story | Ambika Madan, Staff Writer
photo | Alysha Chandra
Yale-NUS College has recently announced the start of a new summer program, the Yale-NUS Summer Institute in Global Strategy and Leadership in New Haven. This signature program is modeled on the popular Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University and will cover readings from ancient classics to contemporary strategy pieces.
At the recent information session for the Yale Summer Session (YSS), Trisha Craig, Dean of International & Professional Experience at Yale-NUS College, mentioned that this summer institute had been on the agenda of former Yale-NUS President Pericles Lewis for years. She also said that this program is open to students from all disciplines and it gives students the tools to think critically about big global issues like climate change, public health, migration and trade.
According to Ms. Craig, the Grand Strategy framework is one that seeks to teach students how to think about the principles of strategy and how to apply them to contemporary global problems. Alongside that, there will be weekly sessions on related skills such as game theory, decision-making, negotiation, and oral presentation. There will also be a two day role-playing event at the end centered around the topic of a particular international crisis. Students will select or be appointed roles of leaders, legislators, press, and other global actors, and they will have to research and draft policy responses, pivoting as the situation demands.
Although the Yale-NUS Summer Institute is considered to be a more condensed version of the Brady-Johnson program, there are important differences between the two. The Brady-Johnson Program is year-long and is open to both undergraduate and graduate students whereas the Yale-NUS Summer Institute is five weeks-long and not open to graduate students. Unlike this new summer institute, the Brady-Johnson program also involves a summer internship. Both the Brady-Johnson program and the Yale-NUS program include special guest dinners where influential people and activists from all over the United States come and dine on campus with students.
This program is worth 10 Yale-NUS credits, has 40 spots per year for freshmen and sophomores from Yale-NUS, and lasts for five weeks. Currently, it is only for Yale-NUS students but it may be opened up to Yale students in the coming years. During this program, students will enjoy a residential experience at Yale University; they will live in the dorms, eat in the dining hall and mingle with other Yale students.
As the first program with the Yale-NUS name on the New Haven campus, this new program also furthers the existing partnership between Yale-NUS College with Yale University, Ms. Craig added.