The 2026 cohort of the Michael B. Keegan Traveling Fellowship includes seven outstanding students traveling the world to examine topics and issues of profound passion. They are only the most recent of the more than 70 outstanding students selected to take part in this impactful program that began more than 60 years ago, which has amassed a loyal following in its alumni and created a multi-generational impact.
In celebration of decades of impact, a group of committed alumni and friends recently made a generous commitment to match, dollar-for-dollar, every gift up to $750,000 to the Michael B. Keegan Traveling Fellowship Fund. The challenge is open through December 31, 2026, or until the matching funds are fully realized.
Immersive, experiential learning is a hallmark of both the Keegan Traveling Fellowship and the Vanderbilt undergraduate experience, providing opportunities to step beyond the classroom to gain real-world understanding and help each recipient become a truly global citizen. Support to enhance access to programs such as the Keegan Fellowship is a priority of the university’s ongoing Dare to Grow campaign.
“The program began as an idea to send an outstanding student leader abroad for a year to travel widely, learn the ways of the world, learn about different societies and ways of life so they could gain a broader base of knowledge of the world before they became immersed in graduate school or the work world,” said David Albright, BA’63, long-time champion and the original fellow who was funded by Corning Glass Works, the initial supporter of the program.
As an undergraduate, Albright exhibited the leadership credentials that led to his selection as Vanderbilt’s first traveling fellow. He excelled academically, played football for two years, served as president of both his fraternity and the Interfraternity Council, and was one of only seven in his class in Omicron Delta Kappa leadership society, along with celebrated author and humorist Roy Blount Jr., with whom he has maintained contact through the years.
Albright’s fellowship studies focused on American plant operations around the globe and the adaptations required for success within different regulations and cultures. He traveled to 46 countries over 27 months. After 62 years, Albright still holds the record for countries visited during the program (at the time of this story). In the years since his fellowship was completed, he has added to his travel history, having now visited 115 countries on all seven continents—the final coming in 2019 with an expedition to Antarctica at age 78.
“You gain an international outlook, and it stays with you all through your life,” Albright said.
Since it began in 1963, the program has experienced starts and stops over the decades, with alumni stepping up to revive or sustain it when funding ended. Over the years, Albright and fellow recipients like Michael Ainslie, BA’65, Michael B. Keegan, BA’80, and Jud Pankey, BA’82, were instrumental in securing funding for the fellowship. During his service as president of the World Trade Council of Middle Tennessee, Albright solicited further support from area businesses with an international presence to revive the program after it had been dormant for several years. This funding supported the program in 1980 when Keegan was selected as that year’s traveling fellow.
As a fellow, Keegan traveled to developing countries to study entrepreneurs across the globe, ultimately visiting 28 countries on five continents. He later joined Albright, Ainslie, Pankey and friends devoted to the program to provide financial support to maintain the fellowship. In the early 2000s, one of these friends of the fellowship who was not an alumnus made an anonymous gift in Keegan’s honor to endow the fund, and the fellowship was renamed for Keegan as a result in 2004.
“It was a life-changing experience for me and so many others over six decades. Having the exposure to different cultures and belief systems changes the way you approach problems and gives you a life-changing perspective. For me, it has been an additional ongoing gift to be able to help provide this experience to so many others,” Keegan said.
“You gain an international outlook, and it stays with you all through your life.”
After decades of funding one or two fellowships per year, donor contributions and growth in the endowment now allow the Michael B. Keegan Traveling Fellowship to support multiple students every year through two programs: the original postgraduate award and the new “Summer Keegan,” for rising third- and fourth-year students. Each cohort connects with one another during their travels to share their experiences, provide support and build camaraderie. Those connections remain long after their formal experiences end—both with one another and the greater Keegan alumni community—amplifying the impact of the fellowship.
Through its evolution over the years, the program has maintained the mission to empower students to immerse themselves in diverse cultures, pursue bold ideas and engage in hands-on learning that shapes their futures as global citizens and leaders. Through independent exploration and cross-cultural engagement, fellows develop the adaptability, resilience and leadership skills necessary to drive meaningful impact in an interconnected world.
Keegan alumna Kelly Moore, BS’94, MD’00, MPH, has served on the selection committee for more than 20 years, many of those as chair, and developed the procedures and rubric for evaluating students in the competitive process.
“The opportunity to review those applications and get to know the students who are interested gives me hope for the future,” Moore said. “We’re investing in these students with an opportunity that uniquely shapes their lives, and these investments are going to pay off for generations.”
Moore’s experience as a fellow in 1994-1995 took her to the Pacific Rim, Australia, New Zealand, continental Europe and then back to the U.S. to study the art of healing in different cultures. Her experiences uncovered both differences and commonalities across cultures, such as the variability in preferences for evidence-based medicine relative to other healing traditions. The healing traditions that emphasized a stronger emotional connection between provider and patient seemed to maximize the therapeutic benefit of a trusting healer-patient relationship. Evidence-based medical interventions could more effectively address certain disease processes but were often delivered in busy settings that limited benefits of the healer-patient relationship. Additionally, she experienced personal growth only possible with the program.
“One of the tremendous skills that I gained was having the confidence to think on my feet and get out of a tight spot, how to manage a crisis on my own, being in unfamiliar territory and having to navigate it,” Moore said.
Collectively, the knowledge, confidence and ability to navigate new environments greatly informed her acclimation to medical school upon her return and her direct patient interactions during training.
“When you walk into a hospital for the first time, the experience is akin to being in a foreign country. I was less intimidated by that ‘new country’ of the hospital ward, and I believed I had something to contribute,” Moore said. “I knew from studying the healers that the relationship—the listening and addressing the patient’s concerns—goes a really long way in the healing process.”
Moore’s career in public health allowed her to resume traveling and learning from cultures of the world, bringing findings and best practices back to the communities she served. Today, she is president and CEO of Immunize.org, a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting the work of health care professionals through its educational resources and advocating for policies that reduce barriers to vaccination for people of all ages.
“We’re investing in these students with an opportunity that uniquely shapes their lives, and these investments are going to pay off for generations.”
Her experience as a fellow exemplifies that of the scholars across generations—each embarks on their journey with a plan of study, and the fellowship leads to personal discovery where they develop skills and strengths that shape the remainder of their lives.
“Unlike a lot of other opportunities where there’s a real question of the return on investment, where you’re producing something whether or not it represents the person you are, the Keegan Fellowship is an investment in the individual—to be a leader, be a community member,” said Abhinav Krishnan, BA’23. “The student is the product at the end.”
Krishnan’s travels extended interests he developed as a student, exploring environmental movements around the world and their success in the context of cultures and societal change. As he became steeped in communities from Bangladesh to Spain to Mexico, and others, he began to perceive common methods of communication that connected people based on common ground. They talked with one another rather than at one another, developing genuine understanding of concerns and the context of their lives.
“The fellowship experience fundamentally alters the way you look at the world,” Krishnan said. “It became really clear to me that the greatest gift I have to offer the world is my time and talent, so I want my work, my professional life, to reflect that to the greatest degree possible.”
Currently a program coordinator for StoryCorps, a media nonprofit dedicated to hopeful storytelling, Krishnan runs the One Small Step program at Vanderbilt, which aims to help students better understand the factors that have shaped our beliefs and humanize these differences by sharing our life experiences in one-on-one conversations.
“Unlike a lot of other opportunities where there’s a real question of the return on investment, where you’re producing something whether or not it represents the person you are, the Keegan Fellowship is an investment in the individual—to be a leader, be a community member.”
Consistently citing the lifelong impact of the experience on their entire lives, the Keegan alumni community remains highly engaged with the program, with an intense interest in its growth. Along with Moore, Albright, Pankey and many other fellowship alumni serve on the selection committee every year.
“The gratitude for the opportunity and a desire to pay forward that opportunity to others have strengthened this incredible community of people who, across more than 60 years, had the same type of rare experience of exploration around the world,” said Moore.
With a deeply connected network and multiple fellows now named each year, the foundation is firmly in place for the next 60 years of fellows. Both the direct impact of the fellowship on its students and their future impact in the world will multiply as more qualified students receive funding to pursue meaningful study and return with completely new perspectives. Every gift to the Michael B. Keegan Traveling Fellowship Fund provides this promise, and the ongoing donor challenge expands the possibilities.