Susan Wente

When Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susan Wente emailed students early Friday morning to inform them that classes had been cancelled for the day, many of them no doubt took it as a signal to sleep in or to begin their weekends early. But for a team of dedicated staff and administrators, the work of dealing with the winter weather had just begun.

Fourteen outstanding faculty members from across the university have been named to the 2016 class of Chancellor Faculty Fellows. The class comprises highly accomplished, recently tenured faculty from the humanities, social sciences, life and physical sciences, and clinical sciences, as well as business, education and engineering.

Ten members of Vanderbilt University’s faculty have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos today launched the University Courses initiative, a key component of Vanderbilt’s Academic Strategic Plan, to promote new and creative trans-institutional learning at the undergraduate, graduate and professional levels.

The Faculty Senate, in partnership with Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susan Wente and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine Jeff Balser, will host a second town hall meeting on the VU-VUMC reorganization Friday, Oct. 30.

A university working group has established the model for a new office that will provide pre-award support for university faculty grant and contract proposals to external funding agencies following the VU-VUMC reorganization. A search for the new office's director also has been launched.

The Faculty Senate is organizing an Oct. 30 town hall to answer faculty questions about the transition of the university and Vanderbilt University Medical Center to separate entities.