Updated: Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 9:27pm
According to the Yale phone directory, Nydia Gonzalez can be found at her desk in 155 Whitney Ave., leading the Office of Human Resources’ Office of Diversity and Inclusion as its chief diversity officer. There is just one problem: she is no longer a Yale employee. And she has not been at the University for weeks. Gonzalez — Yale’s first-ever chief diversity...
As a college student, Joan Steitz was fascinated by science. A chemistry major, Steitz stumbled upon molecular biology — then an emerging field — while assisting senior scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Through her laboratory stint, Steitz even befriended James Watson, one of the scientists responsible for discovering the DNA double helix. At...
After spending over 20 years at the University as both a student and a teacher, Divinity School professor Serene Jones DIV ’85 GRD ’91 will leave Yale this fall to become the first female president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Jones’ appointment to Union, which was announced in late February, will halve the number of American Indian professors at...
Last year, Harvard University welcomed the first female president in its history. In a few months, the university will mark another milestone: the installation of the first black female as dean of Harvard College. In a statement Tuesday, the university announced the appointment of Evelynn Hammonds, Harvard’s senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity and...
Even as the University continues aggressive efforts to increase diversity in its faculty ranks, Latino professors remain a visible minority on campus — and not just at Yale, but in the rest of the higher education community as well. Since 2005, when the Provost’s Office announced a seven-year Diversity Initiative to add 30 faculty members from underrepresented...
Despite the University’s formal commitment to recruiting a more diverse faculty, women faculty members still perceive a sharp gender divide — resulting in what they see as significant inequalities between male and female professors. Female faculty members at Yale are twice as likely as their male counterparts to feel left out of informal departmental networks, and...
When history professor Lillian Guerra entered a campus building in early February to administer a doctoral exam, she received an unintended compliment. The guard at the front door refused to believe she was a professor, insisting instead that she must be a graduate student. “He thought I was joking when I said I was a professor,” Guerra said, laughing as she...
Seven representatives from Columbia, Harvard, New York universities and Yale gathered as part of a panel Monday night to discuss the challenges to achieving diversity and gender equality at institutions of higher learning. The panel, organized by the Women Faculty Forum, a report released by the Forum last year entitled “Women, Men, and Yale University: A View from...
When she conceptualized the freshman seminar “The Engineering of Ice Cream,” Kyle Vanderlick, then the chair of Princeton’s Chemical Engineering Department, was looking for a way to get college students excited about the possibilities of engineering. The introductory-level engineering course packed in all the basics — everything from the thermodynamics of...
Women undergraduates seeking guidance from female role models at the University are finding the number of available mentors insufficient to meet their needs, despite the slowly increasing number of women appointed to the University faculty. Although the University achieved gender balance among undergraduate students years ago, the number of female faculty members is...
The corridors of the Hall of Graduate Studies may have looked the same since they were constructed in 1932, but the faces inside have evolved as the student body has become increasingly diverse. The percentage of graduate students from ethnic minority groups in universities nationwide increased by 2 percent from 2005-’06 to 2006-’07, according to a survey released by...
Professors looking to take advantage of their allotted leave to raise young children may currently find the process more confusing than they first anticipated — thanks to what the Women Faculty Forum is calling a “bureaucratic lag.” Although the Provost’s Office announced a change to the faculty’s child care leave policy more than three years ago, the new...
