School Notes: Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
May/June 2020

COVID-19 response cancellations

Due to COVID-19 response measures in the interest of safety, a number of long-anticipated events were removed from the spring 2020 calendar. Commencement, Three-Minute Thesis, recruitment visits, and dean’s receptions in Boston and New York were all canceled or postponed until further notice. The April GSAA Board meeting occurred online. 

Silver linings

While the effects of the pandemic on graduate education will be deep and far-reaching, for students there have been bright spots. The transition to online instruction was quite smooth, and we hear reports that pedagogical innovations are emerging from the creativity of teaching fellows and faculty. TFs in the sciences, for example, are devising ways to present and record experiments for students to see online and write lab reports. While not the same as conducting an experiment in person, they are combining digital and experiential ways of engaging with a concept or process that we might not have considered under ordinary circumstances. 

We are proud to see Yale students stepping up to help others in wonderful ways. When COVID-19 first broke out in Wuhan, China, Yale graduate students got together and raised money to purchase protective equipment for local medical practitioners. The situation in Wuhan has since improved, but the students still had more than 50 cases of gowns that they have now donated to Yale New Haven Hospital.

A new professional fellowship

The GSAS Professional Experience Fellowship is an exciting new initiative by the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences that offers PhD students the opportunity to work on meaningful projects in administrative offices across the university. This program is designed to expand opportunities for doctoral students to strengthen their professional skill set and broaden their career exposure by working with experienced administrators outside of their academic programs. In turn, by hosting a fellow, offices across Yale can take advantage of the diverse array of skills that PhD students offer to advance their programming and projects.