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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

Symposium explores issues in designing religious spaces

The role of religion in contemporary life, and how that role is reflected in the design and construction of prominent religious structures, was the focus of a symposium at the school on October 26 and 27. “Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture” explored the nature of the sacred in relation to the architectural environment. “The building of religious spaces such as mosques, synagogues, churches, and memorials has engaged and challenged the creative capacities of the most prominent architects of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,” said Karla Britton, a lecturer in the history of architecture. “The relative marginalization of religion from issues in architectural debates, however, has limited the discussion of the role these works play in forming ideas of citizenship, culture, and identity.”

“Constructing the Ineffable” brought together architects, sociologists, philosophers, and theologians to discuss these issues, and featured talks by architects Moshe Safdie, Stanley Tigerman, Peter Eisenman, Thomas Beeby, Rafael Moneo, Fariborz Sahba, Richard Meier, Steven Holl, and Zaha Hadid. Co-sponsored by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School, the symposium was held in "Sacred Spaces.”

Students travel the globe

Students in their final year who are enrolled in advanced studio courses traveled around the world in September as part of their studio project. About ten students from each course visited project sites in Turkey, Egypt, China, India, Italy, and England before returning to campus to work on their designs. One group, led by visiting professor Massimo Scolari, went to Egypt to study the work of Imhotep, an ancient Egyptian architect; another studio traveled to the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, with visiting professors Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, as part of their project to design a dialogue center. Visit the school’s website to view photos from these trips.

Photographs illustrate urban sprawl

An exhibition of aerial photographs depicting the problem of sprawl in America was on view in the school’s temporary home, the new sculpture building on Edgewood Avenue, in September and October. “A Field Guide to Sprawl” included textual commentary by Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and American studies, and illustrated such terms as “mall glut” (shopping malls and surrounding parking lots) and “ball pork” (patronage benefits for developers who are building sports complexes).

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

Smithsonian honors Yale sculpture professor

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has named Jessica Stockholder '85MFA, director of graduate studies in sculpture, the winner of its Lucelia Artist Award. The award, established in 2001, “annually recognizes an American artist under the age of 50 who demonstrates exceptional creativity and has produced a significant body of artwork that is considered emblematic of this period in contemporary art.” The honor is accompanied by a $25,000 award that “is intended to encourage the artist’s future development and experimentation." Stockholder was appointed to the Yale faculty in 1999.

Undergraduates at the School of Art

The School of Art offers a major in art for Yale College undergraduates, providing 36 courses each semester in addition to museum study trips, independent study, lectures, and critiques specific to the undergraduate curriculum. This academic year, there are 40 undergraduate students majoring in art. From December 3 through mid-January, these undergraduate art students will display their work—ranging from color photography to large sculpture installations, video, painting, and graphic design—in the Undergraduate Comprehensive Show in Green Hall, the School of Art headquarters.

“Making Do 2”

For the second year in a row, the School of Art has invited artists to the Green Hall gallery to produce their works with the materials at hand, to “make do” with what they have and respond imaginatively to the relative quantity or scarcity of it. As Dean Robert Storr explains, “It can be an art of 'muchness' or an 'ultra-povera' art of extreme spareness; it can be lasting or totally ephemeral. In essence, it consists of anything the artist chooses to do while making do with a given material of their choice.” The five artists who have accepted this challenge are Matt Johnson, Traci Tullius, Kate Costello, Demetrius Oliver, and Jurg Lehni. An exhibition of their created works opened October 24 and is on view through November 11.

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Yale College
Peter Salovey, Dean
yale.edu/yalecollege

New roles on Old Campus

“Everything at Yale is such an old tradition that it has been a fun opportunity to be part of something so new,” says Tahia Reynaga (BR '98), an Old Campus Fellow and a member of Yale’s development staff. “I remember when I was a freshman in 1994—the first time I moved into Vanderbilt Hall—and now, living here again, I find it is an exciting challenge to balance 1,100 exuberant freshmen and blend that with Yale’s culture of civility in residential life.” This year is Reynaga's second as an Old Campus Fellow. “I guess that makes me a sophomore,” she quips.

Reynaga was one of the first two Old Campus Fellows. Two more positions were added this year, “to provide additional eyes and ears on the Old Campus, and to play a role in expanding programs for freshmen at Yale College,” says Dean of Freshman Affairs George Levesque. The four Old Campus Fellows are also assigned to two or three residential colleges and provide extra support for the residential college deans and masters by helping to keep track of the freshmen who do not live within the walls of ten of the residential colleges. Anchoring the four corners of the Old Campus in apartments created out of student suites, the fellows join the freshman counselors, who still provide essential counseling, supervision, and a direct connection to the residential colleges. The Old Campus Fellows eat all their meals in the residential colleges and at Commons Dining Hall and spend their evenings on the Old Campus, occasionally hosting students in their apartments.

Old Campus Fellow Allison Norris (SY '94), who lives in Welch Hall, is no stranger to residential life. A former head of freshman counselors, Norris also lived for five years in Branford College, where her husband, Thomas “Dodie" McDow (SY '93), was the college dean. Allison, a postdoctoral associate at Yale’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, moved into Welch with Dodie and their three children, Maggie, Franklin, and Solomon. Levesque believes that this might be the first time that children have ever lived on the Old Campus. Nathan Gault, the Yale College webmaster, took up residence in Durfee this fall, and former Woodbridge Fellow Lauren Thompson (CC '05) moved into new quarters in Farnam.

These three, along with Reynaga, are involved with expanding programs for freshmen. “Our programs bring notable people from around the university and introduce them to the freshmen right where they live, in an environment where they are comfortable,” says Reynaga. “When I was a student—and I considered myself well informed about the resources at Yale—I don’t think I was as aware as I could have been about the incredible opportunities all around me.”

This year, the Old Campus fellows will help coordinate a series of seminars on adjustment to college life, including sessions on study skills, time and stress management, and a host of other pressing concerns for new college students. “While freshman orientation is packed with programs and information for our newest students,” says Levesque, “there remains only so much you can do and say in five days. Our goal is to expand the opportunities for freshmen to ask questions and acclimate to Yale’s culture, and the Old ”

Reading assignments

A longstanding program for freshmen at Yale College got a new twist this year: the traditional Sunday evening keynote address to freshmen was preceded by a reading assignment. Spelman College president Beverly Daniel Tatum delivered the talk. Her book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race, was mailed to members of the Class of 2011 as a summer reading assignment. Following the address, freshmen gathered with freshman counselors and other panelists for open discussions about the speech and the reading assignment. “I think the reading assignment provided students with common ideas to discuss, disagree with, or embrace,” said Dean of Freshman Affairs George Levesque. “It was also a fitting introduction to a Yale education, which demands critical reflection and civil discourse, and to the Yale Class of 2011, which happens to be the most diverse in Yale’s history.” At the same time, the Yale College deans have taken on a reading assignment themselves this semester: a book by Tony Kronman, former dean of the Yale Law School, entitled Education’s End: Why Colleges and Universities Have Given Up On the Meaning of Life. [An essay adapted from the book appeared in the Forum department of the September/October issue.] The deans plan to discuss and debate the book among themselves and then to invite Kronman to talk about it with them. They hope for a challenging and stimulating discussion that will focus them on considering their students' intellectual experience.

DeVane Lectures focus on world performance

This semester, Professor Joseph Roach, the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater and professor of English and African American studies, is offering a series of lectures on the impact of the performing arts on people and cultures. The talks are part of the DeVane lecture series, which is both the core of a university course and a program open to the public. It is named in memory of William Clyde DeVane, dean of Yale College from 1939 to 1963.

Professor Roach, whose writings on performance have received wide acclaim, has been a major force in developing the field of performance studies. In 2006 Roach received a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that has enabled him to create the World Performance Project at Yale. Roach’s DeVane series is devoted to the core subject matter of this project and, in the words of Professor Roach, “to the emerging field of performance studies—in theater, dance, music, ritual, and highlighted social practices—that bring together people from around the world as audiences and leave them changed by the experience.” The lectures are being coordinated with the 2007-2008 season of the project, which includes special performances by visitors and artists-in-residence, and a sequence of performances organized in connection with the Yale Center for British Art exhibition “Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds,” which documents the era when slavery was abolished in the West Indies.

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

Five YDS graduates chosen for distinguished-alumni awards

He has been called a “renegade preacher,” “civil rights legend,” “iconoclastic storyteller,” “radical prophet of the South,” and “Redneck Preacher.” Now, another label: recipient of the 2007 William Sloane Coffin '56 Award for Peace and Justice. Will D. Campbell '52BD, civil rights advocate and author of 17 books, is among five graduates honored this year with distinguished-alumni awards from YDS. Campbell was one of only four white ministers to escort African American students through angry mobs during the school desegregation conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Other honorees include: Rita Ferrone '83MDiv, a writer and speaker on liturgical reform in the Roman Catholic Church; Frederick Hilborn Talbot '57MDiv, 90th bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who served episcopal districts in the Caribbean, Georgia, Arkansas/Oklahoma, and Kentucky/Tennessee; Otis Young '57BD, a United Church of Christ minister who has advocated on behalf of gays and lesbians, racial minorities, and women; and Joseph C. Hough Jr. '59BD, president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, which he helped

Lux and Christianity in China

“Many doors were opened on this trip. Now we just need to keep them open and see what comes through,” said Paul Stuehrenberg, Yale Divinity School librarian. “Once we start doing something, it will be easier to do other things.”

Stuehrenberg was referring to a visit to China that he made with Chi-wah Chan, librarian for the Chinese collection in Yale’s East Asia Library, during the spring academic term. The two served as “academic ambassadors” of sorts, opening and developing relationships with Chinese institutions in a joint effort to shed light on the Christian presence in China. In the wake of the trip—which included meetings in Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai—Stuehrenberg sees several opportunities for mutually beneficial collaboration and exchange: “Our interest is in documenting contemporary Christianity—trying to set up collaborative programs with the national church and Nanjing Union Theological College. What we are negotiating now is what we will send them in return for their sending us their current publications, whether it be things currently published about China or copies of historical materials.”

Yale’s extensive collection of historical materials is particularly valuable, because many collections of religious materials in China were destroyed during the anti-intellectual days of the Cultural Revolution. The collection of manuscript materials related to mission work and the Christian church in China at the YDS library is one of the largest such collections

Feminist theologian Letty Mandeville Russell dies at 77

Letty Mandeville Russell, one of the world’s foremost feminist theologians and a longtime member of the Yale Divinity School faculty, died July 12 at her home in Guilford, Connecticut. She was 77. A leader for many years in the ecumenical movement, she remained active in ecumenical circles until her death. One of the first women ordained in the United Presbyterian Church, she joined the faculty of Yale Divinity School in 1974 as an assistant professor of theology, rose to the rank of professor in 1985, and retired in 2001. In retirement, she continued to teach some courses at Yale Divinity School as a visiting professor.

Russell will be especially well remembered for the “shalom meals” she hosted at the end of each semester for students in her courses. Students would come to Russell’s home on the shores of Long Island Sound to sing songs, tell —and offer praise to God.

Dean welcomes experts in religion and ecology to YDS

“Yale is fortunate to have scholars of the caliber of Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim exploring the important synergies that exist—and that can be developed—between religion and the environment. I believe their work here will have a significant impact not only on the academy but on the broader religious and environmental communities as well.” YDS dean Harold Attridge was referring to the joint five-year appointments of Tucker and Grim, a husband-and-wife team, as senior lecturers and senior research scholars at the Divinity School, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and the Yale Department of Religious Studies.

Tucker and Grim are founders of the Forum on Religion and Ecology, a multireligious organization dedicated to encouraging dialogue between religions and other disciplines in order to address environmental concerns.

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

Playwright honored with “genius grant”

American playwright Lynn Nottage '89MFA, a visiting lecturer at the Yale School of Drama, was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in September.  She is one of only 24 recipients of the award this year, also known as the “genius grant.” Her plays, which include Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Mud River Stone, Por' Knockers, Intimate Apparel, and Fabulation, have been produced throughout the United States and Europe at such venues as the Second Stage Theatre, New York; the Tricycle Theatre, London; and the Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago.

The MacArthur Foundation stated that Nottage’s “imaginative exploration of history, her ability to find resonance in unexpected moments in the past, and her sensitive evocation of social concerns have made her a powerful voice in theater.  She is a dramatist who will continue to provide us with provocative plays in which her characters ”

Returning to the Rep

Director Irene Lewis '66MFA has returned to Yale Repertory Theatre this fall to stage Trouble in Mind, a play by Alice Childress, with dramaturgy by Yale Rep’s resident dramaturg Catherine Sheehy '92MFA, '99DFA.  The production runs through November 17.

Recent graduate lands television role

Sarita Covington '07MFA appeared as Krista on the CBS daytime drama As The World Turns for three episodes broadcast in September.

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

Online magazine will cover environmental issues

The environment school is launching an online magazine dedicated to authoritative commentary and reporting on major environmental issues. YaleEnvironment Online will be edited by Roger Cohn '73, the award-winning former editor of Mother Jones and Audubon magazines. The magazine will publish articles and opinion pieces written by some of the world's leading environmental writers and journalists, as well as scientists and researchers. It will feature multimedia content, including video and audio, interviews, discussions, blogs, and interactive graphics, and will provide links to other websites, republish key articles from outside publications, and provide comprehensive background summaries of pressing environmental topics.

In announcing Cohn’s appointment, F&ES dean Gus Speth said, “The time is right for a global publication that will serve as a forum for provocative writing and thinking on ways to tackle urgent environmental "YaleEnvironment Online will begin publishing next spring.

Global warming worries increase

A survey conducted last summer by Yale University, Gallup, and the ClearVision Institute indicates a “growing sense of urgency” among Americans with regard to global warming. Sixty-two percent of respondents to the survey believe that life on earth will continue without major disruptions only if society takes immediate and drastic action to reduce global warming; 85 percent support requiring automakers to increase fuel efficiency of cars, trucks, and SUVs to 35 miles per gallon; 40 percent of respondents say that a presidential candidate’s position on global warming will be “extremely important” or “very important” in their decision on whom to vote for. The survey was conducted July 23-26, using telephone interviews with 1,011 adults. Complete survey results are available online at http://environment.yale.edu/news/5305-american-opinions-on-global-warming/.

Conservationist endows deanship of environment school

The dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies will from now on be known as the Carl W. Knobloch Jr. Dean, thanks to an endowment gift from Carl W. Knobloch Jr. '51. Dean James Gustave Speth, who has led F&ES for the past eight years, has been appointed the inaugural Knobloch Dean. Calling Yale’s F&ES “the number-one school of its kind in the world,” Knobloch, a Wyoming-based businessman and philanthropist, added, “There is an impending crisis in the degradation of the world’s environment, which we must prevent for the sake of our children and their children. F&ES is the finest training ground for those who will forge the way.”

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

Mentoring Week

“The successful development of graduate students into independent scholars is highly dependent on the quality of the mentoring they receive,” said Dean Jon Butler when he announced that the week of October 29 would be “Mentoring Week” at the Graduate School. Directors of graduate studies held seminars, panels, and informal discussions within their departments on the importance of guiding and encouraging students. Workshops were organized to explore ways to evaluate and improve mentoring techniques. The high point of the week came on November 1 with a guest lecture by Kathy Barker, hosted by the Graduate Student Assembly. Barker has lectured extensively on how to direct a research lab and train students and postdoctoral fellows. She is the author of At the Helm: A Laboratory Navigator (Cold Spring Harbor Press, 1998) and At the Bench: A Laboratory Navigator (Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2005), handbooks that explain how research groups work at the human level and how a newcomer can succeed in a life-science laboratory.

Writing Initiatives

This year the Graduate School is reprising past successes and offering new activities designed to help students succeed in their academic writing. The Graduate School now has five graduate-student writing tutors, one from each division and two with ESL training. They are available to assist with the challenges of seminar papers, dissertations, and other writing tasks.

Back by popular demand, Dissertation Boot Camp was offered over the course of two autumn weekends, September 29–30 and November 10–11. This intense but stress-free program is designed for students in the process of writing their dissertations, especially those who are within a few months of completion. Fellows in the Office of Graduate Career Services, under the guidance of Victoria Blodgett, organized these communal laptop marathons. Drinks and snacks, including lunch and dinner, are provided; cell phones and kibitzers are proscribed. Writing tutors are on hand whenever necessary to offer one-on-one help. Also this fall, Assistant Dean Robert Harper-Mangels led a grant-writing workshop in September, offering guidance on how to apply for

Join the company of scholars

Astrophysicist Meg Urry is the next faculty member to give a talk as part of the dean’s lecture series, “In the Company of Scholars.” Urry, the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy and chair of the physics department, will speak about “Black Holes, Galaxies, and the Evolution of the Universe” on December 3 in the Hall of Graduate Studies. “In the Company of Scholars” invites a faculty member to explain his or her research in a way that is understandable to a general audience. Future talks in the series: Leon Plantinga, the Henry L. & Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music, will present “Music and the Industrial Revolution” on February 26, 2008; and on April 8, Benjamin Polak, professor of economics and management, will speak on “Game Theory for Humanists.”

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

Justice Anthony Kennedy lecture part of 11th annual Global Constitutionalism Seminar

A packed auditorium of more than 500 faculty and students gathered September 27 to hear the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, deliver the 2007-2008 Robert P. Anderson Memorial Lecture. Justice Kennedy, appointed to the Supreme Court in 1988 by President Reagan, spoke about “Constitutions: Structures and Rights” as part of a four-day Global Constitutionalism Seminar, held annually at the Law School. In its 11th year, the seminar brings together Supreme Court and constitutional court justices from around the world to freely and confidentially discuss with faculty members the most important legal issues of the day. The theme of this year’s meetings was “The Design and Operation of Judicial Review.” The 20 justices who attended included Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court; Justice Brun-Otto Bryde of the Constitutional Court of Germany; Justice Jose Ramon Cossio Diaz of the Supreme Court of Mexico; Justice Olivier Dutheillet de Lamothe of the Conseil Constitutionnel of France; Justice Kate O'Regan of the Constitutional Court of South Africa; Vice President Wan Exiang of the Supreme People’s Court, P.R. China; and Justice Luzius Wildhaber, former president of the European Court of Human Rights. The seminar was directed by Professor Paul Gewirtz '70JD from its founding in 1996 through 2005, and since 2006 has been directed by Professor Robert Post '77JD.

Alumni Weekend participants consider “twenty-first-century democracy”

An award to New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse '78MSL and an interactive “Polling Game” emceed by Stanford Law professor Pam Karlan '84JD were among the highlights of Alumni Weekend 2007, held October 12-14 at the Law School. Approximately 800 alumni attended, some traveling from as far away as Germany and the Philippines. The weekend included a series of stimulating panel discussions centering on twenty-first-century democracy as it relates to race, elections, new media, and the growing gap between rich and poor. Among the distinguished panelists were Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage '03MSL, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting; Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times; Jeff Greenfield '67JD, senior political correspondent for CBS News; and Myron H. Thompson '69, '72JD, U.S. district court judge for the Middle District of Alabama. There were also remembrances of two Yale Law School pioneers who passed away during the year—the Honorable Jane M. Bolin '31JD and Professor Pauli Murray '65JSD.

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

Architect chosen to design new SOM campus

The architectural firm Foster + Partners, led by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Norman Foster '62MArch, will design a new campus for the School of Management, which will more than double the current SOM footprint. Construction is expected to be completed by the fall of 2011. The new complex, which will include a 230,000-square-foot building, will house state-of-the-art classrooms, faculty offices, the school’s academic centers, and student and community spaces. The larger campus will enable the school to expand student enrollment and increase the size of its faculty, as well as offer greater community facilities and allow for expanded executive programs. Plans are to pursue LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system) certification for the new construction. (For a report on the SOM campus by the Yale Alumni Magazine, see Light & Verity.)

SOM students win CNBC game show

Four students from the SOM Class of 2008 teamed up to win the first CNBC Fast Money MBA Challenge last summer, defeating students from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business in the championship round, which aired live on August 22. The television show, billed as “the varsity sport of the financial mind,” pitted teams from eight top business schools—including Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, NYU, UCLA, and Chicago—against each other in a test of the students' financial expertise. The Yale SOM team—Bob Doherty, Koichi Kurisu, Jeff Levi, and Krishnan Vishwanathan, along with alternates Lisa Howie and Michael McLaughlin—will share the $200,000 grand prize, which is earmarked for education expenses.

From the classroom to the real world

The 208 members of the Class of 2008 took the lessons of SOM’s new integrated management curriculum into the real world last summer as they interned in for-profit, nonprofit, and public-sector organizations. Initial reports on student performance are highly positive. This year, every student who took an internship in the investment banking industry received an offer for full-time employment. Kristin Irish, deputy director of the career development office, attributes this success to SOM’s better preparation of students for the cross-disciplinary challenges of modern business. Jenna Angeles '08, who spent her summer as a consulting intern at Booz Allen Hamilton, agreed: “The skills I learned at Yale enabled me to foster productive relationships [and] to motivate teams to move an idea forward.” An annual Wall Street Journal survey of recruiters rated SOM as the most improved MBA program. The online survey of more than 4,400 MBA recruiters was conducted from December 2006 to March 2007.

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

Help for children with heart defects

A tissue engineering project developed by two Yale physician-scientists could aid children born with serious medical defects, such as hearts with only two chambers.

Traditional treatment options for these children—molding the child’s own tissue into new vessels to be used as grafts, Gore-Tex grafts, and biological grafts from animals—have been problematic. But now, Christopher K. Breuer, assistant professor of surgery and pediatrics, and Toshiharu Shinoka, associate professor and director of pediatric cardiovascular surgery at Yale–New Haven Children’s Hospital, have developed a way to coax cells to grow blood vessels that can be used to repair or replace faulty vessels.

The engineered blood vessels, which are grown from stem cells taken from a patient’s own bone marrow, aren’t prone to the inflammation or rejection that can affect transplanted tissue. The process has been used successfully in 47 children in Japan. Shinoka and Breuer are now awaiting word on their application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct clinical trials of their grafts at

Seed money yields a bumper crop of biotech companies

Fiscal Year 2007 was a banner year for biotech startups that sprang from intellectual property developed by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine. Six new companies received financing, and a seventh closed on funding shortly after the end of the fiscal year. In addition, existing bioscience companies in the New Haven area secured more than $400 million in new financing.

Jon Soderstrom, managing director of Yale’s Office of Cooperative Research, attributes this year’s success to a strong investment climate as well as the fact that many of the new startups address the unmet therapeutic needs of a large segment of the population. One example is Optherion, Inc., a new company that will leverage recent discoveries in the genetic causes of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) to offer more effective, longer-lasting therapies.

Three of the startups were founded in whole or in part with financing from Elm Street Ventures, a seed capital fund started with Yale’s help two years ago. All but one of the seven new companies are headquartered in New Haven. “That’s a critical aspect,” Soderstrom said, “that these companies end up in New Haven and bolster the local economy.”

Roughly 80 percent of

The road less traveled

Students who want to be doctors don’t expect to work bankers' hours, but a growing number are turning away from primary care medicine and choosing so-called lifestyle specialties that allow them to maintain more balance between their work and personal lives.

At medical schools across the country, specialties such as emergency medicine, radiology, ophthalmology, anesthesia, and dermatology—or E-ROAD, as these specialties are collectively called—are becoming increasingly popular, either because they don’t involve responding to a lot of nighttime emergencies or because the physicians work set shifts. 

At the Yale School of Medicine, the number of students choosing the E-ROAD rose from 17 in 1997 to 34 this year. What worries health administrators about this trend is that as the number of E-ROAD doctors goes up, the number of primary care physicians, or those trained in general internal medicine, family practice, and pediatrics, is dropping. At Yale, the number of graduates specializing in these areas dipped from 36 in 1997 to 22 in 2007.

Suggestions on how to reverse this trend nationally have included offering tuition debt forgiveness to students who choose to become primary care physicians.

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

YSM recordings online

A growing library of netcasts—recordings of performances by students and faculty, samples of music by Yale faculty composers, and historical material from the archives of the Oral History American Music Project—have been posted on the School of Music website and on Yale’s iTunesU site, hosted by Apple. Performances by pianists Peter Frankl and Robert Blocker with the Yale Philharmonia, the Alianza Quartet, and the Yale Brass Trio are among the first podcasts that were made available for downloading. Faculty compositions in the netcast library include Ezra Laderman’s Clarinet Concerto with David Shifrin and conductor Ransom Wilson; Martin Bresnick’s Grace, a concerto for two marimbas and orchestra, with soloists Robert van Sice and Eduard Leandro '99MusM and conductor Shinik Hahm; and Aaron Jay Kernis’s Newly Drawn Sky, played by Hahm and the Philharmonia. The netcasts also include historical programs, including a set of interviews with Aaron Copland conducted by Vivian Perlis over many years, and another netcast of discussions with friends and colleagues of Charles Ives. To hear these programs, visit the School of Music website (www.yale.edu/music/ysm) and follow the links to our netcasts and podcasts. Yale’s iTunesU site is http://itunes.yale.edu.

Yale at Carnegie Hall

The first annual “Yale at Carnegie” series, a five-concert series bringing the best of Yale’s School of Music to the audiences of New York, kicked off October 1 with a program of chamber music that featured faculty pianist Claude Frankl, the Tokyo String Quartet, and the Alianza Quartet. The Alianza Quartet, a post-graduate ensemble that the Tokyo Quartet has been mentoring for the past several years, is a group of YSM alumni: violinists Sarita Kwok '06ArtA and Lauren Basney '06ArtA, violist Ahyoung Sung '05ArtA, and cellist Dmitri Atapine '06ArtA. The second concert in the series took place October 29 in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. “The Songs of Charles Ives" featured 37 rarely heard songs written by Ives (Class of 1898), and celebrated the upcoming release of the complete Ives songbook on six CDs. Among the performers in the Ives concert were mezzo-sopranos Leah Wool '03ArtA and Tamara Mumford '04Mus, soprano Jennifer Casey Cabot '89MusM, and tenor Ryan MacPherson '00ArtA, as well as two current students, Edward Parks and Joshua Copeland. Three more concerts at Carnegie Hall are scheduled for the spring.

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

Healthy Neighbors Day

Student volunteers from the School of Nursing organized a “Healthy Neighbors Day” September 8 for the school’s neighbors in the Church Street South apartments. The event featured free blood pressure and diabetes screenings, nutritional counseling, science and anatomy lessons, activities for children and families, and refreshments. More than 120 people attended. New Haven native and nursing student Everol Ennis, one of the organizers of the event, saw it as an opportunity to strengthen relationships with the New Haven community: “Good health and good neighbors are so important.”

Sleep expert named associate dean

Nancy S. Redeker, whose program of research has focused on sleep, sleep disorders, and circadian rhythms of activity and rest in persons who have heart disease, has been named YSN associate dean for scholarly affairs.  Redeker comes to Yale from the School of Nursing at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where she was professor and associate dean for research. Redeker’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Nurses Foundation, the American Heart Association, and the American Association of Critical Care Nurses. She has published numerous data-based, theoretical, and clinical papers in peer-reviewed journals and is a frequent presenter at national and international scholarly meetings. She is currently conducting a study of sleep and functional performance in heart failure, funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research.

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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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