Campus clips

Master's degrees become more popular in a tough job market, so it's perhaps no surprise that the Graduate School saw a 19 percent rise in applications to its master's programs this year. The sharpest increases were in computer science (45 percent), engineering (41 percent), and statistics (28 percent). Applications to PhD programs rose 1.9 percent.

The CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure will speak at the School of Public Health's graduation ceremony in May. Nancy Brinker was invited before the recent controversy over the Komen foundation's decision (which was quickly reversed) to stop funding breast-cancer screenings through Planned Parenthood. Dean Paul Cleary said in a statement that he heard from "numerous faculty, students, staff, alumni, and other concerned citizens" before reaffirming the invitation.

Engineering students will have a highly visible new workshop this fall when the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design opens on the glass-fronted ground floor of Becton Center on Prospect Street. The center will offer work areas, meeting rooms, and facilities for making prototypes. The space was until recently occupied by the engineering library.

The first seven women to earn PhDs at Yale will be the subject of a group portrait in Sterling Memorial Library. The Women Faculty Forum is now raising funds for the portrait, which will feature the seven women who earned their doctorates in 1894, two years after the Graduate School first admitted women.

Remember your freshman roommate? Students in Yale's newest residential colleges won't. The two new colleges, which the university hopes to start building this year, will have no double bedrooms—only singles arranged in suites with common rooms. (Like Silliman and Timothy Dwight Colleges, the new colleges will house freshmen.)