The College
A laboratory for leadership
Yale College is thriving, perhaps as never before. Our faculty, distinguished for its scholarship, remains deeply committed to undergraduate education. Our students enjoy incomparable residential facilities, and they receive from their deans and masters the kind of personal attention normally found only in small colleges. The result is a student body that is intensely serious about the academic enterprise, even as it is engaged with equal intensity in an almost unimaginable array of student activities—from athletics to debate to building and racing a solar-powered car, from tutoring school children to assisting in soup kitchens, from protest to electoral politics to the Yale Entrepreneurial Society, from a cappella singing to the exceptional Yale Symphony Orchestra, from filmmaking to musical comedy and opera. With more than 250 student organizations, Yale College is a virtual laboratory for leadership.
Enriching the undergraduate curriculum
Recognizing that excellence is no excuse for complacency, we undertook a comprehensive review of the Yale College curriculum at the time of our Tercentennial. The Committee on Yale College Education, chaired by the former Dean of Yale College, Richard Brodhead, recommended, among other things, substantial improvements in the teaching of science and quantitative reasoning, greater involvement of Yale’s professional schools in undergraduate teaching, especially in the arts, and a major commitment to increasing the opportunities for students to study and work abroad. A principal objective of the Yale Tomorrow campaign is to provide permanent funding to support these initiatives.
Educating leaders for a science -rich world
To serve as responsible citizens and leaders for the twenty-first century, our students need to become sufficiently familiar with the basic scientific principles and methods that will enable them to form judgments about the quality of argument and evidence in the many scientific disputes that affect public life. We intend to provide enhanced support for pedagogy in science and quantitative reasoning and to develop a variety of courses that meet this need more satisfactorily than comprehensive introductory courses, which are tailored to serve those who intend to continue in science.
Connecting the College and the arts
The arts play a central role in the life of Yale College, but the opportunities for formal study are limited. To satisfy student demand for courses in studio art, photography, filmmaking, theatrical and musical performance, and related fields, we need to create new faculty positions in the Schools of Art, Drama, and Music, as well as in Theater Studies and Film Studies.
Making overseas experiences possible for all
As nations become more interdependent and careers become more global in character, we need to ensure that every Yale College student has an opportunity to study or work abroad during his or her four years of enrollment. To this end, we are expanding the number of approved junior-year-abroad programs, and creating one of our own in Beijing. Recognizing that many Yale students would prefer to spend summers abroad, we have created new summer school courses abroad taught by Yale faculty, as well as hundreds of new work internships around the globe. We have also committed to providing stipends and waiving the summer earnings requirement for those students on financial aid who study or take unpaid internships abroad.
Opening the doors of opportunity
Our commitment to providing full need-based financial aid for all admitted students—extended initially to U.S. citizens and permanent residents in 1966 and subsequently to international students in 2001 —resonates with the best traditions of this land of opportunity. Beginning in 2009, we expect to supply need-based financial aid to nearly half of all undergraduates, under a new formula that cuts the average cost of sending a student to Yale by 50 percent. Parents with annual incomes below $60,000 will not have to contribute to their children's college education. We seek additional financial aid endowment to support this new commitment.
Investing in exceptional faculty
In the end, maintaining the unique quality of a Yale College education requires us to attract and retain a faculty of extraordinary talent and accomplishment. Endowed professorships and funds to support research will further our efforts to preserve our historic excellence in the humanities and social sciences and to add to the distinction of our faculty in science and engineering.
