The College
Reinventing Education for Tomorrow
Today, Yale College is setting out to redefine and reinvent undergraduate education. Our graduates, now and in the future, bear a great responsibility as they further Yale’s traditions of creativity and leadership, of originality and independent thinking. They will serve the public and private sectors, in each case pursuing innovation and progress. It is our responsibility to prepare them for these roles in the best way possible.
To equip tomorrow’s leaders with the skills and knowledge they need, we will work to develop original ways to ensure a solid foundation in science and quantitative reasoning, writing, the arts and humanities, foreign languages, and experiencing other cultures and nations. The reworking of our curriculum goes hand in hand with a fresh assessment of student life—from the financial burdens that encumber students, to a consideration of the extracurriculum and the myriad ways in which the total Yale experience is a complement to the classroom education received during four years under our care. Conscious of the world transforming itself around us, we must continue to provide a learning environment that responds to change while fostering excellence in the academic and social development of every student.
Fortifying financial resources for students
More than forty years ago, Yale was the first among its peers to admit students regardless of financial need. Today, we hold fast to this exceptional commitment—and we must take steps to prepare for tomorrow. Students continue applying to Yale in record numbers each year, demonstrating the value that families place on a Yale education, and our financial aid programs should continue to ensure that Yale is broadly accessible to all outstanding applicants.
By increasing student financial support, we will encourage the most promising students to attend Yale. We will also build a student body that is economically diverse, in keeping with the growing diversity our graduates will encounter wherever they choose to live and work around the globe. Our efforts to improve aid for international students will also contribute to the breadth and depth of our academic community. In addition, the support and endowment of our International Summer Award program will open to many students the otherwise unattainable opportunity to spend a summer learning or working abroad.
Placing science and quantitative reasoning at the core
In tomorrow’s society, a grounding in science and the ability to make and understand arguments based on quantitative analysis will not be optional skills. Participation in crucial social and political debates, such as today’s battles over stem cell research and cloning, will require a deep appreciation of science and quantitative data. As future leaders, Yale College graduates need to be informed about and able to think critically about these kinds of issues.
We now require all of our undergraduate students to take two courses each in quantitative reasoning and the natural sciences. We have added—and will continue to add—courses in these disciplines that have no prerequisites and appeal more strongly to students not contemplating scientific careers. These include our seminar on China’s Environmental Issues and our Math, Music, and Mind course, in which students use mathematical models to understand music. We will also develop new and enhanced courses focused on health issues domestically and globally in response to heightened student interest.
Expansion of our undergraduate research programs will ensure that students studying science and engineering as well as other fields have the opportunity to conduct hands-on research, working closely with a faculty member—during term time or through summer research fellowships. We will also strengthen tutoring programs in these disciplines, to support increased student enrollment in our sciences and quantitative reasoning courses. To meet these needs and to ensure that the viability of core programs such as Perspectives in Science and STARS is not completely dependent on year-to-year funding, we hope to build significant endowment in support of undergraduate science education and research opportunities.
To encompass and focus all of these efforts, our new Science and Quantitative Reasoning Center will serve as a learning space for innovative teaching and a welcoming home for student support programs and pedagogical innovation. An interim Center is already operational; we seek additional support to create a vibrant permanent Center to serve the needs of science education.
Augmenting initiatives that cross the curriculum
One of the distinctive elements of a Yale College education is our respect for the spirit of inquiry and exploration. We encourage students to discover their own passions—for example, by making it possible for them to choose among a wide variety of diverse courses to satisfy new writing and foreign language requirements. This cross-disciplinary approach is fundamental to the development of young men and women who will successfully exercise their skills in multiple contexts once they leave here.
Currently, Yale undergraduates hone their writing skills in any of the 170 approved courses we offer, spanning more than twenty departments and ranging in subject from philosophy or political science to biomedical engineering. The development of additional writing-intensive courses in science and social science will extend the scope of this initiative. We will also strengthen the Yale College Writing Center in order to provide our student writers with more extensive in-person and online resources. The enhanced Center will also oversee a new Journalism Initiative, which will sponsor advanced journalism courses in the Department of English, organize and promote a series of writers’ visits, and provide summer support for students in the College who accept low-paying or unpaid internships at newspapers and other publications.
Our foreign language requirement reflects our goal that Yale College graduates achieve at least an intermediate level of a foreign language, and those who have reached it should travel a further distance. Over fifty languages are currently taught here, providing ample opportunities for language immersion. The Center for Language Study hosts discussion groups and seminars, offers tutoring, and helps departments develop courses—but its efforts must expand. To educate students to be world communicators, we will further develop Language Across the Curriculum—an initiative that supports the addition of language-specific sections to existing courses. We will also seek new faculty and build an innovation fund to support curriculum revision and innovation in language instruction.
To serve as leaders in a global society, Yale students must be able to enter as proficient professionals into profoundly different cultural settings and communicate across cultural lines. They must also be able to harness the strength of their words and write with clarity and power regardless of the subject. Our cross-curriculum initiatives will promote leadership achievement by helping students pursue fundamental skills within contexts that are relevant to today’s world—and tomorrow’s.
Internationalizing the education experience
As technology and innovation gather the continents of our planet into a global neighborhood, tomorrow’s leaders need to develop a true international perspective and a deeper understanding of other cultures and viewpoints. Yale College students will achieve this through more extensive experiences abroad, a richer array of internationally oriented courses, and a campus that enables them to expand their global horizons.
Our most ambitious goal is to ensure that every Yale College student has a study or work experience abroad at least once during his or her undergraduate years, regardless of financial circumstances or the constraints of the particular major. New initiatives—including an undergraduate program at Peking University, more summer internship programs, and improved financial aid for students going abroad—are creating new opportunities for Yale students to deepen their leadership experience through projects such as researching the incidence of cleft lip and palate in Ecuador, building diverse communities in Israel, and assisting asylum seekers in Denmark. But we must do more if we are to realize our objectives.
As we bring outstanding students to Yale from all over the world, we increase the caliber of Yale’s student body and help every student develop broader communication and cooperation skills—undeniably necessary in our global community—by enabling them to live and work alongside people from very different backgrounds. New funds will help us provide a more welcoming experience for our international students—including more financial aid, a stronger English as a Second Language program, a new volunteer community service program specifically for students from abroad, and further initiatives at our International Center for Students and Scholars.
Building on our excellence in the arts and humanities
An historic source of Yale College’s attraction is that it offers a distinguished liberal arts education at the same time that it is situated within a prominent research university and surrounded by renowned professional schools in the arts. We believe that the analysis of creative works and the actual practice of the visual and performing arts are fundamental components of this education—made possible at Yale College by our proximity to the University’s strong graduate programs in music, visual arts, architecture, and drama, as well as its rich galleries and vast collections. This extraordinary relationship to the arts—which sets Yale apart—must be carried forward into the future so that we can continue to offer the arts opportunities that undergraduates come to Yale to experience.
Our leadership in the arts enhances educational opportunities for Yale College students majoring in the arts—but also for students who may never be professional artists yet who recognize the value of art in our society. We will leverage our excellent professional schools and centers by pursuing more collaboration with them and by building better artistic facilities—from drafting rooms to studios to theaters—located close to these schools. In addition, we will appoint faculty in the arts with special joint appointments that will allow them to teach in our undergraduate as well as our graduate programs. We will expand our core offerings in arts practice, including digital art, film, and video, and we will support the development of new courses that will take better advantage of the astonishing collections housed within Yale’s libraries, galleries, and museums.
Fostering leadership and community beyond the classroom
The process of learning cannot be encompassed by any classroom, and tomorrow’s leaders will need more than an outstanding liberal arts education. They will need to develop independence, entrepreneurial spirit, and the ability to seek resources and solve problems on their own.
College students in their freshman year often feel dislocated and overwhelmed, and they face an uphill battle in terms of confidence and independence. At Yale, we will give them special attention and support during this transition to adulthood. We will leverage our new Office of Freshman Affairs by augmenting our advising services and investing more time and energy in identifying students who are having a difficult time adjusting to college.
Our new Freshman Seminar Program helps students connect with their peers and with senior faculty members who become trusted advisers. Recent seminar topics have ranged from Spanish literature to African American history to modern Islam; and from global health to nanoscience to biomedical engineering. Many students report that their freshman seminars have been one of their best experiences at Yale. We will expand this program by adding more courses, easing the financial burdens on participating departments, and funding course enhancements and field trips.
To reinforce the sense of community on campus, we will continue our residential college renovation program. Yale’s residential college system—increasingly emulated by other universities—allows students to enjoy the cohesiveness and intimacy of a small school without sacrificing the cultural and scholarly resources of the University as a whole. Our ongoing renovation of the residential colleges will ensure that our students have a comfortable living environment that reflects today’s lifestyles and offers modern amenities, while maintaining the close-knit communities of friends, faculty members, and administrators that make the residential colleges a hallmark of the Yale College experience.
Known for its extracurricular vitality, Yale College attracts many students who wish to be a part of that life and are eager to explore their own potential. To encourage this contagious culture of energy and creativity, we will upgrade and refurbish the outdated spaces that house student organizations, including our cultural centers. We will also provide better technical support for theater projects and stabilize funding for the underendowed extracurricular organizations that give us drama, opera, dance, the music of the Concert Band and the Symphony, and other opportunities for student expression and leadership.
