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.