alumni with its highest honor
Six alumni of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will receive its highest honor, Wilbur Lucius Cross Medals, at Commencement this year.
Every year since 1966, the Graduate School Alumni Association has awarded the Cross Medals to one or more of the school's alumni for outstanding achievement in an activity in which Cross himself excelled.
Cross (18621948) was accomplished in many fields. He was a distinguished scholar of English literature, having earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 1889. He was editor of the Yale Review for almost 30 years and author of "The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne," "The History of Henry Fielding" and other books on the English novel. He joined the Yale faculty in 1894, and from 1916 to 1930 was the first dean of the newly reorganized Graduate School. Following his retirement from Yale, he was elected governor of Connecticut for four terms.
This year's medals will be conferred on historian William Cronon '90 Ph.D., scholar and statesman Hong Koo Lee '68 Ph.D., scientific researcher Julia Phillips '81 Ph.D., biologist Barbara Schaal '74 Ph.D. and psychologist and educator Philip Zimbardo '59 Ph.D. Following a longstanding tradition of honoring a departing dean of the Graduate School, a special Wilbur Cross Medal will be presented to Peter Salovey '68 Ph.D., who is stepping down to become dean of Yale College.
Cronon is an innovative educator and a pioneering environmental historian, whose writings have transformed scholarly understanding of the American West. A former Yale faculty member (19811992), he is currently the Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin. Cronon's first book, "Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England," put environmental history in the center of American historical writing and won the Parkman Prize. "Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West," winner of the Bancroft Prize, revealed how urban, rural and western history formed an unexpected whole, how numbers told human stories and how technology transformed America everywhere.
Lee has served his native South Korea as both an educator and a politician. After teaching at Emory and Case Western Reserve universities, he served for 20 years at Korea's flagship institution, Seoul National University. In 1988 he entered his country's newly democratic government, holding increasingly responsible and demanding positions: minister of national unification, special assistant to the president, ambassador to the United Kingdom, deputy prime minister and then prime minister. Later, at the height of the Asian financial crisis in 1998, he was posted to Washington, D.C., as ambassador to the United States. He now chairs the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, the equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Phillips has been both a pioneering scientist and an important role model. Her research at AT&T Bell Laboratories led to key advances in semiconductor technology. She transferred into research management at Bell Labs and then Sandia National Laboratories, where she is responsible for critical programs at the nation's largest and most complex technical organization. She has worked to promote programs designed to spark the interest of young people, particularly women, in the sciences, and has been a mentor to numerous budding scientists. Her national leadership in this area was recognized by the first Horizon Award of the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau.
Schaal, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, applies state-of-the-art theory and technique to the study of plant evolution. Recently, she turned her attention to the conservation of plant diversity, the potential benefits and perils of genetically modified crops, and the origins of invasive species. Her seminal work on cassava documented genetic variation among the wild progenitors of that plant, leading the way for other phylo-geographic analyses. Her honors include the Botanical Society of America Merit Award and election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.
Zimbardo's work demonstrates the power of social situations for good and evil. At Stanford for the past 35 years, he conducted studies that now appear in every psychology textbook. Perhaps most famous is "The Prison Experiment," in which he demonstrated the power of social roles and institutional forces in shaping behavior. A popular teacher, he has taught more Stanford students, in a wider variety of courses, than any other professor in the school's history. He was twice elected president of the American Psychological Association, has received honorary degrees on three continents and earned numerous teaching commendations.
Salovey assumed leadership of the Graduate School when Susan Hockfield became provost last year. Although his tenure has been brief, he has been lauded by both faculty and students for his warmth, energy, commitment to graduate education and sense of fun. He will become dean of Yale College in July. His pioneering scholarship on "emotional intelligence" explores the interplay between human feeling and intellect. He has also done research on the power of health promotion messages to prevent risky behaviors leading to such diseases as AIDS and to increase disease prevention and detection measures such as cancer screenings.
T H I S
William Cronon
Hong Koo Lee
Julia Phillips
Barbara Schaal
Philip Zimbardo
Peter Salovey
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
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Campus Notes
Concert to feature undergraduate musicians
2004 Commencement Information
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