School Notes: Yale College
May/June 2015

Saybrook and Silliman masters named

Thomas J. Near, associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and curator of the ichthyology collection at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, has been named master of Saybrook College. Near’s scientific inquiry has been devoted to the complex interplay of fish species around the world and their importance to the biodiversity of our planet. Joining him in the master’s house will be his wife, Allison Murray Near, who practices criminal law at the New Haven firm of Sheehan, Reeve, and Near; and their daughters, Alice (5) and Rebecca (3).

Nicholas Alexander Christakis (ES ’84), the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science, has been named the next master of Silliman College. Before coming to Yale in 2013, Christakis spent 12 years as a professor of sociology and of medicine at Harvard, where he also served as master of Pforzheimer House at Harvard College. Joining him at Silliman as associate master is his wife Erika Christakis, a lecturer on early childhood education at Yale’s Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, and their three children: Eleni, Lysander, and Sebastian (when he is home from Harvard).

Alumni awarded Gates Scholarships

Jeania Ree Moore ’12 and Dylan Morris ’11 are among 40 US students who were awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge later this year. Moore is currently engaged in graduate work in divinity at Emory University and will continue her studies in the same field at Cambridge. Morris went to Cambridge as a Paul Mellon Fellow and will remain at the university to complete a PhD in biological anthropology. The postgraduate scholarship program was established through a $210 million donation to Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2001.

Real-time photos of new colleges

Although the official groundbreaking for the building of the two new residential colleges has not yet been announced, crews have begun preparing the site, on Prospect Street just south of Ingalls Rink. A virtual tour of the colleges and daily photos of the construction site are available at http://newresidentialcolleges.yale.edu.