McDougal Center celebrates ten years
Over the past decade the McDougal Graduate Student
Center, dedicated in 1998, has reflected and influenced the changing nature of
graduate education at Yale.
For generations, the Graduate School was a loose
confederation of academic departments and programs, with offices in the Hall of
Graduate Studies for admissions, financial aid, registration, and dossier
services, overseen by a dean and associate deans. There were no school-wide
receptions, guest lectures, happy hours, programs for parents and children,
student-run concerts, or Blue Dog Cafe. The offices of Graduate Career Services
(GCS), the Graduate Teaching Center (GTC), Diversity and Equal Opportunity
(ODEO), and Student Life didn't exist. A dedicated group of students ran
Working at Teaching, a self-help program for teaching fellows, but there was no
professional staff to guide them. There were no McDougal Fellows, and the
social, cultural, and pre-professional programs they now run had yet to be
invented. But just over ten years ago the Graduate School began to expand its
mission and broaden the range of services it provided. One of the most
significant steps in this process was the creation of the McDougal Graduate
Student Center, funded by Alfred McDougal ’53BA and his wife, Nancy Lauter.
Today, the McDougal Center offers an array of programs
and services organized by 50 student fellows and 10 staff members. Its hub is
the Common Room, which features carved wooden paneling, stained glass windows,
a stone fireplace, and deep leather chairs, plus wi-fi, e-mail kiosks, and a
first-rate coffee shop. The offices of the GTC, GCS, ODEO, and Student Life,
located in the student services corridor, keep the McDougal Center humming with
activity. The program room, with equipment for computer-based presentation, is
often booked for workshops and talks. Downstairs are meeting rooms, a computer
cluster, the Graduate Student Assembly office, and additional work areas for
the Fellows. The Graduate Writing Center will move into the McDougal Center
over the summer.
Linguist joins writing program
Elena Kallestinova, a linguist with a PhD from the
University of Iowa, has joined the Graduate School as coordinator of the
Graduate Writing Center. Her role is to support academic writing at both the
instructional and programmatic levels, working directly with departments to
meet students' needs. Kallestinova oversees graduate-student peer writing
tutors, works with the McDougal Center academic writing fellows, and runs
programs through the McDougal Center. She offered the first set of workshops
starting in June, on writing successful articles in the sciences. Prior to
joining the Graduate School, Kallestinova was a research affiliate at the Yale
Child Study Center. She has taught linguistics and ESL as well as academic
writing for over ten years, both in Iowa and in her native Moscow.
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