Vanderbilt Visions

What is Vanderbilt Visions?

Vanderbilt Visions allows groups of new students to discover college life together.

All first-year students will be assigned to one of 85 Visions groups. These groups—each of which is made up of about 20 first-year students—meet weekly throughout the first half of the semester. Visions groups help you form strong connections and support networks with classmates across different houses, schools, perspectives, and geographical backgrounds and assist with your transition to becoming a successful college student. Visions also connects you with a faculty member and an upper-division student peer mentor, called faculty and student VUceptors. Visions encourages you and your classmates to express your questions, ideas, and opinions and learn from and with each other.

Participation in Vanderbilt Visions is mandatory for all first-year students and attendance will be taken at every meeting.  All Visions groups share a required program syllabus. Each 50-minute session uses small group discussion to focus on:

• Supporting students as they transition to life in college and at Vanderbilt,
• Fostering inclusive community building skills and personal growth in a supportive environment, and
• Providing a bridge to campus resources and services.

Who are the VUceptors?

Visions is led by teams of faculty and student mentors, called VUceptors.

Your faculty and student mentors have chosen to become VUceptors because they are dedicated to assisting and learning from first-year students. Your faculty VUceptor may come from any one of the ten undergraduate and professional schools and colleges at Vanderbilt and your student mentor is an upper-division student from one of the four undergraduate schools.

Applying complementary skill sets, your VUceptors model a dynamic and meaningful professor-student interaction and help to create a mutually beneficial learning environment for everyone as they foster your group’s discovery of the personal, social, and academic community values of Vanderbilt University.

VUceptors work collaboratively with International Orientation Leaders and Transfer Student Leaders to welcome all new undergraduate students to campus each year.

Over the summer, you can expect to receive a letter or email and a phone call from your student VUceptor (usually in early August). Your student VUceptor can answer questions you might have about coming to Vanderbilt and what to expect on Move-In Day.

Become a student or faculty VUceptor!

Visions Group Assignments

Visions is a required university core program. All first-year students will receive a Visions group assignment on Your Enrollment Services (YES). Fall enrollees will be assigned to Visions in mid-July; spring enrollees will be assigned in late December. In making Visions group assignments, your class schedule will be considered to ensure that you are available to attend regularly. Groups are intentionally designed to introduce you to a diverse group of students whom you may not meet otherwise.

Up until the start of the semester, your Visions group assignment is not finalized and you may notice changes in YES as we balance groups and resolve class conflicts. All conflicts with course in which you are enrolled or for which you have been waitlisted will automatically be resolved.

You may request a change to your Visions group assignment by emailing visions@vanderbilt.edu for the following reasons: enrolling for a new course, requesting more time between classes for travel, adjustments due to time zone, or admittance to a selective performance group through the Blair School of Music. For fall enrollees, change requests for non-academic reasons will only be accepted up until mid-July 2025 (specific date to be announced). From that point forward, changes will only be made for academic reasons. Please note: Visions groups only meet on Mondays and Tuesdays.

You may not select a specific group or individual VUceptors, or a specific day or meeting time.

With additional questions about the Vanderbilt Visions program or how to get involved as a VUceptor or a campus partner, please contact Director of the First-Year Experience Natalee Erb.