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Yale University

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Template:Infobox University2 Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest American institution of higher education (or fourth, if St. John's College, Annapolis is included) and one of the most prestigious and well-known in the world. The University has graduated numerous Nobel Prize laureates and U.S. Presidents, including William Clinton and George W. Bush. Its $12.7 billion academic endowment is the second largest of any university, behind only Harvard.

Yale is one of the eight members of the Ivy League. The rivalry between Yale and fellow Ivy League school Harvard University is long and storied; from academics to rowing to college football, their historic competition is similar to that of Oxford and Cambridge.

Yale's emphasis on undergraduate teaching is unusual among its peer research universities, and its undergraduates live in a unique residential college system. Its undergraduate endowment is the largest in the world, and Yale College has produced more Rhodes Scholars than any undergraduate institution save Harvard. Yale's graduate schools include strong drama and arts programs and the most selective law school in the United States.

History

File:Harkness tower fall.jpg
Harkness Tower

Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School" passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut and dated October 9, 1701, which was furthered by a meeting in Branford, Connecticut by a group of ten Congregationalist ministers, now known collectively as the Founders, who pooled their books to form the school's first library. The school first opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson in Killingworth, Connecticut. In 1716, the school moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where it remains to this day.

The college was originally known as the Collegiate School; it adopted the name Yale after Cotton Mather, a friend of the Collegiate School because of his feuds with Harvard, contacted Elihu Yale for help (at the behest of either Rector Andrew or Governor Saltonstall). Yale bestowed a generous gift of nine bales of goods (which the school sold, netting over £560, a substantial sum of money at the time), 417 books, and a portrait of King George I. Yale expanded gradually, establishing the Yale Medical School (1810), Yale Divinity School (1822), Yale Law School (1843), Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1847), the Yale School of Fine Arts (1869), and Yale School of Music (1894). In the early 20th century, Yale merged with the Sheffield Scientific School.

Schools and libraries

Yale College, which accepts fewer than 10 percent of its applicants, is one of the most selective colleges in the United States, behind only MIT, Princeton, Caltech according to The Atlantic Monthly. Yale is also noted for its law school, medical school, graduate school, and school of music. The Yale Divinity School was founded in the early 19th century by Congregationalists who felt that the Harvard University divinity school had become too liberal. The Yale Law School is the most selective in the United States, and has graduated U.S. presidents and Supreme Court justices.

Yale's library system is the second largest in North America with a total of almost 11 million volumes, after Harvard (15 million volumes). The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4 million volumes. The Beinecke Rare Book Library is housed in a marble building designed by Gordon Bunshaft, of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Its courtyard sculptures are by Isamu Noguchi. Other resources include the Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Yale Center for British Art.

Yale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference and the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and Yale is an NCAA Division I member. American football was largely created at Yale by player and coach Walter Camp, who evolved the rules of the game away from rugby and soccer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, which is one of the largest and most elaborate indoor athletic complexes in the world. The school mascot is "Handsome Dan", the famous Yale bulldog.

The Yale Daily News, the oldest daily college newspaper in the United States, has been a forum for opinion and controversy since 1878, and counts among its former chairmen Joseph Lieberman, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Strobe Talbot. The Yale Political Union is the oldest student political organization in the United States, and is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry, Gerald Ford, and George Pataki. Dwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 60 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Whiffenpoofs began the tradition of college a capella singing groups in 1909, and often perform on television and at the White House.

Heads of Collegiate School, Yale College, and Yale University

Rectors of Yale College   (birth-death)  (years as rector)
1  Rev. Abraham Pierson    (1641-1707)   (1701-1707) Collegiate School
2  Rev. Samuel Andrew      (1656-1738)   (1707-1719) (pro tempore)
3  Rev. Timothy Cutler     (1684-1765)   (1719-1726) 1718/9: renamed Yale College
4  Rev. Elisha William     (1694-1755)   (1726-1739)
5  Rev. Thomas Clap        (1703-1767)   (1740-1745)

Presidents of Yale College (birth-death) (years as president)
1  Rev. Thomas Clap        (1703-1767)   (1745-1766)
2  Rev. Naphtali Daggett   (1727-1780)   (1766-1777) (pro tempore)
3  Rev. Ezra Stiles        (1727-1795)   (1778-1795)
4  Timothy Dwight IV       (1752-1817)   (1795-1817)
5  Jeremiah Day            (1773-1867)   (1817-1846)
6  Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1801-1899)   (1846-1871)
7  Noah Porter III         (1811-1892)   (1871-1886)
8  Timothy Dwight V        (1828-1916)   (1886-1899) 1887: renamed Yale University
9  Arthur Twining Hadley   (1856-1930)   (1899-1921)
10 James Rowland Angell    (1869-1949)   (1921-1937)
11 Charles Seymour         (1885-1963)   (1937-1951)
12 Alfred Whitney Griswold (1906-1963)   (1951-1963)
13 Kingman Brewster, Jr.   (1919-1988)   (1963-1977)
14 Hanna Holborn Gray      (1930-    )   (1977-1977) (acting)
15 A. Bartlett Giamatti    (1938-1989)   (1977-1986)
16 Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.   (1942-    )   (1986-1992)
17 Howard R. Lamar         (1923-    )   (1992-1993) (acting)
18 Richard C. Levin        (1947-    )   (1993-    )

Residential colleges

Yale has a system of 12 residential colleges, instituted in the early 1930s through a grant by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness, who admired the college system at Oxford and Cambridge. Undergraduate students are accepted by the university as a whole, and assigned to residential colleges at random. (A special dispensation, though, is made for "legacy" students or students with siblings currently enrolled in Yale College; they may request to be placed in the same college or to be placed in a different college.) Each college has a carefully constructed support structure for students, including a Dean, Master, affiliated faculty, and resident Fellows. Each college also features distinctive architecture, secluded courtyards, and rich facilities ranging from libraries to squash courts to darkrooms. While each college at Yale offers its own seminars, social events, and Master's Teas with luminaries from the outside world, Yale students also take part in academic and social programs across the university, and all of Yale's 2,000 courses are open to undergraduates from any college.

Residential colleges are named for important figures or places in university history or notable alumni; they are deliberately not named for benefactors.

Residential Colleges of Yale University (official list):

File:Branford courtyard.jpg
Branford College Courtyard
  1. Berkeley College - named for the Rt. Rev. George Berkeley (though pronounced BERK-lee) (1685-1753), early funder of Yale.
  2. Branford College [1] - named for Branford, Connecticut, where Yale was briefly located.
  3. Calhoun College - named for John C. Calhoun, vice-president of the United States.
  4. Davenport College - named for Rev. John Davenport (occasionally called "D'port"), the founder of New Haven
  5. Ezra Stiles College - named for the Rev. Ezra Stiles, a president of Yale, and generally called simply "Stiles," despite an early-1990s crusade by then-master Traugott Lawler to preserve the use of the full name in everyday speech. Its buildings were designed by Eero Saarinen.
  6. Jonathan Edwards College - named for theologian and Yale president Jonathan Edwards (generally called "J.E.").
  7. Morse College - named for Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse Code. Also designed by Eero Saarinen.
  8. Pierson College - named for Yale's first rector, Abraham Pierson.
  9. Saybrook College [2] - named for Old Saybrook, Connecticut, the town in which Yale was founded.
  10. Silliman College - named for noted scientist and Yale professor Benjamin Silliman.
  11. Timothy Dwight College - named for the two Yale presidents of that name, Timothy Dwight IV and Timothy Dwight V (usually called "T.D.").
  12. Trumbull College - named for Jonathan Trumbull, governor of Connecticut.

Other campus buildings

Beinecke Rare Book Library
Beinecke Rare Book Library

Benefactors

Yale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are:

Famous alumni

Yale alumni are well represented in the ranks of U.S. presidents, including four of the last six: Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, William Clinton, and George W. Bush. Beginning with Peace Corps founder and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sargent Shriver in 1972, at least one Yale graduate has run on either the Democratic or Republican ticket in every presidential election for the past three decades, and both the Democratic and Republican candidates for the 2004 presidential election were Yale graduates: George W. Bush and John Kerry. In the 2004 Democratic primaries, Joe Lieberman and Howard Dean were also Yale graduates.

Nobel laureates

Technology & innovation

Founders, entrepreneurs, & CEO's

Academics

Presidents & Vice Presidents of the United States

Law & politics

History, literature, art & music

Athletics

Film

Television

Fictional

(* attended but did not graduate from Yale)

Famous professors

Professors who are also Yale alumni are listed in italics.

Famous on-campus tragedies

Yale's high public profile led to three on-campus bombings. On May 1, 1970, an explosive device was detonated in the Ingalls Rink during events related to the trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale. On June 24, 1993, computer science professor David Gelernter was injured in his office on Hillhouse Avenue by a bomb sent by serial killer and Harvard graduate Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber. On May 21, 2003, an explosive device went off at the Yale Law School, damaging two classrooms.

See also

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