Welcome, Dean Cooley!
Lynn Cooley, the C. N. H. Long Professor of Genetics, professor of cell biology and of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, became the 21st dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences on July 1, replacing Dean Thomas Pollard. She has served as the director of the combined program in the biological & biomedical sciences at Yale since 2001. Dean Cooley earned her BA from Connecticut College in 1976, and her PhD from the University of Texas in 1984 for research carried out with Sterling Professor Dieter Söll in Yale’s Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. Her research focuses on the development of female gametes, or eggs, in Drosophila.
What can we learn from the dogs?
To help expand our understanding of how people evaluate and use information, graduate student Angie Johnston (psychology) studies the way dogs solve problems. This approach is “particularly exciting since dogs are very similar to humans socially, but very different cognitively,” she says. Working in Yale’s new Canine Cognition Center, Angie tests whether “natural pedagogy”—a communication system for efficiently transmitting knowledge—is specific to human beings by presenting the dogs with puzzles and watching what they do on their own and when given hints. “Through the process of domestication, dogs have become sensitive to the same communicative cues as human children—eye gaze, pointing, etc.—allowing for a unique opportunity to compare across species using the same methodology,” she says.
Alumnus heads American Academy
Jonathan Fanton ’65, ’78PhD (history), is the new president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The academy is one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research. As an undergraduate at Yale, Fanton directed the Ulysses S. Grant Program for talented inner-city students and helped create a program for high school graduates with great potential but inadequate preparation. He coordinated Yale’s Special Educational Programs (1968–70) and became special assistant to President Kingman Brewster (1970–73) during a tumultuous period in the university’s history. Fanton went on to be executive director of Yale College Summer Programs and associate provost while pursuing his PhD. He was president of the MacArthur Foundation for ten years and president of the New School for Social Research for 17 years. Fanton is past chair of Human Rights Watch, where he still heads the Africa Advisory Committee.
loading
Print
Email