Notes and News – Week of 11-2
ML’s Pieces
Dear Red Lions,
I hope you all took advantage of your extra hour and rested up from our incredible week in TD. Tuesday night we had the honor of hosting our Chubb Fellow, Ambassador Susan Rice, and her brother, E. John Rice, who is currently serving on the Yale Corporation. They started their afternoon with an engaging fireside chat at the Yale Law School discussing recent security policy decisions in Syria and the Middle East and then ended the evening with a wonderful dinner with 120 students in the college. Without a doubt, Ambassador Rice was one of the most forthcoming and generous fellows we have hosted. She shared her biography and path to her current position as the National Security Advisor to President Obama and then took a number of questions from the audience discussing her professional choices to work in the public and private sectors. She inspired each student to consider public service as a future profession and emphatically reminded all of us to not let anyone else define us and that we shape our own futures. She stayed in the TD Dining Hall until 10pm in order to speak to each student who wished to meet her. And she ended the evening by taking pictures with our Dining Hall staff who were so excited to have worked at this important dinner. We will be announcing our spring Chubb fellow before winter break, so stay tuned!
I received a number of great photos from the many Halloween events in and around the TD courtyard. This week’s photo of the week is from our very own Robert Kennedy, TD’s Operations Manager. Titled, “Boo-la Boo,” these Lions were the first to arrive and get going on their pumpkins! Going from left to right are Kris Acuña TD ‘17, Khyber Shepperd TD ‘18, Peter Wang TD ‘18, Blake Knuth TD ‘16, Stephanie Anaya TD ‘17, and Austin Igelman TD ‘16. I hope you all made an effort to check out the incredible range of pumpkins out there… from a very elaborate TD Crest to the elegant maple leaf to the very high concept “Silence of the Lambs” to an incredible tribute to “Che Guevara.”
Halloween night was a great deal of fun with our annual costume contest in the TD Dining Hall. We really appreciated your warm applause coming in as the Star Trek landing party! The children and I really enjoyed seeing the great costumes – though they asked too many questions about the Frocos costume! To all the students who dressed up and did not win a prize – I do apologize that I had to cut the judging short because we loaned out our sound system to the RH Spooktacular. Next year, we’ll be prepared so start planning your costumes now! But I do want to tell everyone who dressed up that they were fabulous. Belatedly I want to recognize a few more costumes. Freshmen Melissa Kropf and Gloria Wu did not win best “twin costume” but they definitely won “best costume using curlers.” And the prize of “biggest penguin costume” should have gone to Tyler Bluell. Seniors Marilyn Vasquez and Fernanda Ribas won “most elegant costume” and “funniest villain” respectively.
Our junior lions knocked themselves out decorating and baking for the freshfolk and deserve a mighty big hand for all their work throwing the first ever RH Spooktachular! I especially want to thank Derek Ficenec and Abdul-Razak Zachariah for all of their efforts coordinating the event. And John Chirikjian TD ’17 captured the evening’s costumes in his “photo booth” station. Please feel free to check out the great pics!
We are gliding into a much quieter week and we should all be able to catch our breath and get back to focusing hard on our work! But we do have two great TD activities for this coming weekend…
Friday 11/6 10pm-1am TD Fall Formal (Anna Liffey’s)
SAC has decided to break away from the other residential colleges and TD tradition and forgo the “screw.” Instead, they are throwing a fall formal for the whole college at Anna Liffey’s, barely a block from TD. Food and admission is free and open to all Red Lions!
Saturday 11/7 TD 10:30am-1pm Football Master’s Brunch (TD Dining Hall)
Please join us for a special master’s brunch before the big Brown football game. Because of the 12:30pm start time, we are starting brunch at 10:30am. We’ll have platters of lox and cream cheese as well as a special omelet station among many other delicious goodies for this special master’s brunch. You will be able to bring food from the dining hall with you to the game. We have rented a bus to take TDers directly from our gate to the game out at the Yale Bowl. The bus will take off at 11:30am and then circle back to TD for a second trip. Students will need to take the Yale buses to come back to TD.
Looking ahead to next week, here are some special events to put on your calendar!
Tuesday 11/10 4:30pm “The Enigma of Arrival: My Life Trajectory as a Conflict Journalist,” Master’s Tea with Journalist Rahul Pandita
Rahul Pandita is currently the Yale World Fellow affiliated with TD for this year. Based in New Delhi, he has reported extensively from various conflict zones and wars in Iraq, India, and Sri Lanka. He has authored several books and his bestselling work: “Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir” has just been turned into a screenplay with the renowned Indian filmmaker Vidhu Vinod.
Wednesday 11/11 5:30-6:45pm Dinner with Dean Jonathan Holloway (TD Dining Room, Downey Room up in the balcony)
After hearing that some TDers would like the opportunity to talk informally with Dean Holloway, I extended an invitation to ask that he have dinner with us in TD. He has graciously said yes and we will be setting up an online sign-up for the event. Because we’ll be in the Downey Room, we will only have room for 12 students so this should be a good size for a more intimate conversation and not a Q&A with the dean.
Without further ado, here is a word from Dean Mahurin…
Áshe,
ML
*****
Dean’s Domain
After hiring a team of McKinsey consultants to discuss Dean’s Domain (or, uh, talking to some of you in the dining hall), I have determined that Dean’s Domain is too long and too repetitive from week to week. I hear you. Below you will find a more streamlined Dean’s Domain.
Before that is a very streamlined poem by Emily Dickinson.
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culpirt – Life!
TiDbits
Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Undergraduate fellowship applications will open on November 10 for the ISPS Director’s Fellows program in Domestic Policy. The fellowship is open to Yale sophomores and juniors and will run the calendar year: January - December 2016. The program aims to build a community of students who seek to bridge the gap between academic work, career interests, and their passion for government, policy, and politics. The fellowship places an emphasis on developing the skills and tools needed to translate research findings into policy proposals, including blogging, op-ed and policy memo writing. Summer internship is required. Check back with the Director’s Fellows page on November 10 to apply.
Medical School Interview Event: Tuesday, 11/3, 5:30-7:00 pm in WLH 112, with presenters Dan Wiznia (YC ’06), MD, Yale Resident in Orthopaedics & Julie Leviter, MD, Yale Resident in Pediatrics
Doctors Wiznia and Leviter will discuss the overview of the medical interview process from the mindset of the interviewer. They will review common questions asked and assess frequent pitfalls to avoid. There will be plenty of time for Q&A. If you have specific questions about the process you’d like Drs. Wiznia and Leviter to address during their presentation, please email them prior to 11/3 at daniel.wiznia@yale.edu and julie.leviter@yale.edu.
The Yale Review of International Studies (YRIS) is currently accepting essay submissions for our upcoming winter issue until Friday, November 13th. Please send any submissions to yris@yira.org. YRIS seeks interesting, diverse, and compelling scholarship on international questions broadly understood: the relations between countries, trends or challenges of transnational or global scope, and the interaction of people and ideas from different countries. We accept essays of all lengths, usually anywhere between 4 to 20 pages. See our website for more information. Please let me know if you have any questions about what YRIS is seeking.
Telltale (a student storytelling group) is having an open mic at Koffee on Friday, November 6th, at 8:30 pm! Anyone is welcome to sign up to tell a story by emailing telltaleyale@gmail.com–just sign up before sign-ups close on Tuesday, November 3rd. Stories can take any form or be in any tone, as long as they’re true and under 7 minutes long. In the past, most have been about a personal experience, but that’s not a requirement. If you have an idea and would like to test it out on someone on the board, let us know in your sign-up email, and we’ll set you up with an optional workshop! And if you’re not a performer, the show is free and open to the public.
Living History Project: Interested in a unique volunteer position and humanizing medicine through patient-centered care? Join the Living History Project and help hospital patients share their life stories! Students learn how to interview patients at Yale-New Haven Hospital and prepare a narrative for the patient’s life history to share with their medical team, to improve understanding of patients and their experience with and response to illness. The Living History Project began in Trumbull about 4 years ago and has since expanded to include all interested Yale undergraduates! Orientation for new members will be held Sat, Nov 7 10am-12pm at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Please fill out this interest form for more information! https://docs.google.com/a/yale.edu/forms/d/1pZBnyK9np5ZsLeztA2y3YX3Ait2YGE6v_RJo4s3Ytck/viewform
CLS SCI European Languages event, November 5, 4-6 p.m., CLS, Dow Hall
Come learn about Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian (BCS), and Romanian and Ukrainian languages through the Shared Course Initiative (http://ctl.yale.edu/language-study/shared-course-initiative). Learn about the countries which these languages are spoken, their histories, their cultures, and their literature!
Please join Women’s Leadership Initiative for a special event with keynote speaker Gloria Feldt on November 10th at 5:30 (location TBD). Gloria is currently the founder and president of Take the Lead, an international organization at the forefront of the gender equality movement. The organization propels women to take their fair share of leadership positions by 2025, and Gloria speaks extensively to women about how to navigate work and social situations. She is also the former president of Planned Parenthood. As Planned Parenthood is currently featured heavily in the news, her unique background as well as her impressive accomplishments make her a leading voice in the discussion about women’s rights. She is a New York Times best-selling author, and her books (including No Excuses, and The War on Choice: The Right Wing Attack on Women’s Rights and how to Fight Back) are read throughout the world. Food will be provided at the event.
DEADLINES
November 13 Last day to convert from the Cr/D/Fail option to a letter grade in a full term course.
Last day to withdraw from a course offered in the second half of the term without the course appearing on your transcript.
December 4 Last day to convert from the Credit/D/Fail option to a letter grade in a course offered in the second half of the term.
December 11 Classes end at 5:30 pm; reading period begins.
Last day to withdraw from a full-term course or a course offered in the second half of the term.
December 16 Reading period ends.
Deadline for all course assignments, other than papers and term projects. This deadline can be extended only by a Temporary Incomplete.
December 17 Final exams begin at 9 am.
December 22 Examinations end at 5:30 pm.
Deadline for all term papers and projects.
CIPE
What is Private Banking?
Thursday, November 5, 4:00pm-5:00pm, 55 Whitney Avenue, Room 369 (3rd floor)
Join Managing Director, Richard C. Walden (YC ‘83) from J.P. Morgan Private Bank as he discusses his career in private banking and routes for students interested in a private banking career.
US Immigration Options for Entrepreneurs
Wednesday, November 11, 12:00pm-1:30pm, SOM Room 4430
STUDY ABROAD
Study Computer Science in Budapest Info Session
Tuesday, November 3, 2015, 4:00 – 5:00 pm
CIPE, 55 Whitney Ave, 3rd Floor, Room 305
Gábor Bojár, founder and professor at AIT-Budapest, will be on-campus to discuss this English-language study abroad program for students majoring in Computer Science and related fields. Snacks and small treats from Hungary will be served! The AIT program has a first-rate faculty, an innovative curriculum including courses such as “Computer Vision Applications for Digital Cinema” taught by faculty affiliates from Colorfront Studios (recent recipients of an Academy Award for technical contributions), and Design Workshop designed by Erno Rubik (inventor of the Rubik’s Cube and recent recipient of the U.S. Outstanding Contributions to Science Education Award), and a guest lecture series that brings prominent speakers to campus. All classes are conducted in English at AIT’s state-of-the-art campus on the lovely banks of the Danube River. Students live in vibrant neighborhoods of Budapest and have ample opportunities to interact with Hungarian students and explore Hungary and the region. AIT is small and friendly, with typical class sizes of 5-15 students. To learn more, visit http://www.ait-budapest.com
Study Abroad with the School for Field Studies (SFS) Info Session
Thursday, November 5, 2015, 4:00 – 5:00 pm
CIPE, 55 Whitney Ave, 3rd Floor, Room 305
Ellen Crow, a representative from the School for Field Studies (SFS), will be on-campus to meet with interested students. Come learn more about the variety of program options for the summer or semester. To learn more about SFS, visit:http://www.fieldstudies.org
Group Advising Sessions
Group advising is a great way for you to learn more about program offerings in a certain region, for a specific language, and to become familiar with the process of applying. This is also an opportunity to meet other students considering study abroad.
• Summer Study Abroad in the UK
November 6, 2015, at 4:00 pm, LC 206
Space is limited to 20 students. Register to attend this event.
• Summer Study Abroad in France and Francophone Africa
November 12, 2015, at 4pm, LC 204
Space is limited to 10 students. Register to attend this event.
• Summer Study Abroad in Spain and Latin America
November 18, 2015, at 4pm, LC 212
Space is limited to 10 students. Register to attend this event.
FELLOWSHIPS – see http://www.yale.edu/yalecollege/international/funding/fellowships/