First-year students at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences were officially welcomed to campus at a Matriculation Ceremony held Aug. 29 in Battell Chapel.
In addition to greetings from Graduate School Dean Susan Hockfield, the ceremony included a talk by Peter Salovey, the Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology.
"Exactly 20 years ago ... nearly to the day ... I sat in your seat, an entering graduate student in the Department of Psychology, and listened anxiously, a jumble of hope and terror, as my elders tried to impart a few tidbits of wisdom," Salovey told the incoming students.
During a recent trip to Stockholm, Sweden, said Salovey, he visited an exhibit celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize. "[Its] theme is that it is the creative environment ... especially those informal meeting places giving rise to unplanned discussions ... that spurs creativity," he recalled.
"I suggest that, in coming to Yale University, you, too, have entered a creative milieu on a grand scheme, and your task in the coming months is to find that local instantiation of the creative place that inspires you. ... [L]ikely, it will be what one sociologist calls the 'third place.' Neither home nor office, the third place is where one finds that combination of comraderie and intellectual safety in which one can try out a really crazy idea. My special place has moved around a bit in the course of two decades at Yale, although caffeinated beverages feature prominently in all of them."
Equally important are the individuals who cultivate that creative environment, said Salovey, including "the talented tradespeople and steadfast custodians who maintain the beauty of its physical reality, and the dedicated clerical and management professionals responsible for helping us to negotiate this landscape.
"Most salient in your lives," he added, "the faculty is here to help you flourish in these rich soils. There are no more important relationships on the campus than those between graduate students and the faculty members with whom you will collaborate in the scholarly and educational missions of the University. ...
"Yale is a university at which members of the faculty choose to be here in part because of the value placed on interaction with students," he said. "Neither graduate students nor professors are encouraged to hide from each other; we are here precisely because of each other. Our lives as scholars, investigators and educators are interdependent; a relationship unparalleled in the non-academic workplace."
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