By the Numbers

June 15, 2015

As the Yale campus switches gears for the summer—and before we rush headlong into planning for the new academic year—I invite you to join me in looking back at 2014-15. What follows is an entirely un-mathematical look at “the year in numbers”!

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  1. Marking ten decades of athletic accomplishments and boola-boola pride, the Yale Bowl turned 100 in September.
  2. Last year, we made nine commitments to the White House to increase college opportunity for low-income students; we have now met or exceeded our goals for each. And this May, nine months into Access Yale, we reached the halfway mark toward our $200 million target for scholarships across all of Yale’s schools.
  3. In October, eight members of our faculty, including three deans and other university leaders, took part in the opening conference for the new Yale Center Beijing
  4. Seven separate campus programs—focused on writing, teaching, tutoring, and the use of technology in the classroom—are now part of a unified Center for Teaching and Learning.
  5. As the new academic year began, we launched six new initiatives to advance the university’s commitment to sustainability. You can follow our progress online.
  6. Just five years from now, Yale will have a spectacular new campus destination for student life, education, cultural programs, and more: the Schwarzman Center, announced in May.
  7. We had four Rhodes Scholars—plus six Marshall, four Gates Cambridge, two Truman, and one Udall—a banner year for prestigious academic fellowships.
  8. Three faculty members (and one soon-to-be!) became members of the National Academy of Sciences, while seven were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
  9. The two new residential colleges are looking more like buildings every day, as evidenced by the daily webcam updates taken from just across the street.
  10. Yale came together as one community in October for its first annual Founders Day, a celebration of the university’s 313th birthday.

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I look forward to celebrating birthday number 314 with you, and to the many new milestones we will share together in twelve months ahead. In the meantime, I thank you all—alumni, community members, faculty, staff, and students—for everything you did to make 2014-15 a great year for Yale. Have a wonderful and well-deserved summer!