Alumni lead university administration
With the appointment of art historian Mary Miller this past fall as dean of Yale College, alumni of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences now hold three of the four top positions in academic administration at Yale. Heading the list is President Richard C. Levin, who earned his PhD in economics from Yale in 1974. Levin is the longest-serving Ivy League president and one of the world's preeminent leaders in higher education. Prior to becoming president in 1993, he was dean of the Graduate School. A distinguished economist, he has been a member of the faculty since 1974.
Second in rank at the university is provost Peter Salovey ’86PhD, the Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology. He joined the faculty in 1986 after earning his PhD from Yale's Department of Psychology. Like President Levin before him, Salovey served as dean of the Graduate School, after which he was named dean of Yale College. He became provost in October 2008.
Miller, Sterling Professor of the History of Art, earned her doctorate at Yale in 1981 and immediately joined the faculty. She is a specialist on Mesoamerican art and is known for her scholarship on Mayan art and architecture.
The fourth top academic position at Yale is dean of the Graduate School, currently held by Jon Butler, the Howard R. Lamar Professor of American Studies and professor of history and religious studies. He is a proud alumnus of the University of Minnesota.
Just write it
Dissertation Boot Camp is an interruption-free writing marathon that takes place over a weekend. In October, 28 students sat at their laptops and worked for eight hours straight, two days in a row, with breaks to eat, stretch, and take care of nature. The boot camp was so successful that an abbreviated version was held in November, organized by McDougal Academic Writing fellows Stephanie Scarmo (epidemiology and public health) and Gina Sherriff (Spanish and Portuguese), with assistance from the Graduate School Writing Consultant Elena Kallestinova. The mini-boot camps ran for four hours at a time, almost every day of the month. At both the long- and short-form boot camps, cell phones, text messaging, chatting, and surfing the web were forbidden. Because they were held in HGS, there was no temptation to do the laundry, watch TV, or run errands. The only thing to do was sit, think, and write. "I was hoping for uninterrupted, dedicated, and supported time to work on my dissertation," said one boot camp participant, Anna-leila Williams (nursing). "I definitely made more progress than I would have on my own." Two full-scale dissertation boot camps are planned for spring term, and more mini-boot camps are under discussion.
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