Four named Wilbur Cross medalists
The Graduate School Alumni Association recently awarded four alumni the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the Graduate School’s highest honor.
John Aber ’71, ’73MFS, ’76PhD (forestry and environmental studies), university professor and provost of the University of New Hampshire, is well known for his research on sustainable ecosystem management, climate change, and acid rain. He has authored or coauthored more than 200 scientific papers and the basic text in his field, Terrestrial Ecosystems.
Alfred W. McCoy ’77PhD (history), the J. R. W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is one of the world’s leading historians of Southeast Asia and an expert on underworld crime syndicates, the war against illegal drugs, and international political surveillance. He is also an influential social historian and has made important contributions to the history of gender and family studies.
Jonathan M. Rothberg ’91PhD (biology) combines spectacular achievements in genome science and biotechnology with entrepreneurship, having launched Curagen (to identify and target genes involved in specific diseases), 454 Life Sciences (which sequenced DNA stunningly quickly and at low cost), RainDance Technologies (which creates microfluidics for genomic and pharmaceutical research), and most recently, Ion Torrent Systems, Inc., which innovated an outstandingly successful DNA sequencing system.
Sarah Grey Thomason ’68PhD (linguistics), the William J. Gedney Collegiate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, is a specialist in historical linguistics (the ways languages change over time), contact linguistics (the influences that languages have on one another), and Native American languages of the Northwest.
Grant will broaden humanities studies
Yale has received a four-year grant of $1.95 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to enhance humanities education throughout the university, with several initiatives specific to the Graduate School. The Graduate School will use Mellon funding to introduce a new concentration that will extend coursework from two to three years, enabling students to develop individual programs that extend their understanding of both their primary discipline and the wider intellectual setting in which it resides. In each of the next three years, a team of faculty members will offer a core seminar on a different topic that cuts across disciplinary boundaries, bringing students together from multiple departments. Students will also be able to participate in team-teaching courses that cover sweeping, cross-disciplinary themes at the edges and intersections of traditional fields of study. The Mellon grant will also provide recent PhDs with new opportunities to teach at the undergraduate level and to broaden their teaching portfolios by offering courses that go beyond their specific discipline.
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