Home > A Vision for Yale
We have a historic obligation to create knowledge, discover new ways of understanding, and demonstrate the importance of taking actions that are rooted in research and scholarship.
— Peter Salovey
Yale University President
Yale's mission is to improve the world today and for future generations through outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice.
The university's mission calls each member of the Yale community to explore the world in all its vast complexity—and to create knowledge that benefits humanity. The stakes for this work could not be higher: the country and the world need the very best from Yale—right now.
As it has done in years past, and as it does today, Yale must lead in the future. That is why Yale is making strategic investments in areas where it can have the greatest impact. These investments will strengthen Yale and, more importantly, fulfill its mission.
Read the FALL 2020 academic strategy update
Science for Breakthroughs
Some of humanity's most pressing and urgent questions can only be answered through science and engineering. Throughout the campus, faculty, students, and staff are accelerating Yale's work in science and engineering to spark discoveries that will benefit millions.
Yale's strategy to accelerate science and engineering is targeted and specific. The university is focused on five multidisciplinary areas and a number of other cross-cutting initiatives that were identified by a faculty committee.
Data science and computer science
Yale will not only expand data and computer science in its applications, benefiting research throughout the campus, but the university will also advance fundamental research underlying this area.
Work in neuroscience takes place in many departments, programs, and schools across the university. Investments in this area will leverage a broad array of Yale's strengths.
Inflammation science
Inflammation science is vital to understanding the immune system as well as the cause and role of inflammation in many chronic diseases, including arthritis, cancer, and multiple sclerosis.
Planetary solutions, including climate change and evolutionary response
This priority area addresses the threat to the local and global environment. Yale must respond to this challenge and is well positioned to do so. This is an area of focus across campus—from the School of Architecture to the School of the Environment, from economics to sociology.
Quantum science and engineering
Investments in this area will build on and augment Yale's leadership in fundamental quantum research with dramatic potential applications.
Collaboration for Impact
It is Yale's responsibility to share light and truth—to increase knowledge and understanding of pressing domestic and international challenges. The university is preparing leaders who will be informed by facts and analysis.
Yale is emphasizing data-driven social science research to address the great issues of the day, such as health care, migration, and international security.
The new Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, for example, will bring together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners working on critical issues that span borders. It will be the first school created at Yale since the School of Management in 1976. By convening world leaders and working collaboratively across fields, Yale students and faculty will set the agenda in areas such as global health, political instability, and cyberwarfare.
Yale also is emphasizing the importance of data-driven social science research that addresses domestic public policy. This allows Yale to offer truth, not partisanship or anecdotes, in advancing American society. The new Tobin Center for Economic Policy is a part of Yale's commitment to conducting evidence-based research to solve critical challenges. It will provide research grants and communicate its findings to a broad audience that includes policymakers and the public. It will become a focal point for faculty and students interested in domestic policy analysis and address a need in the United States for non-partisan, policy-relevant research.
Arts and Humanities for Insight
To fully grasp global challenges, Yale faculty and students must explore and understand the human experience in all its complexity. They are asking questions about the world and the role individuals play in society, seeking light and truth in literature, language, history, philosophy, the arts, and other fields.
Yale is deepening its historic preeminence in the humanities. The renovation and expansion of 320 York Street will place many humanities departments under a single roof, along with signature programs like Directed Studies and the Whitney Humanities Center. By bringing together scholars from across disciplines, from literature to history, Yale is augmenting its ability to ask and answer key questions about humanity and to develop new areas in teaching and scholarship. Yale's museums and collections, among the finest in the world, also serves as superb resources for teaching and learning.
In addition, the university is focused on creating new professorships that bridge the arts to the rest of the university. Yale is reaffirming the importance of arts and humanities to the world and will continue to set the standard in these areas.
Support for Faculty and Students
Yale's academic priorities allow the university to extend the frontier of knowledge and tackle the most critical problems facing humanity. To accomplish these bold plans, Yale must recruit and retain preeminent faculty members who define their fields, as well as attract the most promising students.
Every aspect of Yale's academic investments—from buildings and facilities to providing resources for research, scholarship, education, preservation, and practice—supports the work of its faculty members. Since the academic strategy was announced in November 2016, the univeristy has recruited and retained exceptional educators and scholars across each of Yale's priority areas and beyond. Yale will continue to support targeted hiring of field-changing faculty.
Yale also has focused on maintaining the excellence of its student body and on fostering a diverse and exceptional educational community. Today, Yale's students hail from over 120 countries and from every conceivable walk of life. They bring their unique experiences, creativity, and dreams to the campus. They transform Yale and are transformed by it.
That is why Yale is expanding financial aid across the university and making a significant investment in talented students. The new residential colleges, opened in 2017, have allowed Yale to expand total undergraduate enrollment by 15 percent. Between 2013 and 2019, Yale nearly doubled the number of entering first-year undergraduates who are eligible for Pell Grants, and increased significantly those who are first in their families to attend college.
Yale also has been cultivating innovative, multidisciplinary thinking among all its students. The Yale innovation corridor—including the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), the Yale Center for Engineering Innovation and Design (CEID), and the Greenberg Engineering Teaching Concourse—brings students throughout the university together to create new ventures and address challenges across sectors.
In addition, the Schwarzman Center will play a vital role in helping the Yale community reengage with the activities that are not possible during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once it is safe to gather again, Yale faculty, students, staff, alumni and neighbors will be enriched by in-person artistic performances, guest lectures, and many other events.
Yale's investments in its faculty and students will pay remarkable dividends in their lives and in the communities where they lead and serve.
Building a Stronger and More Inclusive Yale
Yale is committed to addressing longstanding challenges and injustices in society and to advancing the university in ways that are essential to its excellence. In October 2020, President Peter Salovey launched a set of new initiatives that builds on the university's ongoing work to foster and sustain a campus culture that attracts, inspires, and supports the finest and most committed faculty members, students, and staff from every background, every neighborhood in this country, and every part of the world. These new programs will delve into Yale's history, assess and enhance the university's current actions, and create a stronger Yale for the future.
A diverse faculty, student body, and staff—who are fully included in the Yale community—form the foundation for Yale's mission and aspirations. The Yale community will work across many fronts to achieve a university environment where everyone belongs and can thrive, so that faculty, students, and staff can continue to teach, conduct research, and engage in scholarship of the highest caliber.