‘The community we build’: Yale welcomes newest students

As university leaders welcomed Yale’s newest undergraduate and graduate students on a pleasantly breezy morning Monday, university President Maurie McInnis assured them that the tools exist to meet this moment of rapid transformation in the world. 

And at Yale — where enduring qualities like curiosity, courage, and compassion form the bedrock of a community of learning — the university’s newest students could hardly be in a better place to explore them, she said. 

The community that each student builds, through faculty mentors and their own new classmates, will help them develop and strengthen their ideas — and help prepare them for whatever the future brings, McInnis told first-year undergraduates during the annual Opening Assembly ceremony on Cross Campus.

“In a world in flux, the skills and relationships you gain here will help you adapt and thrive,” she said. “The ability to think critically, engage respectfully, ask questions, and interrogate ideas — that’s what stands the tests of both time and technology.”

For the 1,643 members of Yale College’s entering Class of 2029, the annual ceremony marked the formal beginning of their Yale experience. Hundreds of guests, including family members, friends, and other members of the Yale community, attended.

Earlier in the day, speaking to newly arrived graduate students at the annual Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) matriculation ceremony, also on Cross Campus, McInnis ’96 Ph.D. shared her own experiences as a graduate student at Yale, where she discovered “a playground for my curiosity, a space to question, explore, and follow new ideas wherever they led.”

“All these years later,” she said, “it’s clear that Yale’s impact on my life has been immeasurable, as I know it will be on yours. Because however long you’re here for, whatever degree you earn, you will forever be a part of this extraordinary community of curiosity, exploration, and knowledge creation.”

For McInnis, an art historian, some of her most cherished memories as a Yale student were formed at the Yale University Art Gallery, she said in her Opening Assembly address. As the new students began their Yale journey, she shared her thoughts about a particular painting that hangs in the gallery — Winslow Homer’s “Old Mill (The Morning Bell)” — which, like the students’ arrival at Yale, represents a kind of journey.

In the 1871 painting, a woman in a red dress and straw hat approaches a rickety ramp leading to a longer bridge, carrying a lunchpail. Behind her a group of women are in conversation, “their whispering posture almost conspiratorial.” At the far end of the bridge is an old mill. It is unclear who the woman is, or where she is headed. Indeed, like life — and like the best classrooms — it resists easy answers, McInnis said. But it invites the viewer to ask questions.

Homer painted “Old Mill” just a few years after the end of the Civil War, McInnis said, a period “when unfathomable new technologies like electric power and the telephone emerged and radically changed the landscape of work and society,” in ways that disrupted American life almost overnight.

As students prepare to cross their own bridges — and make sense of a world being transformed by technologies like artificial intelligence and social media — “Old Mill” is a reminder that the world we create depends on how we treat one another and the community we build, McInnis said. And as we face another period of transition and uncertainty, she told the new students, it is critical that they turn to each other. 

“Time after time, you will have the chance to fill the canvas before you with connection. Take it,” she said. “In this moment of transition, in the face of uncertainty and instability in the world, be the hand that reaches out first. Be the friendly ear that listens or the soft voice that comforts. Seek out and learn from other perspectives, not just the ones you arrived with. Because that’s how you build community. One small gesture at a time.”

(Read McInnis’ full speech.)

In his own remarks, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis underscored for the new undergraduates that a key part of a university education is the exploration of character — a universal question that is less about where a person comes from and more about where they choose to go next. 

“If you are coming to Yale as a young adult, you can ask — and I hope you will ask — who you will be for the rest of your life — including not just what career you will have but what kind of life you might live and what moral values you want to live by,” he said.

While professors shouldn’t impose their own values on students, he said, it is their responsibility to ask them to confront moral questions, including questions about the kind of lives they want to live. The hope of the kind of education Yale offers, he said, is that by living and working with others, students will make connections between their studies and their own life choices.

“Character is not a list of rules or attributes from antiquity or holy texts,” he said. “At the heart of character is a question, not a rule. Character asks you — even challenges you — to discover your values, articulate them, defend them, even change them in the face of new knowledge, and above all to learn how to live by them.”

(Read Lewis’ full speech.)

During the graduate student matriculation ceremony, McInnis and Lynn Cooley, the GSAS dean, welcomed Yale’s new graduate students and visiting scholars to campus. 

The incoming group of 937 graduate students (which includes Master of Arts, Master of Science, and Ph.D. students) comes to Yale from nearly every corner of the United States and from the around the world, McInnis said. And they will pursue studies in disciplines ranging from mathematics and microbiology to poetry and public health.

“Each of you took a different path to get here. You hail from every corner of the country and around the world,” she said. “Some of you came straight from earning your undergraduate degrees. Others have spent years in the workforce or the military. And yet, you’re bound by something more powerful than a shared interest or field of study, something that crosses every divide and transcends every difference: curiosity.”

“Each and every one of you is here because you got curious about something. A work of art. An unsolved question in physics. A mystery of human behavior.”

In her remarks, Cooley urged students to take full advantage of Yale’s resources — including its exceptional faculty, state-of-the-art facilities, and vast cultural and scientific collections. But their education, she added, will take many forms. She urged them to get to know as many people in the community as possible — not just those they will interact with in their classes, labs, and libraries.

“If you truly want to get the most out of your Yale education, do not just fulfill the requirements of your program — participate fully in all this place has to offer,” she said.

She encouraged them to embrace uncertainty as they work to discover new knowledge that improves society for generations to come. And she urged them to be mindful of how they communicate these findings, and why they matter to the wider world.

“The true test of expertise in each field is not your ability to communicate with experts who understand your field, but rather to explain to those who have no idea what you’re doing or why it’s important,” she said.

For Yale’s new students, McInnis added during her matriculation address, their experiences and education will be shaped by the people they meet, including people from all walks of life and schools of thought.

“It will be shaped by the exchange of new ideas, by the embrace of new experiences, by the community you build and the curiosity it inspires,” she added. “I believe your decision to continue your education is more important now than ever. Because what you do here — what you write, research, discover, and create — will be the answer to some of humanity’s most pressing questions.”