Peter Salovey, a world-renowned psychologist who last year completed an 11-year term as Yale’s president, this month received an honorary degree from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) Medical School in Athens, Greece.
During a June 15 ceremony, held in the Great Hall of the University of Athens, Salovey was recognized for a research career marked by pioneering scholarship — work that has also been “intertwined with an exceptional administrative trajectory.”
As Yale’s 23rd president, said NKUA Rector Professor Gerasimos Siasos, Salovey led the development of new programs and facilities, reorganized departments and schools, founded the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, and transformed the Yale School of Public Health into an independent, self-supporting school that is respected globally.
“Throughout his tenure, he championed innovative teaching and expanded Yale’s collaborations … most recently, with our own university,” Siasos added. “For Professor Salovey, ensuring access to Yale for students from all over the world — regardless of financial background — was a priority.”
Siasos also lauded Salovey’s scholarly work. Among the world’s most influential social psychologists, he is a leading expert on the psychological consequences of moods and emotions and is widely known for his work on the concept of emotional intelligence — a framework he developed over three decades ago with John D. Mayer, which posits that people have measurable emotional skills that affect how they think and act.
At Yale, Siasos noted, Salovey also played a key role in numerous university initiatives, including the Health, Emotion, and Behavior Lab (which has become the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence), the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, and the Cancer Prevention and Control Program.
Salovey, who is also Sterling Professor of Psychology at Yale, returned to the faculty last year after more than a decade as the university’s president. Before becoming president, in 2013, he served as the university provost, dean of Yale College, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and chair of the Department of Psychology.
“It is always very meaningful to me personally when another distinguished university reaches out with this kind of recognition,” Salovey said. “I especially appreciate the way in which it also honors all my collaborators and colleagues at Yale.”
Also attending the ceremony were Maurie McInnis, the current Yale president, and Vasilis Vasiliou, the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health.
