Author Archives: Jessica Letchford

Despite the economic downturn, Yale is gearing up this semester to fill the 434,000 square feet of laboratory space on West Campus. Renovations are underway to prepare laboratories for a new microbial diversity research institute, a genomics core facility and a small molecule screening facility, said Michael Donoghue, the vice president for West Campus planning »

Few realize that Yale granted the first engineering Ph.D. in the United States in 1860. After all, engineering is not the word that comes to mind when someone says Yale. Understandably so, perhaps. Compared to engineering behemoths like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Stanford University, the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, with »

Amidst the bright blue scaffolding around Harkness Tower and the gaping excavation outside Morse College, one change to Yale campus has gone largely unnoticed: the University’s newest wireless network. Only one in five wireless users are accessing the Internet via YaleSecure, an encrypted wireless network that protects users’ passwords and other personal information from hackers, »

More students thought twice before throwing out their rickety bowl chairs and outmoded winter jackets at the Spring Salvage last semester. The end-of-the-year recycling program, which encourages Yalies to recycle their unwanted clothes and furniture, collected fewer tons of student belongings this year — 50 tons compared to the 60 tons collected in 2008, The »

About 100 faculty members who use Entourage to manage their e-mail messages have had problems accessing their accounts in the past week. Yale College Dean Mary Miller said the outages made her “communications unreliable and unpredictable at best.” Joseph Paolillo, a senior director at ITS, said the problem was caused by a hardware problem with »

Roberto Jimenez SOM ’09 thought he was going to Costa Rica to relax after a hectic final semester at the School of Management. But instead of spending the summer exploring lush rainforests, Jimenez and his newly formed group, CO2Neutral2021, worked on drafting a road map to help Costa Rica meet its goal of carbon neutrality »

As families cut back on vacations to exotic destinations, more and more New England residents are opting for local getaways, including Yale’s own Peabody Museum of Natural History. Paid admissions to the Peabody have been up from the previous year for every month except one since the global recession began last fall, said Melanie Brigockas, »

When applicants considering Yale weigh factors in their admissions decision, they typically turn to aesthetics, academics or extracurricular offerings. But a new factor has begun to emerge for a small proportion of applicants: sustainability. For half a dozen of the newest Elis interviewed, Yale’s green initiatives played some role in their decision to matriculate. A »

As newspapers and magazines across the country face budget cuts, layoffs and even closure, Yale’s 11-month-old environmental publication — “Yale Environment 360” — is not only surviving, but thriving. The online magazine, also known as “e360,” has received two awards in the past month: “Best New Science Site” from Treehugger.com, a leading online “green” media »

Recent student-reported problems with wireless connectivity and connection speed have been resolved, David Galassi, the Internet Technology Services director of network services, said Wednesday. In response to an article published by the News earlier this month revealing student dissatisfaction with wireless, Galassi said ITS Network Services conducted an in-depth analysis of the network and, on »

When Leah*, a fifth-year graduate student in the Chemistry Department, decided to go to graduate school, she expected it would be a more intense version of her experience majoring in chemistry at a small liberal arts college. But after only a few semesters at Yale, she realized graduate school was not what she had anticipated. »

While Elis today vastly prefer cell phones, the 20,000 cords currently tethering landline phones across the University will not be cut anytime soon. As departments across the University prepare their budgets for the next fiscal year, cutting both their personnel and non-personnel costs by the mandated 7.5 percent, staff members have proposed eliminating landlines campuswide, »