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Good Times Prompt Thawing of Faculty Freeze
November 1998
In one of the most heartening signs yet of the University’s improved financial health, the administration has lifted a six-year-old policy that froze the size of the faculty at its 1992 level. The policy has been relaxed so that the political science department, which has long been understaffed relative to its popularity as an undergraduate major, can expand.
While other department heads may soon be approaching Provost Alison Richard with wish lists, Richard says the change in policy does not mean it’s time for a faculty shopping spree, especially given uncertainty about the future direction of the economy and the endowment. “The University has been working in a very disciplined way, and we don’t want to lose that,” she says. But President Richard C. Levin said the administration is “going to be on the lookout for other opportunities” to address department needs.
The political science department has been granted six “junior faculty-equivalent” slots, which it can use to hire six assistant professors, three tenured professors, or some combination of the two. Undergraduates in the increasingly popular political science major have complained for several years of the department’s paucity of junior and senior seminars, which has resulted in fierce competition among students. In addition, the department, which for years was ranked best in the country, has slipped slightly. “We’re mindful of the fact that we’re no longer number one,” says chairman David Cameron. “Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford have expanded their faculties enormously, while we’ve been static.”
What’s in a Name? SOM Embraces the MBA
Starting this spring, graduates of the School of Management will earn the right to add three magic letters to their résumés: MBA. After 20 years of granting Master of Public and Private Management (MPPM) degrees, the School is changing the name of its only degree to the more common Master of Business Administration.
Dean Jeffrey Garten says the change is in part an effort to respond to the internationalization of the School and the business world. “Our applicant pool is increasingly global, our students are seeking great jobs all over the world, and the MBA has become recognizable everywhere as the standard credential for professional success,” says Garten.
When SOM was founded in 1976 as the School of Organization and Management, it was intended as an alternative to traditional business schools, training students to work in government and nonprofit institutions as well as in business, an intention reflected in the degree nomenclature. Garten says the change in name does not reflect a change in that mission. “We will still be offering an ‘MBA-plus,’” he says.
Students currently enrolled in the three-year program will be able to choose either the MBA or the MPPM. Alumni who hold the MPPM will be able to change their degree title as well.
Berkeley “Exiles” Cheer New Dorm
Last year, Berkeley College residents faced the prospect of being housed in a new “swing dorm” for a year as if they were being exiled not just to Tower Parkway but to Siberia. In an informal college-wide election last spring, students voted the still-nameless building “Boyd Hall,” which students explained was a contraction of “Boy, did we get [treated unfairly].”
But when students saw the finished $18-million residence hall for the first time in September, they sang a different tune. “The only answer you can give is bragging,” said Mike Wolmetz '00 when asked how he liked his new home. Transfers into the college are up, and more Berkeleyites have chosen to live on campus than in recent years, perhaps because the building’s 108 suites (each of which has two bedrooms and a common room) have some off-campus amenities such as bathrooms of their own and kitchenettes.
But the new residents can’t afford to get too comfortable. Next year, the Berkeley students will reoccupy their own college, to be replaced by students from Branford, which will undergo renovations in 1999-2000.
Designed by the New Haven architecture firm Herbert S. Newman & Associates and built by the Fusco Corporation, the dormitory will be used in its “spare-tire” capacity until the current program of residential college renovations is completed. (University officials expect to be able to carry out routine maintenance beyond that date during summer vacations.) Long-term plans for the building are not yet settled, but one possibility is to use it to house graduate students.
Top-Ranked, with Good Reason
Every year, U.S. News & World Report publishes its ranking of the nation’s top colleges. And every year, college administrators decry the process as pseudoscientific and misleading, while privately sweating out the results. Because regardless of their ability to measure the true quality of institutions, the U.S. News rankings inevitably make headlines—and make trouble for schools that slip.
So although University spokesman Tom Conroy told the media that the rankings are “not a factor in how Yale evaluates itself,” it can’t hurt to be number one, which is where Yale finds itself in the 1999 ranking—in a tie with Harvard and Princeton. (Last year, Harvard and Princeton tied for first, while Yale tied with Duke for third. Yale was alone in first place in 1995 and 1997.)
While the statistical differences among the top schools are small enough to be insignificant in most areas of the rankings, a few notable distinctions stand out. Princeton’s alumni giving rate—66 percent, the highest in the nation—is much higher than Yale’s (50 percent) or Harvard’s (46 percent). Harvard and Princeton both boast an acceptance rate of 13 percent, as opposed to Yale’s 18 percent. But perhaps most significant for those high school students in choosing colleges, Yale’s percentage of classes with fewer than 20 people—77 percent—tops not only Harvard (69 percent) and Princeton (68 percent) and most other universities, but also all of U.S. News’s top 25 liberal arts colleges.
Catching the Early Worm
Prospecting in the sandstones of central India, Yale geologist Adolf Seilacher and his colleagues appear to have struck evolutionary gold. In a paper that appeared October 2 in the journal Science, Seilacher and paleontologist Friedrich Pflueger, also of Yale, along with Pradip Bose, of Javadpur University in Calcutta, report on the discovery of the fossilized tunnels of tiny wormlike animals that lived about 1.1 billion years ago.
The finding has generated a considerable amount of controversy, because many scientists believe that the earliest known multicellular creatures began developing a “mere” 540 million years ago. “This means that the birth of multicellular animals was at least twice as long ago as we thought,” says Seilacher.
While there are fossils of single-celled, bacteria-like organisms in rock that is 3.6 billion years old, life remained relatively simple for another three billion years until a period known to geologists as the Cambrian “explosion.” But did multicellularity evolve with a bang, or was evolution doing a “slow burn"?
The worm tunnels in the Chorhat sandstone—the animals were apparently burrowing just beneath a mat of microbes—seem to argue that nature had been in the multicellular habit half a billion years before conditions were right for the “explosion” of body plans and lifestyles that left their mark in other rocks and would, in time, lead to our species.
Credit Balance Probe Settled
On September 8, the University agreed to a $5.6-million settlement with the federal government to resolve a lawsuit that stemmed from contentions that “the Yale School of Medicine improperly handled a significant number of credit balances” that had accrued in the course of providing an estimated $1 billion worth of patient care from the late 1970s to 1995. The settlement, which is reportedly the largest in a health care case in Connecticut, is not an admission of guilt, explain University and federal officials.
“As the government recognized, the complexity of health insurance payments makes credit balances unavoidable,” says Irwin M. Birnbaum, the Medical School’s chief operating officer since July 1997. “Nevertheless, in past years Yale failed to have adequate administrative and billing systems in place to process all payments properly.”
As a result of what University spokesman Thomas Conroy called faulty management and inadequate computer systems, patients were sometimes double billed. The rare practice—Conroy notes that the the $5.6 million represents only 0.5 percent of the total dollar amount of patient care that was provided—came to light in 1994 when Richard Jackson, then an accounting assistant with Yale’s office of professional services, began receiving complaints from insurance companies and individuals. Dissatisfied with the University’s response, Jackson, called federal authorities. The FBI began an investigation in 1996.
Dorothy K. Robinson, Yale’s general counsel, notes that the University has “fully cooperated with the government” during the probe and “is happy with the result” which has created “a workable mechanism for refunding the credit balances.”
Under terms of the agreement, Yale is refunding more than half a million dollars to the federal government, and making available $1.8 million to insurance companies and $2.5 million to individuals with valid claims. To prevent problems in the future, the Medical School has voluntarily installed a new $15-million computer system.
“Rails-to-Trails” Clears Yale Hurdle
A decade after “rails-to-trails” advocates proposed turning the disused Farmington Canal rail line into a bicycle and pedestrian trail, the University has agreed to allow the two blocks of the line that it owns to be included in the recreational undertaking. President Richard Levin and Mayor John DeStefano Jr. announced the agreement at a news conference beside the rail line on September 15.
The plan for the line calls for a “linear park” starting in downtown New Haven and continuing through Hamden and Cheshire—a distance of 14 miles. Hamden and Cheshire have already built sections of the trail, but the city of New Haven does not yet have funding in place; the city needed Yale’s decision on the matter in order to meet a September 30 deadline for an application for Federal transportation funds for the project.
Yale administrators had long resisted committing the University to the plan, citing concerns about security on the trail and about giving up land that could be used for new construction—a scarce commodity on campus. Levin said that while Yale will let the trail go through if the New Haven portion is realized, it will reserve the right to build atop the trail, which runs through Yale and part of New Haven in an open trench.
Such a solution is acceptable to the Farmington Canal Rails to Trails Association, according to cofounder Nancy Alderman '94, '98MF. “All we ever asked was that Yale allow the trail to go through continuously on its original line,” says Alderman. “We never asked that they not build on that site.”
As for safety, Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs Bruce Alexander says he is not concerned. “Any place that attracts a large number of people contributes to safety. If it’s completed, I think the trail will feel very comfortable.”
WYBC Tunes in a Sister Station
The Yale Broadcasting Company returned to the AM dial this fall, taking over the 1340 frequency that was held until recently by WNHC, a locally owned station that declared bankruptcy in 1997. The station’s board of governors and management hopes that the new station will provide more opportunities for student-oriented programming, since WYBC-FM is now dominated by syndicated programming aimed at a wider New Haven audience.
YBC acquired the new frequency in a bankruptcy auction in June, outbidding Stamford-based Buckley Broadcasting Company with a $775,000 offer. The purchase was funded with proceeds from a renegotiated agreement with the local FM station WPLR, which sells advertising time on WYBC-FM.
Since the new station is free of the commercial pressures of the FM station (revenue from WYBC-FM will cover the operations of the more economical AM station), YBC now has the opportunity to accommodate student disk jockeys who were removed from the air last winter when WYBC-FM dropped its alternative rock, folk, and blues programming. The new station sent a message to that effect by devoting its first 24 hours of programming to an alternative rock marathon.
“To have a station where anybody can express their musical interests has been something we’ve been working on for a long time,” says Mike Corwin '99, WYBC’s general manager.
While the station is, to some degree, continuing WNHC’s emphasis on African American community affairs, Corwin says it will primarily be a station for the student body. As it gets up and running, it will feature expanded coverage of Yale sporting events and a weekly talk show on student issues produced in conjunction with the Yale College Council. “Now we can be the voice of Yale again,” says Corwin.  |
