So Why Didn't We Have Classes Like This When We Were In School?

When we were on campus in the early 1970s, the most popular music-related course many of us took was a Music Appreciation Class. And I'll admit a lot of us added it to our academic schedules because it had the reputation of being a easy A or B to pad the GPA and get 3 hours credit.

But now according to a news release I found on-line through a Vanderbilt Google search, beginning today (June 13), Warner Music Nashville is teaming up with the Vanderbilt Accelerator Summer Business Institute to run "a month-long boot camp for college students and recent graduates. Students will be posed with real-life issues from today's top local and national companies, and then be challenged to come up with innovative solutions and proposals."

The goal of Instiutute is to help students "develop skills in marketing, sales, finance, corporate strategy annd more...(also) enabling participating companies to tap into the brains of creative and motivated millenials."

You know, even in our day, Nashville was known as Music City U.S.A. It's too bad a course like what the Accelerator Summer Business Insitute is doing hadn't been created back then. But then it dawned on me: One of our Centennial Class of 1973 graduates actually did this while we were at Vanderbilt even if he never got any classroom credit for it!

That's right. It's Steven Greil, the chair of our 40th Class Reunion effort. While he was student, Steven helped bring dozens of top rock and roll performers to campus, including perhaps the greatest concert ever held at Vanderbilt, the Grateful Dead performance on Alumni/Neely Lawn in October, 1972.....

Also don't forget the one-of-a-kind Comics seminar Steven brought to campus our senior year. He continued this kind of creative effort for many years after leaving Vanderbilt in his work heading the Nashville Symphony and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Thanks, Steven! Maybe you ought to petition the University for a special second degree!