A Message From Dean Cooley
Dear Alumni,
As another academic year comes to a close, I am grateful for this opportunity to reach out to you with news and updates on recent activity at the Graduate School. I, together with our faculty and students, are eager to build stronger connections with you – our broader Graduate School community.
I hope you will enjoy reading about recent events on campus which included two commencement ceremonies, our 3-Minute Thesis Competition, and the Wilbur Cross Medal Dinner. I am also very pleased to share that two Graduate School alumni have been appointed to the Yale Corporation!
This newsletter includes profile stories on current students’ achievements, research pursuits, and interesting paths to Yale, as well. Undoubtedly, you will all appreciate learning about our success in gaining increased student support beginning in the fall of 2022. I am very proud of the strengthened partnership we have created with Yale leadership, as well as the ongoing consultation from our Graduate Student Assembly leadership, which made this possible.
With best wishes for good health mixed with a healthy dose of summer fun, thank you for staying connected.
Lynn
| |
Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Vice Provost for Postdoctoral Affairs
C.N.H. Long Professor of Genetics
Professor of Cell Biology and Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology
| |
| 2022 Commencement Ceremonies
| |
After two years without the full pomp and circumstance of a traditional Commencement ceremony, this year the University honored the Classes of 2020 and 2022 in back-to-back weekends of festivities.
On May 14, the campus welcomed graduates and their guests for an Alumni Commencement ceremony. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences invited back both the Class of 2020, which had only a virtual commencement the year that they graduated, as well as the Class of 2021, who had a modified ceremony last year on Old Campus without guests. The following weekend, the University celebrated the Class of 2022 with its first full Commencement Weekend since the COVID-19 pandemic paused campus activities in March of 2020.
| |
The 3-Minute Thesis Competition challenges Ph.D. students to describe their thesis work clearly and engagingly in just 3 minutes! On April 14, GSAS alumni Jenny Rooke ’98 Ph.D., Max Golts ’99 Ph.D., and Andrea Levitt ’78 Ph.D. were invited to judge the competition. Read more about the winners they selected here.
| |
| Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal Dinner
| |
The Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences celebrated the 2020 and 2021 Wilbur Lucius Cross Medalists on Monday, April 4, at the Old Refectory in Yale Divinity School. The medal is awarded each year to a small number of alumni for outstanding achievement in one or more of the spheres in which Dean Cross excelled— scholarship, teaching, academic administration, and public service.
Wilbur Cross Medalists 2020 (Seated, L-R): Brenda Stevenson ’90 Ph.D. (History), Veronica Vaida ’77 Ph.D. (Chemistry), Dorceta Taylor ’91 Ph.D. (Forestry & Environmental Studies/Sociology), and Matthew State ’01 Ph.D. (Genetics).
Wilbur Cross Medalists 2021 (Standing, L-R): Mary Miller ’81 Ph.D. (History of Art), Donald Ingber ’77, ’84 Ph.D., ’84 M.D. (Cell Biology), Anat Admati ’83 Ph.D. (Administrative Sciences), and Tamer Basar ’72 (Engineering & Applies Science).
For additional information on the medalists, please click here.
| |
GSAS Alumni Appointed to Yale CorporationPresident Peter Salovey has announced the appointments of Maurie McInnis ’90 M.A. ’96 Ph.D., president of Stony Brook University, and Marta Lourdes Tellado ’02 Ph.D., president and CEO of Consumer Reports, as successor trustees to the Yale Corporation, the university’s governing body. Click here to read more.
| |
| GSAA Welcomed Back to New Haven
| |
On May 6, the Graduate School Alumni Association (GSAA) Board of Directors held their first in-person meeting in New Haven after two years of virtual sessions. More than twenty members from across the country attended for a full day of meetings and a tour of the Schwartzman Center. In the morning, Handsome Dan made a surprise appearance to kick off the day. The event culminated with a celebratory dinner at Union League Café with Dean Cooley.
This was the last meeting for James Schulman ’87 B.A., ’93 Ph.D., who served as Chair of the GSAA this year. Jia Chen ’00 Ph.D., who was the Vice Chair, will serve as the incoming Chair. The full slate of new board members will be announced after July 1, 2022. To learn more about the GSAA, click here.
| |
Malena Rice, a graduating Ph.D. student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of Astronomy, has been named a 51 Pegasi b Fellow by the Heising-Simons Foundation. Rice’s research focuses on exoplanets, which are planets located outside of Earth’s solar system, and on the formation, evolution, and characterization of planetary systems. She also looks at objects within Earth’s outer solar system.
Continue reading>>
| |
When Zara Contractor moved from India to New Haven to attend Yale College 2013, she was torn about what to study. Growing up in Mumbai, she was intellectually curious and excited to take classes in a wide range of disciplines, from biology to literature to economics. She did not know these explorations would eventually lead her to a Ph.D. in economics. Contractor’s current research explores the labor market impacts of society’s increasing reliance on technology in the workplace. Continue reading>>
| |
The Phi Beta Kappa Society has chosen Abigail Fields, Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, as the winner of the 2022 Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship. Established in 1934 by Isabelle Stone (ΦΒΚ, Wellesley College) in honor of her mother, this fellowship recognizes exceptional young scholars in the field of French or Greek language, literature, and culture. Fields earned her Master of Arts degree in French and Master of Philosophy in French at Yale, and her Bachelors degree in French and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas (ΦΒΚ). Continue reading>>
| |
|
Graduate School alumni continue to astound me with their generous gifts of time and treasure. With one month remaining until the conclusion of Yale’s fiscal year on June 30, the Graduate School Alumni Fund is poised to raise $1.6 million from 3,000+ GSAS alumni. These flexible funds directly support fellowships, stipends, and an emergency fund for students facing unexpected financial need. They also offer Dean Cooley the ability to address emergent needs and pilot new programs within the school.
If you have not contributed a gift yet this fiscal year, I would like to ask for your support now. Please join me and thousands of alumni in making a donation today!
– Gene Wang ’99 Ph.D., Chair, Yale Graduate School Alumni Fund
| |
| *Your annual gift to the Yale Graduate School counts toward the For Humanity campaign.
| |
|
|
|
|
