Class Delegate Report April 30, 2003 Association of Yale Alumni Assembly LXII Randy Helm ‘70 Members of the Class of 1970 I have recently returned from New Haven and Assembly LXII of the Association of Yale Alumni (AYA), to which I have been your humble class delegate for the past three years. As my term is now complete, this will be my last official report to you in this capacity (though my successor should be aware that these programs are so stimulating that I will happily serve as an alternate in the future should he be unable to attend an Assembly). Classmates also in attendance included: Bob Nath (AYA Board of Governors), and Mark Fulford (delegate from the Colorado Yale Association). You will not be surprised to learn that there is a lot going on at Yale these days (isn’t there always?). A few news items highlighted in the first two plenary sessions include: Yale’s new on-line alumni directory – over 25,000 alumni have registered in the past six months (a record compared to other schools of our ilk), and you should register too! (http://www.alumniconnections.com/yale/). It is an easy way to look up current addresses of old friends, or to find out what Yalies are living in your (or any other) area. Work is in progress for increased Alumni Career networking on-line as well. A review of reunion programs and services has greatly improved the reunion experience (which I thought was already pretty terrific), and reunion attendance is now up approximately 20% over 10 years ago. There is a fantastic new "Alumni Club Toolbox" website (http://www.aya.yale.edu/clubofficers/) that replaces the thick binders club officers used to hand down from one generation to the next. It has goodies that even non-club officers might find useful, like downloadable Yale icons and photographs, links to a USPS business mail site, and much much more. Check it out! Following these morning sessions I was one of the fortunate 20 or so AYA members invited to lunch with a member of the Yale Corporation, Ted Shen ‘66. As the portraits of Kingman Brewster, Bart Giamatti, Benno Schmidt, and others gazed impassivly down at us from the walls of the board room in Woodbridge Hall, we discussed Yale’s new proposed undergraduate curriculum, particularly the role of study abroad and the use of summer internships. I also found an opportunity to share with Mr. Shen, and with Linda Lorimer the concerns a number of classmates expressed at our last reunion about the Yale Admissions Office. (To summarize, the issues did not deal with the difficulty of our children in getting admitted, but rather the diffidence of the Admissions staff, which led to our admitted children preferring to go to other colleges). In the afternoon we took a close look at the main theme of Assembly LXII, "Engineering and Applied Science in Service to Society". Let’s start with the punch-line: in the early 1980s, engineering at Yale was on the ropes, and it wasn’t clear whether Yale would even continue to concentrate in applied science. Rick Levin and his team, however, felt that an academic institution of Yale’s caliber could not afford to neglect a field of such vital importance to the future of society. Subsequently, Yale placed some large bets in support of engineering and applied science. From everything I saw last weekend, those bets have paid off handsomely. After hearing an overview of the Engineering program from Dean Paul Fleury and from Susan Hockfield (the first scientist to serve as Provost of Yale!), a panel of incredibly bright, talented, and ingenious undergraduates talked to us about their research. Jennifer Michelstein ’03, for example, developed a robotic soccer player, and (perhaps more pragmatically) has invented a device which can be mounted on automobile dashboards to detect sirens and flash a light inside the car to alert the driver (who might be hearing impaired, or simply distracted by on-board telephones, stereos, DVD players, and rowdy offspring). Another student is designing a "surrogate head" for whiplash injury research. George Malcolmson ‘03 has worked on the Segway, on recyclable plastics, and on designing environmentally friendly battery chemistry. The next morning, President Levin gave us an upbeat overview of the University, the proposed new undergraduate curriculum, and Yale’s accomplishments in engineering and applied science . We were treated, as well, to a polite protest by undergraduates concerned about recent incidents of racial harassment on campus. To my mind, race, racism, and diversity would be an excellent theme for a future AYA Assembly. Braving monsoon rains, we boarded school buses (less leg room even than USAirways coach) to tour various laboratory facilities, each more impressive than the last. A new Biomedical Engineering building will be dedicated within a few weeks (it was still being finished during our visit). Undergraduate enrollments in the BS program in biomedical engineering have jumped from 9 in 1999 to 19 in 2002. Teaching laboratories in robotics showed us other wonders, including the "feral robotic dog" project: students rebuild toy robot dogs ($3.99 from Amazon.com) with more power, better software, all-terrain wheels (instead of legs), and sensing devices (robotic noses) that can detect and register differing levels of toxic substances. The resulting pack of feral robotic dogs can be unleashed on a site, and provide visual feedback regarding the presence of toxic wastes. During the weekend, I also found time to chat with non-Engineering undergraduates, namely the members of "The Sextet" (my son Burt ’04 and his five roommates). Their experiences at Yale run the gamut from managing the Yale Daily News, to hosting an interview program on Yale’s FM station, to cramming for MCATS. They are bright, funny, interesting, and worthy heirs to the Yale undergraduate tradition of wit, erudition, and rakish good looks so perfectly exemplified by the Class of 1970. Rounding out the weekend: a nourishing breakfast at the Doodle, an eye-opening visit to the permanent collection of the Yale Center for British Art, and a medieval banquet in the Berkeley College dining hall, in celebration of Bishop Berkeley’s Birthday. In short, our alma mater is thriving. I encourage you to visit her whenever you have an opportunity to do so. It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve as your class delegate to the AYA for these past three years. All best wishes, Randy Helm