facilities are situated on its 330-acre (1.3 km2) campus in the heart of Nashville, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from downtown.
Vanderbilt alumni, faculty, and staff have included 54 current and former members of the United States Congress, 18 US ambassadors, 13 governors, 9 Nobel Prize winners, 2 vice presidents of the United States, and 2 US Supreme Court justices. Other notable alumni include 3 Pulitzer Prize winners, 27 Rhodes Scholars, 2 Academy Award winners, 1 Grammy Award winner, 6 MacArthur Fellows, 4 foreign heads of state, and 5 Olympic medalists. Vanderbilt has more than 145,000 alumni, with 40 alumni clubs established worldwide.
== History ==
=== Founding and early years ===
In the years before the American Civil War of 1861–1865, the Methodist Episcopal Church South had been considering the creation of a regional university for the training of ministers in a location central to its congregations. Following lobbying by Nashville bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire, church leaders voted to found "The Central …
