Education and Student Life
The Sheffield School innovated with an undergraduate course offering science and mathematics as well as economics, English, geography, history, modern languages, philology and political science. Sheffield also pioneered graduate education in the United States, granting the first Ph.D. in America in 1861 as well as the first engineering Ph.D in America to Josiah Willard Gibbs in 1863, and the first geology Ph.D. to William North Rice in 1867.
Unlike Yale College students at the time, Sheffield students had "no dorms, no required chapel, no disciplinary marks and no proctors". The Academical Department of Yale (Ac) and Sheffield (Sheff) became rivals. Loomis Havemeyer, alumnus and registrar at Sheffield, stated: "During the second half of the nineteenth century Yale College and Sheffield Scientific School, separated by only a few streets, were two separate countries on the same planet." The Ac students studied liberal arts and would look down on the practical Sheff students.
Sheffield had its own student secret societies (aka final clubs or senior societies, some also known by their Greek letters) including the Colony Club, 1848 (now Berzelius), the Cloister, 1863 (now Book and Snake), St. Anthony Hall, 1867 (now a 3-year society, also called Delta Psi), St. Elmo, 1889 (also a senior society), as well as Franklin Hall, 1865 (Theta Xi), York Hall, 1877 (Chi Phi), Sachem Hall, 1890 (Phi Sigma Kappa), and Vernon Hall, 1895 (Phi Gamma Delta). The Yale Scientific Magazine was founded at Sheffield in 1894, the first student magazine devoted to the sciences.
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