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Yale University

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Yale University
Yale University Shield
Motto אורים ותמים (Hebrew)
Lux et veritas (Latin)
(Light and truth)
Established 1701
School type Private
President Richard C. Levin
Location New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Campus Urban, 260 acres (1.1 km²)
Enrollment 5,300 undergraduate,
6,100 graduate and professional
Faculty 2,300
Mascot Bulldogs - "Handsome Dan" File:Yale university bulldog mascot.jpg
Endowment $15.2 billion
Homepage www.yale.edu

Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. The University has graduated numerous Nobel Prize laureates, Supreme Court justices, and U.S. Presidents, including William Howard Taft (B.A.), Gerald Ford (LL.B), George H.W. Bush (B.A.), Bill Clinton (J.D.), and George W. Bush (B.A.).

The university's assets include a $15.2 billion endowment (the second-largest among academic institutions) and more than a dozen libraries that hold a total of 11 million volumes. Yale has 3,200 faculty members, who teach 5,200 undergraduate students and 6,000 graduate students.

Yale's 70 undergraduate majors are primarily focused on a liberal curriculum, and few of the undergraduate departments are pre-professional in nature (even the engineering departments encourage and require students to explore academic disciplines outside of engineering). Some 20 percent of Yale undergraduates major in the sciences, 35 percent in the social sciences, and 45 percent in the arts and humanities. All tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, and more than 75 percent of Yale's 2,000 undergraduate courses enroll fewer than 20 students.

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 classics, sciences, drama, art, architecture, history, medicine, and law.

In recent years, fewer than 10 percent of the nearly 20,000 applicants to the undergraduate college have been offered admission, and about three-quarters of those offered admission choose to attend. Yale Law School accepts about 6 percent of its nearly 4,000 applicants (making it the most selective law school in the United States), and more than 80 percent of those offered admission choose to attend.

The rivalry between Yale and Harvard is long and storied, by far the oldest in the Ivy League; from academics to rowing to college football, their historic competition is similar to that of Oxford and Cambridge.

During Yale's tercentennial celebration in 2001, Yale president Richard C. Levin summarized Yale's institutional goals: "As we look to the future, Yale remains committed to undergraduate education and a determination to educate leaders. Leaders of the twenty-first century will operate in a global environment. Therefore, Yale's curriculum is increasing its focus on international concerns and having strong international representation among our student population."

History

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, all of whom were Harvard alumni, met in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's first library. [1]. The group is now known as The Founders.

Originally called the Collegiate School of Connecticut, the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, in Killingworth, Connecticut. In 1716, the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where it remains to this day.

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 [2].

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. Regardless, the entire institution eventually became Yale University.

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, for instance Harvard), requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where all 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), the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (1901), Yale School of Public Health (1915), and the Yale School of Nursing (1923) and reorganize its relationship with the Sheffield Scientific School. The University's youngest school, the Yale School of Management, was founded in 1976.

Yale College became coeducational in 1969.

Yale, like other Ivy League schools, instituted policies in the early twentieth century designed to artificially 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.[3]

The President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, is the governing board of the University.

See also: Oxbridge rivalry, which documents a similar history in which Cambridge University was founded by dissident scholars from its "rival" Oxford University

Heads of Collegiate School, Yale College, and Yale University

Rectors of Yale College birth–death years as rector
1 The Rev. Abraham Pierson (1641–1707) (1701–1707) Collegiate School
2 The Rev. Samuel Andrew (1656–1738) (1707–1719) (pro tempore)
3 The Rev. Timothy Cutler (1684–1765) (1719–1726) 1718/9: renamed Yale College
4 The Rev. Elisha William(s) (1694–1755) (1726–1739)
5 The Rev. Thomas Clap (1703–1767) (1740–1745)
Presidents of Yale College birth–death years as president
1 The Rev. Thomas Clap (1703–1767) (1745–1766)
2 The Rev. Naphtali Daggett (1727–1780) (1766–1777) (pro tempore)
3 The Rev. Ezra Stiles (1727–1795) (1778–1795)
4 Timothy Dwight IV (1752–1817) (1795–1817)
5 Jeremiah Day (1773–1867) (1817–1846)
6 Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1801–1899) (1846–1871)
7 Noah Porter III (1811–1892) (1871–1886)
8 Timothy Dwight V (1828–1916) (1886–1899) 1887: renamed Yale University
9 Arthur Twining Hadley (1856–1930) (1899–1921)
10 James Rowland Angell (1869–1949) (1921–1937)
11 Charles Seymour (1885–1963) (1937–1951)
12 Alfred Whitney Griswold (1906–1963) (1951–1963)
13 Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) (1963–1977)
14 Hanna Holborn Gray (1930– ) (1977–1977) (acting)
15 A. Bartlett Giamatti (1938–1989) (1977–1986)
16 Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. (1942– ) (1986–1992)
17 Howard R. Lamar (1923– ) (1992–1993) (acting)
18 Richard C. Levin (1947– ) (1993– )

Intellectual "schools"

Yale's English and literature departments were the birthplace of New Criticism. 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.

Collections

Yale has the largest collection of rare books and manuscripts in the world, which is housed in the Beinecke Rare Book Library. Yale's library system 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 5 million volumes. The Yale Center for British Art is the largest collection of British art outside of the UK. Other collections reside at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven's most popular museum; Yale University Art Gallery, the country's first university-affiliated art museum; and the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments.

Yale architecture

Harkness Tower

Most of Yale's buildings, constructed in the Gothic architecture style, were built during the period 1917-1931. Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings make this apparent; they 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, added to the appearance of great age of these buildings by splashing the walls with acid[4], 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, when built, the tallest free-standing stone structure in the world. It was reinforced in 1964, however, in order to allow for the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon.

File:Connecticut hall.jpeg
Connecticut Hall

The truly old buildings on campus, paradoxically, are built in the Georgian style and appear much more modern. This includes the oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750). Of the buildings constructed in the 1929-1933 period, the ones in the Georgian style include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and the whole of Davenport College excluding the east, York Street façade (constructed in the gothic style).

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts. 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).

Notable Nonresidential Campus Buildings

Campus Life

Residential colleges

Yale 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):

  1. Berkeley College [5] - named for the Rt. Rev. George Berkeley (1685-1753), early benefactor of Yale.
  2. Branford College [6] - named for Branford, Connecticut, where Yale was briefly located.
  3. Calhoun College [7] - named for John C. Calhoun, vice-president of the United States.
  4. Davenport College [8] - named for Rev. John Davenport, the founder of New Haven. Occasionally called "D'port".
  5. Ezra Stiles College [9] - named for the Rev. Ezra Stiles, a president of Yale. Generally called "Stiles," despite an early-1990s crusade by then-master Traugott Lawler to preserve the use of the full name in everyday speech. Its buildings were designed by Eero Saarinen.
  6. Jonathan Edwards College [10] - named for theologian, Yale alumnus, and Princeton co-founder Jonathan Edwards. Generally called "J.E.". The oldest of the residential colleges, J.E. is the only college with an independent endowment, the Jonathan Edwards Trust.
  7. Morse College [11] - named for Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse Code. Also designed by Eero Saarinen.
  8. Pierson College [12] - named for Yale's first rector, Abraham Pierson.
  9. Saybrook College [13] - named for Old Saybrook, Connecticut, the town in which Yale was founded.
  10. Silliman College [14] - named for noted scientist and Yale professor Benjamin Silliman. Approximately half of its structures were originally part of the Sheffield Scientific School,
  11. Timothy Dwight College [15] - named for the two Yale presidents of that name, Timothy Dwight IV and Timothy Dwight V. Usually called "T.D."
  12. Trumbull College [16] - named for Jonathan Trumbull, governor of Connecticut. The smallest college.

In 1990, Yale launched a series of massive overhauls 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. Berkeley College was the first to undergo complete renovation. Various unwieldy schemes were used to house displaced students during the yearlong projects, but complaints finally moved Yale to build a new residence hall between the gym and the power plant. It is commonly called "Swing Space" by the students; its official name, "Boyd Hall" (a name allegedly created by Berkeley students as a contraction of "Boy, did we get f---d"), is unused.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Yale created plans to create a thirteenth college, whose concrete facade would have broken with the campus' more prevalent Gothic and Georgian architecture. The plans were scrapped, after the city of New Haven put up substantial financial barriers, and the proposed site was eventually filled with condominiums and shops (Whitney Grove Square, among others).

Sports

Yale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference and the Eastern College Athletic Conference, 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 Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the largest and most elaborate indoor athletic complex in the world. The school mascot is "Handsome Dan", the famous Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song (written by Cole Porter) contains the refrain, "Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow."

Yale athletics are ably and enthusiastically 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 include approximately ten different sports each. 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 Haven

The city of New Haven earned a reputation in the 1980's for urban decline, as crack wreaked havoc on a city that was already in trouble from the collapse of its industrial core. It once ranked seventh on a list of the most dangerous U.S. cities[[17]]. But a decade of slow regrowth (500 new housing units in the last five years) has put a new face on this colonial city. In 2003, New Haven was selected as the All-American City, in recognition of its immigrant neighborhoods and blocks of old mansions, quaint stores and big chains, and one of the world's richest universities. Today, Yale's urban surroundings add to its students' education and entertainment: Yale students run for alderman, work in City Hall, and launch non-profit organizations; the downtown features an array of clubs, theaters, and restaurants; 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.

Student organizations

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, Gerald Ford, and George Pataki. The Yale Daily News, the oldest daily college newspaper in the United States, has been a forum for opinion since 1878, and counts among its former chairmen Sargent Shriver, Joseph Lieberman, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Strobe Talbott. 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.

Community Service Organizations


Political organizations

Musical groups

Student musical groups include four university-sponsored organizations composed primarily of undergraduates:

In addition, the student-run Saybrook College Orchestra [23], Berkeley College Orchestra [24], Bach Society [25], and Davenport Pops [26] all provide free concerts of symphonic masterworks.

A cappella singing groups

Undergraduates also sing in more than a dozen a cappella groups.

All men

All women

Coeducational

  • Redhot & Blue[37], founded in 1977 as Yale's first co-educational a cappella group, is known for the intricate and challenging arrangements of its jazz-based repertoire.
  • Out of the Blue[38], founded in 1987, calls itself "Yale's only co-ed, pop-rock a cappella group."
  • Shades[39], founded in 1989 to sing the music of the African diaspora (including R&B and gospel).
  • Mixed Company (Yale University)[40], is one of the oldest mixed a cappella groups at Yale.

Theatrical organizations

  • The Yale Dramatic Association,[41] founded in 1900, is the second-oldest college theater company in the country; "The Dramat" has featured the work of such noted artists as Cole Porter, Thornton Wilder, and Sam Waterston. It typically puts on one large-scale play each fall and one full-scale musical each spring in the University Theater. Smaller-scale productions are mounted in the Experimental ("X") Theater, located in the basement of the University Theater.
  • Yale's improvisational comedy scene features several troupes, including the Viola Question, Just Add Water, The Exit Players, and The Purple Crayon.
  • "College dramats" put on several performances each semester, of many different types.
  • The Yale Gilbert and Sullivan Society [42] produces one operetta per year.
  • The Yale Undergraduate Musical Theater Company, or YUMTC [43] was conceived by Greg Edwards [44]'05 and has quickly gained notoriety for producing exclusively musical theater.

Secret societies

Yale is also known as the home of several senior societies and secret societies, including Scroll and Key and Skull and Bones. These societies select members of the student body for lifetime membership, which is rumored to confer various benefits.

Yale people of note

Benefactors

Yale 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 alumni

See article: List of Yale University People

All U.S. presidents since 1989 have been Yale graduates, including George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton (as is his wife Hillary Clinton), and George W. Bush, the latter two serving two terms each. Most of the 2004 presidential election candidates attended Yale: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (vice-presidential), John Kerry, Howard Dean, and Joe Lieberman.

More famous Yale alumni are noted in the List of Yale University People, including Nobel Laureates, politicians, artists, athletes, and numerous other Yalies who have led notable lives.

Famous professors

Yale has employed many famous professors in its history. A sampling of those professors can be found in the List of Yale University People.

Miscellany

Yale students engaged in a game called bladderball, until 1982. A story claims that students from Jonathan Edwards College broke the ball, hence their self-proclaimed motto: "J. E. Sux."

Yale students claim to have invented Frisbee, by tossing around empty pie tins from the Frisbie Pie Company.

Yale's Central Campus in downtown New Haven is 260 acres. An additional 500 acres (2 km²) comprises the Yale golf course and nature preserves in rural Connecticut and Horse Island.[45]

Yale's Handsome Dan is believed to be the first live college mascot in America.

Crime

The 1970s and 1980s saw poverty and violent crime rise in New Haven, dampening Yale's student and faculty recruiting efforts. After much committee discussion, the university sought to ease these problems; for example, encouraging student volunteerism and, in 1991, beginning to make payments-in-lieu-of-taxes to the city ($2.3 million in 2005; to be boosted in 2006 to $4.18 million). Amid the general economic upturn of the following decade, violent crime near and on campus ebbed. The Yale administration's handling of some high-profile crimes has been criticized as more coverup than constructive engagement. Murders involving Yale students include:

  • In 1974, Yale junior Gary Stein was killed in a robbery. Melvin Jones was convicted in the case and spent fifteen years in prison.
  • In 1977, Yale student Bonnie Garland was killed by a former boyfriend, Yale graduate Richard Herrin. The support of the Yale Catholic community for the perpetrator resulted in his conviction for manslaughter rather than murder.
  • In 1991, the killing of Christian Prince on Hillhouse Avenue in the Yale campus resulted in a brief decline in applications and resulted in a re-examination of Campus security.
  • In 1998, student Suzanne Jovin was stabbed to death. Leaked allegations that her thesis advisor was a suspect led to the end of his career at Yale, but a sizable body of public opinion holds that the Yale administration had pressured the New Haven police to avoid the stigma of yet another random slaying of a student. The crime remains unsolved.

Bombings Three on-campus bombings have occurred in recent history.

Points of interest

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Yale.

Official university sites:

Publications:

Musical Groups:

Organizations:

Other:

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