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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 School of Architecture Yale helps to create Middle East “peace park” Students and faculty including Professors Alan Plattus and Diana Balmori from the School of Architecture participated in a charette with planners from Jordan and Israel in May to discuss the creation of the first cross-border Peace Park to be established in the Middle East. The team visited the location of the proposed park, about six miles south of the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee, at the confluence of the Yarmouk and Jordan rivers. The park area will include the former Rotenberg hydroelectric power station and the “Three Bridges” site, a historical crossing point of the River Jordan, where a 2,000-year-old Roman bridge, an Ottoman Railway bridge, and a British Mandate road bridge still span the river today. No person, train, or vehicle has crossed the river at this site since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Organizers hoped that the charette would result in a vision for revitalizing dilapidated buildings, converting the former power station into a visitor's center, and renovating the bridges for future use. The finished project will be a trans-boundary protected area straddling the international border between Israel and Jordan. Student designs showcased at ICFF Architecture students from Professor Massimo Scolari’s advanced studio participated in a juried competition as part of the 20th annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in May. The display consisted of student-designed furniture prototypes developed as solutions to a problem formulated in Scolari’s fall 2007 studio, which centers on the problem of designing a scholar’s center for the funerary complex of King Djoser at Saqqara, Egypt (ca. 2650 BC). As part of the assignment each student created and fabricated a full-scale prototype of a chair to “furnish" his or her building. Yale was one of only four schools asked to take part in the 2008 ICFF; also participating were the California College of the Arts, Savannah College of Art and Design, and New York’s School of Visual Arts.
School of Art Art faculty win national design awards Two faculty members from the School of Art have been chosen to receive 2008 National Design Awards from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The National Design Awards were established to promote excellence and innovation in design, and are accompanied each year by a variety of public education programs, special events, panel discussions, and workshops. Michael Bierut, a partner in the New York design firm Pentagram and a senior critic in Yale’s graphic design program, is the recipient of the Design Mind Award, which recognizes visionary individuals or firms that have affected a shift in design thinking or practice through writing, research, and scholarship. Bierut is co-editor of the Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design book series and a cofounder of DesignObserver.com, a widely read blog focused on design and culture. Scott Stowell is the winner of the Communications Design Award, which honors work in graphic or multimedia design. Stowell, a critic in graphic design at Yale, operates Open, an independent New York-based design studio that works across a range of media. The award recipients will be honored at a gala dinner October 23 at the Cooper-Hewitt in New York City. Professor elected to American Academy Mel Bochner, retired professor (adjunct) of printmaking and painting, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. Bochner has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, and his work is represented in the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Musee National D'Art Moderne in Paris. He is one of nine Yale faculty members to be chosen for the 2008 class of fellows. (For more on the other Yale-affiliated AAAS fellows, see “Honored.”) Honors for Art School alumni Two recent graduates of the School of Art have been recognized with prizes in the arts. Marc Trujillo '94MFA has been named a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, joining such past fellows as Ansel Adams, W. H. Auden, Aaron Copland, and Martha Graham. An art professor at Santa Monica College, Trujillo has exhibited his work nationwide and it has been featured in numerous publications. Canadian photographer Sarah Anne Johnson '04MFA is the winner of the inaugural Grange Prize for Contemporary Photography, awarded by the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Canadian firm Aeroplan. A native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Johnson has shown her work in a number of solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the United States.
Yale College Student wins writing contest The Atlantic Monthly has named Jerry Guo '09 the winner of the nonfiction division of its prestigious student writing contest. Guo won the prize for a piece he had written in an undergraduate course taught by essayist and reporter Anne Fadiman, who is the Francis Writer in Residence and adjunct professor of English. The essay profiled an unusual subject: the man who owns the world’s largest collection of (human) celebrity hair. Guo credits the prize to his experience in Fadiman's class. Of Fadiman, Guo says, “She spent so much time on this piece with me that I really couldn’t have won the Atlantic competition without her. She's definitely the best professor I’ve had at Yale, and a wonderful person.” When he is not attending classes and working as a research assistant for Ian Ayres '81, '86JD, the William K. Townsend Professor of Law, Guo is a freelance writer for the New York Times. This past May, he traveled to Nepal on assignment as a Leitner Fellow, a fellowship administered by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. In the 11 years since the Atlantic Monthly inaugurated this contest, five of the first prizes have been awarded to Yale students. During the past four years, pieces written in nonfiction courses at Yale have taken three first prizes, and, in the other year, second prize in that contest. Honors for two faculty members At their annual dinner, Yale’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa honors one retired faculty member and one active faculty member with the William Clyde DeVane Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Teaching. Akhil Reed Amar, '80, '84JD, the Southmayd Professor of Law and Political Science, and Donald Crothers, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and professor emeritus of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, are this year’s honorees. Amar’s course Constitutional Law is perennially lauded by students, and Crothers was renowned for inspiring students in the sciences during his career. Yale’s most prestigious undergraduate teaching honor, the DeVane Award has been conferred by Phi Beta Kappa since 1966. William Clyde DeVane was dean of Yale College from 1938 to 1963 and during his career served as president of both the Yale and United chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. Alumnus named new master of Ezra Stiles College Stephen Pitti '91, professor in the American Studies program and director of the Program in Ethnicity, Race and Migration, has been appointed master of Ezra Stiles College, effective July 1. Pitti lived in Ezra Stiles College as a student at Yale. His wife, who will serve as associate master, is Alicia Schmidt Camacho, the Sarai Ribicoff Associate Professor of American Studies. The couple’s twins, first-graders Antonio and Thalia, will also join the Ezra Stiles community. Pitti earned his MA and PhD at Stanford, returning to Yale in 1998 to become an assistant professor of history and American studies, specializing in Mexican-American studies and immigration reform.
Divinity School “Quilt of Faiths” finds a home in Yale chaplain’s office A handmade quilt donated to Yale now graces the lounge in the Yale chaplain’s office, with a message that underscores the Yale chaplaincy’s growing interfaith emphasis. The “Quilt of Faiths,” whose 12 squares represent different religious traditions, was made by former missionaries to Japan for a “returned Japan missionary” gathering held in Seattle in 2005. Hallam Shorrock '52BD, who spent many years as a missionary in Japan, had it shipped to Sterling Divinity Quadrangle for the 55th anniversary gathering of the Class of '52, where he consulted with Dean Attridge about the quilt’s future. Attridge recommended donating it to the Yale University chaplaincy to enhance interfaith efforts. In a letter to Shorrock acknowledging the gift, University Chaplain Sharon Kugler called the quilt a “wonderful tool” for learning about different religious traditions. Conference tackles immigration issues The myriad problems associated with the volatile issue of immigration to the United States are not confined within U.S. borders. Immigration is intimately linked to the problems in home countries that often force people to flee in hopes of a better life in the United States. That was one of the major themes to emerge during a May 1-2 conference at Yale Divinity School entitled “The Challenge of Immigration: Framing a New American Conversation,” which featured a number of leading thinkers and activists on the topic—including, among others, George Rupp '67BD, president of the International Rescue Committee. Rupp encouraged stepped-up U.S. foreign assistance for capacity building in poorer countries. “We have to make investments in the sending countries if the problems are going to be manageable,” said Rupp, a former president of both Columbia and Rice universities and former dean of Harvard Divinity School. “More significant investments than we’ve been making, but over a longer period of time, could make people do what they really want to do—they'd like to stay home.” Miroslav Volf to co-teach course with Tony Blair Miroslav Volf, the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, will co-teach a course on faith and globalization with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair during Yale’s 2008 fall term, in a YDS/Yale School of Management collaboration. Volf is a prolific author, and one of his books, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, was selected as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official Lenten study book for 2006. Volf has written of a “malfunctioning of faith” that “gives inspiration and seeming legitimacy to people’s unconscionable deeds—from acts of violence and terror to complacency and inaction before situations of abuse and injustice.”
School of Drama Center will encourage new works for theater A $2.85 million gift from the Robina Foundation will establish the Yale Center for New Theatre at the Drama School, which will substantially increase the Yale Repertory Theatre’s annual commissions of new plays and musicals, facilitate playwrights' residencies at the school, and help develop a curriculum in writing for musical theater at Yale. It will be overseen by James Bundy, dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre, along with Jennifer Kiger, associate artistic director and director of the Rep’s new play program. “The Yale Center for New Theatre will provide artists with the time and resources to create new work, and build a larger community of playwrights, composers, lyricists, and directors promoting professional training in every discipline of the theater,” Bundy said. The gift includes a $600,000 production fund to be administered by the Yale Center for New Theatre, which will support other not-for-profit theaters that produce world premiere or second productions of plays commissioned by the Yale Rep through the center. The Robina Foundation is a Minnesota-based grantmaking organization that seeks to positively impact critical social issues by encouraging innovation and supporting transformative projects of its institutional partners. Alumni among Tony winners School of Drama alumni were well represented in the list of 2008 Tony award winners. Donald Holder '86MFA won the Tony for best lighting design of a musical (South Pacific). Michael Yeargan '73MFA, resident set designer at the Rep and a member of the faculty in the design department, won for outstanding scenic design of a musical for South Pacific. (Yeargan won a 2005 Tony in the same category.) Catherine Zuber '84CDR took home the Tony for best costume design in a musical (South Pacific) ; and director Anna D. Shapiro '93MFA received a Tony for her work on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County. Other Yale nominations included Scott Pask '97MFA for best scenic design of a play; Todd Rosenthal '93MFA for set design; and Donald Holder for lighting design of a play. The 62nd annual Tony Awards were presented in New York on June 15.
School of Engineering & Applied Science University creates School of Engineering & Applied Science Dean Kyle Vanderlick writes: “It is with tremendous pride that I provide the School of Engineering & Applied Science’s inaugural contribution to the School Notes supplement in the Yale Alumni Magazine. “Yale’s new School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS), announced this past April, houses four engineering departments (biomedical, chemical, electrical, and mechanical), as well as the Department of Applied Physics. [See “Yale Engineering Gets a Promotion” for the Yale Alumni Magazine report.] The school remains an integral and seamless part of Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, which will continue to award undergraduate and graduate degrees, respectively, in engineering. Engineering will continue to attract students from the outstanding class of talented students admitted to Yale College each year. “Of course, engineering has deep, proud, and continuous roots at Yale dating back to the Yale (Sheffield) Scientific School established in 1852. As Yale transformed over the years, so did the configuration of engineering, which first stood as a School of Engineering in 1932. The reestablishment of the School of Engineering & Applied Science represents the crescendo of President Levin’s 14-year efforts to enhance Yale’s excellence in science and engineering. “To assure our future as a leading school of engineering and applied science, the faculty will be grown by more than ten percent and a new engineering building will be constructed on Hillhouse Avenue. Additionally, our school status will allow us to collectively develop innovative curricula for both majors and non-majors; to better provide a culture of engineering for our students; to grow faculty along strategic research directions; and to create synergistic partnerships with the many professional schools of Yale. Our status as a school will also cement the integral role of engineering in a complete liberal arts education. I hope you will follow our progress and look for our news and accomplishments in future issues.”
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Chemistry professor honored The Council of Scientific Society Presidents has honored chemistry professor Paul Anastas with a Leadership in Science Award for his role in founding the field of “green chemistry.” Anastas, known as the “father of green chemistry,” has worked to develop the field for over 17 years. He has published nine books and numerous papers on the subject of science and technology for sustainability, and has received several awards, including the John Jeyes Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the H. John Heinz III Award for the Environment, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Joseph Seifter Award—its highest scientific recognition. Anastas is also the director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale, whose mission is to advance the science, education, and implementation of sustainable technologies. His research is focused on the design of safer chemicals, bio-based polymers, and new methodologies of chemical synthesis that are more efficient and less hazardous. Green chemistry, also known as sustainable chemistry, refers to environmentally friendly chemicals and processes that result in reduced waste, safer products, and reduced use of energy and resources—all improving the competitiveness of chemical manufacturers and their customers. The Council of Scientific Society Presidents is composed of presidents, presidents-elect and recent past presidents from about 60 scientific federations and societies whose combined membership numbers well over 1.4 million scientists and science educators. Book examines clash of capitalism and the environment A book by the dean of F&ES argues that the environment will continue to deteriorate so long as capitalism continues to be the modern world’s economic engine. The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, by Gus Speth '64, '67LLB, describes a non-socialist alternative to capitalism, which includes moving to a post-growth society and environmentally honest prices, curbing consumerism with a new ethic of sufficiency, rolling back growing corporate control of American political life, and addressing the enormous economic insecurity of the average person. Speth writes that Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the dollar value of all goods and services produced by the economy, is a poor gauge of human well-being or welfare. The book cites studies showing that throughout the entire period following World War II, as incomes skyrocketed in the United States and other advanced economies, reported life satisfaction and happiness levels stagnated or even declined slightly. Seeing an “emerging environmental tragedy of unprecedented proportions,” Speth has concluded that “today's environmentalism has not been succeeding.” The co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former White House adviser calls on environmentalists to “step outside the system and develop a deeper critique of what is going on.”
Graduate School of Arts & Sciences McDougal Center celebrates ten years Over the past decade the McDougal Graduate Student Center, dedicated in 1998, has reflected and influenced the changing nature of graduate education at Yale. For generations, the Graduate School was a loose confederation of academic departments and programs, with offices in the Hall of Graduate Studies for admissions, financial aid, registration, and dossier services, overseen by a dean and associate deans. There were no school-wide receptions, guest lectures, happy hours, programs for parents and children, student-run concerts, or Blue Dog Cafe. The offices of Graduate Career Services (GCS), the Graduate Teaching Center (GTC), Diversity and Equal Opportunity (ODEO), and Student Life didn’t exist. A dedicated group of students ran Working at Teaching, a self-help program for teaching fellows, but there was no professional staff to guide them. There were no McDougal Fellows, and the social, cultural, and pre-professional programs they now run had yet to be invented. But just over ten years ago the Graduate School began to expand its mission and broaden the range of services it provided. One of the most significant steps in this process was the creation of the McDougal Graduate Student Center, funded by Alfred McDougal '53BA and his wife, Nancy Lauter. Today, the McDougal Center offers an array of programs and services organized by 50 student fellows and 10 staff members. Its hub is the Common Room, which features carved wooden paneling, stained glass windows, a stone fireplace, and deep leather chairs, plus wi-fi, e-mail kiosks, and a first-rate coffee shop. The offices of the GTC, GCS, ODEO, and Student Life, located in the student services corridor, keep the McDougal Center humming with activity. The program room, with equipment for computer-based presentation, is often booked for workshops and talks. Downstairs are meeting rooms, a computer cluster, the Graduate Student Assembly office, and additional work areas for the Fellows. The Graduate Writing Center will move into the McDougal Center over the summer. Linguist joins writing program Elena Kallestinova, a linguist with a PhD from the University of Iowa, has joined the Graduate School as coordinator of the Graduate Writing Center. Her role is to support academic writing at both the instructional and programmatic levels, working directly with departments to meet students' needs. Kallestinova oversees graduate-student peer writing tutors, works with the McDougal Center academic writing fellows, and runs programs through the McDougal Center. She offered the first set of workshops starting in June, on writing successful articles in the sciences. Prior to joining the Graduate School, Kallestinova was a research affiliate at the Yale Child Study Center. She has taught linguistics and ESL as well as academic writing for over ten years, both in Iowa and in her native Moscow.
Law School YLS announces additions to faculty The Law School is pleased to welcome four outstanding individuals to appointments at the school. Thomas W. Merrill joins as professor of law, specializing in property, environmental law, administrative law, eminent domain, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He was the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia University. Legal historian Nicholas Parrillo '04JD has been appointed associate professor of law and will teach in the fields of administrative law and American legal history. Scott J. Shapiro '90JD comes to Yale as a professor of law and philosophy. He previously held a joint appointment with the University of Michigan’s Law School and philosophy department. His areas of specialty include jurisprudence, criminal law, constitutional law and theory, and family law. And Linda Greenhouse '78MSL, Pulitzer Prize-winning legal writer and Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times, joins the faculty as the Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Senior Fellow. She will advise on the Law and Media Program, lecture, do research, and participate in various Law School activities, including the Supreme Court Clinic. Professor elected to American Academy Professor Reva Siegel '78, '86JD, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is deputy dean and the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School and professor of American studies at Yale University. Her writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. She is co-editor of Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law. (For the Yale Alumni Magazine’s list of other Yale-affiliated AAAS inductees, see “Honored.”) Study leads to changes in public interest program and financial aid Yale Law School is enhancing its public interest program and increasing financial support for graduates. The school is substantially increasing the amount of support provided through its loan forgiveness program, COAP (Career Options Assistance Program); doubling the number of post-graduate public interest fellowships it offers; adding a full-time director of public interest programs; and increasing funding for international summer public-interest opportunities. The changes are the result of a multi-year study by the school’s Public Interest and Financial Aid Committee, which sought ways to improve opportunities for students to engage in public service both during and after their time at the Law School. A student-led Public Interest Working Group also worked closely with the administration on the recommendations.
School of Management New SOM “raw” cases provide real-world situations When business school students anywhere in the country consider the buyout of the Texas utility TXU by a pair of private equity firms, they don’t have to use a standard business school case study. (Such studies are traditional business school teaching tools, but they are heavily predigested and interpreted for students.) Instead, students can use a “raw case,” a new type of multimedia online case developed by SOM to support the school’s innovative, integrated MBA curriculum by more closely replicating real-world business situations. The SOM case-writing team, which has developed more than 20 “raw” cases for the Yale MBA program, originally created the TXU case for a competition sponsored by the Aspen Institute and JPMorgan Chase. Rather than a “cooked” narrative, summarizing the background of the issue, the case team prepared a website that linked to a plethora of “raw” documents that would have been available to a person deeply involved in the actual deal. Students are provided with news accounts, analyst’s reports, news releases, videos, maps, 10Ks, and stock charts as they try to put together a strategy for how the various parties should proceed. View the TXU case and learn more about “raw” cases at mba.yale.edu/news_events/CMS/Articles/6434.shtml. Successful faculty recruiting brings senior academics to Yale SOM An exceptional faculty recruiting season last year has resulted in significant additions to the SOM senior faculty. Gary Gorton, whose research has focused on banking, corporate finance, asset pricing, and commodity futures, comes to Yale from the Wharton School, where he was a professor of banking and finance and held a secondary appointment as professor of economics in the University of Pennsylvania College of Arts and Sciences. Stephen Redding, formerly a reader in economics at the London School of Economics and director of the Globalization Program at the LSE Center for Economic Performance, has focused on productivity growth at the firm and industry level, international trade, and economic geography. Redding was a visiting associate professor in the department of economics at Harvard University in 2007-2008. The two are joined by Constance Bagley, newly appointed professor in the practice of law and management, who comes to Yale SOM from the Harvard Business School, and seven other new tenure-track hires in marketing, economics, organizational behavior, and operations management. Q3 asks, “Can good health be good business?” Q3, the third issue of the SOM magazine, takes a look at the intersection of health and business and how strong management practices can improve healthcare around the globe. The issue addresses the problems surrounding employer-sponsored health insurance, the best ways to fund medical innovation, how to reduce medical errors, and how healthcare consumers make decisions. Q3 pulls together top practitioners and faculty from SOM and around the country to tackle some of the most important issues facing business today. The magazine can be found online at som.yale.edu/q3, where you can also request a print copy.
School of Medicine Med students ace “Match Day” For the second year in a row, the Yale School of Medicine’s graduating class had a 100 percent “match,” meaning that all the students in the class were accepted into residency programs for the continuation of their medical training. The trend of students choosing so-called lifestyle specialties that offer manageable hours and a balanced life continued, but the big surprise this year was the number of students—nine out of 97—going into psychiatry. “That’s unheard of,” said Associate Dean of Student Affairs Nancy Angoff. “This is new for us." Nationally, this year’s match was the largest ever, with more than 28,700 medical students vying for 22,240 first-year residency positions. Alternative medicine goes mainstream at Yale The medical school hosted its inaugural integrative-medicine scientific symposium, “Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Evidence for Integration,” in April. The symposium explored ways in which complementary therapies, including massage, yoga, meditation, Reiki, nutrition, and exercise, can be combined with traditional science-based therapies for a more integrative approach to health care. Topics included acupuncture for the relief of postoperative nausea and lower back pain in pregnancy, and potential applications of traditional Chinese medicine in cancer. The sold-out conference was sponsored by Integrative Medicine at Yale, a new program designed to heighten awareness of and improve access to the best in evidence-based comprehensive medical care. Yale’s medical school gets more affordable Reflecting a growing trend among universities with large endowments, the Yale School of Medicine in April overhauled its financial aid formula to make it easier for middle-class students to attend Yale. The new formula eliminates the required parental contribution for families making up to $100,000 a year. Under the old formula, families earning as little as $45,000 a year were expected to contribute toward medical school costs. Besides making a Yale medical school education more affordable, the new policy reduces financial barriers to students' entering primary-care fields and lower-paying specialties. The total cost of medical school at Yale in 2008-2009 will be $62,010 for an incoming student. Overall, 87.6 percent of Yale medical students currently receive some form of financial aid. Encouraging news for patients with Parkinson's disease Injecting uterine stem cells into the brains of mice with Parkinson’s disease triggered the growth of new brain cells, School of Medicine researchers reported at the annual scientific meeting of the Society for Gynecologic Investigation. The stem cells came from human endometrial stromal cells cultured under conditions that induce the creation of neurons. When the stem cells were injected into the brains of mice, the neurons were able to boost dopamine levels and partially correct the problem of Parkinson’s disease, said lead author Hugh S. Taylor, professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Reproductive Sciences. Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that often impairs the patient’s motor skills and speech. Women have a ready supply of uterine stem cells that are easily obtained. This research raises hope for the potential use of these stem cells for therapeutic purposes.
School of Music Benefit concert raises funds for disaster relief Responding to the great humanitarian need created by three recent natural disasters, Yale and New Haven community musicians performed a special benefit concert in Sprague Hall on May 21. The concert, called “Help Can’t Wait,” raised $10,000 and the proceeds were given to major charities providing services to the victims of the earthquakes in China, the typhoon in Myanmar, and the recent tornadoes in the United States. Performers included the Yale–New Haven Chinese School Children’s Chorus and members of the Yale Philharmonia, Yale Concert Band, Yale Symphony, Yale Glee Club, Yale Cellos, and student and faculty soloists from the School of Music. This was the third “Help Can’t Wait" concert organized by musical organizations at Yale. The first was in response to the tsunami and earthquakes in Southeast Asia and the Pacific in 2004, and the second benefited victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Alumnus wins the Pulitzer prize in music David Lang '83MusAM has won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in music for his piece, The Little Match Girl Passion, based on the children’s story by Hans Christian Andersen. The piece was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered in October 2007 at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in a performance with sopranos Miriam Andersen and Bente Vist, tenor Christopher Watson, and bass-baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen. Lang’s music has been performed by ensembles as varied as the New York Philharmonic and the Kronos Quartet. He is renowned for his work with the experimental collective Bang on a Can, which he founded with two other Yale composers, Michael Gordon '82MusM and Julia Wolfe '86MusM. David Lang was visiting professor of composition at the Yale School of Music in 2006.
School of Nursing Fellowships enable international study Six YSN students are studying abroad this summer on Downs International Health Student Travel fellowships, competitive grants administered by the Committee on International Health based at the Yale School of Epidemiology and Public Health. The students worked with YSN mentors to develop nursing research proposals for the fellowship, and are undertaking their projects this summer in Central America, Africa, and Asia. Eden Garber '09 is studying nutrition of school-aged children in Haiti; Jessica Pettigrew '09 is researching pica practices among parous Haitian women in the Dominican Republic; Erin Loskutoff '09 is in China, working on a resource guide for community-dwelling older adults; Rosha Forman '09 is studying the current practices of skilled birth attendants in Zambia; Marina McIver '09 is researching contraception among young women in South Africa; and Regina Longinotti '09 is learning about microbicide acceptability among reproductive-age women in Guyana. Harvard professor draws crowd to Bellos Lecture An overflow crowd packed a room at the School of Nursing April 16 to hear an internationally recognized authority on health disparities give the 2008 Sybil Palmer Bellos lecture. Dr. David Williams, the Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health at Harvard’s School of Public Health, and professor of African and African American studies and of sociology at Harvard University, spoke on the “Social Sources of Health Disparities: Patterns, Causes, Interventions.” In his talk, Williams, an expert on the social influences affecting health, named socioeconomic status, geographic location, and socio-political environment as key factors contributing to health disparities in the United States. Inequalities in health, he said, are created by larger inequalities in society; improving the conditions in which we are born, live, and work can have a profound effect on our health and well-being. Photos, video, and a slide presentation of the Bellos Lecture are available at www.nursing.yale.edu. Program will assist minority cancer survivors A YSN community initiative led by M. Tish Knobf, American Cancer Society Professor, designed to help reduce cancer disparities and improve quality of life among minority populations, has received a $100,000 grant from the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Building a Foundation of Health for Women of Color will help cancer survivors by providing education, support, and assistance in developing strategies to integrate physical activity and healthy eating into their daily lives. Currently, black women in Connecticut have higher breast cancer mortality compared with white women; more than one-third do not exercise nor do they eat the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables; and 75 percent are overweight. This culturally based program will educate cancer survivors to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors, which have the potential to moderate their risk for cancer. The grant will serve minority survivors in the New Haven and Bridgeport areas.
School of Public Health Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) comes into its own EPH (the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Medicine) has long been the acronym of choice when describing the faculty, staff, and students who work and study at 60 College Street in the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health (LEPH). The department was created in 1914, when the university received an endowment from the Anna M. R. Lauder family to establish a chair in public health at the Yale Medical School. This department of the medical school has also been a nationally accredited school of public health since 1946, and has been led by a dean (as are the freestanding professional schools at Yale) since 1995. In January of this year EPH was again accredited as a school of public health. The university officers and the Yale Corporation decided that the school’s name should reflect that long-standing accreditation. Without changing the governance structure of the public health faculty or its affiliation with the School of Medicine, they changed its designation from EPH to the Yale School of Public Health. CARE program to improve community health A new community health initiative aims to translate research from bedside to community by fostering ambitious community-based research and transforming scientific breakthroughs into practical benefits. CARE: Community Alliance for Research and Engagement, part of the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, is led by Jeannette Ickovics, professor in the division of chronic disease epidemiology and head of the social and behavioral sciences program. Ickovics explains, “Yale is invested in making the New Haven community stronger and healthier. We are beginning to collaborate in innovative ways to work toward improving health outcomes for the residents of our city.” Epidemiology professor named ELAM Fellow Susan T. Mayne, professor of epidemiology, has been accepted as a member of the 2008-2009 class of Fellows in the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women. ELAM is the nation’s only in-depth program that focuses on preparing senior women faculty at schools of medicine, dentistry, and public health to move into positions of institutional leadership where they can effect positive change. ELAM offers an intensive one-year program of leadership training, with extensive coaching, networking, and mentoring opportunities. Said Mayne, “Women are under-represented at the highest ranks of leadership in schools of medicine, dentistry, and public health. This program is specifically designed to prepare women to be optimally effective in leadership positions in the academic environment.” |
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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