Assembly LXI: The Undergraduate Curriculum at Yale
Thursday, October 24 - Saturday, October 26, 2002
Assembly Chair Marc B. Lockhart '84
Executive Summary

Graduate School Alumni Association Executive Committee Meeting

For the first time at an AYA Assembly, delegates representing the Graduate School met as a separate group. This change in the Assembly program reflects a recent transformation of the Graduate School Alumni Association (GSAA), the volunteer leadership organization for Graduate School alumni. Under the GSAA's new constitution, delegates to the AYA Assembly also serve as members of the executive committee of the GSAA. The Executive Committee elects its own officers and will now conduct semi-annual meetings during the AYA Assembly. (Note: all alumni of the Graduate School are automatically members of the GSAA; there are no dues.)

The new constitution for the GSAA states that its purposes "shall be to serve the interests and help to maintain the stature of the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, to provide a channel of mutual communication between the alumni and the Graduate School and to provide review and counsel to the Dean regarding the direction of the Graduate School's alumni relations programs and efforts."

Stephen Scher '56, '66 PhD, Chair of the GSAA, opened the meeting with a welcome to the delegates and a quick overview of the changes in the GSAA. Jeff Brenzel '75, executive director of the AYA, then related a brief history of the relationship between the AYA and the Graduate School. Four years ago, at the beginning of Susan Hockfield's first term as Dean, alumni relations and fund-raising activities at the Graduate School were separated and turned over to the AYA (alumni relations) and the Office of Development (fund-raising). Since then, AYA staff members Julia Downs and Jessica Rostow have performed the alumni relations work for the Graduate School, under the guidance of Jeff Brenzel and Judy Cole '84 MPPM.

As described by Jeff Brenzel, initiatives for engaging Graduate School alumni with Yale include:

• More effective communications with alumni via departmental newsletters and a revamped Yale Alumni Magazine.
  
  
• High-quality "vertical" reunions for Graduate School departments; two per year (reunions for Economics, Astronomy, English, Linguistics, Political Science, African American Studies, Engineering have been held since 1999; reunions for French and pan-East Asian studies are scheduled for 2003).
  
  
• An online career networking capability akin to the one already in place at Stanford, is set for launch in late spring 2003. This project will address both academic and non-academic careers for Graduate School alumni.
  
  
• The Dean has steadily increased her personal travel to speak with Graduate School alumni in major cities both here and abroard, and she has increased school support for receptions at major academic conferences for Graduate School alumni.
  
  
• Graduate alumni are playing a key role in developing and using the enhanced resources for lifelong learning being produced through the AllLearn venture with Stanford and Oxford.

Susan Hockfield, Dean of the Graduate School, then joined the session to meet and talk with delegates. She first expressed her commitment to pursuing excellence in every aspect of graduate education at Yale, and to creating a vibrant "community of scholars" at the Graduate School that includes alumni as well as faculty and students. A vigorous, friendly question-and-answer session with the Dean concluded the meeting.

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