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Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Established	1847
Dean:	Jon Butler
Faculty:	900
Students:	2,300
Location	New Haven, Connecticut,  United States
Website:	www.yale.edu/graduateschool

The Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, founded in 1847, is one of the oldest graduate schools in the United States. It conferred the first Ph.D. degrees in North America in 1861.

Today, the Graduate School is one of twelve schools composing Yale University and the only one that awards the degrees of Doctor of Philosophy, Master of Philosophy, Master of Arts, Master of Science, and Master of Engineering. The work of the Graduate School is carried on in the divisions of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Biological and Physical Sciences. Fifty-three departments and programs offer courses of study leading to the Ph.D. degree. There are twenty-four programs that terminate with the master’s degree.

The Graduate School comprises approximately 2,300 students, about one-third of whom come from outside the United States. Admission is highly competitive with each entering class making up about 500 students.

About 900 faculty are involved with the graduate students as teachers, mentors, and advisors.

The portrait of Edward Bouchet, the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in the United States, adorns Sterling Memorial Library

Established by an act of the Yale Corporation in August 1847, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was originally called the "Department of Philosophy and the Arts" and enrolled eleven students who had completed four-year undergraduate degrees. The Department was also the precursor of the Sheffield Scientific School. The program offered seminars in chemistry and metallurgy, agricultural science, Greek and Latin literature, mathematics, philology, and Arabic. The faculty consisted of two full-time science professors, Benjamin Silliman Jr. and John P. Norton, and five Yale College faculty members who offered advanced courses in their subject areas.

At Commencement in 1861, Yale University awarded the first three Ph.D. degrees in the United States. The University of Pennsylvania followed in 1870, Harvard University in 1872, and Princeton University in 1879.

In 1876 Edward Alexander Bouchet (Yale B.A. 1874) was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in the United States. His degree was the sixth doctorate in physics ever awarded in that field.

Women were admitted into the Graduate School that same year. In 1894, Elizabeth Deering Hanscom became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. at Yale. She went on to establish a long and distinguished career as professor of English and American literature at Smith College.

In 1892, the Department of Philosophy was officially renamed the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Arthur Twining Hadley was appointed dean. Hadley later became Yale's 13th president. In 1920, the Graduate School was assigned its own governing board, and under Dean Wilbur Lucius Cross (1916-1930), it attracted a large and distinguished scholarly faculty.

The Hall of Graduate Studies was built between 1930 and 1932. Designed by James Gamble Rogers, the building is in the scholastic Gothic style, with whimsical and emblematic decorative details, stained glass windows, and ornamented ceilings.

In 1996, the McDougal Graduate Student Center was established in the Hall of Graduate Studies. It now has professional staff to head offices of Teaching Fellow Preparation and Development, Graduate Career Services, and Student Affairs. The Graduate Student Assembly was established in 1997.

The Graduate School offers programs leading to the M.A., M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in over 70 departments and programs. It also offers joint-degree programs with several of Yale's professional schools and opportunities for advanced non-degree study.

The Hall of Graduate Studies

HGS contains the offices of the Graduate School administration, several academic departments, the McDougal Student Center, a dining hall, and a residential tower for graduate students.

Yale’s facilities for research and study include a university library system of nearly eleven million volumes, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, the Office of Information Technology Services, departmental libraries and collections, and the extensive resources of the professional schools. The collections and services of the Research Libraries Group, which consists of Columbia, Harvard, and Yale universities and the New York Public Library, are also available to students.

Special research facilities for the sciences include the Bass Center for Molecular and Structural Biology, Josiah Willard Gibbs Research Laboratories, Kline Geology Laboratory, Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, Kline Biology Tower, Becton Engineering and Applied Science Center, the Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center, the Peabody Museum of Natural History, the Arthur W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory, Arthur K. Watson Hall for computer science, the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine, and the many other science laboratories throughout the campus.

The Office of International Affairs serves as an administrative resource to support the international activities of all schools, departments, offices, centers, and organizations at Yale. It tries to promote Yale and its faculty to international audiences and increase the visibility of Yale’s international activities around the globe.

Mr. Alfred McDougal ’53, a Yale alumnus, and his wife, Ms. Nancy Lauter, enabled Yale to create the McDougal Graduate Student Center in 1997. The McDougal Center is housed in HGS, comprising a popular Common Room (and student-run Blue Dog Cafe), The Graduate Teaching Center, Graduate Career Services, the Dossier Service, and a Resource Library. The Center also has offices for the McDougal Fellows, Diversity Fellows, and Graduate Teaching Center student staff, the Graduate Student Assembly, as well as various directors and staff.

• Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences - Official Homepage
• The McDougal Center
• Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society

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