Vanderbilt University's Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy will use a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant to study data from three national surveys related to the potential correlations between art-making and quality of life.

Vanderbilt is one of 15 colleges and universities to receive the first-ever NEA research grants.

Jim Patterson and MyVu.com have the story here.

Craig Ferrell, one of the orthopedic specialists who founded The Bone & Joint Clinic in Franklin, has died from injuries sustained during a recent polo game. Ferrell was vice chairman of orthopedic surgery at Vanderbilt, which acquired Bone & Joint in the summer of 2009.

Vanderbilt University has been named the host institution for the Association of American Universities Data Exchange.

The appointment, the first involving a private university and to last five years, will take effect July 1.

Vanderbilt will house the AAUDE director and a staff analyst within the offices of the Vanderbilt Institutional Research Group (the building for which is pictured here).

The AAUDE is a public service organization that collects various institutional data to allow its member institutions to better understand how they compare to their peers in the academic industry. More than 60 public and private research universities in the United States and Canada are member institutions.

MyVU has details here.
 

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has named Vanderbilt University humanities professors Jonathan Lamb and William Luis 2012 fellows.

Both men work within VU’s College of Arts and Science.

Lamb, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, and Luis, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Spanish, are among 181 recipients in the United States and Canada selected for the highly coveted fellowship. Artists, scholars and scientists in all fields are eligible to apply for the fellowships, which are awarded on the basis of impressive achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

“The Guggenheim represents the pinnacle of academic achievement, and we are honored by this tribute to Professors Lamb and Luis, Carolyn Dever, dean of the VU College of Arts and Science and professor of English, said in a release. “Both scholars bring innovation to questions of major significance within their fields.”

Lamb, who teaches and writes about 18th century literature and culture, is working on a book about the effects of the disease scurvy on the nerves and temperaments of its victims.

Luis, who is editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review, will use his Guggenheim funding to write the definitive book on the life and works of the Cuban slave poet Juan Francisco Manzano.

Previous Vanderbilt recipients of Guggenheim Fellowships include the following: William Caferro, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History; Michael Bess, the Chancellor’s Professor of History; Barbara Hahn, Distinguished Professor of German; Ruth Rogaski, associate professor of history; Jay Clayton, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English; Paul Freedman, former professor of history; John Wikswo, the Gordon A. Cain University Professor; Mark Jarman, Centennial Professor of English; and Matthew Ramsey, associate professor of history.

The Vanderbilt University Board of Trust will soon vote on a plan to significantly upgrade the school's existing student recreation center and build alongside it a large multipurpose facility capable of hosting a football practice and featuring a track. The new building would rise between the student rec center and 25th Avenue South.