VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER and VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
Over its 142-year history, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) has built a strong reputation as a leader in medical education, research, and patient care throughout the Southeast and the nation. VUMC traces its roots to the establishment of Vanderbilt Medical School in 1875. G. Canby Robinson restructured the Medical School both physically and academically when he became dean in 1920. Robinson insisted that the School be an integral part of the University and moved it to a site on campus in 1925, when a new medical school and hospital were built. This building, with subsequent additions, exists today as Medical Center North and houses academic offices and research laboratories, as well as patient care facilities.
VUMC sustains Robinson’s founding vision through its continuing mission to lead in improving the healthcare of individuals and communities regionally, nationally and internationally through the exceptional capabilities and caring spirit of its people, and to combine transformative learning programs and compelling discoveries to provide distinctive personalized care.
Vanderbilt University (VU) is an independent, privately supported university founded in 1873. The authority of the University resides in a self-perpetuating Board of Trust, and the Chief Executive Officer of the University is Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos. The University includes the College of Arts & Science, Blair School of Music, Divinity School, Graduate School, School of Engineering, School of Law, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, Owen Graduate School of Management, and the Peabody College of Education and Human Development. The mission of Vanderbilt University is to be a leader in the quest for knowledge, in the dissemination of knowledge through teaching and outreach, and in creative experimentation with ideas and concepts. As a center for scholarly research, teaching, and service to the community and society, Vanderbilt values intellectual freedom that supports inquiry, equality, compassion, and excellence in all endeavors.
In April 2016, VUMC and VU became legally separate not-for-profit entities.However, VUMC’s mission remains tripartite, including research, training, and clinical care, reflecting the priorities of the VU School of Medicine since its establishment. The research conducted by faculty appointed in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine is performed by VUMC-employed investigators. Faculty appointments for these investigators are granted through Vanderbilt University, as a delegated responsibility of the Dean of School of Medicine who also serves as the President and CEO of VUMC (Jeffrey Balser, MD, PhD). Biomedical science in these departments is conducted across the spectrum of basic, clinical and population-based research within a strongly trans-disciplinary environment and highly collaborative culture that is sustained by our faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students. Multiple NIH, DARPA and non-federal foundation funded research centers support activities, shared resource cores and programs across this biomedical science spectrum, including in the areas of cancer, diabetes, digestive disease, infection/immunology and vision research. Of note, the Animal Care and Use Program and facilities are maintained and operated by VUMC for all animal research efforts across both VUMC and VU, with VUMC-employed faculty being the largest user of animals for research. In addition, VUMC provides IRB oversight to support all human related research conducted at both VUMC and VU, through the VUMC Human Research Protection Program. Finally, 55 research cores are maintained at VUMC for use by the entire University, comprising 82% of biomedical research shared resources at Vanderbilt.
All investigators in VUMC receive their research space, resources, salary support and protected research time (in the case of clinical faculty) from VUMC, as an institutional priority. VUMC is dedicated to ensuring our investigators are competitive for research funding, and invests well in excess of $100M annually of internal funds for direct support of biomedical research, above and beyond grants, contracts, and philanthropic support. Junior investigators are given substantial development funds to support their progress toward tenure, and VUMC routinely reinvests in mid- and senior-level faculty to sustain and advance their discovery efforts. A significant number of investigators in VUMC hold endowed chairs and professorships (130 investigators) that support their research, through endowments held by VU for the direct benefit of VUMC-employed faculty. VUMC maintains an active administration and support infrastructure for the grant-funded projects of its investigators totaling nearly $460M in research funding annually, and contributing the majority of the School of Medicine NIH funding. Of the 44 biomedical research training grants at Vanderbilt, 30 are led by VUMC-employed faculty, and a majority of biomedical research-oriented graduate students are trained and mentored in VUMC laboratories.
Research
Biomedical research at Vanderbilt has long been recognized for its contributions to the advancement of medicine. The School of Medicine claims two Nobel Laureates, Earl W. Sutherland Jr., in 1971, for his discovery of the metabolic regulating compound cyclic AMP, and Stanley Cohen, in 1986, for his discovery (with a colleague) of epidermal growth factor. The Medical School’s reputation for outstanding research is reflected in the amount of federal and private support it receives. Because of the creativity of the faculty, the School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation’s top 10 medical schools for NIH funding. The School of Medicine received $340 million in NIH research funding in 2016, placing it eighth in the country for grants awarded to a medical school.VUMC research funding from all sources has more than doubled since 2001, reaching $458.3 million in fiscal year 2016.
VUMC FACILITIES
Overview: VUMC is a comprehensive health care facility dedicated to patient care, research, and the education of health care professionals. Its reputation for excellence in each of these areas has made Vanderbilt a major patient referral center for the South, Southeast and Midwest.
Clinical Enterprise:VUMC’s building footprint spans roughly 10M sq ft including a Comprehensive Cancer Center for adults and children, Level 1 Trauma Center, Level 4 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, dedicated Regional Burn Center and TN’s only comprehensive solid organ transplantation center. The clinical enterprise has 12 adult specialties ranked among the nation’s best according to the US News and World Report. The hospital has 758 licensed beds and conducts over 70,000 emergency room visits and 1.6M ambulatory visits per year.
Academic Enterprise: The Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSOM) attracts the most accomplished and talented students in the country due to the quality of the training, the excellence of the faculty, the collegial atmosphere between faculty and students and the close personal attention that students receive. The diverse 2017 class of physicians, scholars and innovative leaders were selected from a pool of more than 6,400 applicants and represent 31 states, 59 undergraduate schools, and boast a median GPA of 3.9. The Schools of Medicine and Nursing are consistently placed at the top of nationwide rankings, including the annual U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) survey, “America’s Best Graduate Schools.” VUMC clinical departments and specialty programs are similarly top ranked in the USNWR annual “America’s Best Hospitals” survey.
The VUSOM is committed to the education of physicians and investigators who are firmly grounded in the basic medical sciences, will provide compassionate care to patients based upon their evaluation and application of the latest scientific research, and will become leaders and scholars in their fields. The medical school’s major strength lies in the quality of its students and faculty. The school provides a supportive and stimulating environment where students are encouraged to pursue individualized interests in clinical medicine and research. Graduating students traditionally gain entrance to high quality residency and postdoctoral programs of their choice throughout the country. The faculty, which represents a variety of specialties and research programs, has a national and international reputation for excellence in the biomedical sciences and clinical care.
CAMPUS, GROWTH, SPACE
The Vanderbilt campus is comprised of 300 acres and was designated as a national arboretum in 1988. Buildings on the original campus date to 1873, the year Vanderbilt was founded, and the Peabody section of campus has been a registered historic landmark since 1966. Vanderbilt University Medical Center is located between the undergraduate and Peabody campuses and has a footprint of approximately 10 million square feet. The close proximity of Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt Medical Center promotes interactions, sharing of resources, and collaboration.
VUMC has greatly expanded its physical plant beyond Medical Center North (1925) through construction of Rudolph Light Hall (1977), the new Hospital (1980), the Vanderbilt Clinic (1988), the Robinson Research Building (1989), Medical Center East (1990), the Village at Vanderbilt (1990), and the Eskind Biomedical Library (1994). To stimulate and support its unparalleled growth in biomedical research, Vanderbilt has aggressively expanded research space over the last 10 years, creating the Preston Research Building (1995; 205,000 sq. ft.), the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (2001; 54,000 sq. ft.), Medical Research Building III (2002; 289,643 sq. ft.), and the Medical Center East South Tower (2005; 300,000 sq. ft.). In addition, Vanderbilt built the new Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital (2004-2006).
Medical Research Building IV (MRB IV), dedicated in 2008, added 290,820 sq. ft. of research space. The addition of the floors of the Third Bed Tower will add about 200,000 sq. ft. to the Medical Center. There is active planning for an even larger research dry lab facility (MRB V) that should add a similar amount of space.