Vanderbilt and the Shanks endowment
Vanderbilt University and Nashville
Vanderbilt University is a leading university for teaching and research. The undergraduate program provides a high quality liberal arts education, while the broader university has a large array of graduate and professional programs. The Vanderbilt campus is famous for its beauty and national arboretum status, and it has a convenient location minutes from downtown Nashville.
Nashville is a rapidly growing city, with a metro population of 2 million people. This makes it one of the largest cities in the southeastern US. It is a major attraction for tourism and the music industry, and a major hub for education and health care. The city is a very pleasant one to live in or visit, and it was named the 15th best place to live in the US by U.S. News & World Report.
The Department of Mathematics at Vanderbilt University currently has over 100 graduating math majors each year, 23 graduate students, and 53 faculty, of which 18 are postdocs. The department has 25 tenured and tenure-track professors. The department is home to many strong research groups in various areas such as constructive approximation, biomathematics, graph theory, topology, group theory, logic, noncommutative geometry, operator algebras, and universal algebras. The department also hosts a large number of visiting researchers and a wide array of seminars, colloquia, and conferences.
The Shanks Endowment
The Shanks Endowment was established in 1984 by the Shanks family in honor of 1956-1969 Department Chair Baylis Shanks and his wife Olivia Shanks. The Endowment supports a series of conferences and workshops in the math department as well as the Annual Shanks Lecture.