I.

Introduction

Yale University, institution of higher education, the third oldest in the United States, located in New Haven, Connecticut. One of eight traditional colleges that make up the Ivy League.

II.

History and Administration

Yale University was founded in 1701 in Branford, Connecticut; later that year it was chartered as the Collegiate School. In 1702 the school opened in Killingworth (Clinton), and the first Bachelor of Arts degree was granted in 1703. After being moved to Saybrook (now Old Saybrook), Connecticut, four years later, the school was relocated in New Haven in 1716. In 1718 it was renamed Yale College in honour of its benefactor, the English merchant Elihu Yale.

In the early 19th century, during the presidency of the American educator and clergyman Timothy Dwight, Yale established its first professional schools. Additional departments were founded under the American educator Timothy Dwight Woolsey, who served as president from 1846 to 1871; during this period Yale conferred, in 1861, the first doctorate to be given in the United States. The present name was officially adopted in 1887.

Yale University is governed by a 19-member corporation consisting of the president, a self-perpetuating board of ten trustees, six alumni fellows elected by the university's graduates, and the governor and lieutenant-governor of the state of Connecticut, who serve on an ex officio basis.

Famous Yale graduates include the colonial patriot Nathan Hale, the lexicographer; Noah Webster; the inventors Eli Whitney and Samuel Finley Breese Morse, and US presidents William Howard Taft and George H. Bush. President William Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and President Gerald R. Ford are among noted Yale Law School graduates.

III.

Undergraduate Activities

The oldest division of the university, Yale College, offers courses leading to Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees. Highly selective, the college accepts only about 19 per cent of all applicants, of whom about 56 per cent actually enrol.

All first-year students live in dormitories on the Old Campus; they later become affiliated with the residential colleges, where they subsequently live. Established in 1933 by the American industrialist Edward Stephen Harkness, the college-residence system was designed to give students, from the sophomore (second) year onwards, the educational and social benefits of living in relatively small groups within a larger university environment. Each of the 12 colleges accommodates approximately 250 students and has its own library, common rooms, and living and dining facilities. It is headed by a master and dean, both university faculty members, who live within the college enclave. A group of fellows, also associated with the university's staff, assists the master in administering the college's social, athletic, and intellectual activities.

One feature of undergraduate study at Yale is the Scholars of the House Program. Designed for independent study, it allows qualified seniors to enrol in or attend any Yale course and to work on faculty-supervised projects.

IV.

Graduate and Professional Divisions

The first professional school established at Yale was the School of Medicine in 1813; other graduate divisions are the schools of architecture, art, divinity, drama, engineering, forestry and environmental studies, law, music, and organization and management. Other professional divisions are the Institute of Occupational Medicine and Hygiene, the Labor and Management Center, and the Institute of Far Eastern Languages.

V.

Buildings and Publications

The university occupies more than 405 hectares (1,000 acres) in and around New Haven. The oldest existing structure is Connecticut Hall, on the Old Campus, built in 1752. Other prominent structures include Harkness Tower, housing a 54-bell carillon, one of the largest in the world; the Payne Whitney Gymnasium; and the School of Art and Architecture (the work of the American architect Paul Rudolph). Ezra Stiles College, Morse College, and the Yale Cooperative Corporation are other 20th-century buildings designed by an alumnus, the noted architect Eero Saarinen. Yale is also the site of several notable museums: the Yale University Art Gallery (the oldest college-affiliated art museum in the United States) and the Yale Center for British Art, both designed by the noted American architect Louis I. Kahn, and the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Home games of the Yale American football team are played at the Yale Bowl, which has a seating capacity of 75,000; the annual game with Yale's rival, Harvard University, always attracts a capacity crowd.

The libraries of Yale University contain more than nine million volumes, most of them housed in the Sterling Memorial Library, the main library. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by the American architect Gordon Bunshaft, holds many collections of ancient works and other papers and books of particular scholarly interest. Outstanding among the special collections housed in the Yale libraries are the William Robertson Coe collection of western Americana, the manuscript journals of the 18th-century Scottish biographer James Boswell, and the papers of the American writer Gertrude Stein.

University publications include the Yale Daily News, America's oldest college daily newspaper, founded in 1878; Yale Review, a quarterly literary journal; the Yale Literary Magazine; and the Yale Law Journal. Yale University Press, established in 1908, annually publishes a distinguished list of general and scholarly books.

Reviewed by: Yale University