Vanderbilt University Medical Center has formalized plans to start a department of physical medicine and rehabilitation that will be housed inside Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital. Leading the venture starting next April will be Walter Frontera, a veteran of Harvard Medical School and other prestigious institutions who has since 1996 led a similar program at the University of Puerto Rico.

“As a member of the Institute of Medicine, Dr. Frontera is truly one of the pioneers in the discipline of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation,” said Jeff Balser, M.D., Ph.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. “As the founding chair for our new department, we have recruited a true leader — highly regarded on the international stage and with a wealth of experience in developing clinical and academic programs.”

Lipscomb University is ramping up its four-year-old involvement with the Tennessee Prison for Women and growing an 18-credit hour slate of liberal arts courses into a full associate of arts degree. Since the launch of the LIFE program, TPW inmates have compiled three literary journals and staged a theatrical production.

Lipscomb's Associate of Arts degree will follow the Tennessee Board of Regents general education requirement of 63 credit hours. Unlike most of the college programs offered in prisons nationwide, Lipscomb's coursework is not offered by correspondence. Lipscomb faculty travel to the prison once a week to teach the courses. In addition, Lipscomb's traditional students travel to TPFW to attend classes with the inmates and also receive credit.

The State Building Commission on Tuesday gave the nod for Nashville State Community College to buy the former Dillard's store at Hickory Hollow Mall and convert it to a satellite campus. The entire project is slated to cost $8.3 million, reports Michael Cass.

Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is returning to Vanderbilt University, where he founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center in the late 1980s, as an adjunct professor in the department of cardiac surgery. He also will be a professor at Meharry Medical College.

During his tenure in the Senate, Frist continued practicing surgery and led emergency medical responses to catastrophes around the globe, including to Sudan during the civil war in the 1990s, Darfur during the genocide, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Sri Lanka following the Indian Ocean tsunami, Haiti after last year’s earthquake and most recently Kenya/Somalia during the ongoing famine.

“These humanitarian medical experiences, coupled with my focus in cardiac care and chronic disease in the developing world are the sort of perspective I hope to bring back to the Cardiac Surgery group specifically, and the Medical Center more broadly, to underscore the oneness of health and health care in our locale and world,” Frist said.

Stephanie Reevers, who this summer left the Tennessee Claims Commission after more than seven years, has been named staff attorney at Austin Peay State University. Reevers, who earlier in the decade threw her hat in the ring for the State Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, has since June been working at the Attorney General's office. She had held various positions there for more than a decade before joining the Claims Commission, which hears various lawsuits against the state.

The number of students hitting the books at Lipscomb University now tops 4,000 for the first time thanks to the introduction of a number of programs, including the College of Pharmacy and four new master's, as well as influx of future teachers. All in all, the growth between Belmont Boulevard and Granny White has been pretty darn impressive in recent years.

2005 was a milestone for Lipscomb when the university’s board of trustees approved a five-year investment initiative that pumped an average of $1 million a month into the campus and academic programs for almost five years. The plan resulted in a renovated campus landscape, 38 new programs of study, 79 new full-time faculty hired and an increase in graduate enrollment from 221 in 2005 to 1,316 so far this fall.