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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University.

The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers.

 

School Notes
A supplement to the Yale Alumni Magazine from the twelve schools of Yale.

School of Architecture
Robert A. M. Stern, Dean
architecture.yale.edu

London developer named Bass Fellow

Roger Madelin, a London developer, has been named the third Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Architecture. Selected from among leaders in the development community, Bass Fellows participate in an advanced design studio led by a chaired architecture professor and organized around a development project with which the Bass Fellow is engaged; the aim is to expose architecture students to the real-world application of their art. Madelin, chief executive of Argent, will be teaching the studio with London-based architect and Bishop Visiting Professor Demetri Porphyrios. The studio will design schemes for King’s Cross Central, a 67-acre site in the heart of London adjacent to a new Channel tunnel rail link to St. Pancras station. Argent’s current scheme for the area proposes new residential, commercial, retail, and cultural spaces, as well as a new home for the university of the arts. The challenge for the students will be to integrate the rich historic fabric with new structures while also focusing on sustainable development for the future. Yale students in the studio will investigate master planning issues of the project and will visit the London site.

Architecture student takes top design prize

Yichen Lu, a first-year master of architecture student at Yale, has won first prize in the 2006 Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition sponsored by Shinkenchiku (New Architecture) magazine in Japan. The objective of the competition was to employ new media or definitions to describe the new urban lifestyle. Lu designed a portable device entitled “The Meaning of Life,” which participates in and drives the development of urban lifestyle—observing, reading, resting, wandering the streets of Manhattan—and transforms people’s activities from “program” into poetic narrative. The prizes and winners were announced in the December issues of Shinkenchiku and JA magazines.

Dutch designs at Architecture gallery

The Architecture School Gallery will be converted into a three-dimensional graphic this spring to highlight the work of Dutch architecture firm UN Studio. “UN Studio: Evolution of Space” will focus on 18 years of the firm’s work, including the recently opened Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, and past projects such as the Moebius House and the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam. The exhibition will be on view in the gallery from February 12 to May 4.

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School of Art
Robert Storr, Dean
yale.edu/art

Art classes for everyone

A series of one-night, three-hour undergraduate workshops aimed at non-art students was offered free of charge to the Yale undergraduate community last fall. Initiated by new dean Robert Storr and associate dean Sam Messer, “Increase the Size of Your Brain” offered six workshops in various media, taught by both tenured and part-time faculty: “Getting from the Neck to the Knee” focused on drawing and was taught by Dean Storr; “No Photography Experience Necessary,” with Lisa Kereszi and other faculty, centered on pinhole camera. Other subjects included “Mold from Life and Plaster Casts” with Daphne Fitzpatrick; “Introduce Yourself to Monotype” with Norm Paris; “Painting Basics” with Clint Jukkala; and “Handmade Collage Techniques: Exploring Principles of Visual Communication,” led by Henk Van Assen, director of undergraduate studies. Offered on a first-come sign-up basis, each of the courses was quickly oversubscribed, which pleased Dean Storr. “It’s exciting to watch people connect with their own talent for the first time or reconnect after a long pause,” he said. “It’s gratifying to provide the situation where that happens and to see how contagious it can be.”

“Increase the Size of Your Brain" continues in the spring semester with such workshops as “Small-Format Street Photography,” “The Good Stuff: From the Waist to the Toes” (drawing part II), and “Thinking With Your Eyes” (an adjunct to the formal course “Visual Thinking”).

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Yale College
Peter Salovey, Dean
yale.edu/yalecollege

Long-time dean retires

Betty Trachtenberg, long-time dean of student affairs and associate dean of Yale College, who has worked with five deans of Yale College, dozens of other deans and masters, hundreds of student leaders, thousands of freshman counselors, and tens of thousands of Yale undergraduates, will be stepping down at the end of the academic year to enjoy a well-earned retirement with her husband, children, and grandchildren. In a 30-year career in Yale College, Dean Trachtenberg has had a broad and profound effect on the life of the entire Yale community. Dubbed the “Landlady of the Old Campus” for the attention she has paid to every aspect of freshman residential life, from public safety to the condition of the plumbing (and sometimes called the “Dean of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll” for the student issues that so often have occupied her time), Dean Trachtenberg reorganized the oversight of hundreds of student organizations and involved herself personally in setting and enforcing policies concerning student health and social conduct. (See Milestones.)

Throughout her deanship, she has worked closely with the Yale College Council and has championed student participation in the governance of the university by arranging for their appointments to various advisory committees. Her strong sense of justice and her evident personal compassion have made her the ideal dean’s office representative for disciplinary, mediation, and grievance procedures and have identified her as the person to whom students, parents, and staff turn in times of crisis. In one of the highest tributes a student organization can pay, Dean Trachtenberg was the subject of the half-time show at the Yale Bowl during the game against Princeton in November.

Yale/Peking undergraduate program takes flight

By the time you read this, Yale College students will have completed the first semester of the Peking University-Yale University joint undergraduate program, and the second semester will be underway. In the fall 21 Yale College students and 21 Yuanpei students lived together as roommates on two floors of Building #42 at Beida. The range of courses they took together, including “The Formation of Modern American Culture,” “The City in Literature and Film,” “Introduction to Chinese Economy,” and “Directed Research at the Beida-Yale Joint Research Center for Microelectronics and Nanotechnology,” as well as the courses for second semester, can be viewed at www.yale.edu/iefp/pku-yale/academicsfaculty.html.

While Yale students adapted to having no electricity in their individual rooms between midnight and 6:00 a.m., there were accommodations to American habits: the bathrooms were renovated to Yale specifications, with hot-water showers and western-style toilets; there is a common room on each floor, furnished with televisions, DVD players, computer work stations, potable water, couches, tables, and chairs; and, at the suggestion of the Yuanpei program administration, Yale and PKU selected a more advanced student, Li Kunlin, to serve as a live-in and part-time resident assistant to help with extracurricular activities and to serve as a liaison with the dorm and program offices.

New York Times managing editor teaches seminar

Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, is teaching an advanced course in journalism at Yale College this semester as part of the Yale Journalism Initiative, established by Steve Brill '72 and his wife Cynthia '72, which will educate, train, and provide career guidance to 15-25 Yale Journalism Scholars. A search committee solicited suggestions for the position from faculty across the university and received over 100 names. “Because of her award-winning reporting and significant books, Ms. Abramson quickly became a top candidate,” noted Linda Peterson, the Niel Gray Jr. Professor of English and chair of the search.

Abramson was appointed managing editor of the New York Times in August 2003 after serving as that paper’s Washington bureau chief for three years. She was the first woman to hold either position. Prior to joining the Times, she worked at the Wall Street Journal, 1988-1997, as deputy bureau chief for the Washington office and as an investigative reporter. From 1986 to 1988 she was editor-in-chief of Legal Times, a weekly Washington-based newspaper with a national readership. In addition to many articles and essays, Abramson has written two books: Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, co-authored with Jane Mayer (Houghton Mifflin, 1994), which was a finalist in the nonfiction category for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law, 1974 (Doubleday, 1986). In 1992, Abramson won the National Press Club’s Correspondence Award for her series of articles on the role of money in the 1992 elections.

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Divinity School
Harold W. Attridge, Dean
yale.edu/divinity

At the Yale Divinity convocation and reunions: a spontaneous voice against torture

It’s not always easy to predict what might happen at the Yale Divinity School Convocation and Reunions, beyond events planned months in advance. The surprise at this year’s celebration October 9-12 was a spontaneous petition drive aimed at challenging the government’s controversial position on prisoner interrogations. Heading up the effort were two YDS alumni from the Class of 1956: Donald Beisswenger of Nashville, Tennessee, and Edward Hummel of Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The pair gathered signatures of alumni and current YDS students who signed on to endorse the Torture Is a Moral Issue statement of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Not only did the group decide to send the petition to the president and members of congress; they also resolved to ensure that discussions of war and peace are part of every future convocation and reunions gathering. Beisswenger is not counting on a reply from President George W. Bush '68, but neither is he ruling it out. “I’m always open to the spirit,” he said. “I mean, you can never tell. This event [the petition drive] did not seem like it would happen, but it did happen.”

Works of Jonathan Edwards now available online

Hundreds of sermons and theological writings of eighteenth-century preacher, theologian, and Yale graduate Jonathan Edwards went online in October, thanks to the efforts of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, housed at the Divinity School. The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online website—at http://edwards.yale.edu/archive/—is now available in a public beta phase, after thousands of hours of use by the closed beta team. Some of the 200 sermons in the 25,000 pages of online text have never been published. Others are very well known, such as the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, perhaps the most famous sermon ever written in America. Ultimately, the goal is to make the entire Jonathan Edwards manuscript corpus available on the website, which features a fully searchable and thematically, scripturally, and chronologically tagged interface that can be used by anyone with the appropriate software and Internet access. The center was established in October 2003 on the 300th anniversary of the birth of Edwards, viewed by many scholars as the most significant figure in American religious history.

Three YDS faculty appointed to endowed chairs

Willis Jenkins grew up on a farm in Virginia and, early in his scholarly career, worked in theological education and sustainable development with the Anglican Church of Uganda. Among the Ugandan Anglicans, he recalls, “Environmental issues were right at the heart of a lot of their concerns.” Those life experiences helped shape Jenkins's scholarly interests in religion and environmental ethics, which he will now be pursuing at Yale Divinity School as the first-ever Margaret Farley Assistant Professor of Social Ethics.

Two other members of the Yale Divinity School faculty, both senior scholars, were appointed to endowed chairs in the fall along with Jenkins. Thomas Ogletree, a former dean of the Divinity School, was named the Frederick Marquand Professor of Ethics. He served as dean at YDS from 1990 to 1996 after nine years as dean of the Theological School at Drew University and three years at Vanderbilt University. An ordained United Methodist minister, he was also one of the principal drafters of the current United Methodist disciplinary statement on doctrinal standards.

Appointed the Clement-Muehl Professor of Homiletics is Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, who joined Yale Divinity School this year after serving on the pastoral staff of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. Her research interests are in congregational studies and preaching, women’s ways of preaching, and prophetic preaching. A former president of the Academy of Homiletics, Tisdale has served on the faculties of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and Princeton Theological Seminary, and as adjunct faculty at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

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School of Drama
James Bundy, Dean
yale.edu/drama

West meets East

A Beijing Opera adaptation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is being created by the chair of Yale’s directing department along with opera director Tian Man Sha and Vice President Sun Hui Zhu of the Shanghai Theatre Academy in China. Liz Diamond and Tian Man Sha recently presented a workshop of their project at the 2006 International Symposium of Drama School Directors, hosted by the Shanghai Theatre Academy in October.

The Shanghai symposium brought together heads of drama schools and departments from 20 institutions around the world to discuss the rapidly changing cultural contexts within which our schools are training the next generation of theater makers. Speeches and workshops at the meeting covered a broad range of questions, addressing such topics as expanding training to include film, television, and other media; problems of censorship and self-censorship; the challenges that a global, market-driven culture presents to the theater artist seeking to create new forms; and the problems faced by artists trying to keep alive ancient theatrical performance forms. Diamond’s speech to the symposium described Yale’s efforts to broaden and deepen our students' exposure to theater artists, theatrical forms, and theatrical production models from around the world.

Among the outcomes of the symposium: commitments to develop structures for sharing faculty, to provide students with more and varied exchange opportunities, and to launch collaborative projects.

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School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
James Gustave Speth, Dean
environment.yale.edu

Green scientists join Yale faculty

Julie Zimmerman, an author of a treatise on the principles of green engineering, and Paul Anastas, the “father of green chemistry,” have joined the Yale University faculty. With these appointments, says Thomas Graedel, the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Industrial Ecology, “Yale builds on its already world-class stature in industrial ecology and sustainability.”

Zimmerman developed novel environmentally friendly metalworking solvents for optimizing manufacturing machining processes without sacrificing performance; her results are currently being implemented by the auto industry. At the EPA Zimmerman managed grants to academia and small businesses in the areas of pollution prevention and sustainability. She obtained a PhD from the University of Michigan in 2003, and holds a joint Yale faculty appointment with the Department of Environmental Engineering and the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Anastas was the 2006 winner of the $250,000 Heinz Prize for the Environment from the Heinz Family Philanthropies, which hailed him as the “father of green chemistry.” He is director of the Green Chemistry Institute, and served from 1999 to 2004 in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Prior to that he was chief of the industrial chemistry branch of the EPA, where he was responsible for the regulatory review of industrial chemicals and the development of rules, policy, and guidance. He holds a PhD in organic chemistry from Brandeis University.

Developing world gains access to environmental research

A collaborative project among Yale University, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and leading science and technology publishers will make global scientific research in the environmental sciences available online to environmental scientists, researchers, and policymakers in the developing world.

Through Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), more than 200 publishers, societies, and associations will offer one of the world’s largest collections of scholarly, peer-reviewed environmental science journals to more than 1,200 public and nonprofit environmental institutions in 106 developing nations in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. Every institution enrolled in OARE will receive resources with an annual retail subscription valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Institutions eligible to enroll in OARE include universities and colleges, research institutes, ministries of the environment and other government agencies, libraries, and national nongovernmental organizations. Access for institutions in the 70 poorest countries will be free. Access for institutions in 38 lower-middle-income countries will be for a nominal charge; monies raised will be reinvested to support continued training and outreach activities in eligible countries.

More than 1,000 scholarly scientific and technical journal titles in the fields of environmental science will be provided through a portal presented in English, Spanish, and French. OARE will also provide important abstract and index research databases, which are intellectual tools the scientific and professional community use to search for information within thousands of scholarly publications.

Yale journal identifies products that cause greatest environmental damage

Transportation, food processing, and home energy use are the leading causes of environmental damage, according to a special issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. Automobiles and air transport, the meat and dairy industries, and home energy use, including the use of appliances, account for nearly 80 percent of the total amount of pollution produced by society. Contributors to the special issue, “Priorities for Environmental Product Policy,” examined the impacts of products in Cardiff, Wales; in Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands; and in countries in the European Union as a whole. The special issue features the most recent and influential studies on the relative impact of consumption activities.

The Journal of Industrial Ecology is a peer-reviewed international quarterly owned by Yale University, published by MIT Press, and headquartered at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. The articles in the special issue are available at mitpressjournals.org/toc/jiec/10/3.

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Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Jon Butler, Dean
yale.edu/graduateschool

In the company of scholars

Susan Rose-Ackerman '70PhD (economics), the Henry Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and professor of political science, spoke on “Corruption and Democratic Transition" to open the dean’s 2006-07 lecture series, “In the Company of Scholars." Rose-Ackerman has explored the topic extensively, having written Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform. “Corruption can be defined in many ways,” she noted, “but I use it to mean the misuse of political power for private or political gains by officials, firms, and individuals. … You have to be opportunistic to do empirical work in the field of corruption studies. You can look for situations where there are two sets of books to compare or surveys from which you can deduce something useful. You can’t measure corruption directly.”

Future speakers will discuss genomics, art history, and other topics. The next lecture is scheduled for February 13.

Exploring federal careers

A series of lectures, workshops, information sessions, and a mini-career fair were the main attractions at Federal Career Week this fall on the Yale campus. Students learned about fellowships and jobs in public health, international relations, environmental policy, intelligence, defense, economics, and more. One program, “Ten Steps to a Federal Career,” walked students through the process of conducting a federal job search that draws on individual interests and strengths. Another session, presented by Colleen Getz '98PhD (political science), outlined opportunities in the U.S. intelligence community. Getz is director of strategic political-economic programs for the National Intelligence Council. Federal Career Week was organized by the career offices of Yale College, the School of Management, Epidemiology and Public Health, Forestry & Environmental Studies, the MacMillan Center, and the Graduate School.

Graduate students honored for teaching

Each semester, the Yale College dean's office invites undergraduates and faculty members who supervise teaching fellows to nominate candidates for the title of Prize Teaching Fellow. Winners are chosen by a committee of faculty and administrators. In November, at a dinner hosted by the deans of the college and Graduate School, 12 Prize Teaching Fellows were honored for their outstanding ability to instruct and inspire Yale undergraduates in discussion sections, language classes, and science labs. This year’s fellows are Carolyne Davidson (history), Seth Dworkin (mechanical engineering), Daniel Feldman (comparative literature), Jeffrey Headrick (chemistry), Dorota Heneghan (Spanish and Portuguese), Joshua Levithan (history), Heidi Howkins Lockwood (philosophy), Charles More (philosophy), Barry Muchnick (history), Todd Olszewski (history of medicine and science), Sean Taylor (molecular, cellular and developmental biology), and Justin Zaremby (political science).

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Law School
Harold Hongju Koh, Dean
law.yale.edu

Supreme Court justice visits Law School

The day after declaring the Constitution a “dead document” in a speech to the Yale Political Union, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia took part in a question-and-answer session with the Law School community. Leading the discussion were Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Bruce Ackerman '67LLB and Southmayd Professor of Law Akhil Amar '80, '84JD. In the hour-long session, Justice Scalia answered questions on the role of the ninth amendment in reading the Constitution, the core principles of Bush v. Gore, and whether to consider the drafters' original intent in modern-day interpretations of the Constitution.

Yale Law School to acquire university “swing dorm”

After 75 years in a single building, Yale Law School is beginning to feel a space crunch. Though it once housed dorm rooms for 140 students, today the Law School’s Sterling Law Building has only 23 dorm rooms. In an effort to help alleviate that space problem and restore the Law School’s tradition of a residential community, the Law School and the university have negotiated for YLS to acquire the university “swing dorm” in approximately 2012 as part of the Law School’s $200 million capital campaign.

The swing dorm, which is located just a block from the Sterling Law Building, is a 125,000-square-foot facility. It currently houses undergraduates who have been displaced during the ongoing renovations of undergraduate residential colleges. Those renovations are anticipated to be completed in the next five years, at which time the Law School will acquire the building. Yale Law School dean Harold Hongju Koh said he looks forward to making the building a “welcoming home for future generations of Yale law students.”

State Supreme Court justices receive Alumni Award of Merit

This past fall, the Yale Law School Association, the alumni organization of Yale Law School, presented its Award of Merit to three state Supreme Court justices: the Hon. Margaret Marshall '76JD, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and a Yale Corporation fellow; the Hon. Drayton Nabers Jr. '65LLB, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama; and the Hon. Randall T. Shepard '72JD, chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court. Award recipients are recognized for having made a substantial contribution to public service or to the legal profession. Previous recipients of the award include: Eugene V. Rostow '33, '37LLB, '44MAH; Cyrus R. Vance '39, '42LLB, '68LLDH; Gerald R. Ford '41LLB, '77LLDH; Eleanor Holmes Norton '63MA, '64LLB; Ellen Ash Peters '54LLB, '64MAH, '85LLDH; and William J. Clinton '73JD.

Another Academy fellow

An announcement in the September/October issue listed seven YLS alumni who had been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, but left out the name of Victor S. Navasky '59JD, who also was elected to the Academy last year.

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School of Management
Joel Podolny, Dean
mba.yale.edu

SOM leads in enrollment of women MBA students

With women making up 38 percent of the Class of 2008, the School of Management has the highest percentage of women MBA students enrolled for 2006 among leading business schools, according to a census released in October by the Forte Foundation. SOM dean Joel Podolny called it a “wonderful affirmation” of the school’s efforts to recruit women, and added, “This is a banner time for the women leaders of SOM, both past and present”—referring also to Fortune magazine’s recent naming of Indra Nooyi '80MBA as the most powerful woman in business. The Forte Foundation is a consortium of top U.S. and European business schools, major corporations, and nonprofits, that is dedicated to encouraging women to pursue leadership roles in business. It conducted the census of female enrollment among its 27 member schools, which include Harvard Business School, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago, MIT, and Tuck.

Students take off in new curriculum

As first-year students embarked on the Organizational Perspectives courses, a series of eight all-new classes that forms the heart of the new Yale SOM MBA curriculum, they were also preparing for another embarkation. In January 2007 first-year students are traveling to one of eight destinations around the world. Yale SOM is the first major business school to require such an international trip. Faculty leaders designed the trips to examine key issues in international business, and students will meet with businesspeople, government officials, and nonprofit leaders. Each trip will also link to one or more of the Organizational Perspective courses through pre-trip preparation and through reports and activities conducted in the classes after students return. The trips will go to India, China, Singapore, South Africa, Costa Rica, and Poland, among other destinations. See mba.yale.edu/internationalexperience for a complete list of trips.

Center renamed in honor of Ira Millstein

The school has renamed its new corporate governance center the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management, in honor of corporate governance expert Ira M. Millstein. Millstein, a senior partner at the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, is also senior associate dean for corporate governance at Yale SOM.

Considered one of the world's leading experts on corporate governance, Millstein was integral in the launch of the center, serving as its director through the inaugural Yale Governance Forum in June 2006, and he continues to oversee the center in his role as senior associate dean.

The center was established with the receipt of $20 million in gifts and commitments from individual and corporate donors. The mission of the center is to explore the role of corporate governance to better enable corporations both to be competitive in their markets and to contribute to society. “Ira Millstein’s reputation in the field of corporate governance is unmatched,” said Dean Joel Podolny. “He has brought tremendous innovation and real-world insight to the center and it has flourished under his leadership.” Read more about the center online at millstein.som.yale.edu.

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School of Medicine
Robert J. Alpern, Dean
med.yale.edu/ysm

New disease genes found by Yale scientists

Two School of Medicine research teams have identified gene mutations that play a role in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Josephine J. Hoh, associate professor of epidemiology, and colleagues linked a mutation on Chromosome 10 to the “wet” form of AMD, in which an abnormal proliferation of leaky blood vessels in the retina causes blindness. Meanwhile, a group led by Professor of Medicine Judy H. Cho showed that an uncommon variant of a pro-inflammatory gene protects against Crohn’s disease, suggesting a promising target for IBD therapies. Both studies appeared in the journal Science.

Weight-lifting risk unveiled

Since reporting in 2003 on a link between weight lifting and tearing of the aorta in five individuals, John A. Elefteriades, professor of surgery, and colleagues have identified 31 others who experienced an internal aortic tearing following heavy lifting. Most were younger than age 50, in good health, and had no prior history of cardiac disease. In the journal Cardiology, the team notes that nearly all of these individuals, a third of whom died, had unknowingly been living with an abnormally enlarged aorta, a condition that occurs in hundreds of thousands of American men. The researchers urge those planning to pump serious iron to be screened for aortic enlargement.

Connecticut awards $7 million to Yale stem cell investigators

Yale fared well in the first group of grants awarded in November by the state of Connecticut from a $100 million fund established last year to promote stem cell research. Yale scientists received $7 million of the $19.78 million allocated by the State of Connecticut Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee for 21 research projects. Michael P. Snyder, professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, received the largest grant, $3.8 million to investigate how human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) differentiate into nerve cells. Haifan Lin, professor of cell biology and director of the Yale Stem Cell Program (YSCP), received $2.5 million to support a new core facility that will accommodate federal funding restrictions on hESC research. Diane S. Krause, associate professor of laboratory medicine and pathology and YSCP co-director, received $856,653 to study a leukemia gene using hESCs.

A new leader for Department of Internal Medicine

With 351 full-time faculty, the Department of Internal Medicine is the medical school’s largest department. Founded in 1813, the department has been an exemplar of Yale’s tradition of intertwining research with quality clinical care. The faculty scientists have secured $83 million in research funding, and its physicians treat patients at Yale–New Haven Hospital and the West Haven campus of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. On October 2, the medical school named Jack A. Elias, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine and chief of the section of pulmonary and critical care medicine, as the department’s new chair. Elias, a leading authority on the molecular basis of asthma and other lung disorders, has trained more than 50 scientists now working in academia and industry, and he holds seven patents or pending patents based on his research.

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School of Music
Robert Blocker, Dean
music.yale.edu

Parisot honored by Sejong Soloists

The International Sejong Soloists, one of the world’s top conductorless string orchestras, honored renowned Yale cello professor Aldo Parisot at its annual benefit concert on November 12 at Carnegie Hall. Hyo Kang, artistic director of the Sejong Soloists and a member of the School of Music faculty, invited Parisot and the 20 members of the Yale Cellos ensemble to perform on the program. CNN anchor Paula Zahn hosted the festivities; an amateur cellist, she joined the group for two pieces. Two YSM alumni had leading roles in the musical tribute: Ole Akahoshi '95CERT, now on the school’s faculty, is principal cello of both Sejong and the Yale Cellos, and Jian Wang '88CERT, a renowned international soloist and recording artist, was a featured soloist.

Yale musicians win in Italy and Chile

Darrell Ang, a conducting fellow at the Yale School of Music from Singapore, was a top prizewinner in the 2006 Antonio Pedrotti International Competition for Orchestra Conductors. The grueling competition, open to conductors of all nationalities, took place in Trento, Italy, over a two-week period ending on October 12. The 40 conductors chosen to compete in Trento were given a repertoire of 24 pieces to prepare, ranging from Mozart symphonies to a new work by Luca Mosca that was commissioned for the competition, but were not told which piece they would be conducting for the competition until they stepped to the podium. All had auditioned for the competition in New York, Tokyo, Trento, Brussels, or Prague. Mr. Ang is a first-year master of music student, studying with Shinik Hahm.

On November 11, Rumanian cellist Mihai Marica '04CERT won the 33rd International Music Competition in Vina del Mar in Chile, regarded as one of the most prestigious music competitions in the world. Marica, a student of Aldo Parisot, won a substantial cash prize, two appearances as soloist with the Chilean Symphonic Orchestra, and an appearance in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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School of Nursing
Margaret Grey, Dean
nursing.yale.edu

Research contributes to federal approval of autism drug

A study carried out at Yale and four other universities has led to FDA approval of the antipsychotic drug risperidone for the treatment of children with autism accompanied by tantrums, aggression, and self-injurious behavior. This is the first time the FDA has approved any medication for use in children and adolescents with autism. The study was conducted by the Research Units of Pediatric Psychopharmacology (RUPP) Autism Network, which is funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Lawrence Scahill, professor of nursing and child psychiatry at Yale and the director of the RUPP Autism Network at the Yale Child Study Center, was one of the principal investigators for the study. “Our findings broke new ground in the treatment of autism. For the first time, we have data on both the short- and longer-term benefits of medication for children with autism,” he said, adding, “The FDA approval was based in large part on a federally funded study—rather than an industry-sponsored study—so this approval is a welcomed translation of clinical research to policy.”

Distinguished alumna honored for her “life journey”

Sharon Schindler Rising '67 was named the School of Nursing’s 2006 Distinguished Alumna for her work as a clinical scholar, teacher, educational program director, inventor, entrepreneur, politician, and nurse-midwife. The presentation was made at the YSN reunion in October. Rising’s dedication to providing high-quality, cost-effective, and sensitive prenatal care led her to establish the Centering Pregnancy Program, an innovative method of prenatal health care delivery that involves group support and provider facilitation. Based on a model she developed at the University of Minnesota, the program is now available at 50 sites in the United States, Canada, and Australia, including Yale–New Haven Hospital.

YSN faculty contribute to nursing journal

As guest editor of the December issue of Nursing Clinics of North America, Independence Foundation Professor Gail D'Eramo Melkus brought together the country’s leading experts in diabetes to contribute material on the latest advances in the care of diabetes and diabetes-related complications. YSN faculty writing for this issue include Andrea Dann Urban and YSN dean Margaret Grey '76MSN, who wrote about the challenges of managing and treating Type 1 diabetes; and Deborah Chyun '82 and the Medical School’s Larry Young, whose article “Diabetes Mellitus and Cardiovascular Disease” addresses the risks of heart disease in diabetes patients.

 
 

 

 

 

Note to Readers

The Yale Alumni Magazine carries this supplement in every issue for news from Yale’s graduate and professional schools and Yale College.

This supplement is underwritten by the university and is not produced by the magazine staff but provided by the schools.

 
 
 
 
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