Comment on this article
Yale Science To Get a $500-Million Boost
March 2000
On January 20, President Richard Levin announced Yale’s most comprehensive building project in the sciences since the 1960s. The University will spend $500 million during the next decade to build five new buildings on Science Hill and renovate six others. That same day, it was revealed that John Malone '63, former chairman of the cable-television concern Tele-Communications, Inc., is giving $24 million toward the construction of one of those buildings, a facility for the Faculty of Engineering at Prospect and Trumbull streets.
President Levin described the plan as necessary to keep Yale competitive in the sciences—particularly the rapidly growing biology and engineering areas. “My view is that Yale can’t stay at the top without
being at the top in the sciences,” says Levin.
Yale’s science facilities have increasingly been seen as inadequate for attracting both students and faculty when compared to those at peer institutions. Cutbacks in federal funds and Yale’s former policy of “deferred maintenance” have brought the University to the point where, in the words of Dean of Engineering Allan Bromley, “Our buildings are now literally falling down around our ears.”
In addition to the engineering building, the plan includes a new environmental sciences facility, which is being built adjacent to the Peabody Museum with a $25-million gift from Edward Bass '68; a building for the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies north of Osborn Memorial Laboratories; a molecular biology building north of the Peabody and connected to Gibbs Laboratories; and a new chemistry building north of Kline Chemistry Laboratory.
The other existing Science Hill buildings will be renovated and, in some cases, assigned to new uses. The 77-year-old Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, for example, will be reconditioned as teaching laboratories for undergraduates in biology, chemistry and physics. There are also plans to build a pair of lecture halls for introductory undergraduate science courses on the central campus.
While Levin said that the Bass and Malone gifts are an important start, he added that the University has a long way to go to fund the renovations. “We will try to get as much as we can through fundraising,” he says. “But we’re committed to move ahead, and we are prepared to finance some of it through borrowing if need be.”
Yale has long hoped to shed its image as a school dominated by the humanities, and Bromley, for one, thinks the new investment in facilities—coupled with a planned expansion of the faculties in engineering and biological sciences—will make a difference. “This definitely changes the character of the University,” says Bromley. “It changes the way the University sees itself, and it changes
our relationship with the outside world.”
For God, For Country, And for Ial?
The likelihood that Yale alumni will confuse their alma mater with a Welsh public college has been dramatically reduced. Officials at the stateside Yale have convinced Yale College in Wrexham, Wales, to alter its name to Coleg Ial Yale College Wrexham, a moniker that combines the Welsh and English versions of its name.
The saga began in March, when the University learned of the Welsh institution—which had adopted the Yale name in 1993—and sent a letter through the General Counsel’s office to the school’s principal, Emlyn Jones. While Jones says they felt Yale’s claim was “bogus” and the letter’s tone “aggressive and threatening,” the school was advised by its own counsel “to make a commercial decision not to expose the college to the risk of expensive legal
cost.”
Officials at Yale in Wrexham, which is similar to a junior college, say that the name was chosen for the nearby Yale Hills, which are usually known by their Welsh name, Ial. But the school’s Web site (yale.ac.uk) claims the college was “named after Elihu Yale, a local entrepreneur of the 16th [sic] century and benefactor of Yale University in America.” Elihu Yale is buried at St. Giles Church in Wrexham; Saybrook College’s Wrexham Tower is modeled after St. Giles.
While University Secretary Linda Koch Lorimer maintained that Yale acted because there was potential for confusion between the schools, the media—particularly in Britain—saw the story as a David-vs.-Goliath battle. The Guardian opined that the University’s concerns were “complete horsey do-dos.”
The Asteroids Aren’t Coming—Maybe
Rest a bit easier: The odds that our planet will collide with an asteroid are considerably less than was previously believed, says David Rabinowitz, a research associate in physics. In a research paper published last January in the journal Nature, Rabinowitz and three colleagues from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, report on a sky survey they are conducting with a highly sensitive automated telescope system in Hawaii. The computerized telescope is capable of detecting and tracking the tiny points of light that reflect off asteroids that travel in so-called “near-Earth” orbits.
The objects under consideration are between one mile and six miles in diameter. If one of them were to cross paths with our planet, the result would be the stuff of which disaster movies are made. “It would be like a nuclear bomb coming in,” said Rabinowitz. “It might even change the climate of the Earth.”
Indeed, many scientists believe that such a collision took place 65 million years ago and helped bring about the demise of the dinosaurs. Previous estimates by astronomers sug- gested that perhaps as many as 2,000 asteroids were in chaotic orbits that would from time to time bring them uncomfortably close to our celestial neighborhood. Odds of an encounter were pegged at about 1 percent over the next 1,000 years.
But the sky survey Rabinowitz described in Nature found that there were only about half the number of asteroids out there with the potential to menace the Earth. “I’m not getting any more sleep knowing this,” said the scientist. “I’m just happy that we’re well on our way to finding most of these asteroids.”
Student Project Aims at Guns
A group of Yale seniors is trying to turn a class project into a moneymaker—and a lifesaver. Five students from a course called “Creativity and New Product Development” have created a product they hope will reduce accidental deaths from handguns.
Students in the engineering and applied science course, taught by lecturer Henry Bolanos, come up with product ideas, then follow through with business plans. Brian Kreiter ’00, an African American studies major from Chicago, took the class in order to develop the idea for GunGuard, a device that attaches to a gun with a Velcro strap and emits a loud, high-pitched whine when the gun is moved, deterring children from playing with the gun and alerting adults. (A childproof mechanism turns off the alarm.) He teamed up with four other students in the course to pursue the idea.
Kreiter says the inventors, none of whom are gun owners, would like to see guns protected by trigger locks or gun safes. But not all gun owners are willing to have their guns disabled. “The product is targeted at people who won’t use other safety products,” says Kreiter.
The inventors have hired a patent attorney and are currently trying to decide whether to license their invention, produce it themselves, or hire a CEO to “run with the idea,” as Kreiter puts it. Foremost in their minds, he says, is getting the product into the nation’s homes. “It’s such an important safety device, we’re comfortable doing whatever it takes to get it manufactured and sold,” he says.
Will Power Books Replace Blue Books?
Some 53 percent of Yale undergraduates are now using laptop computers instead of desktop models, and the rise of such portable technology is producing new opportunities—and new problems. Last fall, a Yale Daily News editorial called on the University to create a consistent policy regulating the use of laptop computers in exams.
“This past week,” the editorial said, “as some of us shook our cramped hands to relieve the pain from hand-writing essays in blue books, others calmly scratched their temples and went back to typing their midterm exams.”
Laptops are now commonly used in classes for note-taking, but are less frequently permitted in exams. Currently, the decision whether to allow students to write exams on computers is left up to individual faculty members. Some feel that computers offer an unfair advantage to students who can afford them, while others worry about the potential for cheating on closed-book exams. “We would have to be assured that the computers don’t have loads of relevant files or a prewritten essay on them,” says Mark Schenker, Yale College dean of academic affairs.
Schenker, who chairs the Committee on Honors and Academic Standing, says an investigation by his committee is “one of many ways we could decide this issue. We’re hoping to get a better sense by the end of the term of the reality of laptop use.”
In China, Tales of Yale for Sale
For 18 years, East Asian language and literature professor Kang-i Sun Chang has introduced Yale students to classical Chinese poetry. But in a second life as a freelance journalist, she has introduced readers in mainland China and Taiwan to Yale professors, the Grove Street Cemetery, and Handsome Dan. Last month, two volumes of her essays and articles about Yale were published—one in mainland China as part of a series on “great universities,” and one in Taiwan.
Chang, a native of Beijing who was educated in Taiwan and at Princeton, frequently does profiles of Yale faculty members—often in fields outside her own. Article ideas sometimes come from her Chinese editors, but more often they spring from conversations or chance encounters on campus. She writes in a personal, first-person style far removed from academic prose. “I like to re-educate myself,” she says about her forays into other disciplines. “I like the collegiality of Yale—not just socially but intellectually.”
The professor began writing about Yale after a 1979 visit to mainland China. “Nobody had heard of Yale,” she recalls. “I was quite upset, especially since the first Chinese to study in America had come here.” Chang has sought to raise awareness of the University’s historic ties to China.
Chang says her work is in demand because “mainland China has a fascination with great universities, and they’re very hungry for information about the Western world.” While she often writes about literature and academic subjects, Chang says her article about Handsome Dan got the most attention abroad. “I wrote about the many Handsome Dans who died untimely deaths,” she says. “And the Chinese were very interested, since they have a superstition that says if you’re talented, you will die young.”
It’s Official: Bad Hair Can Ruin Your Day
Next time a loved one complains about a “bad hair day,” pay attention: It may cause more than mere annoyance. Psychology professor Marianne LaFrance found in a recent study that the perception of “bad hair” can have a demonstrable negative effect on self-esteem.
LaFrance, who does research on non-verbal communiction, was approached about researching the effects of bad hair last fall by Procter and Gamble, which is launching a new line of hair-care products that they claim provide greater control. LaFrance told the company she was interested, but warned that “we might find something they didn’t like. There were no strings attached to the research.”
LaFrance and her team divided subjects into three groups, all of whom were given basic tests of self-esteem and self-judgment. But before the test, subjects in one group were asked to think about and discuss their bad-hair experiences. A second group was encouraged to think about negative things unrelated to hair, and a third control group was not asked to think any negative thoughts. The “bad-hair” group showed lower self-esteem than the others. And contrary to stereotypes, men, by one measure, seemed to be more affected than women. “Bad hair seemed to trigger some kind of self-doubt about performance in men,” says LaFrance.
The subject of bad hair might seem insignificant to some, but LaFrance says that “as a psychologist, I’m interested in the effects of things that might first seem to be small or trivial.” And she says she has heard plenty of bad-hair stories from friends and colleagues since the study was made public. One dean at Yale, whom she would not name, confided “I’ve had a bad hair life.”
Campus Clips
The Yale Homebuyer Program, which grants up to $25,000 to employees who buy homes in selected parts of New Haven, will continue for at least the next two years, officals announced in December. Since the program began in 1994, 384 employees have taken advantage of the plan.
Fraternities hosting parties in their off-campus houses have recently become the targets of a crackdown by Yale and city officials. The city is moving to enforce existing laws that require fraternities to secure housing permits, register their parties, and prohibit the sale of alcohol to minors.
Puerto Rican and Mexican-American students have successfully petitioned the University to unite their respective cultural houses to form a new Latino Cultural Center. Under the new plan approved by Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, Latino students of all backgrounds will now have access to the cultural center and to ethnic counselors.
A Divinity School student has been suspended for 18 months after being accused by another student of rape. The assault was alleged to have taken place on October 18 at an off-campus party. While the state’s attorney declined to file charges in the matter, the School’s sexual harassment committee voted to suspend the student until September 2001.
Since the Yale Club of New York City began issuing membership cards last summer—and asking to see them at the door—the club has turned away nearly 1,500 people who could not produce proof of membership. The club had apparently become a convenient spot for midtowners to read the newspaper and have a cup of coffee. Officials say that since the policy was enacted, the club has reduced its standard order of coffee for the second-floor lounge by 50 percent.  |
