School Notes: Yale Divinity School
May/June 2014

Serving time among the underserved

A growing number of Yale Divinity School students are seeking to serve prisoner and reentrant communities through supervised internships, activism, and volunteer opportunities. Inspired by YDS’s 2013 all-school conference discussion of Michelle Alexander’s book on mass incarceration, The New Jim Crow, Michael Nitsch ’14MAR reached out to friends and mentors about his capacity to serve people affected by America’s incarceration system. By the end of the spring 2013 semester, he had left his ordination process to focus on a future career in reentrant work. Lucinda Huffaker, director of supervised ministries, has been working toward providing opportunities in prison ministry. Her efforts were aided this year with the help of George Chochos ’16MDiv, whose journey from prison to the MDiv program was featured in a November 2013 article in the New Haven Register. Since his enrollment at YDS, Chochos has committed himself to continued outreach to reentrants, as well as to helping his fellow students understand the difficulties of prison ministry. Jordan Brooks ’15MAR worked in reentry programming for a number of years before enrolling at YDS. She hopes to use her expertise to develop a comprehensive reentry program in New Haven. Gregory Williams ’15MDiv became involved with incarceration issues through his activism on behalf of the New Haven immigrant community. This year he created Decarcerate CT, an organization dedicated to ending mass incarceration. He describes his efforts to end injustice in the American prison system as “an important element in a pastoral care toolbox.” 

Applications increase

The YDS admissions office has embarked on an ambitious recruitment strategy, which is now showing signs of success: the school had a more than 10 percent increase in applications over last year. This increase runs counter to the national trends of declining applications and enrollment at theological schools. Among the applications, there were 251 MDiv, 275 MAR, and 37 STM applications, as well as four non-degree submissions. The pool of applicants came from 388 undergraduate institutions. There were 224 applicants with prior graduate-level experience from 163 schools, including 14 with law degrees. YDS hopes to matriculate an incoming class of 145 students.