Campus clips

Artifacts from Machu Picchu that have been at Yale for nearly 100 years will go on display this fall at a new museum and research center in Cusco, Peru. The formal opening of the UNSAAC–Yale International Center for the Study of Machu Picchu and Inca Culture, a joint venture of Yale and the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco, was held on October 6.

Yale’s endowment had its best year since 2007, returning 21.9 percent for a total value of $19.4 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30. Similar results were reported this year by Princeton (21.9 percent) and Harvard (21.4 percent). The university is still recovering from 2008–09, when the endowment’s value dropped from $22.9 billion to $16.3 billion.

Air Force ROTC is returning to campus in the fall of 2012, the university announced in September. Yale will host an ROTC detachment for its own students and those at nearby colleges. An agreement to bring back naval ROTC was announced in May.

The West Campus will be home to Yale’s Energy Sciences Institute, a new interdisciplinary research venue. The institute, funded in part by a $25 million gift from Thomas Steyer ’79 and Kathryn Taylor, will explore ways of turning sunlight into storable energy and will also look at near-term ways of making fossil-fuel technology cleaner.

Hurricane Irene caused flooding, widespread power outages, and property damage in Connecticut on August 28, but Yale reported only a few downed trees and isolated outages. Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it reached New Haven.

A ride to Boston for a buck? It’s now possible from New Haven. Megabus, which sells tickets online for its intercity bus service for as little as one dollar, began service to Hartford and Boston from the Elm City on August 17.