Yale Alumni Magazine - Graduate & Professional Edition

Graduate and Professional School Edition

		David vs. Goliath David Gelernter is a computer scientist who doesn't like computers. So he's launched a quest to rebuild everybody's desktop.

		How Yale Got its Groove Back In 1993, President Rick Levin inherited a budget crisis and a campus beset by malaise. Two veteran Yale watchers assess his response.

		The Land That Knew Hell For those who survived the massacres in East Timor, justice depends on historical truth. Genocide researcher Ben Kiernan is helping them find it.

		This is Your Brain in Tune Somewhere, hidden in the synapses, are the connections that give one person in ten thousand the mysterious ability called perfect pitch. Neurobiologist Dave Ross wants to find them.

		The Second Coming of the Divinity School Why should a twenty-first-century research university spend millions refurbishing a seminary? Professors, students, and alumni offer twelve views on God and man at Yale.

		The Books That Made the Writers Introduction by Tom Wolfe Jr. '57PhD Summer 2003 The "man in white" and other alumni authors mine their library shelves to reveal why you are what you read.


		The Golden Hours of the Romanovs by Tim Townsend Summer 2003 In 1920, a Russian aristocrat fled the country with hundreds of photographs, now at the Beinecke, of the tsar and his family.


		Solid State by Bruce Fellman Summer 2003 Alumni assembly: Engineers at work -- cleaner flames, smarter robots, and better ways to have your head examined.


		The Gallery Goes Home by Mark Alden Branch May 2003 This summer, the Art Gallery begins a decade-long, $94 million renovation and expansion plan that involves reclaiming the Old Gallery and Street Hall.


		It's All Political by James McElroy '95 May 2003 While staffing up to meet an ever-growing undergraduate demand for its courses, the political science department is taking an ecumenical approach to the schism between empiricists and philosophers in the field.


		Senior Society by Jennifer Kaylin May 2003 What becomes of a professor once the word "emeritus" is pinned to the title? A continued and vital academic life for emeriti is the goal of the Henry Koerner Center. And as four profiles show, Koerner fellows are not exactly retiring types.

Back in the Fold
by Mark Alden Branch
April 2003
In 1997, Yale declined a gift for gay and lesbian studies from firebrand author-activist Larry Kramer '57, and it seemed unlikely that he would ever have anything good to say about his alma mater. But time -- and a gift from Kramer's brother -- healed a number of wounds.


		Beyond the Building by Jennifer Kaylin April 2003 When a fire destroyed a factory in downtown Ansonia, Connecticut, the town enlisted Yale's Urban Design Workshop to help decide how to rebuild. Since 1993, this arm of the School of Architecture has offered advice to cities and towns all over Connecticut.


		A Neighborhood for Cures by Marc Wortman March 2003 The Medical School's Congress Avenue Building, the largest structure built by Yale in since the 1930s, was designed to bring research and teaching into the 21st century.


		Training the Next Leaders by Bruce Fellman March 2003 When Paul Kennedy, John Gaddis, and Charles Hill looked at their students, they saw the next generation of top diplomats, executives, military officers, and maybe even a U.S. president. In a course on "grand strategy," the professors offered the "big picture" principles that can help shape future leaders.


		This is the Way the World Ends by Bruce Fellman February 2003 With help from T.S. Eliot and Albert Einstein, Yale physicists and astronomers joined forces to probe black holes for clues about the age and ultimate fate of the universe.


		Rediscovering Machu Picchu by Bruce Fellman December 2002 In 1911, Hiram Bingham III, a Yale professor of Latin American history, stunned the world with his announcement that he'd located the "lost city of the Incas." But Machu Picchu was neither lost nor was it a city. Two scientists at the Peabody Museum of Natural History put together an exhibit that explained what Bingham actually found.


		Secrets of the Temple by Mark Alden Branch November 2002 A team of artists and scholars led by art historian Mary Miller reconstructed the most important murals in Maya art -- 1,200 years after they were painted.


		Inside Autism by Bruce Fellman November 2002 People with autism live in their own isolated worlds. Child Study Center clinicians and research scientists alike studied how to make contact -- and how to make a difference.


		The Trouble with Frogs by Bruce Fellman October 2002 Ecologist David Skelly attempted to solve a puzzle: the appearance of amphibians with abnormal limbs. The answer could shed light on the mystery of human disease.


		Making Music Matter Summer 2002 by Peter Hawes How does a classical musician get to Carnegie Hall? The answer involves far more than "practice, practice, practice." Under the leadership of Dean (and pianist) Robert S. Blocker, the Yale School of Music found a combination of innovative and traditional ways to train students to become virtuoso perormers, composers, and conductors -- and employable.


		Rebuilding Engineering by Bruce Fellman April 2002 Engineering celebrated its 150th anniversary at the university with a new dean, new programs and faculty, research discoveries, and an initiative to attract more students. After years of instability, engineering at Yale appeared to have a secure future.


		Business with a Twist by Bruce Fellman March 2002 When international banker and statesman Jeffrey Garten took command at the beleaguered School of Management in 1996, there were doubts about its viability. As he began his second term as dean, SOM's simultaneously humanistic and hard-edged approach to business seemed made for the times. The rankings agreed.


		A New Dean Takes the Stage by Peter Hawes March 2002 The School of Drama and its Repertory Theatre have been the training ground for some of the nation's premier practitioners of the dramatic arts. Its newest leader is James Bundy, a 1995 Drama School graduate with lengthy family ties to Yale, a long artistic career, and a vision for keeping theater at center stage.


		The Slavery Legacy by Mark Alden Branch February 2002 The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition tried to demonstrate how central slavery was to America's beginnings. A controversial recent report on Yale's ties to slavery helped prove the point.


		Belief, Bricks, and Beyond by Matthew Holden Lewis November 2001 The Yale Divinity School had its share of woes, but a new dean and the implementation of a plan to rebuild YDS both physically and academically created a positive stir.


		States of a Union by Bruce Fellman October 2001 Since 1991, a group of graduate students has led a determined movement to create a union. This effort has been strongly opposed by an administration that sees graduate student unionization as anathema. The result is a struggle over values as labor issues and higher education policies collide.


		Sticking with China by Melinda Tuhus Summer 2001 Yale's ties to China go back nearly 350 years, and as President Levin's trip there demonstrated, the link has held through wars, revolution, and diplomatic upheavals like the one involving a U.S. spy plane.


		New Haven: Biotech City? by Bruce Fellman May 2001 The demise of the gun factories in the 1970s left New Haven's local economy in tatters. But a shift in Yale's attitutde towards the commercialization of research discoveries resulted in a bevy of upstart biotechnology companies -- and hope for the future.


		Bytes, Copyright, and Info-Survival by Bruce Fellman February 2001 The information revolution promised new forms of freedom, but it also presented a threat of a digital dictatorship.


		The Birthplace of the ABC's by Bruce Fellman December 2000 In the late 1980s, when Yale Egyptologists John and Debby Darnell started exploring the western desert in the land of the pharaohs, conventional wisdom suggested they'd find nothing of interest. Conventional wisdom turned out to be wrong.


		The Art School on its Own by Mark Alden Branch December 2000 Free from its cramped quarters in the Art & Architecture Building, the School of Art turned to the question of how art is to be made in the digital age.


		Powerful Persuader by Bruce Fellman November 2000 Tear gas and violence were in the New Haven air in the spring of 1970 when Kurt Schmoke '71 helped lead the campus through tumultuous times. Thirty years later, Schmoke remained a leader -- the first black man to serve as mayor of Baltimore, and the first black Senior Fellow of the Yale Corporation.


		A Century of Drama at Yale October 2000 In the university's Tercentennial year, the Dramat turned 100 and the School of Drama turned 75. The history of both organizations was revealed in a presentation of posters that highlighted graphic design and amateur theater.


		Framing the Future by Mark Alden Branch Summer 2000 Yale has spent the last decade pouring money into the renovation of its buildings, but figuring out how those buildings go together is a problem of another sort. After an exhaustive three-year study of the campus, a new "framework for campus planning" offers advice on how to accentuate the positive.


		Serious About Sciences by Bruce Fellman May 2000 The announcements over the winter that Yale will invest one billion dollars over the next 20 years in new and improved laboratory and teaching facilities for the sciences signal the university's commitment to remain at the forefront of research and education.


		What's in a Name? by Bruce Fellman April 2000 In 1735, a Swedish botanist named Linnaeus developed the method that scientists still use to classify plants, animals, and other organisms. A group of Linnaeus's successors, led by two Yale researchers, now believe that they have come up with a better way to catalog creation.

		A Life in History by Howard Lamar April 2000 History professor C. Vann Woodward, who died in December, helped reshape the way Americans look at the South. A colleague and former president of the university remembers Woodward's contributions to Yale and the nat

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