Meet our Students
With nearly 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students hailing from all 50 U.S. states and more than 90 countries, A&S immerses you in a rich diversity of culture, experience, and thought.
This diversity creates a dynamic learning community. Our students are empowered to explore what they’re passionate about and gain perspectives, capacities, and skills they will need for any career opportunity. While at Vanderbilt, our students are creating, discovering, building, and forging paths they never imagined possible.
Read more about our undergraduate and graduate academic programs, and learn more about our students below.
MEET OUR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Bethel Derege
Class of 2028
Bethel sits down for the same interview across two different semesters for a fun glimpse into a first-year experience at the College of Arts and Science.
Shanay Desai
Class of 2025
A senior double majoring in neuroscience and drug discovery and biotechnology, Shanay co-authored two publications that highlight the lab’s findings of a new platform that could enhance the reprogramming and death of GBM cells that completely evade healthy cells—addressing a huge challenge for chemotherapy.
Sarah Marvin
Class of 2025
For Sarah, family bonding time with her parents and five siblings has often included heaving a ball made of solid iron in the backyard of their rural Michigan home. Today, Sarah's fierce tenacity in the throwing ring for the Commodores track and field team is balanced, like the best shot put spin, with her ability to create sincere connection among fellow students.
Devan Wiley
Class of 2025
Devan had the opportunity to apply their passion for environmental protection by serving as the teaching assistant for SOC3316: Business, Civil Society, and the Environment, leading undergraduate students through a collaborative project to investigate the drivers of rural community support and opposition to large-scale solar initiatives.
MEET OUR GRADUATE STUDENTS
KeShawn Ivory
Astrophysics
KeShawn is co-director of events for Black in Astro, an organization that celebrates and amplifies the Black experience in space-related fields. The group recently won the Annie Maunder Medal for outreach or public engagement in astronomy or geophysics from the Royal Astronomical Society.
Jacob Steenwyk
Biological Sciences
Jacob and collaborators at Vanderbilt, Tel Aviv University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison, measured the coevolution of pairs of genes shared across budding yeasts to identify the genes that participate in the same cellular or molecular functions. The results of this work could fundamentally change how we identify genes with similar functions.
Lucy Kim
English
In the six years Lucy has worked as a tutor and mentor in Vanderbilt’s Writing Studio, she has held more than 800 appointments, providing writing support to more than 400 undergraduate, graduate and professional students. “I’ve never really thought of my clients in terms of numbers or hours. Helping them is something that I do almost automatically because it’s something that I cherish.”