 | President Richard C. Levin and Yale College Dean Peter Salovey enter Woolsey Hall for the Freshman Assembly. |
The following is the text of the Freshman Address delivered by President Richard C. Levin on Aug. 28 in Woolsey Hall.
I want to join Dean Salovey in welcoming the parents, relatives and friends of the members of the Yale College class of 2008. We are delighted to have you as part of the Yale family, and we thank you for entrusting your children to us. I know that you are wrestling with the inevitable mixed emotions of this moment. So let me reassure you. If history is any guide, your children will thrive here.
And now to the class of 2008: As you were making last minute preparations to come to New Haven, Dean Salovey and I, along with about 50 administrative and faculty colleagues and an even larger number of indefatigable supporting staff, were embarking on a new adventure of our own. Just two weeks ago, the presidents and vice presidents of 12 of China's leading universities arrived in New Haven for an intensive 10-day course on the American university, and Yale in particular.
I was greatly pleased but not entirely surprised when, at the end of the program Wednesday evening, our Chinese colleagues reported that they found the course very stimulating, and that they were returning home with new ideas for reforming some of their policies and practices. What did surprise me was how valuable the experience was for those of us at Yale who participated in teaching the course.
At the request of China's State Council and Ministry of Education, we were asked to explain the essential features of how universities work: how students are admitted; how faculty are recruited and evaluated; how research is funded; how student participation in the classroom and in extracurricular activities is encouraged; how digital technologies are used in teaching and research; how medical schools relate to the larger university; how alumni involvement is encouraged; how funds are raised to support the university; how the endowment is invested; how long-run planning is done; how campus master plans are created and modified; and how responsibilities are divided among administrators and the faculty.
Any good teacher knows that one can't hide one's ignorance from an inquisitive student. And we knew in advance that our Chinese students would be very inquisitive. It would not be enough for them to learn how Yale works; they would want to know why. This was no small challenge for us. Correctly anticipating the curiosity of our visitors, we prepared our lectures by re-thinking the answers to some very fundamental questions about why the university is organized the way it is, about why we do things the way we do.
Among the questions we had to ask ourselves, and among those asked by our visitors, are some that pertain directly to you. Three in particular come to mind. Why is the undergraduate curriculum, at Yale as at other leading American universities, structured as it is -- with two years of broad, general education followed by two years focused largely on one subject? Why is it valuable to have advanced research and undergraduate education co-located in the same institution? Why do we select students by considering many dimensions of accomplishment and potential rather than academic performance alone?
Since the experience of being a Yale undergraduate is about to be yours, I thought these questions might be of some interest. So, with the answers fresh in my mind, having been recently tested on this material, I submit them to you.
During your first two years here, you will have the opportunity to explore a broad range of subjects, choosing among literally hundreds of courses throughout the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences that have no or few prerequisites. Indeed, you will be required to distribute your courses such that you cannot specialize prematurely. Only when you choose a major field of study, at the end of your second year, will you be required to concentrate a significant portion of your courses in one area, and only then will you be required to take certain specific courses, rather than choose among electives.
This distinctively American approach to undergraduate education is not the prevailing pattern in most other countries with strong universities. In most of Europe and in China, students choose their major field of study when they apply for admission. Once admitted, they do not have the freedom that you have to test your interest in a wide variety of subjects; they specialize immediately. Similarly, in much of the world, students choose a profession in their final year of secondary school; they begin the study of law and medicine as first year undergraduates.
The freedom to explore in the first two years hasn't always been a feature of undergraduate education in America. Until the middle of the 19th century, there were very few elective courses at Yale and other leading American colleges. Everyone in Yale College took a common set of courses focused on classical Greek and Latin, science, mathematics and philosophy, and the vast majority of students in law and medical schools entered directly from secondary school. The expansion of the number of elective courses, the requirement that students choose a major after two years of general study, and the definition of professional schools as postgraduate institutions evolved gradually during the 50 years following the Civil War.
The most eloquent justification for a broad, unspecialized and non-vocational undergraduate curriculum is found in a report written by Yale's President Jeremiah Day in 1828 that was intended, ironically, to justify retention of the prescribed classical curriculum. At the core of Day's argument was the belief, which we at Yale share today, that your education should equip you to think independently and critically, and to respond flexibly to new information, altering your view of the world as appropriate. Although Day believed that the set classical curriculum was ideal to develop this "discipline of the mind," today we encourage you to experiment broadly over a range of subjects, to master different ways of thinking that will prove valuable as you continue to learn and develop over a lifetime. We believe that you will be better doctors, lawyers, business leaders, teachers, scholars, ministers, artists, musicians, writers or public servants after you have explored many subjects, and most especially after you have learned to submit all ideas to critical scrutiny and to think for yourself.
A second question we confronted in attempting to explain Yale to our Chinese visitors was why, in the same institution, do we combine research at the most advanced levels with undergraduate instruction? Again, this is not the prevailing pattern throughout the world. In many European countries, as well as China, the most distinguished scientists and scholars work in specialized government laboratories or research institutes, where they train advanced graduate students but do not teach undergraduates. That is not the practice here. Yale's most distinguished scientists and scholars teach undergraduate courses. This arrangement advantages both you and our faculty.
The advantage to you is clear. There are few experiences comparable to that of learning a subject from someone who has actively shaped the field she teaches. Such scholars understand more deeply than anyone else that our knowledge is constantly being augmented and reinterpreted. There are simply no better teachers than those who at once possess complete mastery of a field and a commitment to learning as an active, life-long project.
The advantage to faculty is less obvious, but equally important. I've just explained to you how being asked to teach the Chinese material with which we were intimately familiar caused us to reconsider and justify beliefs and practices we normally take for granted. Well, so it is for scholars, enmeshed in their disciplines, who confront students as bright and curious as you. You ask the best and most challenging questions, precisely because you have yet to internalize fully the assumptions and methods that govern each particular discipline. What we teachers learn from thinking about the questions you ask in the classroom makes us better scholars and better teachers.
A third question our Chinese visitors asked was: why do we have such a mysterious and complicated set of criteria for admitting students? In China and many other countries around the world, admission to the top universities is strictly determined by performance on standardized national examinations. Why are we so different?
The question has a simple answer, even if we acknowledge that our admission process is mysterious and complicated. We know what we are trying to accomplish, even if the decisions are hard to make.
Now you are by no means slackers when it comes to taking tests. But it wasn't your test scores that got you here. It was your potential to make a contribution to society, your potential to become leaders in your professions and chosen fields, your potential to become involved in public and civic life, your potential to become creative and imaginative scholars, teachers, artists, musicians or writers. To make a judgment about your potential we used all the evidence available, not simply test scores and grades. We considered what your teachers said about you, what you said about yourselves, and what you did outside the classroom.
I am not revealing our high opinion of you to impose a burden of obligation. I mean instead to convey a sense of our confidence in you, even as you are experiencing the understandable and entirely natural anxiety of starting something new. History has proven us right in our admissions decisions; Yale graduates make an astonishingly rich array of contributions to society. But it doesn't happen automatically. Our job is to put extraordinary resources at your disposal; your job is to make the most of them.
In the weeks ahead, each of you will find yourself in a situation not unlike mine two weeks ago as I encountered our Chinese visitors for the first time. Just as I had to explain Yale to those unfamiliar with it, you will have to explain yourself to strangers. You will be asked to describe who you are, what you like and dislike, what you believe and don't believe. In probing conversations way past midnight, you will be challenged to explain why you have come to be the person you are. These conversations are the beginning of your Yale education. You have so much to learn from the other people in this room, and they have much to learn from you. You are all alike in possessing talent and potential, and you will come to share a great enthusiasm for this place, but you have very different backgrounds, tastes and beliefs. Just as it does in the classroom, encountering difference among your classmates will broaden your horizons and cause you to appreciate new possibilities. It will challenge you to think about yourself, to understand the person you are, and to define the person you hope to become. Welcome to four years of self-discovery. Welcome to Yale.
Freshman Address by Yale College Dean Peter Salovey
T H I S
Back to School
Freshman Address by President Richard C. Levin
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Historian is term member of foreign relations council
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