Campus clips

Researchers from different scientific disciplines will collaborate at Yale's new Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, which is being launched this year with a gift from Dr. Raymond Sackler and his wife Beverly. (The amount of the gift was not disclosed.) The institute will support visiting scholars, graduate fellowships, and other projects among some 20 to 25 faculty in existing departments whose research interests overlap.

Pedestrian safety improvements are being made to intersections around the medical school and Yale-New Haven Hospital in response to the death of medical student Mila Rainof ’08MD last spring. Crosswalks have been repainted, and curbs will be adjusted and signals upgraded.

The Yale College Council will ask the college's Committee on Majors to consider recognizing academic minors for undergraduates. Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford all offer some sort of official recognition of secondary fields of study. The YCC says 86 percent of students surveyed favor the proposal, but some faculty are wary. Economics professor Benjamin Polak told the Yale Daily News he feared such a program could lead to "credential inflation."

Writers and composers in musical theater will have a new outlet at Yale beginning this summer. The schools of drama and music are working together to launch the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, which will host a two-week summer workshop to help three writers or teams develop new shows.

Casino Night in Morse and Ezra Stiles colleges, long a favorite party among students, is no more.  This year's party had to be remade on a day's notice, without the traditional casino games, when the colleges' masters were informed that a 2003 law makes events with such games illegal, even if no money changes hands.