History
Established by an act of the Yale Corporation in August 1847, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was originally called the "Department of Philosophy and the Arts" and enrolled eleven students who had completed four-year undergraduate degrees. The Department was also the precursor of the Sheffield Scientific School. The program offered seminars in chemistry and metallurgy, agricultural science, Greek and Latin literature, mathematics, philology, and Arabic. The faculty consisted of two full-time science professors, Benjamin Silliman Jr. and John P. Norton, and five Yale College faculty members who offered advanced courses in their subject areas.
At Commencement in 1861, Yale University awarded the first three Ph.D. degrees in the United States. NYU's School of Practical and Analytical Chemistry followed in 1866, The University of Pennsylvania in 1870, Harvard University in 1872, and Princeton University in 1879.
In 1876 Edward Alexander Bouchet (Yale B.A. 1874) was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in the United States. His degree was the sixth doctorate in physics ever awarded in that field.
Women were admitted into the Graduate School that same year. In 1894, Elizabeth Deering Hanscom became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. at Yale. She went on to establish a long and distinguished career as professor of English and American literature at Smith College.
In 1892, the Department of Philosophy was officially renamed the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Arthur Twining Hadley was appointed dean. Hadley later became Yale's 13th president. In 1920, the Graduate School was assigned its own governing board, and under Dean Wilbur Lucius Cross (1916-1930), it attracted a large and distinguished scholarly faculty.
The Hall of Graduate Studies was built between 1930 and 1932. Designed by James Gamble Rogers, the building is in the scholastic Gothic style, with whimsical and emblematic decorative details, stained glass windows, and ornamented ceilings.
In 1996, the McDougal Graduate Student Center was established in the Hall of Graduate Studies. It now has professional staff to head offices of Teaching Fellow Preparation and Development, Graduate Career Services, and Student Affairs. The Graduate Student Assembly was established in 1997.
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