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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 Teaching award honors former professor The 2007 graduating School of Architecture class voted Thomas Beeby '65MArch, adjunct professor and former dean, as their most inspiring teacher and presented him with the inaugural King-lui Wu Award for Distinguished Teaching at this year’s commencement. Beeby’s designs include renovations to Yale’s Cross Campus Library and the Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago’s main public library. The award is named for Professor King-lui Wu, who was a close associate of Joseph Albers and served on the school’s faculty for more than 40 years. Public and private buildings that he designed can be found all over the world; he retired from Yale in 1988 and died in 2002. Architecture’s temporary home As soon as the last degrees were conferred on this year’s graduates, the school packed up and moved around the corner to 32–36 Edgewood Avenue, where it will be housed until renovations to the architecture building are complete sometime in 2008. The building, designed by Paul Rudolph and built in 1963, is being restored by Charles Gwathmey '62MArch of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates. The restoration will include window replacement, air conditioning, doubling the size of the library, and lighting improvements. School receives good review The National Architecture Accreditation Board, the sole agency authorized to accredit U.S. professional degree programs in architecture, reviewed and reaccredited the Yale School of Architecture this year. Mark Simon '72MArch, a partner at Centerbrook Architects and Planners, was one of two outside observers working with the core NAAB team on the review. “I was pleased to see how thorough architecture education has become at Yale,” he says. “There are many levels of activity at the school, including almost constant supplementary lectures and conferences that go beyond the standard program, as well as more overseas travel on the part of classes, all of which expose students to a wide variety of thinkers and practitioners.” Two other developments contribute to the school’s excellence, according to Simon: exposing students to teams of professionals and assigning students to work in teams—which, he says, “prepares them much better for real professional life, which is almost all teamwork.”
School of Art Emeritus professor honored by National Academy The National Academy, an honorary association of American artists with a museum and school of fine arts in New York City, has awarded the 2007 Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize to Bernard Chaet, professor emeritus of drawing and painting. This is Chaet’s fifth prize from the National Academy since 1997, and is awarded in conjunction with the 182nd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, which was on view at the academy museum this spring. Also included in the exhibition this year is a painting by William Bailey '55BFA, '57MFA, professor emeritus of painting, who is the winner of the Benjamin Altman Prize. Summertime art study Sam Messer '81MFA, adjunct professor of painting and associate dean, had a solo exhibition, “The Evolution of Desire,” this spring at the Nielsen Gallery in Boston. Messer just concluded his seventh year as director of the art division at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk, Connecticut. Twenty-six students, all heading into their senior year in college, participated in the intensive six-week program of painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography. The Summer School also offers three free programs for the community: a children’s workshop, a drawing class, and a digital photography class. Dean curates Venice Biennale Dean Robert Storr returned to New Haven this summer from Europe, where he curated the 2007 Venice Biennale. Storr was the first director from the United States in the history of the celebrated art festival. The 52nd Biennale’s public exhibition, “Think with the Senses—Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense,” presents works by about a hundred artists from around the world. “While this show looks forward, it does not look back,” writes Dean Storr, explaining his inclusion of living and active artists in the show. “These art works, … though created in different languages, are all conjugated in the present tense.” The exhibition is on view in Venice through November 21.
Yale College Crossing boundaries Yale has a new project underway to promote richer understanding of contemporary issues in the Middle East. The Council on Middle East Studies of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies will bring together three visiting scholars each year, from different disciplines and countries, whose research will focus on regional issues with global implications. Two visiting scholars for 2007-2008 have already been named: Shaul Mishal, professor of political science at Tel Aviv University and an expert on Palestinian politics and Islamic fundamentalism, and Farhad Khosrokhavar, professor of sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. The Iranian studies component, launched in the fall of 2006 with a monthly seminar series led by Yale professor of history and Carnegie scholar Abbas Amanat, will gain momentum with a conference next fall on “Iranian Identity Boundaries and Modern Political Culture.” Daryoush Ashouri, a prominent Iranian author, translator, and researcher, will be visiting Yale in 2007, and Arang Keshavarzian, a researcher focusing on Iranian politics, economic development, clergy-state relations, and social movements, will continue as a MacMillan Center research affiliate. The program also includes a Turkish studies component, a public health component, and a program called ERICE (Empowerment and Resilience in Children Everywhere). ERICE is a collaborative project that will support research on childhood disorders in this region of conflict, implement treatment programs, and establish training and degree programs. Students honor their teachers An online evaluation system in Yale College has led to an unprecedented percentage of students writing evaluations for each and every course they take, but the winners of the highly regarded teaching prizes are still chosen by traditional methods. At the Phi Beta Kappa banquet in February, the juniors and seniors who had been admitted in the first and second elections (another election was held at Commencement) awarded their teaching prize to Marvin Chun, professor of psychology and the new master of Berkeley, with a citation recalling that he was applauded after every single one of his lectures. At Class Day in May, six teaching prizes were awarded: to Alicia Schmidt-Camacho, assistant professor of American studies, for “uniting her excellent teaching seamlessly with her community and world citizenship"; to William Yu Zhou, senior lector in East Asian languages and literatures, for his “brilliant and devoted teaching of Chinese language"; to Keith Darden, assistant professor of political science, for his “charismatic and captivating lectures and dedicated mentoring"; and to Mark Johnson, Arthur T. Kemp Professor of Chemistry, for the “sizzling chemical reactions” his teaching generates in his classrooms. In addition, students saluted Richard Lalli, associate professor (adjunct) of music, with a chorus of his name set to Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus"; and Robert Farris Thompson, John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art (whose legendary courses on the Black Atlantic visual tradition and New York mambo have riveted generations of students), with a recorded version of his favorite Tito Puente music. Two athletes enter Yale lore Every year, Yale honors its most remarkable athletes at Class Day. This year, Ed McCarthy, among the most decorated players in Yale football history, was named the winner of the William Neely Mallory Award, the most prestigious athletic award given to a senior male at Yale. McCarthy, a four-year starter who played every position on the offensive line, was the first offensive lineman in league history to claim a major award: he was the Ancient Eight’s rookie of the year in 2003. He was a 2004 second-team All-Ivy choice and made the first team the following two years. A Fairfield, Connecticut, native, McCarthy earned four different (Associated Press, American Football Coaches Association, the Sports Network, Walter Camp) All-America honors as Yale’s top offensive lineman during the Bulldogs' 2006 Ivy League championship season. He helped Yale’s offense rank No. 1 in rushing among Ivy teams with 200.80 yards per game. In addition, he won the Gridiron Club of Boston’s Nils V. “Swede” Nelson Award for outstanding academic and athletic accomplishments as well as exemplary citizenship. He also was a finalist for the Draddy Award, college football’s top academic prize, and was honored by the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame as a scholar-athlete. The Bulldog lineman also garnered academic all-district and All-Ivy honors the last two years. A history major, McCarthy graduated with a 3.6 GPA. Rachel Jeffers, who helped lead the Yale women’s crew to a pair of Ivy League titles and this year’s NCAA championship, was the recipient of the 2007 Nellie Pratt Elliot Award, the most prestigious athletic award given to a senior female at Yale. This spring, Jeffers, the team captain, stroked the Yale varsity eight to the Eastern Sprints and Ivy League titles. The Bulldogs were 12-0 in the dual-race season and ranked second in the nation in the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association/U.S. Rowing poll. Yale has qualified for the NCAA team championships in each of Jeffers’s four years. In her freshman season, Jeffers sat in the No. 1 seat as the Bulldogs finished second in the NCAA grand final, less than two seconds behind the national champion. In her sophomore year, the Bulldogs won their first Sprints and Ivy League titles since 1981. Yale captured the bronze medal at Sprints in her junior season. Jeffers, who started rowing in her sophomore year of high school at a club in her hometown of Los Gatos, California, also has international experience. She was part of the U.S. national team that won a silver medal in last year’s world championships in Lucerne, Switzerland, and she is a candidate for the U.S. team that will compete at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. Also a history major, Jeffers maintained a 3.4 GPA.
Divinity School The Religious Right: end of an era? Either the era of the Religious Right is over, or mainstream Christians should mount an aggressive challenge to make sure it is over. Those were two viewpoints on the Religious Right offered, respectively, by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne and former Colorado senator Gary Hart '61BD, '64LLB, during the May 3-4 “Faith and Citizenship” conference at the Divinity School. From the point of view of Dionne, the conference’s keynote speaker, the breakdown of the Religious Right is “part of a larger decline of a certain style of ideological conservatism that reached high points in 1980 and 1994 and collapsed in 2006.” He observed, however, that the reported demise does not signal a decline in evangelical Christianity but, rather, a new reformation among evangelicals who are “trying to disentangle their great movement from a political machine.” Hart, who was interviewed by Dionne at the conference's closing luncheon, assailed what he termed the Religious Right’s “rigid, doctrinaire definition of Christianity” and threw out a challenge to the “traditional church.” “Where is the mainstream church for the last 20 years on standing up to the Religious Right?” asked Hart. “The traditional church has to get more engaged. … It simply can’t let a small group of one wing of Protestantism define what Christianity means.” Learning from the Lost Boys of Sudan M. Jan Holton, the newly appointed assistant professor of pastoral care and counseling, believes the Lost Boys of Sudan have something to teach all of us. Holton has a special interest in using pastoral theology as a lens for exploring intercultural aspects of trauma and recovery, and much of her research has focused on the thousands of Sudanese boys orphaned and forced from their villages as a result of wars in the late 1980s. “The long-held tradition of care and obligation toward each other, passed down through generations, has served them in particularly positive ways to mitigate the effects of traumatic stress,” says Holton, who joined the YDS faculty at the beginning of the 2006-07 academic year. “This offers us a powerful glimpse into the healing power of community, not only for the Lost Boys but for all of us. … We look at pastoral care as a pastor taking care of a congregation, and that is certainly a part of it, but it is also about who we are as people, as communities, taking care of each other.” Historian elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences Margot E. Fassler, the Tangeman Professor of Music History with joint appointments at the Divinity School, the Institute of Sacred Music, the School of Music, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, was elected in April as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fassler is a historian who works primarily with the musical and liturgical traditions of the Latin Middle Ages and of the United States. Her subspecialties are liturgical drama of the Middle Ages and Mariology. Her book Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris has received awards from both the American Musicological Society and the Medieval Academy of America. She has edited a volume on the divine office and has just completed a book on the cult of the Virgin Mary at Chartres. She is currently preparing a book on the twelfth-century theologian, exegete, and composer Hildegard of Bingen. Psalms in Community, which she co-edited, is being reprinted by the Society of Biblical Literature. Under the auspices of a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Fassler continues to work with congregations and practitioners to make videos of sacred music in its liturgical contexts. Her most recent film is Joyful Noise: Psalms in Community.
School of Drama Yale represented among Tony Award winners The American Theatre Wing presented the 61st annual Tony Awards in New York City on June 10, and Yale alumni were among the winners. William Ivey Long '75MFA won the Tony for best costume design for a musical (Grey Gardens) ; Scott Pask '97MFA won for best scenic design for a play (The Coast of Utopia) ; and David Hyde Pierce '81BA was honored as the best actor in a musical (Curtains). Other Yale nominations included Liev Schreiber '92MFA for best actor; Santo Loquasto '72MFA, Susan Hilferty '80MFA, and YSD faculty member Jane Greenwood, each for costume design; Christopher Akerlind '89MFA for lighting design for a musical; and Lynne Meadow '71Dra and Judith Hansen '04Dra, both for revivals of a play. August Wilson’s Radio Golf, which had its premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2005, was nominated as best play. YSD alum helps plan NEA forum on disabled artists Many people with disabilities continue to face significant barriers in achieving training and professional status in the arts, leaving them underrepresented in the arts world. Nico Lang '05MFA, manager of community partnerships at Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, served on the task force to plan the second National Forum on Careers in the Arts for People with Disabilities. The task force, which included representatives from arts, disability, research, philanthropy, and education organizations, met at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., on April 19 and 20. The National Forum will convene in August 2008 at the Kennedy Center in Washington and will bring together 250 people from many fields to review and evaluate progress concerning educational and career opportunities since the first forum took place in 1998; identify obstacles and strategies to overcome them; and develop a strategic plan to further advance arts careers. Dean honored by Connecticut critics The Connecticut Critics Circle honored YSD dean James Bundy '95MFA for his artistic leadership of Yale Repertory Theatre by presenting him with the Tom Killen Award on June 4, in an event at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam. The Connecticut Critics Circle, an organization of theater reviewers from around the state, presents the Tom Killen Award annually to recognize outstanding contributions to Connecticut theater.
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Air pollution leads to low birth weight in infants The exposure of pregnant women to air pollution can increase their risk of having low-birth-weight babies, according to a Yale study. Researchers at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the School of Medicine found that the higher the level of exposure to nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter, the greater the risk of having lower-weight infants. The study’s results imply that even low levels of air pollution can have harmful effects: average concentrations for all pollutants in the study were in compliance with federal air quality standards. Further, exposure to a fine particulate matter from vehicle exhaust had a greater negative effect on infants of black mothers than those of white mothers. “This study indicates that some populations may face disproportionate health burdens of air pollution,” said Michelle Bell, assistant professor of environmental health and co-author of the study with Keita Ebisu '04MS and Kathleen Belanger '85PhD, both of the Yale School of Medicine. For more, see the Yale Alumni Magazine report, “Breath and Birth.” Graduates offset travel emissions The 117 members of the F&ES Class of 2007 will invest in projects that sequester carbon dioxide or develop renewable energy, in an effort to offset the pollution that their families' vehicles emitted as they traveled to commencement on Memorial Day. The class will spend $2,340, or $20 per graduate, to offset 330 tons of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas linked to global warming. Offsets have been arranged through three organizations—the Conservation Fund, Native Energy, and CarbonFund.org—which are involved in reforestation, renewable energy, and energy-efficiency projects throughout the United States. The students used a travel calculator on the Native Energy website to determine the carbon emissions from their families' travel. Some of the families came from as far away as China, India, and Nepal. FES journal explores environmental impact of cities A special issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology (JIE) examines the global environmental impact of cities in Singapore, Barcelona, Toronto, China, and Southeast Asia, and discusses such topics as the prospects for addressing global warming in urban policy and resource flows in cities. Gus Speth '64, '69LLB, dean of the environment school, says, “We have always known that cities are a fundamental piece of the environmental equation, as a source of both challenges and opportunities. What is new here is recognition, front and center, that they have a global role to play.” JIE is a peer-reviewed international quarterly owned by Yale University, published by MIT Press, and headquartered at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Financial aid improvements The Graduate School has announced broad improvements in financial aid for students in PhD programs, which take effect July 1. The standard nine-month stipend for both entering and continuing students in all humanities and social sciences departments and programs will increase from $19,000 to $20,000 in the 2007-2008 academic year. University dissertation fellowships will also increase from $19,000 to $20,000. Summer support for students on nine-month fellowships will increase from $3,500 to $3,700 beginning this summer. Stipends for entering and continuing students in the sciences, which depend on field of study and usually provide 12 months of support, will increase by similar amounts. Teaching fellowships will increase by more than 5 percent. Supporting new parents Dean Jon Butler introduced a new Parental Support and Relief Policy this spring to assist full-time PhD students when they become parents. Doctoral students who wish to suspend their academic responsibilities because of the birth or adoption of a child may request parental support and relief during or following the semester in which the birth or adoption occurs. During this period, students will remain registered, receive the full financial aid package as specified in their letter of admission, and have their departmental academic expectations modified according to their individual needs. Students who use this parental support and relief policy may be entitled to an additional eight weeks of stipend funding at the end of their fifth year, and their academic clock will stop, effectively adding a semester of time towards their degree at the end of what otherwise would have been the student’s sixth year. Applications see increase This year, 8,540 hopeful applicants sought admission to the Graduate School, making 2007 one of the most competitive years in the history of the school. The great majority—7,775—applied to PhD programs; 765 requested slots in master’s degree programs. International applicants numbered 3,609. The Graduate School expects to enroll about 420 new doctoral students and 70-80 master’s students in the fall, so most applicants had to be turned away. Among doctoral programs, departments with the greatest number of applications were economics, 694 (with 22 openings); psychology, 604 (12); engineering and applied science, 536 (45). Among smaller programs, philosophy was extremely competitive, with 223 would-be students vying for five places. Forum addresses grading systems Sometimes students seem to be more interested in the grade they get for a course than in the skills, information, and insights they can gain. The ninth annual Spring Teaching Forum and Innovation Fair tackled this problem head-on. Titled “Why Do We Grade?” the forum raised provocative questions about how and why students are evaluated. What are grades supposed to communicate? Are they meant to give information to students, potential employers, graduate and professional schools, other faculty members, or all of the above? How and to what extent do grades shape the learning environment in the classroom? The event was organized by the Graduate Teaching Center, headed by Director Bill Rando, with assistance from the graduate student teaching coordinators. Keynote speaker Michael Lesy, a professor at Hampshire College—where written evaluations are used instead of letter grades—presented the pros and cons of that system. Lesy is a former lecturer in American studies at Yale. The heart of the forum was a panel discussion, “What Grades Communicate, Why They Matter, and Whether We Need Them,” with Charles Bailyn '81, professor of astronomy and physics; Marvin Chun, professor of psychology; Valerie Hansen, professor of history; and political science graduate student Justin Zaremby '03.
Law School Supreme Court justice presides at moot court finals U.S. Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito '75JD was one of three distinguished judges presiding over the finals of the Morris Tyler Moot Court of Appeals on May 7. Judges Rosemary Barkett of the 11th Circuit and Rosemary S. Pooler of the 2nd Circuit joined Alito in listening to an impressive panel of law students argue Rahmani v. United States, which addressed whether the government may, consistent with the First Amendment, prosecute persons for supporting groups it has designated “foreign terrorist organizations” without allowing them to dispute those designations. Arguing for the petitioner, Roya Rahmani, were Anna Manasco Dionne '08JD and Krishanti Vignarajah '08JD. Representing the respondent, the United States of America, were Bryan Caforio '08JD and Jon Donenberg '08JD. After a brief deliberation, the judges awarded the Potter Stewart Prize for best overall argument to the petitioners, Dionne and Vignarajah. They declared the Thurman Arnold Prize for best oralist to be a tie between Dionne and Vignarajah. “We could not be more impressed by the quality of the oral arguments heard this afternoon,” Alito said. Two YLS professors, alumni elected to American Academy Southmayd Professor of Law Akhil Reed Amar '80, '84JD, and Augustus E. Lines Professor of Law Henry B. Hansmann '74JD, '78PhD, have been elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Amar, who joined the Yale faculty in 1985, teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School. He is co-editor of a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking, and author of several books, including, most recently, America’s Constitution: A Biography. Hansmann has focused his scholarship principally on the law and economics of organizational ownership and structure and has dealt with business corporations as well as nonprofits, mutuals, cooperatives, condominiums, trusts, and partnerships. He has also written on other aspects of basic legal relationships, with particular attention to property rights. Three other Yale Law School alumni—Stanford law professor Pamela S. Karlan '80BA, '84JD; John F. Kennedy Library Foundation CEO John Shattuck '70LLB; and NYU law professor Richard L. Revesz '83JD—were also elected this year. Survivor winner visits Law School “How I Survived Survivor and Other Professional Challenges" was the title of a talk given by Yul Kwon '00JD in April at the Law School. Kwon earned $1 million when he won the CBS reality show Survivor: Cook Islands in December 2006. Though he was initially disturbed to learn competing Survivor teams would be divided along racial and ethnic lines, Kwon persevered, saying he wanted to challenge the racial stereotypes he experienced growing up and present a positive image of the Asian-American man. He said he was determined to compete fairly, relying on mutual trust and cooperation among team members rather than backstabbing. Kwon urged Yale Law School students to “think outside the box” and not be afraid to take risks. Amy Chua delivers Duff inaugural lecture On April 9, Professor Amy Chua delivered her inaugural lecture as John M. Duff Jr. Professor of Law. In a talk titled “Empire and Tolerance: The Rise and Fall of World Dominant Powers,” Chua discussed her thesis that what connects history’s hyperpowers is a remarkable pattern of tolerance and pluralism. Chua joined the Yale Law School faculty in 2001 after teaching at Duke, Columbia, Stanford, and New York University. Her expertise is in the areas of contracts, law and development, international business transactions, and law and globalization. She received Yale Law School's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003. She is author of the 2002 New York Times bestseller, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. Her newest book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall, will be released in October 2007.
School of Management New curriculum year one The school completed the first year of its new MBA curriculum in May, and it has been deemed a success by faculty, students, and recruiters alike. After the Orientation to Management and Organizational Perspectives segments, the year culminated with the Integrated Leadership Perspective course, which involved 23 professors from varying disciplines and focused on tying together all of the learning that had come before. “People weren’t sure quite how it was going to work out, either on the faculty or the student side,” said Matt Miller '08MBA, “but in many ways I could give it a 10 out of 10 and call it seamless.” A new way to study business In April, the school debuted a first-of-its-kind multimedia case study. Built on the theory that the traditional print format for business case studies could be augmented to reflect the multidimensional business problems executives face today, the new form uses Internet, database, and media technology to reflect the real-time nature of business; it also supports the integration of traditional business disciplines that is at the heart of the school’s new MBA curriculum model. SOM faculty found an extraordinary teaching moment in the November 2006 acquisition of Equity Office Properties Trust by the Blackstone Group, which was the largest real estate deal in U.S. history. After three months of work by faculty and case writers, including extensive interviews with the CEOs of both companies, students got their first crack at the Blackstone/EOP case. The multimedia case forced them to evaluate federal filings, analysts' reports, dozens of news reports, and studies of the real estate and private equity industries. “I believe it’s the case of the future,” said Will Goetzmann '78, '86MPPM, '90PhD, the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies, who helped design it. Record year for fund-raising SOM enjoyed the best fund-raising year in its history in 2006-2007, with more than $110 million raised. This more than triples the previous year’s fund-raising figure, and dwarfs the 2004—2005 total of $9 million. The amount is counted towards the school’s Management Tomorrow drive to raise $300 million in seven years. With four years to go, the school is close to the halfway mark for its overall campaign goal. Nearly $50 million of the funding raised to date is targeted to the new SOM campus, the architect for which should be revealed shortly. The SOM Alumni Fund is also on track for record participation this year. Among major business schools, historically only Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business has a higher rate of alumni giving than Yale SOM.
School of Medicine Insurance coverage leads to increased cancer screening and diagnosis After Medicare coverage expanded to include screening for colon cancer, early diagnosis and treatment of the disease also increased, according to a report by School of Medicine researchers in the December 20, 2006, issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. Medicare reimbursement rules first changed in 1998 to cover screening colonoscopies for older patients at risk for colon cancer. Then, in 2001, coverage was expanded again to include all Medicare recipients. A team led by Cary P. Gross, associate professor of medicine, found that colonoscopies increased by 600 percent since the first Medicare change. A total of 44,924 patients were diagnosed at an early stage during the study period, an increase from 22.5 percent to 25.5 percent since 1998; after the second coverage expansion, the percentage rose to 26.3 percent. “These data strongly support initiatives to increase access to and use of screening colonoscopy,” Gross said. Nicotine dependence may be in the genes The addictive power of tobacco has long been recognized, but researchers are gradually zeroing in on genetic links to nicotine dependence. Joel Gelernter '79, professor of psychiatry, genetics, and neurobiology, and colleagues recently linked several genetic regions to nicotine dependence. Many of these regions have been targeted by other researchers, but in a new finding reported in the January issue of Biological Psychiatry, the Gelernter team showed that a region of chromosome 5 that contains several genes is strongly linked to nicotine dependence in African Americans. Gelernter now wants to find the specific gene or genes that affect nicotine addiction. Soldiers in Iraq battle a new, more elusive enemy As if roadside bombs and suicide attacks weren’t enough, now American troops fighting in Iraq are facing another health threat: Acinetobacter baumannii. More than 240 wounded soldiers have been diagnosed with this antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, which if unchecked can cause urinary tract infections, pneumonia, meningitis, sepsis, and even death. Michael Snyder, the Lewis B. Cullman Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and his colleagues have made a significant contribution in the fight against A. baumannii. Using DNA sequencing technology, Snyder’s group found that 17 percent of the strain’s genetic material originated in other microorganisms and that it is through this foreign DNA that A. baumannii has gained its durability. The findings were published in the March 1 issue of Genes and Development. It is believed that an understanding of these evolutionary adaptations will help doctors develop antibiotics to treat the infections caused by this organism. When the cure compounds the problem It is common practice to give patients with heart or lung problems, including premature babies, supplemental oxygen. But prolonged high concentrations of oxygen can lead to hyperoxic acute lung injury (HALI), in which extensive cell death causes the lung’s capillaries to break down and become leaky. Jack A. Elias, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor and chair of internal medicine, led a study to see if angiopoietin-2 (Ang2), a protein known to destabilize blood vessels, might contribute to HALI. Elias's team found high Ang2 levels and greater cell death in fluids and lung tissue taken from mice, adult humans, and premature infants after exposure to high oxygen levels. Mice that had been previously treated with RNA that suppressed Ang2 had far less damage, and mice that lacked Ang2 lived much longer than their counterparts. These findings, published in the November 5, 2006, issue of Nature Medicine, suggest that drugs designed to curb Ang2 could protect patients against HALI. This study is an example of the “bench-to-bedside" research that the Yale medical school has made a priority, because, while the research was done on mice, researchers also established its relevance for human patients with acute lung injury.
School of Music Trumpeting for Yale This spring, trumpet professor Allan Dean and his six Yale School of Music students premiered a new work they commissioned from Joan Panetti '74MusAD, the Sylvia and Leonard Marx Professor of Music. The resulting work, Panetti’s three-minute “Fanfare,” was performed first at the school's commencement on May 28 and then June 1 at the 32nd annual conference of the International Trumpet Guild at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. A reviewer at the conference had praise for both the piece and the performance: “Featuring imitative textures, bold sonorities, and intriguing complexity, this fine work received a superb performance from these fine players. Bravo, Yale Trumpets!" The performers were Daniel Beck '07MusM, Thomas Bergeron '08MusM, Joel Brennan '07MusAM, Aaron Hodgson '07MusM, Chih-Hao Lin '08MusM, and Olivia Malin '07MusM. Trio of Fulbrights For the first time in the school’s history, three students have been awarded Fulbright grants to study abroad in the same year. Eric Beach '07MusM will study percussion and the organization of contemporary music in Freiburg, Germany. Trumpeter Joel Brennan '07MusAM will be based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, working with a member of the Rotterdam Philharmonic on contemporary Dutch brass music; Brennan plans on giving recitals throughout the Netherlands of new music for trumpet by both Dutch and American composers. Claire Happel '07ArtA, a harpist, will study with the renowned harpist Jana Bouskova in Prague, Czech Republic. YSM at Arts and Ideas Festival On June 14 in New Haven, the Martha Graham Dance Company performed at the Shubert Theater with a live orchestra from the School of Music. The program, part of the city’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, featured Graham’s 1954 masterpiece, Ardent Song, danced to music by Alan Hovhaness; Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring; and Wallingford Riegger’s Chronicle. After the performance, the Yale ensemble recorded the Hovhaness work in Sprague Hall for the Graham company to use on tour. The festival’s presentation of Yale Opera on the Green continued this year with Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. First performed in Sprague Hall in April, the production, under the Italian director Pier Francesco Maestrini, brought the outrageous satirical operetta into the world of National Lampoon’s Animal House. While the Sprague production offered only piano accompaniment, the festival performance featured the New Haven Symphony.
School of Nursing Elm-Ivy Award honors work with area teens The university presented a Seton Elm-Ivy Award on May 2 to Lois Sadler '79MSN, associate professor and assistant dean for academic affairs, for her work with teen parents in New Haven since 1979. The award recognizes Sadler’s research and scholarship, which have documented “improvements in both quality of life and long-term health outcomes for vulnerable teens and young families in New Haven and beyond.” The Seton Elm-Ivy Awards, established by Fenmore Seton '38 and his wife Phyllis, recognize outstanding individual effort to sustain and expand the partnership between “town and gown.” Nursing pioneer addresses students for National Nurses Week Rhetaugh Dumas '61MSN spoke at the Connecticut Mental Health Center in May as part of National Nurses Week. In her talk she discussed her experiences as the first person to conduct funded clinical experiments in nursing, during her time as a student at YSN. Dumas, who was director of nursing at YSN from 1967 to 1972, was among the earliest researchers to use randomized experimental design to study clinical problems in patient care. She also was the first woman, first African American, and first nurse to be formally appointed as deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health. In 1996, Dumas was appointed by President Clinton to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Student lauded for community service Nurse midwifery student Jessica Theorin '08MSN is the 2007 recipient of the School of Nursing Community Service Award, presented annually to a student who has made outstanding contributions to the New Haven community in the delivery of health care or other outreach efforts. Dean Margaret Grey presented the award as part of the 2007 Sybil Palmer Bellos Lecture. Since enrolling at YSN, Jessica has volunteered at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) in New Haven and has coordinated volunteers for DESK, ensuring that health-care students are available for health education and screening services. She has also worked with the “Have Bones, Will Travel" educational program and at the HAVEN free clinic. In addition to her service to the New Haven community, said Dean Grey, Jessica is a “constant positive presence in the YSN community, organizing prospective-student potlucks and hosting prospective students in her home. Yale nurses are called upon to make a difference, and this Yale nursing student has done just that.” Three students win YSN creative writing awards Since 2004, motivated in part by a nursing shortage, the School of Nursing has encouraged its students to write accounts of their experiences in nursing—to “put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards and tell our stories”—in an effort to give others a glimpse into the world of nursing. The school annually confers creative writing awards for selected entries. This year, three first-year nursing students were named winners of the School of Nursing Creative Writing Award. Jessica Pettigrew '09MSN (“The Prince and Me”), Tess Aldrich '09MSN (“Our Own Arrangement of Details”), and Uchenna Omokaro '09MSN (“A Silent Hope”) were honored for their achievements during a ceremony at the Quinnipiac Club in New Haven. To read the winning entries, visit nursing.yale.edu/students/creativewriting. |
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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