It was at a dinner for first-year Branford College students last year that Juan Carlos Gonzalez, now a Yale sophomore, first encountered a particularly accomplished fellow college resident.
“I thought, ‘Wait, that’s the guy, I recognize him,’” said Gonzalez. “So I went up, and I took a photo with him. He’s really nice.”
That guy was James Rothman, Sterling Professor of Cell Biology and professor of chemistry at the Yale School of Medicine (YSM), who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2013 for his work uncovering the mechanism for conveying molecular messages both inside and outside of cells.
Rothman — along with his wife, Joy Hirsch, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of comparative medicine and neuroscience at YSM— is also one of the resident fellows of Branford College, providing academic advice and mentorship to its students and participating in the community’s social life.
(Along with producing insights into the neural basis of social behavior, Hirsch is also a champion ballroom dancer.)
“To interact so closely with people who are doing groundbreaking research, who are literally producing new knowledge, I never quite imagined that being possible at my age,” said Gonzalez. “That’s a very Yale experience.”
Jim and Joy are accomplished scientists, so for students to realize they are living here, next to them, there’s also this sense of awe and, and a genuine reminder that we’re surrounded by excellence and that we are also part of that excellence.
In addition to living in Branford and acting as advisers to first- and second-year students, Hirsch and Rothman have developed another way to facilitate connection with their neighbors — monthly dinners structured around a conversation on a predetermined topic, typically something broadly science related. Hirsch and Rothman send out the topic and related reading material ahead of time, and they and about a dozen students, chosen by lottery, convene at Mory’s for dinner and discussion.
“What’s really amazing is that if you take a dozen more or less random Branford College students, you will find somebody who knows something about everything,” Rothman said. “These are such a diverse group of people, intellectually and experientially. You have such amazing expertise. And in shockingly young people”
“And if not expertise, opinions, which is even more interesting,” added Hirsch.
A partnership in learning
The residential college system of Yale, patterned after Oxford and Cambridge, was established with a gift from Edward Harkness (Yale College class of 1897); the first seven colleges — including Branford — opened in 1933.
From the beginning, the relationship between students and their resident faculty advisers was considered vital to the enterprise of fostering students’ development, academic and otherwise. As Charles Seymour, then Yale’s provost, wrote shortly after the colleges’ opening, these relationships were based on “the principle of co-partnership for the conquest of learning.”
The support and encouragement that Rothman and Hirsch provide, said Enrique De La Cruz, the head of Branford College, emblematize this commitment to students. “The two of them, despite their global obligations, still advise our first years,” he said. “They take undergraduate students in their lives, and they’re very much immersed in why we’re here.”
“Yale is a truly amazing university with amazing people in all career levels — faculty, staff, lecturers, professors in the practice — and across many different disciplines,” added De La Cruz, who is also the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Jim and Joy are accomplished scientists, so for students to realize they are living here, next to them, there’s also this sense of awe and, and a genuine reminder that we’re surrounded by excellence and that we are also part of that excellence.”
Enrique De La Cruz
All 14 of Yale’s residential colleges offer an extended community of faculty, staff, and alumni who provide academic and social support to students. These include the residential college deans, who act as the chief academic officers and oversee their students’ academic progress; the heads of college, who help shape the social and intellectual life of the college; and associate heads, college staff, resident and non-resident fellows, and graduate affiliates, who advise and mentor students.
In Branford, Stephen Blum, the senior director of strategic initiatives at the Yale Alumni Association, also serves as resident fellow.
The supportive framework, especially of the heads and resident fellows who live in the college, can help ease the transition to college life for many Yale undergraduates, students say.
“You’re coming in as a first year, probably recently 18, the world is huge and you’re just a new baby to it, and it feels good to have something like a second set of parents,” said Elena Bouldin, a Yale College junior and Branford College resident. “It really provides you with more of a sense of a smaller community within the bigger Yale.”
Rothman, a member of the Yale College Class of 1971, was also a resident of Branford College during his undergraduate years, as were both his children. For him, living within the college offers a visceral sense of connection. “I think it’s fair to say that we marvel at the beauty of Branford College, and frequently we just look around and pinch ourselves because it’s physically such a beautiful and unique environment,” he said. “It’s also inspiring to be constantly among young people.”
“It’s been so much fun to connect with the undergraduates and have a renewed appreciation of their enthusiasm and their brilliance,” added Hirsch. “They’re creative and funny and appropriately irreverent. And it’s been a real privilege, I think, for us to share this place with them.”
Dinner and a wide-ranging discussion
Each month, a lucky dozen Branford residents are emailed an article to read — on lithography, for example, or Miyake events (spikes in carbon-14 recorded in tree rings), or, most recently, the reintroduction of dire wolves through genetic engineering — in preparation for dinner.
Research that has recently earned the Lasker or Nobel prizes are also perennial topics, said Rothman. He happens to be on the Lasker award jury, he added — “so I’ve already had to do the hard work of actually understanding the topic.”
They convene at Mory’s, typically in the Cup Room (where a glass case holds dozens of silver cups, representing the restaurant’s iconic communal tradition), and discussion gets underway. Rothman or Hirsch often jump start the conversation — “I tend to monologue,” said Rothman; “I tend to put the brakes on it,” rejoined Hirsch — but as the meal progresses the students take over.
“What happens by the end of these things is that you could delete us from the room,” said Rothman. “We don’t matter anymore. They start talking to each other, and we might try to get a word in on the edges, but that’s about it. We become almost irrelevant — which is the highest compliment you can have.”
“When the students make the faculty irrelevant, that’s good,” added Hirsch.
“The chance to sit and have a meal with the professor is amazing,” said De La Cruz. “But to sit down with these two to talk about a topic — it’s fun. And you realize that they’re using this as an opportunity to fulfill the university’s goals — encouraging thought and discussion, endorsing critical questioning, and inspiring curiosity.”
That Hirsch and Rothman encourage a wide spectrum of interests and backgrounds among their attendees appeals to students as well. “They hold it as a space where anyone can attend regardless of whether you know a lot or very little about the topic,” said Bouldin, the Yale junior. “You can always attend and contribute and also learn something from the conversation.”
“What really interested me is how it wasn’t just about science,” added Gonzalez, the Yale sophomore. “There are a lot of other conversations. Everyone brings in their own expertise, their own passions.”
For some students, the dinners can have a profound effect. “We’ve had students who have reported that their experience in these sessions has changed their ideas about what they want to do,” said Hirsch. “Several students have made decisions to go on to medical school or go on to science because of the conversations that happened.”
“What we do here is contribute in a small way to a unique experience that the students in our college can have,” said Rothman. “If some small piece that they take with them adds up to who they become, then we’ve succeeded, and more importantly they’ve succeeded.
“And if this helps Yale succeed in a small way that’s unique to Yale and special, and maybe special to our little microcosm of a residential college, that’s a wonderful thing. And we get a lot out of it, too.”
