|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
“Yale” redirects here. For other uses, see Yale (disambiguation).
Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is a member of the Ivy League. Particularly well-known are its undergraduate school, Yale College, and the Yale Law School, each of which has produced a number of U.S. presidents and foreign heads of state. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first school in the United States to award the Ph.D. degree. Also notable is the Yale School of Drama which has produced many prominent Hollywood and Broadway actors, as well as the art, music and architecture schools, each of which is often cited as among the finest in their respective fields.
Yale's 70 undergraduate majors are primarily focused on a liberal curriculum, and few of the undergraduate departments are pre-professional in nature. About 20% of Yale undergraduates major in the sciences, 35% in the social sciences, and 45% in the arts and humanities.[4] All tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Yale uses a residential college housing system modeled after those at Oxford and Cambridge. Each of 12 residential colleges houses a representative cross-section of the undergraduate student body, and features numerous facilities, seminars, resident faculty, and support personnel. Yale's graduate programs include those in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences - Biology, Classics, English, Pure, Applied and Engineering Sciences, History, Math, Sociology, Political Science and Economics - and those in the Professional Schools of Architecture, Art, Divinity, Drama, Forestry & Environmental Sciences, Law, Management, Medicine, Music, Nursing, and Public Health.
Yale president Richard C. Levin summarized the university's institutional priorities for its fourth century: "First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders." [5] The nicknames "Elis"[3][4][5] (after Elihu Yale) and "Yalies"[6] are often used, both within and outside Yale, to refer to Yale students.
HistoryImage:Original Yale College Building.jpg Original building, 1718-1782 Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School" passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut and dated October 9 1701. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers led by James Pierpont, all of whom were Harvard alumni (Harvard being the only college in North America at this point), met in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's first library. [6]. The group is now known as "The Founders." Yale was founded to train ministers. Originally called the Collegiate School, the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, in Killingworth (now Clinton). It later moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1718, the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where it remains to this day.[citations needed] In the meanwhile, a rift was forming at Harvard between its sixth president Increase Mather (Harvard A.B., 1656) and the rest of the Harvard clergy, which Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The relationship worsened after Mather resigned, and the administration repeatedly rejected his son and ideological colleague, Cotton Mather (Harvard A.B., 1678), for the position of the Harvard presidency. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hopes that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not [7]. Image:Old Brick Row, Yale College.jpg Old Brick Row in 1807 In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Andrew or Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted a successful businessman in Wales named Elihu Yale to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Yale, who had made a fortune through trade while living in India as a representative of the East India Company, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum at the time. Yale also donated 417 books and a portrait of King George I. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College in gratitude to its benefactor, and to increase the chances that he would give the college another large donation or bequest. Elihu Yale was away in India when the news of the school's name change reached his home in Wrexham, North Wales, a trip from which he never returned. And while he did ultimately leave his fortunes to the "Collegiate School within His Majesties Colony of Connecticot," the institution was never able to successfully lay claim to it. Serious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original words. The Reverend Ezra Stiles, president of the College from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in the Hebrew language as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language (as was common in other prestigious schools), requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study the language) and is responsible for the Hebrew words "Urim" and "Thummim" on the Yale seal. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in July, 1779 when hostile British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the College. Fortunately, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, Secretary to the British General in command of the occupation, interceded and the College was saved. Fanning later was granted an honorary degree for his efforts. Yale College expanded gradually, establishing the Yale Medical School (1810), Yale Divinity School (1822), Yale Law School (1843), Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1847), the Sheffield Scientific School (1861), and the Yale School of Fine Arts (1869). (The divinity school was founded by Congregationalists who felt that the Harvard Divinity School had become too liberal.) In 1887, as the college continued to grow under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed to Yale University. The university would later add the Yale School of Music (1894), Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (1901), Yale School of Public Health (1915), Yale School of Nursing (1923), Yale Physician Associate Program (1973), and Yale School of Management (1976). It would also reorganize its relationship with the Sheffield Scientific School. Yale College became coeducational in 1969, when Amy Solomon became the first woman to register as an undergraduate [8]; she was also the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. (Women studied at Yale University as early as 1876, but in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.) Yale, like other Ivy League schools, instituted policies in the early twentieth century designed artificially to increase the proportion of upper-class white Christians of notable families in the student body (see Numerus clausus), and was one of the last of the Ivies to eliminate such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970. [9] The President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, is the governing board of the University.
Yale and politics in the modern eraThe Boston Globe wrote that "if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale."1 Yale alumni have been represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. Presidential election since 1972. Yale-educated Presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees during this period include John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (VP, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (VP, 1972). Other Yale alumni who made serious bids for the Presidency during this period include Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992). On January 20, 2007, Yale Law alumna Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her candidacy for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. Several potential explanations have been offered for Yale’s representation in national elections since the end of the Vietnam War. Various sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on many of the future candidates. 2 Yale President Richard Levin attributes the run to Yale’s focus on creating "a laboratory for future leaders," an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster.2 Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College, stated: "We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale." 1 Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes "an ethos of organized activity" at Yale during the 20th century that led John Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Joseph Lieberman to manage the Yale Daily News.3 Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: "It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school."4 New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller and the Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows credit the culture of community and cooperation that exists between students, faculty and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.5 During the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique;" when challenged on the distinction between Dukakis' Harvard connection and his own Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for "liberalism and elitism"[7][8] In 2004, Howard Dean stated: "In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation." [10] Sources: 1Boston Globe 11/17/2002, Magazine, p. 6; 2Los Angeles Times 10/4/2000, p. E1; 3New York Times 8/13/2000, p. 14; 4Boston Globe 8/13/2000, p. F1 5Yale Alumni Magazine, May/June 2004, p. 45 AdministrationRectors of the Collegiate School
Rectors of Yale College
Presidents of Yale College
Presidents of Yale University
AdmissionsImage:Yale USA.jpg Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University [1] The acceptance rate for Yale College for the Class of 2011 was 9.6%.[11] The admissions yield for the Class of 2010 was 71.1% [12] Yale College offers need-blind admissions and need-based financial aid to all applicants, including international applicants. Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and more than 40% of Yale students receive financial assistance. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the University, and the average scholarship for the 2006-2007 school year will be $26,900. Half of all Yale students are women, more than 30% are minorities, and 10% are international students. Furthermore, 55% attended public schools and 45% attended independent, religious, or international schools.[13]. Intellectual "schools"Yale's English and Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, after the passing of the New Critical fad, the Yale literature department became a center of American deconstruction, with French and Comparative Literature departments centered around Paul de Man and supported by the English department. This has become known as the "Yale School." Yale's history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historian C. Vann Woodward is credited for beginning in the 1960s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Most noticeably, a tremendous number of currently active Latin American historians were trained at Yale in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s by Emìlia Viotta da Costa; younger Latin Americanists tend to be "intellectual cousins" in that their advisors were advised by the same people at Yale. CollectionsImage:NightCafe.jpg The Night Café, Vincent van Gogh, 1888, Yale Art Gallery[2] Yale University Library is the second-largest university collection in the world with a total of almost 11 million volumes. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about four million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at a variety of subject libraries. Rare books are found in a number of Yale collections. The Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th Century British literary works. And the Elizabethan Club, while technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale. Yale's museums are also of world importance. The Yale University Art Gallery, the country's first university-affiliated art museum, contains important collections of modern art as well as old masters and one of its newer wings was designed by Louis Kahn. The Yale Center for British Art is the largest collection of British art outside of the UK, originally the gift of Paul Mellon and also housed in a building designed by Louis Kahn. The Peabody Museum of Natural History is New Haven's most popular museum, well-used by school children as well as containing research collections in anthropology, archaeology, and the natural environment. The Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, affiliated with the Yale School of Music, is perhaps the least well-known of Yale's collections, because its hours of opening are restricted. Yale architectureYale is noted for its harmonious yet fanciful largely Gothic campus [14] as well as for several iconic modern buildings commonly discussed in architectural history survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery [15] and Center for British Art[16], Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue. Many of Yale's buildings were constructed in the Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931. Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes such as policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid [17], deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, 216 feet tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon. Other examples of the Gothic (also called neo-Gothic and collegiate Gothic) style are on Old Campus by such architects as Henry Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis. Several are associated with members of the Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall [9], Phelps Hall [10], St. Anthony Hall (a commission for member Frederick William Vanderbilt), the Mason, Sloane and Osborn laboratories, dormitories for the Sheffield Scientific School (the engineering and sciences school at Yale until 1956) and elements of Silliman College, the largest residential college. [11] Ironically, the oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750), is in the Georgian style and appears much more modern. Georgian-style buildings erected from 1929 to 1933 include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and Davenport College, except the east, York Street façade, which was constructed in the Gothic style. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, is one of the largest buildings in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts.[18] It is located near the center of the University in Hewitt Quadrangle, which is now more commonly referred to as "Beinecke Plaza." The library's six-story above-ground tower of book stacks is surrounded by a windowless rectangular building with walls made of translucent Vermont marble, which transmit subdued lighting to the interior and provide protection from direct light, while glowing from within after dark. The sculptures in the sunken courtyard by Isamu Noguchi are said to represent time (the pyramid), the sun (the circle), and chance (the cube). Alumnus Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect of such notable structures as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Washington Dulles International Airport main terminal, and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed Ingalls Rink at Yale and the newest residential colleges of Ezra Stiles and Morse. These latter were modelled after the medieval Italian hilltown of San Gimignano--a prototype chosen for the town's pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like stone towers. These tower forms at Yale act in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic spires and Georgian cupolas.[19] Notable nonresidential campus buildingsA comprehensive online searchable resource containing architectural data and pictures of existing campus buildings, including several private clubs and societies, is maintained by Yale's Office of Facilities at [20].
Yale's secret societies, whose buildings (some of which are called "tombs") were built both to be intensely private yet ostentatiously theatrical, display diversity and fancifulness of architectural expression. No campus walking tour should exclude them. "Landed" or "tombed" societies and their architects are:
An online archive of Yale's "Lost Landmarks", or buildings that no longer exist, may be found at: [21] Campus lifeResidential collegesYale has a system of 12 residential colleges, instituted in 1933 through a grant by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness, who admired the college systems at Oxford and Cambridge. Each college has a carefully constructed support structure for students, including a Dean, Master, affiliated faculty, and resident Fellows. Each college also features distinctive architecture, secluded courtyards, and facilities ranging from libraries to squash courts to darkrooms. While each college at Yale offers its own seminars, social events, and Master's Teas with guests from the world, Yale students also take part in academic and social programs across the university, and all of Yale's 2,000 courses are open to undergraduates from any college. Residential colleges are named for important figures or places in university history or notable alumni; they are deliberately not named for benefactors. Residential Colleges of Yale University (official list):
In 1990, Yale launched a series of massive renovations to the older residential buildings, whose decades of existence had seen only routine maintenance and incremental improvements to plumbing, heating, and electrical and network wiring. Renovations to many of the colleges are now complete, and among other improvements, renovated colleges feature newly built basement facilities including restaurants, game rooms, theaters, athletic facilities and music practice rooms. The Yale administration is currently evaluating the feasibility of building two new residential colleges. [34] SportsImage:YaleBowl-WalterCampGate1.JPG The Walter Camp Gate at the Yale Athletic Complex. Yale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Associaton, and Yale is an NCAA Division I member. Like other members of the Ivy League, Yale does not offer athletic scholarships and is no longer competitive with the top echelon of American college teams in the big-money sports of basketball and football. Nevertheless, American football was largely created at Yale by player and coach Walter Camp, who evolved the rules of the game away from rugby and soccer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Yale Bowl (the nation's first natural "bowl" stadium, and prototype for such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl), located at The Walter Camp Field athletic complex, and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the second-largest indoor athletic complex in the world. [35] The Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, founded in 1881, is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world. The yacht club, located in nearby Branford, Connecticut, is the home of the Yale Sailing Team, which has produced several Olympic sailors. The school mascot is "Handsome Dan", the famous Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song (written by alumnus Cole Porter) contains the refrain, "Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow." The school color is Yale Blue. Yale athletics are supported by the Yale Precision Marching Band. The band attends every home football game and many away, as well as most hockey and basketball games throughout the winter. Yale intramural sports are a vibrant aspect of student life. Students compete for their respective residential colleges, which fosters a friendly rivalry. The year is divided into Fall, Winter, and Spring seasons, each of which includes about ten different sports. About half the sports are coed. At the end of the year, the residential college with the most points (not all sports count equally) wins the Tyng Cup. Life in New HavenNew Haven has experienced major economic growth in the past couple of decades, turning it into a major cultural center and hub for travel. In the past decade, technology and biotech firms and investment by Yale have put a new face on this colonial city. In 2003, New Haven was selected as an All-America City, in recognition of its immigrant neighborhoods, city parks, and blocks of old mansions, quaint stores and big chains, and one of the world's pre-eminent universities. Yale students run for alderman, work in City Hall, and launch non-profit organizations. Yalies go to Toad's Place to hear bands like Built to Spill and Rufus Wainwright, enjoy cheap martinis at Hot Tomatoes, or buy home-brewed beer and brick-oven pizza at BAR; and, visitors check out exhibits at the Peabody Museum before taking in a show at the Shubert Theater. The area's quality of life attracts businesses and residents who are unaffiliated with the university. For example, hedge funds are moving east from the world's hedge-fund capital of Greenwich. Downtown New Haven's luxury apartments draw thousands of young professionals who reverse-commute to high-paying corporate jobs in more suburban parts of Connecticut. The city has become a center for architecture firms, due in part to Eero Saarinen, whose firm moved to New Haven in the early 1960s, and younger colleagues including Cesar Pelli, whose "alumni" of his large New Haven firm have started firms of their own in the city. Student organizationsThere are a large number of student organizations of different interests. The Yale Political Union, the oldest student political organization in the United States, is often the largest organization on campus, and is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry and George Pataki. The university features a variety of student journals, magazines, and newspapers. The latter category includes the Yale Daily News, which was first published in 1878 and is the oldest daily college newspaper in the United States, as well as the Yale Herald, which was first published in 1986 and is considered to be the university's weekly newspaper. Dwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 60 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Yale College Council runs several agencies that oversee campus wide activities and student services. The campus also includes several fraternities and sororities. The campus features at least eighteen a capella groups, the most famous of which is The Whiffenpoofs, who are unusual among college singing groups in being made up solely of senior men. A number of prominent secret societies, including Skull and Bones, are composed of Yale College students. Yale people of noteNineteen Nobel laureates are affiliated with the university. BenefactorsYale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are:
Famous alumniAll U.S. presidents since 1989 have been Yale graduates, namely George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton (who attended the University's Law School along with his wife, New York Senator Hillary Clinton), and George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney,(although he did not graduate). Many of the 2004 presidential candidates attended Yale: Bush, John Kerry, Howard Dean, and Joe Lieberman. Other Yale-educated presidents were William Howard Taft (B.A.) and Gerald Ford (LL.B). Alumni also include several Supreme Court justices, including current Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. More famous alumni are noted in the List of Yale University people, including Nobel Laureates, politicians, artists, athletes, activists, and numerous others who have led notable lives. Famous professorsYale has employed many famous professors in its history. A sampling of those professors can be found in the List of Yale University people. Miscellany and traditions
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
