School Notes: Yale Divinity School
November/December 2016

New faculty for new academic year

Nine new professors began their first full year at YDS at the opening of fall semester—the most the school has ever welcomed in a single year. The nine include Willie Jennings, an acclaimed scholar of African American religion who was on sabbatical last year, and Joyce Mercer ’84MDiv, professor of practical theology and pastoral care, who arrived midway through 2015–16, along with seven professors appointed last spring: Adam Eitel, Clifton Granby, Erika Helgen ’15PhD, Yii-Jan Lin ’14PhD, Donyelle McCray, Eboni Marshall Turman, and Benjamin Valentin.

Also, five people are beginning their first full academic year as research scholars at the Center for Faith and Culture at YDS: Drew Collins; Matthew Croasmun ’06MAR, ’14PhD; Sarah Farmer; Angela Gorrell; and Ryan McAnnally-Linz ’10MAR, ’16PhD. (Two of these researchers, Croasmun and McAnnally-Linz, were already at the center but are now serving in new roles.)

A group teeming with multiple forms of diversity, 170 new students began their YDS careers as the 2016–17 academic year got under way. The new students come from 18 countries and nearly three dozen denominations and faith traditions. Thirty-six percent are from underrepresented racial groups. 

Fund-raising helps YDS scholarships

Nineteen new endowed scholarship funds; significant additions to several existing scholarships; a near-record year for gifts to the Annual Fund; a future with less student debt and better student access to Yale Divinity School: these are the outcomes of the Access Yale fund-raising effort at the Divinity School, a two-year project that came to a successful close on June 30.

Over the course of a two-year period beginning July 1, 2014, Yale University undertook Access Yale, a major university-wide push for student financial aid. Thanks to an anonymous gift and an estate gift from the late Howard Benson ’53BD, YDS was able to set up a challenge fund—the only such challenge fund at the university during Access Yale—to encourage donors to create new scholarships. The challenge fund added $50,000 each to 15 new scholarships created during the fund drive.