it was among the richest I’ve ever had.”

Of Divinity faculty, Levine has taught the most classes at Riverbend. She will return in the fall to teach “The Gospel of John” to a class limited to 12 inmates and 12 Vanderbilt students. Levine, Bruce Morrill, Daniel Joranko and Richard Goode recently discussed their life-changing experiences teaching in Nashville-area prisons during the Rethinking Prisons Conference at Vanderbilt. The panelists agreed that what sets apart the Vanderbilt classes is that university students learn alongside the “insider” students, many of whom routinely sign up for the single class taught each semester. “One of the challenges of teaching in a maximum security prison is that you have to keep developing new courses because your insider students will be in your classes for more than the three years of a normal Divinity School degree program,” Levine said.

Bruce Morrill (Daniel Dubois/Vanderbilt))

Morrill, the Edward A. Malloy Professor of Catholic Studies at Vanderbilt, taught “Suffering, Politics and Liberation” this spring at Riverbend. “It is a course I actually developed as a doctoral student at Emory University and have taught many times with some modifications along the way,” Morrill said.

The course is described as a close reading of biographical and theological texts to explore the practical role religious faith plays in people’s experiences and responses to suffering caused by systemic injustice in societies. The readings included biographies of Rigoberta Menchu, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Morrill noted that several of the inmates are very involved in chaplaincy programs and are deeply appreciative of the opportunity to enroll in the Vanderbilt classes.

After Morrill came to Vanderbilt in summer 2011, he was invited to join the Contemplative Study Group at Riverbend, which meets Saturday evenings for worship and reflection. “I had already heard the insiders speak with such joy about the classes on Monday evenings, so I was ebullient to have the opportunity to teach there,” he said.

One of the early driving forces behind the Vanderbilt Divinity prison ministry was the late Harmon Wray, a Nashville criminal justice expert who died unexpectedly in 2007. Shortly before his death, Wray was quoted in a Vanderbilt Register story. “The initial idea was based on a program that’s been going on for 20 years at Sing Sing Prison in New York,” Wray said. “The difference here is that I don’t think there’s any other place in the country where divinity students are actually sitting in the classroom with the Riverbend students reading the same material, discussing the same material.”

Joranko, adjunct lecturer at Vanderbilt Divinity School, took over coordination of the program after Wray’s death. “Faculty bring their own unique teaching styles to each course, but most of the classes ‘gel’ around the content with in-depth discussion,” Joranko said. “The most important value is the community of mutual respect that helps both the Riverbend and the Vanderbilt students grow formatively through the experience.”

Also participating in the conference was Richard Goode, a professor of history at Lipscomb University. Goode earned his doctorate in religion from Vanderbilt in 1995. About five years later he began exploring with Wray and others the idea of forming a master’s of divinity program at Riverbend. When the program was launched, courses were limited to “special topics” taught by adjunct instructors.

In 2004 Goode and other prison ministry advocates met with tenured Divinity faculty to see if they would be willing to relocate some of their classes to Riverbend. Goode noted that Levine was one of the first to step up to the challenge. Goode also played an important role in developing Lipscomb’s undergraduate liberal arts education program at the Tennessee Women’s Prison. “Teaching at the prison is truly inspiring, but it’s important to consider the perspective of the insider students when teaching the material,” Goode said. “If we walk in saying ‘we are here to save you’ or ‘we are here to fix you,’ we’re creating as much trouble as anything else. However, if we say ‘our liberation is bound together,’ then we might begin to learn together,” Goode said.

Most of the 15 prisoners from the first group in the Lipscomb program, which started in 2007, will earn their associate degrees in December. The Lipscomb tuition is $450 per student for a three-hour semester course and textbooks. Goode said that a small grant that runs through the end of this year covers tuition for some students. In addition, a number of donors provide scholarships for others not covered by the grant.

The insider students at Riverbend are not charged tuition. Those who have already earned a bachelor’s degree are eligible to receive credit for the master’s-level courses. At this time, insider students cannot earn a master’s degree since not all of the required courses have been offered behind the walls. That was a longtime dream of Harmon Wray that those who have taught at Riverbend hope will be realized someday.

The Marburg and Ebola viruses are greatly feared both for their death rates, which can be upward of 80 percent, and for the dramatic course of their illnesses, which includes bleeding from multiple locations and multi-organ system failure. They can pass to humans from an animal vector, and are spread from person to person by blood contact.

James Crowe Jr., M.D.

The Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, directed by Crowe, has developed advanced technology for making human monoclonal antibodies and is well known for isolating and producing monoclonal antibodies from survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic and other viral epidemics. In this case, Crowe and colleagues will work to isolate antibodies from the blood cells of people who have survived Marburg or Ebola virus hemorrhagic fevers.

“We have received more than 1,000 blood cell samples from about 30 now-healthy people in Uganda who survived Ebola there, and from an interesting case of a Colorado woman who contracted Marburg viral illness while on a trip to Uganda in 2008.

“It’s believed she was exposed to the virus by bats as she explored the Python Cave there, which contains millions of bats. She is the only known case in the U.S. and we have already been able to isolate more than 30 monoclonal antibodies from her blood,” Crowe said.

A priority, Crowe said, will be developing prevention or treatment options for people who come in close contact with Ebola and Marburg patients, including health care workers, who in the past have died from exposure to their patients.

The lab is still awaiting samples from the Congo and Gabon to ensure they are covering all of the known Ebola and Marburg viral strains. Vanderbilt will not be working with the live viruses themselves. Alexander Bukreyev, Ph.D., from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, will work with the viral strains in a biosafety facility (level 4) in UTMB’s Galveston National Laboratory. Ultimately the goal is to test the effectiveness of human antibodies as both preventive and treatment measures in animal models.

The fence is in place to surround a new air-handling system that will replace the old system during a necessary project to repair damaged concrete flooring where the old system is housed.

Vanderbilt University Hospital’s new air handling system will be temporarily located in front of the hospital’s north tower.

Those familiar with the second floor area of VUH immediately outside Au Bon Pain and between the side-doors leading to the hospital’s mezzanine level have walked past the space housing the air handling system. The air handling system and the damaged floor supporting it are housed in a mechanical room behind the row of multiple black metal louvered doors.

Major construction for the project will occur during non-peak work hours and on weekends. Pedestrian and vehicle access to VUH will not be impacted.

Ken Browning, assistant vice chancellor for Facilities and Construction, says the roof underneath the plaza’s surface, now 36 years old, is compromised in sections and has resulted in leaks into critical areas underneath the plaza. These leaks have also resulted in water intruding into the mechanical room beside Au Bon Pain, damaging the concrete floor.

“There is a roof underneath the pavers of the entire Medical Center plaza, and portions of this roof system are failing. The roof is worn out and is leaking in several areas along the plaza. The floor of the room housing the air handling system within VUH is leaking too. This isn’t an optional repair — it’s like the roof on your house; when it starts to leak you have to do something about it,” said Browning.

“We need to address this area as a first step for what will be a multi-phase, multi-year repair process. The process to repair the floor and replace old air handling units within the mechanical room will last approximately eight to nine months.”

A new air handling system will be temporarily placed in front of VUH in essentially the same location as a trailer that housed a CT scanner last year. A series of large air ducts will run from the new system’s temporary location and tie into ductwork within VUH to maintain appropriate air circulation for these areas.

“We have to replace one air handler which serves the Department of Radiology and areas below, and also replace the other which serves the third and fourth floors of the north tower of VUH,” Browning said. “The new unit being placed in the temporary location allows us to keep all of these areas in service throughout the period we’re performing floor repair and unit replacement.”

Browning describes the repair of the floor in the mechanical room as a necessary first phase to replace damaged sections of the roof’s surface underneath the plaza.

“Other than the repair of damaged concrete in the mechanical room, the rest is routine replacement of aging equipment,” he said.

When the floor is repaired a new air handling system will be installed in the north mechanical room. The temporary system in front of VUH, which is also new machinery, will be relocated to replace the aging system in VUH’s south tower, thus resulting in the replacement of both aging systems during the next year.

(Vanderbilt University)

Primary care physicians and nurse practitioners significantly disagree on some proposed changes to the scope of nurse practitioners’ responsibilities, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study released today.

The study, led by investigators from the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing (VUSN), Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), comes at a time when the U.S. health system is facing both an increasing demand for primary care services and a worsening shortage of primary care physicians.

One broadly recommended strategy to combat the problem has been to increase the number and the responsibilities of nurse practitioners.

Peter Buerhaus, Ph.D., R.N.

“It is unsettling that primary care physicians and nurse practitioners, who have been practicing together for several decades, seem so far apart in their perceptions of each other’s contributions,” said co-author Peter Buerhaus, Ph.D., R.N., director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies and the Valere Potter Professor of Nursing at VUSN.

“I am concerned that these large gaps in perceptions will inhibit efforts to redesign care delivery and to improve the productivity and configuration of the primary care workforce,” he said.

The study survey was mailed to a national random sample of nearly 2,000 primary care clinicians — evenly divided between physicians and nurse practitioners — and responses were received from 467 nurse practitioners and 505 physicians.

The majority of both groups — 96 percent of nurse practitioners and 76 percent of physicians — agreed with the Institute of Medicine recommendation that nurse practitioners “be able to practice to the full extent of their education and training.”

The two groups disagreed significantly on whether an increase in the supply of nurse practitioners would improve patient safety and the effectiveness of care and health costs. One-third of physicians responded that such an increase might have a negative effect on safety and effectiveness.

“We were surprised by the level of disagreement reported between these two groups of professionals,” said Karen Donelan, Sc.D., Ed.M., of the Mongan Institute for Health at MGH, lead author of the report.

“We had hypothesized that, since primary care physicians and nurse practitioners had been working together for many years, collaboration would lead to more common views about their roles in clinical practice. The data reveal disagreements about fundamental questions of professional roles that need to be resolved for teams to function effectively,” she said.

A strong majority (82 percent) of nurse practitioners believed they should be able to lead medical homes — practices using a team-based model to deliver coordinated patient care — but only 17 percent of physicians agreed.

Additionally, 64 percent of nurse practitioners agreed they should be paid equally for providing the same services, compared with only 4 percent of physicians.

Sixty percent of nurse practitioners in collaborative practices indicated they provided services to complex patients with multiple conditions, but only 23 percent of physician in such practices responded that those services were provided by nurse practitioners.

Study co-author Robert Dittus, M.D., MPH, Albert and Bernard Werthan Professor of Medicine, associate vice-chancellor for Public Health and Health Care and director of the Institute for Medicine and Public Health, said he hopes the study will provide information needed for thoughtful discussion among nurse practitioners and physicians and encourage a focus on working more closely together in both training and practice to understand each provider’s capabilities and roles.

Robert Dittus, M.D., MPH

“Such roles are likely to evolve over time as primary care is practiced more in a team concept than a one-on-one provider to patient-only model,” Dittus said. “The roles for many of the team providers, including nurse practitioners, are likely to change as such providers gain expertise and experience over time, and thus the confidence and trust of the entire provider team.”

The two groups did agree that increasing the supply of primary care nurse practitioners would improve the timeliness of and access to care, and respondents working in collaborative practices indicated that both professions provide a wide range of services in their practices.

The study was supported by grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

At last weekend’s graduation ceremony for the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, right, talks with, from left, Braxton Brakefield, Rachel Waters, Meera Patel and Angela Eeds, Ph.D. (photo by Michelle Barbero)

During his remarks to the third graduating class of the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt (SSMV) on Saturday, May 11, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., didn’t give an address — he told a story instead.

The former Tennessee governor and U.S. Education Secretary told the 19 graduates about his friend, the late Alex Haley, author of “Roots:” “Six words that he would always say, ‘Find the good and praise it.’”

“Some people think our country is in deep trouble … yet ironically in many ways, most of the people in the world are trying to emulate a lot of the things that we’ve figured out how to do,” Alexander continued.

“It’s important to see our shortcomings, but it’s also important to find the good and praise it.”

Established in 2007 as a joint venture of Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, SSMV is a program of the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach.

Students receive accelerated science instruction and research experience at Vanderbilt while attending their public schools.

This year’s graduates are going on to distinguished universities including Vanderbilt, Columbia, Princeton and West Point.

“This is the kind of program that I wish we had in every single big city in America,” Alexander told reporters before the event.

Marilyn Dubree, MSN, R.N., delivers Tuesday’s State of Nursing address. (photo by John Russell)

“This year, perhaps more than ever, we have seen changes that are long overdue but make things uncertain. There are many opportunities for nursing to make a difference,” said Dubree.

Dubree said that Middle Tennesseans view Vanderbilt as the best place to receive care and rate Vanderbilt nurses as the best. She also recognized the tremendous work done in key quality metrics that have resulted in significant decreases in falls and pressure ulcers.

“Nursing does ordinary things in extraordinary ways,” said Dubree. “As we touch one patient, one family, we have the ability to impact entire communities.”

She reviewed this spring’s successful Nurse Referral program that resulted in more than 150 referrals, the continued success of the Nurse Residency program with a new Adult Emergency Department residency track and the need to focus more on decreasing nursing turnover rates.

“We need to make sure we are doing everything we can because we need great nurses and team members,” Dubree said.

The bulk of her comments focused on pilot projects or new initiatives, such as the nursing leadership model that helps develop leaders, ensures performance accountability and improves team dynamics. Developing “The Vanderbilt Way” for handling transitions of care aims to ensure patients get exactly what they need, when they need it while being anchored in scientific evidence.

Dubree shared how VUMC Nursing is testing new ways of delivering care, including the contributions of increasing numbers of advanced practice nurses. Initiatives such as adding patient representatives to the Nursing Quality Council for ongoing input supports nursing’s commitment to understanding and improving the patient and family experience.

Vanderbilt nursing has also increased the number of poster and podium presentations and publications, supporting the dissemination of nursing knowledge.

“If Florence Nightingale could see us now, she would be delighted at our research, evidence-based approach and collaborative team efforts for this very sacred work,” said Dubree.

To learn more, read the VUMC REporter article here.

School of Medicine students, from left, Dustin Hipp, Dana Hipp, Kathleen Nemer and Jennifer Dang are fired up about commencement. (photo by Anne Rayner)

The Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Class of 2013 will enter health care at a time of great change. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will begin the bulk of its health reform changes Jan. 1, 2014. New providers will enter a rapidly changing system of care.

On Friday, May 10, at their ceremony in Langford Auditorium, graduates were advised to be ready to make difficult decisions and become the leaders that will turn health care around.

“There are roughly 140 medical schools in this country, but only about 20 of them produce 80 percent of the leaders. Vanderbilt is a leader even within that small elite group,” said Jeff Balser, M.D., Ph.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs and dean of the School of Medicine.

Jeff Balser, M.D., Ph.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, congratulates Femi Kassim during last week’s graduation ceremony in Langford Auditorium. At right is Scott Rodgers, M.D. (photo by Anne Rayner)

“Our graduating classes are among the smallest in the nation for a reason. We are not here to train the nation’s health care workforce; we are here to spend the extra time and energy to train the nation’s health care leadership.”

In his address to 111 graduates, Balser said that while health care is a team effort, Vanderbilt medical students must step up and be willing to make difficult calls, even when there is no “good” course of action. Doing so, he said, would develop the emotional resilience of leadership.

School of Medicine Founder’s Medalist Billy Sullivan, center, with Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos and Bonnie Miller, M.D. (photo by Joe Howell)

He advised students to retain a sense of self-awareness, a strong support system, optimism, a sense of humor and perspective in everything they do.

The Class of 2013 is perhaps one of the most prepared to examine the issues of health care from many different angles.

Associate Dean for Student Affairs Scott Rodgers, M.D., said the class is remarkable for having a large number of students who took a year or more off from medical school to pursue a dual degree (MBA, J.D., MPH, M.Ed.) or to become specially trained in an area of research.

Founder’s Medalist Billy Sullivan is a perfect example. He took a year off to earn his Masters in Education at Peabody. He worked with Medical School administrators to help shape the new Medical Curriculum 2.0. and said he hopes one day to teach in academic medicine.

VUSM student Rishi Naik, in back, bear hugs his brother, Darshan Naik, who presented him with his diploma. (photo by Anne Rayner)

“For me and many of the students I started with, it was wanting to bring another skill set to medicine, wanting to look at medicine through a different lens. Medicine is changing, it has to change, so we will need skills to facilitate the change,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan is the first Vanderbilt student to earn an M.D./M.Ed. He said having the patience to extend formal education and diversify knowledge, far from creating more stress, created an opportunity to slow the pace and allow for learning to sink in.

It also allowed him to balance school with a busy home life with wife, Elisabeth, and their 5-month-old daughter, Mary Claire. Sullivan will begin his residency at Vanderbilt in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics in July.

Within the Class of 2013 there were 16 underrepresented minority graduates, three M.D./Ph.D. recipients and three M.D./MBA recipients. Other graduates include:

School of Medicine student Ryan Lang, center, is surrounded by family and friends outside Langford Auditorium. (photo by Anne Rayner)

Doctor of Audiology — 11.
Doctor of Medical Physics — 4.
Master of Science in Medical Physics — 2.
Master of Education of the Deaf — 2.
Master of Science (Speech Language Pathology) — 29.
Master of Public Health — 14.
Master of Science in Clinical Investigation — 10.
Master of Laboratory Investigation — 1.

From left, Everett Gu, Amanda Harris and Laila Hassam-Malani get ready for the School of Medicine ceremony. (photo by Anne Rayner)