Suggest a Yale-related website
Webwatching
www.yale.edu/accred
November/December 2009
Yale
is currently undergoing its accreditation review by the New England Association
of Schools and Colleges, required every ten years. Admittedly, there's not much
suspense over whether Yale will pass the test. But the exercise is a chance for
Yale to do some internal introspection and hear external perspectives: the 1999
outside evaluation team raised concerns about faculty diversity, teacher evaluation, tenure policy, and the proliferation of small academic programs.
Follow Yale's process -- and comment on the university's own self-study report -- at
this university website.
www.yalelightfellowship.com
September/October 2009
Around 150 Yale students a year go to Asia to study Chinese, Japanese, or Korean through the Richard U. Light Fellowship. The program encourages students to blog about their experiences abroad; you'll find those blogs, along with photos, video, and podcasts, at the fellowship's multimedia site.
www.yale.edu/smartstreets
July/August 2009
The death of fourth-year medical student Mila Rainof '08MD last year while crossing a New Haven street set in motion a push for better attention to street safety on campus and in the city. One response is the Smart Streets website, which uses animations and a quiz to teach pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers how to be better "citizens of the street." (Full disclosure/added attraction: the site was designed by Mark Zurolo '01MFA, art director of this magazine, and Randall Hoyt '01MFA.)
www.overheardatyds.blogspot.com
May/June 2009
In the
model of blogs like Overheard in New York, where readers post intentional or
accidental witticisms they've heard in public places, Overheard at Yale
Divinity School offers a quirky peek into a distinctive subculture. Some recent
offerings: "I'm a little disturbed by the amount of people that have suggested
poison as a way to figure out who is the Refectory thief"; "You know, I didn't
drink cheap beer until I came to div school"; "What if Jesus came back already
but he burned up in re-entry?"
http://lfo.astro.yale.edu
March/April 2009
Star-gazing -- both real and virtual -- is on the upswing atop Prospect Hill. Since 2005, Yale's Leitner Family Observatory has been hosting public viewing nights using a collection of telescopes. Now, a planetarium has opened on the site offering regular shows for the public. See a gallery of astronomical images and a schedule of events on the observatory's website.
www.library.yale.edu/testimonies
January/February 2009
A
Belgian girl hidden from the Gestapo in a convent's laundry basket. A U.S. Army
colonel's first view of a concentration camp. A Dutch woman's decision to help
rescue Jews. Since 1979, Yale's Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
has collected some 4,300 interviews totaling more than 10,000 hours. The
archive's website includes a selection of powerful video excerpts from the
collection.
http://brblroom26.wordpress.com
November/December 2008
From
Room 26 in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, curators Timothy
Young and Nancy Kuhl tend their online "cabinet of curiosities": a blog
featuring new or unusual items in the library's collections. Recent entries
include a nineteenth-century French visual dictionary for deaf-mutes,
promotional materials for the punk band the Sex Pistols, and a selection of
keys belonging to literary figures.
http://maps.google.com
September/October 2008
Slowly but surely, the online giant Google is
photographing streetscapes all over the country for Google Street View, a
feature that lets you click on a map and see what a block actually looks like.
The few streets that have been completed so far in New Haven, however, betray a
suspicious single-mindedness: they form a path from Interstate 95 to 157
Wooster Street -- which happens to be the address of Frank Pepe's pizzeria.
http://e360.yale.edu
July/August 2008
The environment school's new venture in online
journalism, Yale Environment 360, debuted in June. Former Mother Jones and Audubon editor Roger Cohn '73 is editing
the magazine, which features environmental opinion, investigations, and a
frequently updated news digest. It launched with articles by leading environmental writer Bill McKibben and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert '83, among
others.
http://images.library.yale.edu/ydn
May/June 2008
Is your recall of your Yale days getting a little
dimmer? Now you can check your memories against the archives of the Yale
Daily News. More
than 2,000 editions of the News can now be read and searched online, thanks to a joint effort by the Yale University Library, the Oldest College Daily Foundation, and
the Class of '45W. The first phase of the project includes the earliest editions, 1878-79; issues from the two world wars; 1967-70; and 1978-81. The
library will be demonstrating the archive -- and looking for funds to continue
the project -- during this year's reunion weekends.
www.stickk.com
March/April 2008
It's like new year's resolutions with consequences: a website where you can commit to losing weight, quitting smoking, or any goal you can think of. You or your friends monitor your progress, and you can even put up money that will go to a friend or a charity if you fail. The site is the brainchild of economics professor Dean Karlan, who founded Stickk with Law School professor Ian Ayres '81, '86JD, and Jordan Goldberg '06, '08MFA. The site launched in a beta version in January.
http://open.yale.edu/courses
January/February 2008
Remember when the registrar told you when and where you'd have a class? Now you can audit Yale courses in your kitchen, at the coffee shop, or, if you're very careful with your laptop, in the bathtub. In December, the university launched its Open Yale Courses project, which features syllabi, reading lists, and complete video lectures for seven Yale College courses, ranging from Modern English Poetry with Langdon Hammer '80, '89PhD, to Fundamentals of Physics with Ramamurti Shankar. Even when they're only four inches tall, Yale professors can
still have a commanding presence.
http://itunes.yale.edu
November/December 2007
Since the university started making podcasts of lectures, talks, and
music available last fall, the offerings have grown in number to nearly 200 -- from
Professor Harold Bloom on the art of reading a poem to Coach Jack Siedlecki on
the current football season. The recently revamped iTunes site for the podcasts
is now organized by subject: listeners can subscribe to podcasts on any of 15
topics.
www.yale.transloc-inc.com
September/October 2007
It's a godsend for all the Yale Shuttle riders who've spent hours
waiting in the cold and rain: an online map with a global positioning system
that shows precisely where the bus is right now. You check your computer in your warm, dry office,
and stroll outside at exactly the right moment. Yale installed the system,
created by TransLoc Inc., early this year. (But be careful. Those tiny icons
inching slowly around the miniature Yale campus on your screen can be, well,
oddly hypnotic.)
www.yale.edu/secretary/programs/diplomas_
translation.html
July/August 2007
Sure, you've got a Yale diploma -- but can you read it? Never fear:
for $20, the Office of the Secretary will provide you with an official document
(complete with embossed university seal) that translates the diploma from Latin
to English. Mindy A. Marks of the secretary's office says she gets between 100
and 150 requests each year for the translation.
http://art.yale.edu
May/June 2007
The School of Art's new website proves that you really can please everyone. The catch is that you can only please them one at a time. The new website is a wiki: it allows students, faculty, staff, and alumni to add or change content at will. Even better for a community of visually oriented people with strong artistic opinions, the wiki allows participants to redesign the home page. The site was developed by Tamara Maletic '01MFA and Dan Michaelson '02MFA; Michaelson teaches graphic design at the school.
www.givingcatalog.yale.edu
March/April 2007
Yale knows it might be hard to buy for. So, like your
savvier engaged couples, the university now has an online gift registry as part
of the Yale Tomorrow capital campaign. Go see what's in your price range: the
renovation of the Art Gallery for $40 million? An endowed professorship for $3
million? Weenie bins in the remodeled Cross Campus Library were going for just
$50,000, but they're sold out.
www.yale.edu/opa/podcast
January/February 2007
You may still think of iTunes as a
place to get, well, tunes, but alma mater has other ideas. The Office of Public
Affairs has launched an effort to put up "podcasts" -- downloadable digital files -- of talks by alumni, faculty, and others at the iTunes website. As of early December, 20 such podcasts were available, all for free, ranging from a reunion talk on the second Bush administration by historian John Gaddis to a lecture by art historian Vincent Scully on architect Philip Johnson.
www.tyson.com/givingthanks
November/December 2006
Ever at a loss for words on Thanksgiving Day when it's time to say grace? David W. Miller is here to help. Miller, the executive director of the Yale Center of Faith and Culture, was asked by Tyson Foods to help compile a book of graces called Giving Thanks at Mealtime. Miller says he tried to represent a wide variety of faith traditions in the selections. It's not clear, however, just which tradition is responsible for "Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub" on page 19.
www.ruddsoundbites.typepad.com
September/October 2006
Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity launched a blog this spring where the center's faculty and affiliates keep up with news and opinion about diet, nutrition, agriculture, and weight bias. Recent topics have ranged from an appreciation of swiss chard to a thoughtful appraisal of a television beauty pageant for full-figured women.
www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon
July/August 2006
Since its establishment in 1996, the Law School's Avalon Project has posted hundreds of documents from the history of law and government, some of them annotated by Law School faculty. You can brush up on the Magna Carta, consult the Bretton Woods Agreements, or even peruse the minutiae of ancient Roman street maintenance.
www.wcsyale.org
May/June 2006
This year, three alumnae of the Women's Campaign School, a summer program hosted by the Law School, are testing their skills by running for Congress. The school, founded in 1993, brings budding female politicians together with veterans for a one-week non-partisan introduction to campaign skills. It's not easy. "They work 14-hour days," says the school's Martha Sterling-Golden. "We try to make it as much like the last two weeks of a campaign as possible."
www.yale.edu/bellydance
March/April 2006
Yale is known for its plethora of student groups--but 302 years went by before the founding of a Yale Bellydance Society. With 30 undergraduate and graduate school members, the group offers weekly classes and frequent performances on and around the campus.
www.thepocketpart.org
January/February 2006
Legal types know that a "pocket part" is a supplemental pamphlet tucked into a back pocket in a legal journal to update or comment on its contents. The Yale Law Journal is taking that idea online with a new site that features short versions of its articles, responses to the articles, and a discussion board.
http://edwards.yale.edu
November/December 2005
After 50 years of work, the 26 print volumes of the papers of Puritan theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards are nearly complete. Now the editors at Yale's Jonathan Edwards Center have an ambitious new project: to put every scrap of Edwards's writing online in a searchable database. The first fruits of their efforts can be seen on the center's website.
http://blogs.yale.edu/roller
September/October 2005
It's like traveling back in time to when only geeks knew how to navigate the Internet: in April, the university launched the pilot version of a tool that will host blogs for students, faculty, and staff. As of mid-August, though, the Yale University Weblogs site had not yet been publicized, and the early adopters were mostly IT types from around the campus. But not all the posts are about "OVID interface problems" or "Site e-mail aliases in Sakai": you can also turn up some nice pictures of a Labrador puppy named Willie and speculation about the plot of the new Dukes of Hazzard movie.
www.yale.edu/swahili
July/August 2005
The Kamusi Project, founded in 1995 by the Yale Program in African Languages, works on the theory that it takes a village -- a global village -- to edit a Swahili dictionary. Dozens of registered users from around the world contribute to the project's Internet Living Swahili Dictionary. The project's editors hope to create a print version in the future.
http://artgallery.yale.edu
May/June 2005
While its physical space is constrained by renovations, the Art Gallery has expanded its chunk of cyberspace with a redesigned website. Besides lots of images of items in the permanent collection, the site features an online magazine called What is Art, with contributions from curators, students, and professors.
www.grovestreetcemetery.org
March/April 2005
Yale's quietest neighbor, the Grove Street Cemetery, is justly admired and lovingly maintained. Its proprietors have taken similar care with its website, which includes photos, historical information, and a "chronicle of eminent people" buried there -- among them Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, and 14 Yale presidents.
www.harvardsucks.org
January/February 2005
Never mind what happened on the field: at the Harvard football game, Yale clearly won the battle of the bleachers. Disguised as the "Harvard Pep Squad" -- complete with red-painted faces and fake Harvard IDs -- Yale students passed out cards for credulous Crimson fans to hold up at a predetermined moment. These days, of course, not even an undergraduate prank can be without its own website. This one includes a video of the event, a rap song celebrating it, and commemorative posters for sale.
www.yale.edu/carillon
November/December 2004
The Guild of Carilloneurs is now taking requests. A form on the group's website allows visitors to suggest numbers they'd like to hear -- and includes a list of past requests, including Ravel's Bolero, "P.I.M.P." by 50 Cent, and one polite "unrequest" of "Danny Boy." And even if the bellringers don't want to play your song, you can play it yourself using the site's irresistable "virtual carillon" feature.
www.yaletoday.com
September/October 2004
Founded last year as an alternative to yalestation.org (the Yale College Council's official student portal), this frat/jock-flavored site offers party photos, message boards, and a representative slice of campus life . if the campus is Dartmouth in 1962. Most fun is the "Hot or Not?!" game. Like other similar sites, it lets you rank photos of people from 1 to 10, but things sometimes take a surreal turn. A photo of Grigory Rasputin recently had an average viewer rating of 7.24; a beer-can pyramid was judged slightly hotter at 7.45.
http://enso.pair.com/~mud/yalegraphicdesign
July/August 2004
MFA thesis exhibitions at the School of Art are painfully short-lived, but this year's graphic design graduates have given their work extended life on the web. Their site includes work from the fertile imaginations of 16 designers, including ancient myths told as tabloid headlines ("WINGS COLLAPSE, BOY DIES") and a design for a "homeland security blanket."
http://yalebulldogs.ocsn.com/trads/mascot.html
May/June 2004
Fifteen dogs have been crowned Handsome Dan since 1889, some with more successful reigns than others. (Number VIII lasted only two games. One historian reports that he "disliked crowds.") Read about all of them on the athletics department's web site.
www.museumofmoney.org
March/April 2004
School of Management professor Martin Shubik has a dream: to establish a Museum of Money and Financial Institutions in lower Manhattan that will "demystify economics" and "enhance the public's understanding of money." In the meantime, you can visit his virtual museum, which includes exhibits on topics ranging from the origins of economics in Mesopotamia to bimetallism in The Wizard of Oz. (The site was designed by Randall Hoyt and Mark Zurolo, art directors of this magazine.)
www.rankyourcollege.com
January/February 2004
A Duke University professor created this site in answer to the U.S. News and World Report college rankings. We're happy to report that Yale was recently ranked
number one according to his methodology. No, wait, nine. Um, make that eighty-two.
http://events.yale.edu/opa
November/December 2003
From Urology Grand Rounds to the Yale Cabaret, hundreds of upcoming campus happenings are searchable by date, category, or keyword at the university's new and improved calendar of events.
www.yale.edu/wff
September/October 2003
Created in 2000 to highlight
the role of women at Yale during the Tercentennial, the Women Faculty Forum
is a center for networking, advocacy, and scholarship. Its Web site includes
original research on the status of women at Yale and on specific concerns
such as child care.
www.yale.edu/oir
Summer 2003
George Pierson's Yale Book of Numbers (1983) was an exhaustive look
at university trends through statistics. The Office of Institutional Research
now has the book and a recent update available online. A sample: The proportion
of freshmen with Yale College alumni parents peaked in 1939 at 31.4 percent.
The all-time low, in 1994, was 9 percent.
http://wybc.com:8081/home.asp
May 2003
While WYBC-FM is scarcely recognizable as a Yale radio station anymore, its
AM sister station has emerged as an eclectic sandbox for students. See the
weekly schedule and other information on the station's Web site.
http://world.yale.edu
April 2003
In keeping with its growing global aspirations, in February the university
launched a site called "Yale and the World" that organizes Yale's online materials
regarding all things international.
www.yale.edu/collegetour
March 2003
We mentioned the Yale College online
campus tour a year ago, but it has since been beefed up with new content, most
notably an animated look at freshman year by cartoonist Mike Lee '93.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu
February 2003
YaleGlobal, the new online magazine of the Center for the Study of Globalization,
was launched this fall with a combination of original articles and links to
outside content.
www.yaleinsider.org
December 2002
YaleInsider, a Web site maintained by Yale union officials, now has a frequently
updated "blog" with links to news stories about Yale. Its tone is
one of consistent skepticism about the university, its investments, and its
labor policies, but they're good and fast at finding stories, and they provide
a useful balance to university PR.
www.louislunch.com
December 2002
Get the full story on the New Haven establishment that claims to have invented
the hamburger 102 years ago -- and a printable potato chip coupon for first-time
customers.
www.yale.edu/ism
November 2002
Need a Newberry Organ fix? The Institute of Sacred Music has audio files of
performances by its organ faculty, some of them on Woolsey Hall's great instrument.
Scroll down to "Hear an ISM performance" at the bottom of the page.
www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr02/pr0207.html
October 2002
A pair of Yale astronomy students working at the Kitt Peak National Observatory
caught a close encounter with an asteroid on film in August. Still images by
Brandy Heflin '03 and graduate student Bing Zhao have been turned into a movie
on the observatory's Web site.
www.lawmeme.org
Summer 2002
Subtitled "legal bricolage for a technological age," Lawmeme is a
lively, opinionated Weblog run by the Law School's Information Society Project.
The site, which follows ongoing law-and-technology issues, has had up to 300,000
hits a month since it debuted last summer.
www.yale.edu/whiffenpoofs
May 2002
Forgotten the words to the "Whiffenpoof Song?" You'll find the lyrics
to it and other Whiff favorites, along with audio clips and other information
about the "gentleman songsters," on the group's Web site.
www.library.yale.edu
April 2002
The University Library has given its home page a new look to make research
and other library business easier.
www.yale.edu/musicalinstruments
March 2002
Yale's Collection of Musical Instruments now has a gallery of its holdings
online -- from harpischords to a hurdy-gurdy.
www.library.yale.edu/gazette
February 2002
Having trouble reading the hieroglyphics inscribed over the entrance to Sterling
Memorial Library? The Library published a complete description of its rich
ornament and inscriptions in its Gazette when Sterling opened in 1931.
The text of that publication is now available (and searchable) online.
www.yale.edu/glc/tangledroots
December 2001
What do Irish Americans and African Americans have in common? The Gilder Lehrman
Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition asks just that question
on its "Tangled Roots" site, which features articles and documents exploring
the shared history of the two groups throughout American history.
http://info.med.yale.edu/library/exhibits/yalemed1
November 2001
Adapted from a Tercentennial exhibit at the Medical Historical Library, "Yale
and Medicine: 1701-1901," traces education in the healing arts at Yale even
before the founding of the School of Medicine in 1810.
www.yale.edu/dmca
October 2001
Technology and creativity intersect at Yale's Digital Media Center for the
Arts. The Center's Web site features glimpses of interactive media projects
developed with the Center's support.
www.octi.net
Summer 2001
Political science professor Don Green's game of skill, Octi (see "Details," Oct.
1999), just received a patent. You can learn more about the game and play it
online at this site.
www.yale.edu/chaplain/battell
May 2001
The University Chaplain's Web site includes a virtual tour of Battell Chapel,
with details that range from a list of organ stops to explanations of the words
and pictures on the building's windows and walls.
www.library.yale.edu/mssa/elms/elms.htm
April 2001
From John C. Calhoun to C. Vann Woodward, Yale has had deep and complex ties
with the American South. A 1996 exhibition at Sterling Memorial Library explored
those ties, but if you missed it, the online version is worth the trip for
those well versed in Yale and "y'all."
www.yalestation.org
March 2001
Its original content is still sparse, but the student-run site YaleStation.org
is trying to establish itself as the undergraduate's first stop on the Web.
With information on events, dining, organizations, and links to other information
sources, the site offers alumni a virtual trip back to campus.
www.yale.edu/yso
February 2001
In its 35 years of existence, the Yale Symphony Orchestra has gained a reputation
as one of the best undergraduate orchestras in the nation. The YSO's home page
includes clips from the Symphony's recordings, information on upcoming concerts,
a history of the group and its conductors, and news of alumni.
www.yale.edu/dining/options/menu.html
December 2000
Want to come back to your college dining hall for old time's sake? First, check
out the menu on the dining services Web site. The site includes nutrition information
on the offerings and advises vegetarians and people with food allergies as
to appropriate choices. But it seems there's no "brown sauce" to
be found.
www.doonesbury.com/strip/retro/yale/index.html
November 2000
Back when B.D.'s helmet still had a "Y" on it, the
Doonesbury characters were a scruffier lot residing in the pages of
the Yale Daily News. You can read the original 83 News strips
by Garry Trudeau '70, '73MFA at the Doonesbury Web site. References
to Dick Cavett, T-groups, and bursar-billable drugs will resonate for
those of a certain age.
http://members.aol.com/themafya/home.html
October 2000
"THeMAFYA" is a near-acronym for "Theater,
Music, Art, and Film Yale Alumni," and the group's Web site
helps young Yalies in New York keep up with each other's performances.
Even if you can't make the events, the site's celebrity alumni
and Yale movie trivia pages are a guilty pleasure.  |
