As we greet a new academic year, I’d like to welcome you to The Vanguard and share my reflections on its philosophy.

Isabella Bautista | September 27th, 2024

Dear readers,

Before I could even walk, I loved to experiment. Crawling around the house, I would scratch various surfaces — the vinyl floor in the kitchen, the carpet in the living room, even the asphalt of the driveway — and listen to the distinct sound each one made against my fingertips. Even if I didn’t know it yet, I wanted to be a scientist: I was testing, learning, and discovering novel characteristics of the world around me, something that I haven’t stopped doing for even one year of my 20 years of life. 

Science can be tremendously complex, but there is no reason it should have to be incomprehensibly so. There often seems to be an invisible barrier separating “scientists” from “non-scientists,” which leads me to ask: what really is a scientist? The word “scientist” stereotypically evokes images of Albert Einstein covering dusty chalkboards with equations or Rosalind Franklin poring over experimental results to determine the structure of DNA. In reality, anyone can be a scientist, even a crawling baby exploring the uncharted territory of the natural and man-made world. I’ll take it upon myself to give you the broad definition of scientist as merely a seeker of knowledge. If you’re here, I’ll venture to guess that you’re seeking knowledge, and in my book, that makes you a scientist. 

A good scientist not only discovers new information but also communicates it — that’s where The Vanguard comes in. Each member of the staff has a particular scientific niche they enjoy, from particle physics to social determinants of health to new gene therapies. With each new piece of content we produce, we open up a new channel of scientific discourse and discovery to one another and to you. Our hope is that you will learn from reading as much as we do from writing and that a newfound love for knowledge and science will excite you.

Welcome to the Vanguard, fellow scientists. I can’t wait to see what we’ll discover together.

Isabella Bautista

Vanderbilt Vanguard Editor-in-Chief 2024-25