Charles Scott, professor of Philosophy and early faculty supporter of the Student Health Coalition (SHC), concludes this 2019 gathering with poignant remarks about what transpired when the Vanderbilt Medical School assumed control of the SHC. The energy of dissatisfaction that drove much of the Coalition’s work was replaced instead with a sense of institutional fulfillment. …
Irwin Venick, Joe Little, and Bob Hartmann reflect on the birth and growth of the Center for Health Services (CHS) over time, tracing its stages of development from its initial Medical School partnership to its later social-science orientation and eventually, with Barbara Clinton as director in the late 1970s, to its relationship with the Nursing …
On the Center’s multi-phasic identities and development over time Read More »
Margaret Ecker and Bob Hartmann discuss how the university seemed to be feeding off of and trying to control Coalition energy and notoriety in the effort to recruit foundation dollars. He shares the story of his trip escorting Sir George Pickering, a well-respected hypertension specialist from England, who was at the time visiting as a …
On institutional benefit of student-led Coalition energy and notoriety Read More »
Irwin Venick characterizes the formation of the Center for Health Services (CHS) as an “institutional overlay imposed upon from on high” rather than an impulse among Coalition participants. He explains that most of the university-driven energy to formalize and take advantage of the SHC work in some way came from luminaries at the Medical School, …
Irwin Venick on what prompted development of the Center for Health Services Read More »
Dick Burr recalls Bill Dow’s eccentric, impassioned personality and its driving force in the evolution of the Student Health Coalition. Full footage of Dick Burr’s interview from March 25th, 2021.
Bill Dow co-founded the Student Health Coalition while in medical school at Vanderbilt University, in 1969. His larger-than-life role in the SHC origin story and beyond warrants special telling, which we attempt in the essay that follows. Contributed by Margaret Ecker, compiled in collaboration with friends Bill Dow energized a generation of student activists and …
Contributed by Bob Hartmann, February 2017 Rick Davidson has been badgering me for over a year to write a profile. Somehow he enlisted my wife, Mel Welsh, and now she is badgering me! As I read the profiles on the web site, I am in awe. You people really made something of your lives. I’m …
Richard Davidson was born in West Palm Beach, Fla. in 1947. He attended Vanderbilt undergraduate and medical schools, and did a residency in internal medicine there as well. During the summer of his second year in medical school (1970) he was asked to participate in a new rural health project by a classmate. In 1971 …
Contributed by John E. Davis, August 2015. I am the eldest son of a Southern couple who moved north for employment after World War II. Every June, my parents would “go home,” loading their three boys into a station wagon with no air conditioning and traveling hundreds of miles down US 1 from New Jersey …
