Campus clips

View full image

A US quarter featuring Pauli Murray ’65JSD will be issued next year. Murray, a civil rights attorney, poet, and Episcopal priest, earned an advanced degree from Yale Law School; Pauli Murray College at Yale is named for her. The reverse of the coin (shown here), part of a series of quarters celebrating American women, will include Murray’s image and a quote from one of her poems.

A new job-training program  called BioLaunch started this spring in New Haven. Established by Yale biology professor Craig Crews, in partnership with the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology, BioLaunch trains local residents for jobs in the city’s biotech industry that don’t require a college degree. “The idea is to get people who aren’t necessarily in the system, give them the necessary job skills to be able to get a good-paying job, and start their path towards something larger within the industry,” says Crews, who has launched four companies in New Haven based on his research.

President Salovey announced in June the establishment of the Yale Committee for Art Recognizing Enslavement. The 14-person committee will consider commissioning works of art to address Yale’s historic relationship with slavery. Cochairing are Kymberly Pinder ’95PhD, dean of the School of Art; Adriane Jefferson, director of arts and cultural affairs for the City of New Haven; Michael Morand ’87, ’93MDiv, director for community engagement for the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library; and Charles Warner Jr., district behavior specialist for the New Haven Public Schools.
 
Geospatial data—information about the Earth’s geography—has been revolutionized by satellite imagery, cell phones, and computing advances. Yale’s new Center for Geospatial Solutions will put that data to use in addressing problems like climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Environment professor Karen Seto and economics professor Costas Arkolakis will be codirectors of the center.

The program in Judaic studies at Yale has changed its name to the Program in Jewish Studies. The program, which offers both an undergraduate major and graduate study, was once focused on Judaism as a religion. However, the program’s leaders wrote in their proposal for a name change that the current program “focuses not on texts and religion but on the broad experience of Jews in many arenas, on multiple continents, over three millennia.”