<p>Earlier today, Yale President Richard Levin sent this e-mail to the Yale community:
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To: The Yale College Community</p>
<p>From: Richard C. Levin</p>
<p>I write to announce formally that this year we will assess the desirability of adding two new residential colleges. I have asked Peter Salovey, the Dean of Yale College, to coordinate the work of two committees: one to examine the impact of increasing enrollment on our academic programs and the other to consider the impact on student life. Before we decide to proceed with new colleges, we want to be certain that the quality of the Yale College experience would be maintained or enhanced, and not diminished.</p>
<p>Yale's residential colleges achieve the nearly impossible: they provide both a sense of community akin to that of a small liberal arts college and access to the abundant resources of a great research university. The combination of a vital, flourishing residential and extracurricular life with an extraordinary academic program sets Yale apart, and no doubt contributes to the College's exceptional record in educating leaders in all walks of life for this country and the world.</p>
<p>The idea of adding residential colleges dates back more than thirty years. But recent developments now offer compelling reasons for a thorough reconsideration:</p>
<p>Applications to Yale College have nearly doubled in the last decade, requiring us to reject a large number of qualified candidates who would clearly benefit from a Yale education and contribute to the Yale community.
Our mission has expanded to embrace the education of leaders for the world, not simply our nation. Increased enrollment would create more opportunity for Americans as well as international students.
We are making substantial investments in the curriculum of Yale College - enhancing support for writing, languages, science instruction, and quantitative reasoning. These efforts could be appreciated by a larger student population.
A larger student body would require a larger faculty, especially in departments and programs that are under enrollment pressure now. Expanding the faculty in certain areas would have substantial benefit for graduate education and research.
A larger enrollment would have positive and perennial benefits for the economy of New Haven, arising from the expenditures of students themselves, the University's expenditures on their behalf, and new employment opportunities.</p>
<p>Despite these obvious and substantial benefits of expansion, we need to consider carefully all the associated costs and collateral consequences. We need to identify the costs that are quantifiable, and we need to ponder the important, non-quantifiable impact of additional enrollment on the culture of Yale College. The committees that I am appointing will take up this challenge.</p>
<p>For example, the Committee on Academic Resources, chaired by Dean of Undergraduate Studies Joseph Gordon, will consider where additional faculty positions would be needed to preserve the opportunity Yale students now have to enroll in small classes in the freshman year, and, in most departments, to take seminars as juniors and seniors led by members of the ladder faculty. This committee will also consider such issues as what supplemental library and information technology resources would be needed to support a larger student body, and how much additional classroom space would be needed.</p>
<p>The Committee on Student Life, chaired by the former Master of Calhoun College William Sledge, will investigate the staff resources required to maintain the quality of student support services, from shuttle buses to the Bursar's Office and Financial Aid to Career Services, International Education and Fellowships, and the University Health Services, for example. This committee will also consider how new colleges located on Prospect Street between Canal and Sachem Streets might be made to feel "closer" to the center of campus, or might even move the perceived center northward, by the possible addition of classrooms, late night dining, and exercise facilities in proximity to the new colleges. Finally, the committee will consider the extent to which the capacity of two new colleges, if built, should exceed the increase in enrollment, in order to relieve overcrowding of our twelve existing colleges.</p>
<p>Penelope Laurans, Associate Dean of Yale College and Special Assistant to the President, will serve as Vice Chair of both committees and assist Dean Salovey in coordinating their work. Both committees will be supported by the Budget Office in forming estimates of the comprehensive cost of expansion, which, as we know from preliminary studies, will substantially exceed the incremental revenue provided by several hundred additional students. I will ask each committee to report on its findings early in the fall semester, so that we will be prepared to make a recommendation, one way or another, on the advisability of expansion to the Corporation by the end of this calendar year. If we decide to proceed, I would then form a planning committee to work with architects on the programming and design of the new facilities.</p>
<p>I have asked the Yale College Council to nominate three student members for each committee. As soon as they are chosen, the names of the remaining faculty and staff members of the committees will be posted on the web, and the work of the committees will get under way.</p>
<p>The prospect of expansion presents an opportunity to augment Yale's capacity to contribute to the strengthening of our nation and the betterment of the human condition globally. If we are to seize this opportunity, we must be confident that we can preserve the extraordinary quality of academic and extracurricular life in Yale College. This will be a year of exploration - an inquiry undertaken with all the seriousness and rigor of the academic enterprise to which we are all deeply committed.
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