VandyVox showcases the best of student-produced audio at Vanderbilt University. Each episode features student work from a curricular or co-curricular project, including audio documentaries, radio dramas, spoken word essays, and ongoing podcasts.
Vanderbilt Center for Teaching director Derek Bruff got the idea for VandyVox during a course design institute hosted by his center in May 2018. Several faculty participants in the institute were interested in assigning audio projects in their courses or creating class podcasts. Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if there were a “podcast of podcasts” produced by Vanderbilt, featuring the best of these student projects?
In the fall of 2018, Bruff pitched the idea to colleagues at Vanderbilt Student Media, including director Chris Carroll and assistant directors Paige Clancy and Jim Hayes. They were excited by the idea and the potential it had for helping Vanderbilt student work reach a wider audience. Bruff reached out to faculty and students for audio to include, and the Student Media team, including assistant director Jeff Breux, went to work on production and distribution.
We launched Season 1 of VandyVox in February 2019 with eight episodes featuring student audio created for honors theses and internships, courses and research projects. Fields represented in the first season include math and English, law and health policy. Genres include audio documentaries, speculative fiction, critical essays, and that one where three people sit around a microphone and talk about video games.
We hope that VandyVox gives listeners a sense of the creative and critical media produced by students at Vanderbilt, and that it inspires faculty and students to consider ways that audio production might enhance their teaching and learning.
Season 2 came out later in 2019, and Season 3 arrived in 2020 with new host Kaelyn Warne, PhD candidate in environmental engineering. Season 4 is in our future! If you know of student audio we might feature on VandyVox, please let us know by emailing CFT director Derek Bruff.
Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or another podcast app using our RSS feed. Our episodes are also available on Podomatic. You can also follow us on Twitter: @vandy_vox.