School Notes: Yale College
March/April 2019

Dean returns to the classroom

Dean Marvin Chun—Richard M. Colgate Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science—has returned to the classroom to teach Introduction to Psychology, a popular lecture course in which 500 students have enrolled this semester. Guest lecturers will include Professor Laurie Santos, who taught Psychology and the Good Life last semester, and President Peter Salovey, who will speak on the subject of love. Professor Chun’s research focuses on brain imaging and behavioral methods to study attention, memory, learning, and perception.

College offers data science certificate

The Yale College faculty has approved a new data science certificate for students in Yale College. The certificate, offered by the Department of Statistics and Data Science, appears on the transcript and is designed to promote the use of data analysis, recognize excellence in statistics and data analysis beyond the minimum QR requirement, and highlight data science study as an elective concentration. The certificate is available to members of the class of 2020 and beyond.

New leadership at NACC

A search has begun for a new director of the Native American Cultural Center. Dean Chun announced in January that the NACC’s director, Dean Kelly Fayard, had accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Denver beginning in the fall of 2019. Dean Chun praised Dean Fayardfor her strong leadership at the NACC, and for leading the Mellon Mays fellowship, designed to increase the number of minority students pursuing PhDs and subsequent careers in academia in selected core fields in the arts and sciences. Professor Ned Blackhawk will serve as the search committee’s faculty chair and Dean Burgie Howard as the executive chair.