Campus Clips

The School of Public Health will consolidate some of its operations in a new building at 47 College Street, the university revealed at a community meeting in September. Besides providing new space for the School of Public Health, whose main building is across the street, the 525,000-square-foot structure will expand research space for the School of Medicine. The 1.9-acre site, which Yale owns, currently contains a smaller building with academic and administrative offices. Plans call for the project to be completed in 2032.

Yale Divinity School is negotiating with Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) on a plan for the seminary to affiliate with YDS. Under the plan announced in September, CTS would become the Chicago Theological Institute at Yale Divinity School, a hub for continuing education and online programs within YDS. CTS, founded by abolitionists in 1855, is a seminary affiliated with the United Church of Christ. It gave up the lease on its building in Chicago on September 1, and many of its students have completed their coursework online in recent years. The schools will work toward final approval of the plan over the next two years.   

Peace building will be the focus of a new academic center at the Jackson School for Global Affairs. The Center for Peace and the Global Good, which will launch in the spring, will be a hub for faculty, visiting scholars, fellows, and students who work in areas including human rights, global health, conflict resolution, and strategic nonviolence. Senior lecturer Bonnie Weir has been appointed executive director of the center.

The School of Nursing, which has focused in recent years on advanced training for nurses, will offer two new accelerated degree programs for students with no prior education in the field. Beginning next year, the school will offer a master of nursing program that prepares students to become registered nurses in 16 months and a three-year program that will allow students to earn a doctor of nursing practice degree. The programs are an effort to address the critical shortage of nurses nationwide.

A new podcast hosted by author and commentator David Brooks premiered in September. The Permanent Questions features conversations between Brooks and intellectual leaders about “the fundamental questions of the humanist tradition.” His first three guests were philosopher Meghan Sullivan, Yale astronomer Priyamvada Natarajan, and playwright/novelist Ayad Akhtar. The podcast is produced by The Atlantic magazine, where Brooks is a staff writer, in partnership with Yale, where he is a Presidential Senior Fellow at the Jackson School.