Inaugural Dean announced for NUS College

01/04/22

ChestermanThe National University of Singapore (NUS) has appointed Simon Chesterman as Dean-designate of the new NUS College, the college that will result from the merger of Yale-NUS College with NUS’s University Scholars Programme. 

A recognized authority on international law, Professor Chesterman has been a faculty member at NUS Law since 2007 and has served as Dean of the Faculty of Law (NUS Law) since 2012. He will continue to serve as Dean of NUS Law while NUS convenes a global search for his successor. In assuming the role of inaugural Dean of NUS College beginning July 1, 2022, he will also be concurrently appointed Vice Provost for Educational Innovation at NUS, where he will focus on extending best practices in education — in particular, those piloted in NUS College — across the whole of NUS.

Pericles Lewis, Yale’s Vice President for Global Strategy who served as founding president of Yale-NUS College from 2012 to 2017, said, “I would like to congratulate Professor Simon Chesterman on his appointment as Dean of NUS College. As Dean of NUS Law, Simon has worked closely with faculty and students at Yale-NUS College over the past decade. He is a distinguished scholar and dedicated educator and has a broad vision for undergraduate education at NUS. Simon has played a leading role in planning for NUS College as a new institution that will build on the legacy of Yale-NUS and the University Scholars Programme. Simon will provide outstanding leadership for the new honors college.”

NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye said, “A strong advocate for interdisciplinary education, Professor Chesterman is an inspirational and collaborative leader who has contributed much to the higher education landscape in Singapore and internationally. I am confident that under Simon’s leadership, our new NUS College will have a strong beginning.”

In August 2021, NUS announced plans to merge Yale-NUS College with NUS’s University Scholars Programme, a popular interdisciplinary initiative within NUS. As part of a larger reorganization of NUS’s academic offerings, the new undergraduate honors college will offer a broad-based, interdisciplinary education through deeper integration with the rest of NUS by bringing together the best elements of the USP and Yale-NUS College. 

The new NUS College will admit its first class of up to 400 students in academic year 2022-23. Professor Tan Tai Yong will be stepping down as president of Yale-NUS College after completing his full five-year term of appointment at the end of this academic year, and Professor Joanne Roberts has been appointed to serve as president of Yale-NUS College beginning July 1, 2022. Her term as president will continue until Yale-NUS College concludes the 2024-25 academic year. Tan Tai Yong, Roberts, and Lewis served with Chesterman on the planning committee for NUS College, which was chaired by NUS Provost Ho Teck Hua. Professors Roberts and Chesterman will work closely together during the three-year transition from Yale-NUS College to NUS College.

Joanne Roberts appointed third President of Yale-NUS College

11/01/21

Professor Tan Tai Yong will be stepping down as president of Yale-NUS College after completing his full five-year term of appointment at the end of this academic year, and Professor Joanne Roberts has been appointed to serve as president of the college beginning July 1, 2022, according to the college’s governing board.

In making the announcement in Singapore, Kay Kuok, chair of the Yale-NUS governing board, said: “I wish to thank Tai Yong for his many years of dedicated service to the College. He has led the College through many challenging events, most recently during the tumultuous time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the close-knit nature of residential living, the extremely low incidence of COVID-19 on campus is testament to his contingency planning and strong leadership in times of crisis.”

She added, “The entire Governing Board is delighted that Joanne has accepted this appointment. She is deeply committed to the liberal arts model of education and its broad and inclusive approach. We are confident that she will capably lead the College during the next three years, ensuring that we provide the Yale-NUS experience to all our students and making sure that Yale-NUS is supported in the transitional years ahead.”

Yong and Roberts

Pericles Lewis, Yale’s Vice President for Global Strategy, who served as founding president of Yale-NUS College from 2012 to 2017, said “I am personally very grateful to Tai Yong for his partnership over the past decade. Together with his wife Sylvia, he has been a central member of the Yale-NUS community from its inception. He has a deep love for the college and his service to Yale-NUS has allowed the college to thrive over the past several years.” 

“I am thrilled that Joanne will lead the college for the next few years until its merger into NUS’s New College in 2025. Joanne has made the well-being of Yale-NUS students and faculty during the transition a high priority and her energy and commitment will be key to the work before us,” said Lewis.

Yale President Peter Salovey added: “It is wonderful to see the continuity in Yale-NUS leadership during this time of transition. Both Professor Tan Tai Yong and Professor Joanne Roberts have provided outstanding guidance for Yale-NUS College, and they have my gratitude.”

Of her appointment, Roberts said, “I am honored to lead this incredible community in the years ahead. Yale-NUS College has been punching above its weight despite its small stature in the past decade. Our students and graduates have demonstrated their spirit of adventure and tenacity, securing amazing jobs and fellowships after graduation, and creating positive change within their communities. Our diverse faculty and staff have also been instrumental in enabling the Yale-NUS community to be dynamic and forward-looking. I am excited to continue this good work, alongside our dedicated community members, to ensure the continued success of Yale-NUS and making sure its legacy continues beyond the end of my term. I thank President Tan Tai Yong for entrusting me with something so precious and for his many years of guidance and leadership.”

Roberts currently serves as executive vice president of academic affairs at Yale-NUS and prior to this she was the college’s dean of faculty. A Canadian citizen, Roberts previously held the Canada Research Chair in Economics at the University of Calgary. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Waterloo and her M.A. and PhD from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and held a number of leadership positions in the Economics profession in Canada before moving to Singapore. In her roles at Yale-NUS since 2017, she has been instrumental in developing new student life policies and practices and in overseeing the recruitment, tenure, and promotion of faculty over the last several years. 

The National University of Singapore (NUS) announced in August it will establish a provisionally named New College that in 2025 will merge Yale-NUS College with NUS’s University Scholars Program, a popular interdisciplinary initiative within NUS. This is part of a larger reorganization of NUS’s academic offerings.

Regarding the ongoing preparations for Yale-NUS College to transition to the New College, both Tan and Roberts continue to serve on a planning committee at NUS that will guide the transition. Tan is leading the working group on faculty; Roberts is leading the working group on curriculum, which will adapt important elements of the Yale-NUS curriculum for the new college. In addition, Lewis is serving in an advisory capacity as a member of this committee. 

In describing the work of the planning committee, Lewis said, “I have been pleased to see signs of considerable continuity, while recognizing that the New College will of course be very different from Yale-NUS. Together, we are working hard to ensure a smooth transition, a high quality of education during the next few years, and the continued vitality of the Yale-NUS community.”

Yale-NUS to be merged into a new college in 2025

08/27/21

This is an external news story
Click here to read it: https://news.yale.edu/2021/08/26/yale-nus-be-merged-new-college-2025

Discovery in bird feathers has the potential to make fiber optics, solar cells, and fuel cells more efficient

06/04/21

A team of scientists from Yale-NUS College, ETH Zurich, and Yale University have discovered how leafbirds make complex color-producing crystals with highly desirable optical and electronic properties. These crystals may serve as inspiration for multifunctional applications and have the potential to make fiber optics, solar cells, and fuel cells more efficient, according to the newly published research.

The international team of collaborators, led by Vinodkumar Saranathan from Yale-NUS College, includes Eric R. Dufresne from ETH Zurich, Richard O. Prum from Yale University, and Suresh Narayanan and Alec Sandy from the Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy multidisciplinary science and engineering research center. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), this study is particularly relevant as the search for renewable sources of energy and sustainable manufacturing has taken on a fresh urgency.

The research breakthrough came from the team’s investigation of the feather colors of leafbirds, an enigmatic group of perching birds endemic to South and Southeast Asia (including Singapore). In the plumage of one species of this bird, the blue-winged leafbird, the scientists discovered a complex, three-dimensional crystal called the single gyroid that has evolved to produce vivid, saturated structural colors.

According to Saranathan, “Knowing how leafbirds manufacture these exotic structures can spur novel biomimetic eco-friendly self-assembly strategies for large-scale materials synthesis at these highly challenging optical length-scales, given the urgent ecological need for such materials.”

By comparing the colour-producing nanostructures present in close relatives, the team reported that this species is able to directly synthesise single gyroid photonic crystals, which have highly desirable optical and electronic properties that make them ideal for use in photovoltaic cells to generate solar energy. Use of this crystal – a “crowning achievement” in material science engineering which thus far has been manufactured only with great difficulty – has the potential not only to improve photovoltaic cells, meaning they can be produced more easily and cheaply, but also for use in other industrial applications like catalysis in fuel cells and fiber optics.

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Read more about Yale’s collaborations with ETH Zurich.

Read more about Yale and Yale-NUS College.

Read more about this research at the Yale-NUS College website.

Read the research paper at the PNAS website.

Pinelopi Goldberg featured in Yale-NUS webinar 'Addressing Global Inequity'

03/26/21

event posterA webinar organized by Yale-NUS College focused on the topic ‘Addressing Global Inequality’ took place on March 30, 2021. It featured Pinelopi Goldberg, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and Elihu Professor of Economics at Yale University, and Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School. It was moderated by Danny Quah, Dean and Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. 

Rising inequality presents policy makers with social, economic and political challenges and is linked to social ills like crime, poor health outcomes and radical nationalism. Over the past few decades, forces like globalisation and technological change have widened inequality but the recent coronavirus pandemic has intensified the acceleration of inequality between and within countries as well as pushed poverty levels higher. Two of the world’s leading growth and development economists, professors Goldberg and Rodrik, discuss the problem and consequences of rising inequality, and what tools and policies can be deployed to address it.

CLICK BELOW TO WATCH A VIDEO RECORDING OF THE WEBINAR


To learn more about Yale’s partnership with Yale-NUS College, visit this page on the Yale and the World website.

To learn more at Yale-NUS College visit their website.

‘The Future of American Democracy’ kicks off new Yale-NUS webinar series January 19

01/12/21

Yale-NUS College has organized a series of collaborative webinars which will take place throughout the Spring 2021 semester focused on timely topics and featuring faculty from Yale, Yale-NUS, and National University of Singapore (NUS). The series is intended for audiences across all three campuses and beyond and will be hosted by Yale-NUS’s Dean of Faculty Office. The series builds on the success of the recent webinar “American Elections” held in October – read more about that event

“We are delighted to feature leading scholars at Yale-NUS College along with those at Yale and NUS for engaging discourse on a diverse range of topics – from politics to public health and featuring faculty from the humanities, sciences and social sciences,” said Yale-NUS Dean of Faculty Jeannette Ickovics (also the Samuel and Liselotte Herman Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health).  “Yale-NUS welcomes the opportunity to host these virtual meetings, where we will be joined by faculty, students, alumni, and friends of our extended academic communities to explore timely ideas from perspectives of both East and West”

event poster“We are delighted to feature leading scholars at Yale-NUS College along with those at Yale and NUS for engaging discourse on a diverse range of topics – from politics to public health and featuring faculty from the humanities, sciences and social sciences,” said Yale-NUS Dean of Faculty Jeannette Ickovics (also the Samuel and Liselotte Herman Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health).  “Yale-NUS welcomes the opportunity to host these virtual meetings, where we will be joined by faculty, students, alumni, and friends of our extended academic communities to explore timely ideas from perspectives of both East and West.”

The first event of the new series will take place on January 19. It is titled, ‘The Future of American Democracy’ and will focus on aspects of the 2020 United States presidential election such as the unprecedented voter turnout, number of votes cast, and polarization. It will also include discussion of the post-election period which has been equally tumultuous with questions raised about the long-term consequences for the health and legitimacy of American democracy.

The January 19th webinar will feature a spirited discussion by noted political and legal specialists from Yale University and Yale-NUS College. The event will include panelists: Bryan Garsten, Professor of Political Science and Humanities, and Chair of the Humanities Program at Yale; Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale, and; Benjamin Schupmann, Assistant Professor of Social Science (Political Science) at Yale-NUS. It will be moderated by Nomi Claire Lazar (Yale PhD ’05), Associate Professor of Social Sciences (Politics) and Associate Dean of Faculty (Curriculum) at Yale-NUS.

To register for the webinar, please visit the Yale-NUS website for details. 

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To learn more about Yale’s partnership with Yale-NUS College, visit this page on the Yale and the World website.

To learn more at Yale-NUS College visit their website.

David Post appointed as dean of faculty at Yale-NUS College

01/26/21

Yale Vice-President for Global Strategy Pericles Lewis sent the following email on January 20, 2021:


Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to let you know that David Post has been appointed dean of faculty of Yale-NUS College, effective July 1, 2021, for a term of three years. David is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale. He will succeed current Dean of Faculty Jeannette Ickovics, and will lead faculty development, drive research endeavors, and refine Yale-NUS College’s innovative curriculum.

David is an aquatic ecologist and the principal investigator of the Post Lab at Yale. His research tests long-standing questions about food web structure and dynamics, the influence of environmental change on community structure and ecosystem function, spatial linkages among ecosystems, and the importance of interactions between ecology and evolution for community and ecosystem processes. He has studied the impacts of environmental change on species in habitats as diverse as Connecticut lakes and the Mara River in Africa

He is a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. David earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University, and his B.A. and M.S. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

David is an admired colleague and distinguished scientist, who has demonstrated his leadership ability during nearly two decades at Yale. In taking on this new role he will make a substantial contribution to Yale-NUS College by continuing to strengthen its outstanding faculty and innovative curriculum. David will also help maintain the close ties between Yale and the National University of Singapore as Yale-NUS enters its second decade.

The appointment was announced with a joint statement from Yale-NUS and Yale in which President Salovey said, “Yale-NUS College is Yale’s most ambitious international partnership. We are fortunate to have David Post, a long-time Yale faculty member, participating in the ongoing hiring and development of faculty for Yale-NUS, which has become a model for liberal arts and sciences education in Asia and worldwide.” Read the announcement on Yale News.

I would also like to recognize Jeannette Ickovics for her service to Yale-NUS. In addition to serving for the past three years as Dean of Faculty at Yale-NUS, Jeannette is the Samuel and Liselotte Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Yale School of Public Health. During her tenure in Singapore, she has been instrumental in envisioning new academic initiatives, promoting cross-divisional and multidisciplinary scholarship, developing mentorship opportunities for junior and female faculty, and highlighting faculty members’ innovative research. 

Please join me in extending thanks and best wishes to Jeannette as she returns to New Haven later this year, and congratulations to David on his appointment as Dean of Faculty beginning next summer.

Sincerely,

Pericles Lewis

Vice President for Global Strategy
Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives
Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature
Yale University

'Global Leadership Perspectives' Yale-NUS webinar series

02/01/21

Yale-NUS College has organized a series of collaborative webinars to take place throughout the Spring 2021 semester focused on timely topics and featuring faculty from Yale, Yale-NUS, and National University of Singapore (NUS). The series is intended for audiences across all three campuses and beyond and will be hosted by Yale-NUS’s Dean of Faculty Office.

“We are delighted to feature leading scholars at Yale-NUS College along with those at Yale and NUS for engaging discourse on a diverse range of topics – from politics to public health and featuring faculty from the humanities, sciences and social sciences,” said Yale-NUS Dean of Faculty Jeannette Ickovics (also the Samuel and Liselotte Herman Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health).  “Yale-NUS welcomes the opportunity to host these virtual meetings, where we will be joined by faculty, students, alumni, and friends of our extended academic communities to explore timely ideas from perspectives of both East and West” The series builds on the success of the recent webinar “American Elections” held in October – read more about that event

The following sessions have taken place (click the links to read details and view recordings):

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To learn more about Yale’s partnership with Yale-NUS College, visit this page on the Yale and the World website.

To learn more at Yale-NUS College visit their website.

Yale-NUS Introduces New Residential Curriculum

10/01/20

Yale-NUS recently introduced their new Residential Curriculum which will teach students important life skills as part of their living and learning community. The Curriculum includes three main areas: Community Living and Engagement, Intercultural Engagement, and Wellness. Dr. Dave Stanfield, the Dean of Students at Yale-NUS, explained that “The Yale-NUS Residential Curriculum is an intentionally curated sequence of programmes, discussions, and activities that help students build life skills and broaden their perspectives during their four years of campus living.” The topics covered in the Residential Curriculum were carefully crafted to satisfy the student’s learning objectives, and they encompass everything from financial wellness to social justice.

Professor Joanne Roberts, Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs at Yale-NUS, explained the important role of the Residential Curriculum in shaping how students understand the world: “At Yale-NUS, a diversity of experiences, perspectives, and disciplines come together to inform the way we approach learning. Besides academic learning, which is built upon our Common Curriculum, which introduces our students to foundational concepts and modes of inquiry across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, our Residential Curriculum also provides an immersive living and learning experience for our community members who come from over 70 countries. The Residential Curriculum is one of the ways we explicitly structure and scaffold learning within our community, creating intentional conversations and activities, to make the most out of residential and student life. These two pillars of learning are complemented by a rich set of co-curricular and extra-curricular learning opportunities, such as internships and community engagement, which move our students beyond the classroom and enable them to synthesize the diversity of experiences to understand their place in Singapore, ASEAN, and the world.”

Learn more about Yale-NUS’s unique Residential Curriculum here or watch the video about their new curriculum below.

Gorski named faculty director of the New Haven Office of Yale-NUS College

03/05/20

Yale Vice-President for Global Strategy Pericles Lewis sent the following email on March 5, 2020:


I write to announce the appointment of Philip S. Gorski, Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies, as the faculty director of the New Haven Office of Yale-NUS College, effective July 1, 2020.

Philip GorskiPhil’s knowledge of and involvement with Yale-NUS College is extensive. He currently serves as chair of President Salovey’s Yale-NUS College Advisory Committee and has held an appointment as a Contributing Faculty Member at Yale-NUS College since 2017. Phil spent the Spring 2015 and Spring 2018 semesters teaching at Yale-NUS. His service to Yale-NUS also includes mentoring faculty and students, consulting on the design of the Yale-NUS common curriculum, and membership on faculty search committees.

Phil is a comparative-historical sociologist with strong interests in theory and methods and in modern and early modern Europe. His empirical work focuses on topics such as state-formation, nationalism, revolution, economic development and secularization with particular attention to the interaction of religion and politics. He is a co-director of Yale’s Center for Comparative Research (CCR), and co-chairs the Religion and Politics Colloquium at the Yale MacMillan Center.  Phil earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, his B.A. from Harvard College, and his A.A. from Deep Springs College.

Yale-NUS College has maintained an office in New Haven to facilitate on-going programming and continued institutional collaboration since the College was founded in early 2011. The office initially provided the expertise and administrative support necessary to develop key aspects of the new college including admissions and financial aid, finance and operations, recruitment of senior leadership and faculty, and the creation of institutional policies and procedures. The New Haven office staff focus on strengthening and extending the relationship between the two institutions, whether by encouraging and facilitating individual visitors to travel between the campuses, supporting the Yale-NUS Governing Board and senior leadership, or exploring ways to expand institutional collaborations.

Kel GinsbergThe current director of the New Haven office, Kel Ginsberg, is retiring at the end of August. Arriving at Yale in 2001, Kel contributed in important ways to the launch and development of two unique Yale international endeavors – the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program and Yale-NUS College. She and her team received the 2017 Linda K. Lorimer Award for Distinguished Service. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Kel for her dedicated work on the Yale-NUS partnership since its beginning almost a decade ago. We now look forward to the next decade of Yale-NUS College with great optimism for what the future holds.

Please join me in extending best wishes to Kel Ginsberg on the occasion of her retirement and congratulations and a warm welcome to Phil Gorski.

Sincerely,

Pericles Lewis

Vice President for Global Strategy
Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives
Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature
Yale University

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