More news of Yale people

Michael Marsland

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Remembered

Thomas Ogletree (left), who was dean of the Divinity School from 1990 to 1996 and served on the school’s faculty until 2009, died on January 4 in Branford, Connecticut. He was 89 years old. An ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, Ogletree had been a pastor before becoming a professor at Vanderbilt. He was dean of the theological school at Drew University before being appointed to the Yale deanship. Ogletree taught and wrote mainly about Christian ethics. In 2012, he made national news when he officiated at his son’s same-sex marriage in violation of his denomination’s rules.

Stanley Flink ’45W, a journalist who worked in communications at Yale in the 1970s and later taught a journalism course in Yale College, died in North Branford, Connecticut, on December 31. He was 98 years old. Flink, whose time at Yale was interrupted by service in the US Army in World War II, graduated in 1948. He worked for Life magazine, the NBC morning news show Today, and CBS News, among others, before returning to Yale as director of alumni communications and public information, a post he held from 1973 to 1979. He was editor pro tem of the Yale Alumni Magazine from 1977 to 1979. From 2012 until his death, Flink wrote the alumni notes for the Class of ’45W for the magazine. He was a tireless ambassador for his unusual class, which had entered Yale on an accelerated wartime plan in the summer of 1942 and was scheduled for graduation alongside the Class of 1945. Flink insisted that the “W”—for “war”—never be omitted in university communications about his class. He was awarded the Yale Medal in 1994.

Appointed

Megan Ranney will become the new dean of the School of Public Health on July 1. Ranney, a public health researcher whose work has focused on community-driven approaches to problems such as gun violence, COVID-19, and behavioral health problems, is currently deputy dean of Brown’s School of Public Health. She earned her MD at Columbia and her master of public health at Brown. She will succeed Melinda Pettigrew, who has served as interim dean since Sten Vermund stepped down last July.

Renee Kopkowski has been appointed vice president for communications at Yale. Since 2019, Kopkowski has been vice president for institute communications at Georgia Tech. She has also worked in the corporate sector, as vice president for corporate affairs at Mars Chocolate North America and as senior director of global external communications for Mars, Inc. She was also president and partner in the Atlanta consulting firm strat-igence, Inc.

Honored

Seven Yale students and recent graduates will study abroad next year on Marshall and Schwarzman Scholarships. Among the 40 Americans selected for Marshall Scholarships for study in the United Kingdom are Michael Chen ’23, Bayan Galal ’23, and Alex Hu ’23. Among the 151 Schwarzman Scholars selected from around the world, who will study at Tsinghua University in Beijing, are Mathis Bitton ’23, Jonas Kavaliauskas ’21, Putt Punyagupta ’23, and Namra Zufiqar ’21.