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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 Writing the book on New York architecture The fourth in a series of books on the history of New York’s architecture, New York 2000, was published last November. Authored by School of Architecture dean Robert A. M. Stern '65MArch, along with David Fishman and Jacob Tilove, the 1,600-page volume documents and interprets the city’s architecture and urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Millennium, the period between the city’s fiscal crisis and its rebirth as a world capital of finance, media, and culture. (See “In Print,” January/February.) Panel discussions on themes in the book, ranging from consideration of the research methodology to assessments of the city’s viability, were held in New York in January and February. An architect’s story The first in-depth biography of Louis I. Kahn, the designer of the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale Art Gallery’s 1953 addition, has been published. Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, by Carter Wiseman '68, lecturer at the School of Architecture, details Kahn’s life from his childhood in the slums of Philadelphia to his rise as an internationally renowned architect. Wiseman culled personal correspondence and family documents to illuminate Kahn's character and his personal relationships with clients and friends. (See Arts & Culture.) Studio projects focus on United Arab Emirates Two advanced studio classes are studying sites in the United Arab Emirates as part of their coursework. Zaha Hadid, the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor, who is designing (with her London office) the performing arts center in Abu Dhabi, has assigned her students to come up with their own design drafts of schemes for the cultural district in that city. Students taking a class with Ali Rahim, the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor, are investigating issues of real estate, finance, and urbanism in the city of Dubai to address the design of a commercial tower. Each of the studio classes traveled to the UAE in February to visit their project areas and become familiar with the fast-growing region.
School of Art Applications continue to rise The School of Art received a record 1,215 applications this year for admission in September 2007, reflecting a 15-percent jump in applications from last year. All four departments at the school—graphic design, painting and printmaking, photography, and sculpture—saw increased applications. In a rigorous two-tiered process that will result in a class of about 60 students, the original pool of applicants is whittled down to about 175 candidates, who are then asked to interview on campus and present their portfolios to faculty and students. Final acceptance letters are mailed in late March. The school boasts a low acceptance rate (approximately 5 percent), and its yield (the percentage of those accepted who matriculate) has remained quite high—between 89 percent and 100 percent (depending on the department) over the last two years. A welcoming website The newly revamped School of Art website, yale.edu/art, which was originally launched in October 2005, is a wiki site, which allows art school graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni to edit the site’s contents and add new content. Within the next few months, alumni will be invited to contribute to a page on which they can link their sites and personal or professional information. It is anticipated that by summer the website will become one of the richest resources for both alumni information and images of Spring exhibitions The semester of MFA thesis exhibitions has begun; please consult the school website for a schedule and images of current work in the shows in Green Hall. The ten graduating sculptors will open the thesis shows and take up the first two months of the gallery with installations, video, and other constructions.
Yale College Science and math for all In 2003, Yale College set a new direction for several aspects of the undergraduate curriculum. One of these recommendations called for beefed-up requirements for courses in science and “quantitative reasoning,” coupled with a new Science and Quantitative Reasoning Center to help students. The new center, now in its second year of operation, continues to expand its services. With one full-time and three part-time faculty, the center offers students tutoring in the science and quantitative reasoning disciplines as well as opportunities for undergraduate research and learning. Douglas Brash, professor of therapeutic radiology and genetics, coordinates undergraduate research and runs “Perspectives on Science,” a year-long course that introduces freshmen to the full range of scientific disciplines through lectures and small group discussions with some of Yale’s most distinguished faculty. Applied mathematician Frank Robinson directs the Science and Quantitative Reasoning Tutoring Program, which offers one-on-one tutoring to students who are experiencing academic difficulty in a specific course. The program also helps professors bring new teaching methods to the sciences and assists students in developing their quantitative reasoning skills. Kailas Purushothaman, associate research scientist in diagnostic radiology, runs the residential college tutoring program, which offers help at scheduled times in the center and five nights a week in the residential colleges, in all areas of math and science. Shepherding the SQR Center is Associate Dean for Science Education William Segraves, a faculty member in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and the 1996 winner of the Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences. New dean to direct Native American Cultural Center The Native American Cultural Center will soon have what the Afro-American, Asian American, and Latino cultural centers already have: a college assistant dean as its director. The new dean will manage and oversee the NACC and will work with undergraduates to develop services, organize activities, and sponsor events. The dean will also work with university administration to define an appropriate identity for the center and plan for its support and nurture; consult with deans and faculty on academic advising, counseling, and guidance; and assist the dean of admissions and his staff in the recruitment and admission of new students. The new position has been made possible through the gift of Fred C. Danforth '73 and his wife, Carlene Larsson.
Divinity School East of Eden, another garden? Christl Maier, associate professor of Old Testament, left the Divinity School in January to accept a senior position on the faculty of the University of Marburg in her home country, Germany, where she will combine historical-critical interpretation of Old Testament texts with feminist biblical hermeneutics. In leaving, though, she threw some garlands in the direction of YDS. She likened her departure to “leaving the Garden of Eden” and said she hopes to bring “the imperishable fruits of wisdom” harvested at YDS to Marburg with her, including the “varied faith traditions and perspectives brought to Yale by smart and interested students.” She concluded, “East of Eden I have found another garden to irrigate. I am grateful for having experienced the abundance of YDS, which fostered my skills of planting and reaping [from] the tree of wisdom.” The recipient of a prestigious Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology while at YDS, Maier has not cut her Yale ties entirely: she will be collaborating with Associate Professor of Hebrew Scriptures Carolyn Sharp '00PhD on a Book of Jeremiah commentary for the International Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament. Sterling Divinity Quadrangle: where art and social justice meet Most of the time, the main courtyard of Sterling Divinity Quadrangle is simply a place where students can read in the shade of a tree, take some quiet time on a wooden bench, or toss a Frisbee around with friends. But of late the Quad has been put to another use: an outdoor art gallery with a focus on issues of social justice. First, in October, there was the Eyes Wide Open exhibit, when pairs of empty boots filled the courtyard, each pair representing a New England soldier who died in Iraq. Not long afterwards, beginning in mid-January, came the Global Village Shelters installation, displaying inexpensive yet sturdy shelters for the homeless made of laminated corrugated cardboard that is waterproof, fire resistant, and biodegradable. The Quad might not have the same crowd appeal as some of the other locations for the exhibits, including such venues as Central Park and the Museum of Modern Art. But in both cases the Quad became a destination for a number of people who under normal circumstances would not have occasion for a visit. Capital punishment close to home As a matter of life and death, capital punishment is an issue of great intellectual interest for most students of theology. But for two current MDiv students, the death penalty is more than a subject for theoretical debate. Student Robin Theurkauf, who earned a PhD in political science from Yale in 2001, was married to a victim of the World Trade Center attack. And Michael Norko, a YDS student and associate professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, gave expert testimony in the highly publicized murder trial of Michael Ross, whose execution in 2005 was Connecticut’s first in 45 years. Both wrote about their experiences in the 2006-07 issue of Spectrum, YDS’s yearly report to alumni and friends. Theurkauf, who testified in the penalty phase of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, wrote, “Creation is gripped in a continuous stream of violence that flows over every time and place. We need not contribute to it. Killing Moussaoui would not bring any of the victims back. Rather, it would have dehumanized us all.” Based in part on Norko’s input, the courts found Ross competent to stand trial. Norko wrote, “He [Ross] found comfort in the rituals and exercises of his faith tradition, for which he was nonetheless ridiculed in popular judgments. The common reaction was to exclude from him the possibility of redemption, a notion that curiously seems to burden God with the limits of vengeful humanity.”
School of Drama A “new voice” in playwriting Several months before he receives his MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama, Tarell McCraney is already experiencing tremendous professional success with his Brother/Sister trilogy of plays: The Brothers Size, In the Red & Brown Water, and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet. The first play in the trilogy, The Brothers Size, was developed at YSD as a second-year studio production. Several of McCraney's classmates, wanting to see the student production have a further life, endeavored to shop the play to other theaters. Forming Bulldog Independent Group, theater management students Malcolm Darrell '07MFA, David Roberts '08MFA, and Stephanie Ybarra '08MFA partnered with the Off-Broadway Foundry Theatre to produce the play at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival of promising new works in January 2007. The YSD production was moved intact to New York under the direction of Tea Alagic '07MFA with the cast consisting of Brian Henry '07MFA, Gilbert Owuor '07MFA, and Elliott Villar '07MFA. The New York Times reviewed the sold-out engagement, saying that the “absorbing and emotionally resonant drama, set in the bayou country of Louisiana and loosely based on West African myths, is decidedly the work of a young writer. But there is evidence in his richly drawn characters and colloquial poetry, which manages to sound both epic and rooted in a specific place, to suggest that he has a long career ahead of him.” In February New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre mounted its own production of The Brothers Size as the centerpiece of their In-Festival while simultaneously staging readings of In the Red & Brown Water and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet. At YSD McCraney was represented in last year’s Carlotta Festival of New Plays with a production of In the Red & Brown Water and will be featured again this year with a staging of Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet. The New York Times advises, “Listen closely, and you might hear that thrilling sound that is one of the main reasons we go to the theater, that beautiful music of a new voice.” Theater beyond the stage Yale Repertory Theatre hosted the international tour of the AIDS drama In the Continuum, written and performed by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter, in January and February. The production, which received support from Bank of America, provided tremendous opportunity for the Yale Rep to conduct outreach to various segments of the Yale community and New Haven’s community at large. A tour-de-force tale recounting a weekend in the life of two black women—one a middle-class newsreader in Zimbabwe and the other a teenage poet living in Los Angeles—the play exposes the silent epidemic that has made HIV the primary cause of death for black women aged 25 to 34. Yale Rep partnered with AIDS Project New Haven, Yale’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, AIDS Walk New Haven, Yale AIDS Watch, Yale’s Afro-American Cultural Center, Yale’s divinity and medical schools, the Women Faculty Forum at Yale, and AIDS Interfaith (among other organizations) to host events and discussions to disseminate the play's powerful message. Yale Rep welcomed more than 2,000 area high-school students to In the Continuum through the theater’s innovative Will Power! education initiative. Both of the performers/playwrights participated in “Talk Backs” with the students after each of the five added student matinees.
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Index ranks Yale forestry program best in research productivity The Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies has the best forestry program in the United States based on the research productivity of its faculty, according to a recently released index. The 2005 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, partly financed by the State University of New York at Stony Brook and produced by Academic Analytics, a for-profit company based in Pennsylvania, rates faculty members' scholarly output at 7,294 doctoral programs around the country and provides data on 177,816 faculty members at 354 institutions. Based on data from 2005, the report was released in January 2007. The index ranks the top ten programs in 104 disciplines (Yale’s immunobiology and neuroscience programs are also ranked highest), and examines the number of book and journal articles published by each program’s faculty, as well as journal citations, awards, honors, and grants received. Chad Oliver '70MFS, '75PhD, Pinchot Professor of Environmental Studies, is not surprised by the ranking. “Because of its organization and tradition,” he said, “the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies has always been an innovator in research, constantly exploring new concepts rather than dominating targeted areas of expertise.” Global forests focus of executive education program F&ES has started a new executive education program concentrating on the condition and dynamics of global forests. The program is aimed at providing executives in forestry and forest-related companies, industry, and the financial community, as well as members of the media, with the latest research in forest science and management, issues, and trends. The courses are designed for professionals who don’t have the time for a graduate-degree program, but need the background to understand and meet the challenges of conserving and managing the world’s forests. The program, offered this spring by the Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry, consists of two week-long courses at Yale: “Executives Learning About Forestry” and “Foresters Becoming Executives.” They are taught by senior F&ES faculty and cover a wide range of subjects, including forestry and biotechnology, illegal logging, forest health and invasive exotic pests, and the future of cities and their effect on forests. New F&ES structure to redefine the green-building concept A new facility at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies will be a model of the school’s dedication to sustainable design. Named for the environmental philanthropist Richard Kroon '64, the building will provide office space for 75 faculty and staff, along with classrooms, a 175-seat auditorium, and an environment center named for donors Emily and Carl Knobloch '51. Completion of the Kroon building is expected by 2009. “It will be Yale’s most green building, a symbol of the school’s ideals and values, and a powerful expression in beautiful form of our relationship to the environment,” said Gus Speth, dean of the Forestry School. “It will be an inspirational and instructional model of sustainable design.” The Kroon building will be a long, four-story structure with a rounded roofline running east to west, which will provide maximal southern exposure to increase solar heat gain in winter and natural lighting year-round. The use of geothermal energy and energy-efficient structural elements will eliminate the need for steam and chilled water for heating and cooling. Photovoltaics on the roof will supply a portion of the building’s electricity requirements, complemented by alternative sources such as wind. Rainwater runoff will collect in holding tanks and be filtered naturally for use in flush toilets. The building will prominently feature timber harvested from sustainably managed forests, including the 7,880-acre Yale-Myers Forest in northeastern Connecticut.
Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Graduate School dean honored for “impeccable scholarship” Dean Jon Butler returned to his alma mater in December to deliver the commencement address at the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts. Butler, who earned both his BA and his PhD in history from the University of Minnesota, received an honorary doctor of science degree for his “impeccable, deeply researched scholarship,” his efforts to “increase public understanding of American history and religion,” and his “incandescent ability to reimagine the past.” “This great university gave me everything I could ever have wanted as a student, a person, ultimately as someone from a Minnesota farm town who simply wanted to be a historian,” Butler said in his speech. Dean Butler joined the Yale faculty in 1985. Author of numerous prizewinning books on the role of religion in American history, he is the Howard R. Lamar Professor of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies. He served as chair of the American Studies program and the Department of History and director of the Division of the Humanities before becoming dean of the Graduate School in 2004. Renewing the PhD: the 2-4 project During the second, third, and fourth years of their doctoral programs, most PhD students move from formal class work to independent scholarship. Science students complete lab rotations and exams, choose an adviser and a lab, write a dissertation prospectus, and begin independent research and writing. Humanities and social science students finish their last courses, take exams, write a prospectus, and begin teaching. When all goes smoothly, students advance to candidacy by the end of the third year and are deeply engaged in dissertation research in the fourth year. But sometimes all doesn’t go smoothly, and progress gets stalled. Last semester, all academic departments in the Graduate School were asked to evaluate the second, third, and fourth years of their doctoral programs. “We want our PhD programs to show greater flexibility, imagination, and responsiveness to shifting intellectual needs, student aspirations, and broadening professional opportunities and demands,” the dean wrote, outlining the project. Students should be able to advance “to candidacy efficiently and with confidence, so that the researching and writing of the dissertation is neither unduly delayed nor fraught with anxiety.” Departments were given questions to consider on such topics as course requirements, exams, and the ways in which departments mentor, evaluate, and communicate expectations to their students. Reports and recommendations for change were submitted to the dean in December.
Law School Tenth law colloquium addresses advocacy and public-interest law The annual Liman Colloquium, hosted by the Law School's Arthur Liman Public Interest Program, brings together advocates, scholars, and students from across the country for a day-long discussion on such topics as federal funding of legal services, low-wage workers and workfare, the challenges of becoming and staying a public-interest lawyer, and the role of mass media in public-interest advocacy. The tenth annual colloquium, featuring Cory Booker '97JD, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, as the keynote speaker, was planned for March 1-2 to focus on the changing role of advocacy and public-interest law. YLS clinic provides legal services for senior housing Last November, St. Luke’s Senior Housing Inc. of New Haven broke ground on the Josephine Jarvis Gray Senior Housing development in New Haven’s Dixwell neighborhood. The 18-unit building, which bears the name of a 92-year-old parishioner of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Whalley Avenue, will provide HUD-subsidized low-income housing for elderly individuals. Attorneys and students from the Law School’s Community and Economic Development (CED) Clinic helped St. Luke’s Senior Housing Inc. (SLSHI) in obtaining and preparing the necessary documents for their closings with HUD and the city of New Haven’s Livable City Initiative. Prior to that, CED assisted in forming SLSHI as a non-stock corporation, obtaining 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status for the corporation, completing SLSHI’s firm commitment application to HUD, selecting contractors and a management agent for the project, acquiring the property, and obtaining funding from a variety of governmental and private sources. CED is just one of the Law School clinics working under the umbrella of the School's Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization to provide legal representation to individuals and organizations in need of legal help but unable to afford private attorneys. Law School remembers President Gerald Ford President Gerald Ford '41LLB, who died in December, was a Yale football and boxing coach and a graduate of the Law School. Ford came to New Haven in 1935 after graduating from the University of Michigan, and enrolled in the Law School in 1938. “Chance thrust upon Gerald Ford a succession of crucial historic roles—president, vice president, House minority leader, and member of the Warren Commission. He answered each of those challenges with courage and humility,” Dean Harold Hongju Koh said, adding, “He leaves behind enduring accomplishments, including a nation healed, the Helsinki Accords, landmark post-Watergate legislation, and the historic appointments of Attorney General Edward Levi and Associate Justice John Paul Stevens. History, and his alma mater, will long honor his memory.” President Ford was presented with the Yale Law School Association’s Award of Merit in 1979. His portrait hangs in the Law School. At press time, the Law School was planning an event to honor the memory of President Ford.
School of Management Carbon offsets make international travel “carbon neutral” In keeping with Yale’s intention to become the “greenest" university, a group of MBA students organized a voluntary program to allow students and faculty trip leaders to purchase carbon offsets for the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from their international travel. The student organizers calculated that SOM’s required International Experience resulted in over three million miles traveled, and the release of over two million pounds of greenhouse gases. By purchasing the offsets, students hoped to counterbalance their travel-related emissions by funding carbon abatement projects. The bulk offsets were purchased from five providers, and will finance carbon abatement activities such as renewable energy development, energy conservation initiatives, tree-planting, and large-scale reforestation activities in South Africa, India, Costa Rica, and the United States. Through the collective purchases made by students, TAs, faculty, alumni, and several anonymous donors, the International Experience became “carbon neutral,” and the SOM community became more familiar with climate change and carbon markets. 2007 Global Social Enterprise class and trip focuses on Brazil This semester’s course on “Managing Social Enterprises in Developing Countries” focuses on businesses and NGOs in Brazil. Led by Garry D. Brewer '70PhD, the Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser Professor of Resource Policy and Management, and assistant professor of economics M. Keith Chen, the course aims to provide students with an overview of management techniques that can be used to help socially focused organizations in developing countries achieve sustainable growth. As part of this course, students work in project teams to provide pro bono consulting services to enterprises based in Brazil, including a company that manufactures and sells equipment to recycle air conditioning and commercial refrigerants, a children’s cardiac clinic, and an environmental organization focusing on sustainable development. The student teams plan to spend their spring break in March on client site visits. These consulting engagements will culminate in a presentation of deliverables to the client executives in Brazil, as well as a presentation on each consulting engagement to SOM faculty and students. SOM launches “… on Management” lecture series The school inaugurated a new lecture series in January designed to provide members of the SOM community with the opportunity to hear firsthand from executives, innovators, policymakers, and thought leaders from many fields of endeavor, speaking on topics devoted to the management challenges at the intersection of business and society. Among the early “… on Management” speakers were Martha Finn Brooks '81, '86MBA, the COO of Novelis, Inc., who talked about the challenges of a global start-up; and John Hueston '91JD, a co-lead prosecutor of the Enron trial, who spoke on the corporate governance lessons to be learned from that company’s collapse. The “… on Management” series is designed to complement the school’s popular “Leaders Forum,” which brings to campus corporate CEOs and other top leaders in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.
School of Medicine Immunobiology gains department status The Section of Immunobiology has become a full department at the medical school. Founded in 1988 and now chaired by Richard A. Flavell, the immunobiology section was one of the first university departments in the country devoted specifically to the study of the immune system. The 2005 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index ranked Yale’s immunology program as best in the United States, based on such data as faculty publications, grants, and honors and awards. The new immunobiology department boasts 13 primary faculty members, including four investigators of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, two members of the National Academy of Sciences, and two members of the Royal Society—all widely recognized for their research in such areas as lymphocyte development and activation. Within the department, the newly formed Human Translational Immunology Group will concentrate on translational and clinical studies that link the department’s strength in basic immunology to the clinical departments of the medical school. In this research, investigators will apply the principles of basic immunology to diseases such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes, and disorders of the vascular system. Yale opens PET Center The Yale Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Research Center for molecular imaging, the result of an alliance between the university and Pfizer Inc., was officially opened in January. PET, a non-invasive diagnostic scanning technique, provides researchers and clinicians with visual images of organ function and can detect biochemical changes in body tissues before disease causes structural damage. Through its high-resolution imaging and quantitative analysis, the PET Center provides researchers with a more rapid and accurate way to determine whether a drug is reaching its target. This will enable researchers to make earlier decisions on whether to embark on a large clinical trial or abandon a drug candidate before investing large amounts of money. The Yale PET Center is one of the few PET laboratories in the United States that is cGMP (current good manufacturing practice) compliant, meeting the highest safety standards for human subjects and quality control. The center also boasts one of the few PET scanners in the world dedicated to imaging the human brain that achieves a resolution of 2.5 millimeters. Pfizer chairman and CEO Jeffrey B. Kindler praised the alliance between Pfizer and Yale: “This venture illustrates how great things can happen when a science-based company like Pfizer and a leading academic medical center like Yale combine resources. … I am confident that this collaboration will yield important research insights and, ultimately, new treatments for patients.” Molecule found to play a role in brain malformation The absence of the molecule MEKK4 in the fetal brain may cause periventricular heterotopia (PVH), a congenital brain malformation often linked to neurological disorders such as epilepsy, mental retardation, and learning or memory deficits. The finding was reported in the journal Neuron in December by Pasko Rakic, professor and chair of neurobiology, and colleagues. Neurons are the basic building blocks of the nervous system, specialized to transmit information throughout the body. They develop during gestation near the lining of fluid-filled ventricles and migrate to the cerebral cortex where they establish connections with other neurons. MEKK4 regulates the gene Filamin-A, which produces a protein that organizes another protein, actin, which is essential for neuronal migration in the developing brain. Too much Filamin-A inhibits the neuronal migration. Said Rakic, “We show that MEKK4 deficiency leads to both a breakdown in the lining of the fetal ventricles and abnormally high levels of Filamin-A within the proliferative areas.” The findings provide insight into the development of human PVH.
School of Music Symposium focuses on music education in public schools The Yale College class of '57 has been an active supporter of music education in public schools, partnering with the School of Music to establish a successful program in the New Haven school system and working to create an endowment for its continued operation. Now the class is sponsoring an international symposium, “Music: A Child’s Birthright,” at the school May 30-31, coinciding with the class’s 50th college reunion weekend. The symposium “will bring together international perspectives on the importance of music education in the public schools,” said Paul Hawkshaw, professor of music history, and will feature music educators such as Roberta Guaspari, founder of the Opus 118 Music Center in Harlem; Wang Cizhao, president of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing; Joseph Polisi, president of the Juilliard School; and Yale School of Music dean Robert Blocker. Members of the class of '57 were involved in the selection of school teachers from around the country who will receive awards. Honorary co-chairs of the symposium are pianist Emanuel Ax, who will play a recital for the class, and mezzo Frederica von Stade. Taking their show on the road Nearly 400 musicians from Yale and the New Haven community will travel to Boston April 27 to perform Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem at the famed Symphony Hall. The Yale Glee Club, Yale Camerata, Yale Schola Cantorum, the Elm City Girls' Choir, and the Trinity Choir of Men and Boys will sing, accompanied by the Yale Philharmonia, under the direction of Shinik Hahm, the Philharmonia’s music director. The 1962 Britten masterpiece will be paired with Toru Takemitsu’s “From Me Flows What You Call Time,” featuring the Yale Percussion Group. The concert will be repeated the following night back in New Haven at Woolsey Hall. Tickets for the Boston performance are available through the Symphony Hall box office, bso.org.
School of Nursing Chronic-illness scholar addresses convocation The Center for Excellence in Chronic Illness Care at YSN hosted its ninth annual convocation on February 26. Lesley Degner, PhD, from the University of Manitoba, delivered the keynote address. Dr. Degner, an internationally recognized scholar and researcher in patient involvement in medical decision-making, is the author of Life-Death Decisions in Health Care, which outlines the factors that influence the way treatment decisions are made for patients with life-threatening illnesses. The Center for Excellence in Chronic Illness Care was established at YSN in 1999 to study the unique experience of chronic illness as it affects patients, families, and survivors. The center’s work focuses on multiple areas in which the school’s faculty conduct research, such as AIDS/HIV, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. The aim of the center is to enhance the understanding of the chronic illness experience and to translate research findings into better care for those with chronic illnesses. YSN articles top list of most accessed in nursing journal Three articles published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing by YSN faculty and alumna were among that publication’s most accessed articles during 2006. Topping the list was “Decreasing the Risk of Complicated Bereavement and Future Psychiatric Disorders in Children” by YSN assistant professor Vanya Hamrin and Kathleen Kirwin '02MSN. The third-most accessed article in 2006, “The Use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors in Children and Adolescents with Major Depression,” by Professor Lawrence Scahill '89MSN/MPH, '97PhD, with Professor Hamrin and Maryellen Pachler '03MSN, had led the rankings the previous year. “Psychopharmacology Notes: Nonstimulant Medications for the Treatment of ADHD,” by Adrienne Rains '03MSN and Dr. Scahill, came in at eighth on the list of most-accessed articles from the journal. Authors discuss AIDS epidemic in South Africa Nurses and doctors in South Africa have had to cope with the rationing of antiretroviral therapy and the limits imposed by what they describe as that government’s halting rollout of drugs, according to Dr. Ronald Bayer and Dr. Gerald Oppenheimer, authors of Shattered Dreams?: An Oral History of the South African AIDS Epidemic. In a talk sponsored by the Center for International Nursing Scholarship and Education at YSN, Bayer and Oppenheimer discussed how South Africa’s health care providers have confronted these problems. South Africa has struggled for over a decade with an AIDS epidemic that has claimed the lives of more than a million South African men, women, and children. YSN has been actively engaged in the clinical response to the South African AIDS epidemic since 2002 through the Sizongoba project at Church of Scotland Hospital (COSH) in KwaZulu-Natal, and collaborations with the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine in Durban. Gerald Friedland, professor of medicine and epidemiology and public health at Yale and principal investigator of the Sizongoba project, and Terri Clark '76, '79MSN, lecturer at YSN who leads clinical midwifery experiences at COSH, participated in a panel discussion following the presentation by Drs. Oppenheimer and Bayer. Recent awards support YSN research The use of voice mail to improve transfer information from hospital to nursing home is the focus of a study being conducted by Dr. Meg Bourbonniere, YSN assistant professor, with the help of a grant from the Commonwealth Fund. The study builds on an earlier one conducted by Dr. Bourbonniere, which was funded by YSN’s Center for Self and Family Management of Vulnerable Populations. Dr. Bourbonniere’s specialty is geriatric nursing and clinical gerontology. As part of her dissertation work, YSN doctoral student Christine Ceccarelli '10 is investigating the factors that help or hinder development of state policies to support home caregiving. Ceccarelli was one of four individuals last year to receive a Mattie J. T. Stepanek Intergenerational Caregiving Scholarship from the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving, which annually awards scholarships to students, volunteers, and professional caregivers who are interested in pursuing a career in caregiving or want to receive additional training for their current caregiving situation. |
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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