Trumbulletin 2-22-21

February 22, 2021

I hope you all are enjoying the first break day of the semester and that all will be doing something to relax.  As those of you who are enrolled in person and are using the dining hall in Trumbull will realize by now (assuming you haven’t slept late and missed both breakfast and lunch!), I decided to celebrate this first break day by making a variety of games, puzzles, art materials, and food items available to you all as you pass through the Common Room. The idea is just to be light hearted and to do something different today. 

There will be more break days to come, of course, and know that I’m wide open to suggestions regarding how to make those special as well.  Just send me your ideas and I’ll act on them. They might involve repeating some items from today or having new and different ones.  As the weather improves we can add events that occur outside.

I thank Debbie Rueb, Deborah Bellmore and Karen Eisenman for helping me coordinate today’s event.  I also thank Jerry Zhou and Eric Youshao for their help with distributing pizzas on Super Bowl Sunday and last week. 

We’ve not forgotten that we have off campus students in New Haven and also remote students in many locations – especially our first-year students.

For our off campus students in New Haven:  If you would like us to prepare a goodie bag for you and pick it up in the entrance way to the Trumbull House (off Rose Walk), we’ll do that.  Just send me an email with the name of the person who will pick it up (so I can label it and communicate with you) and how many Trumbullians you are living with/who the goodie bag is for.  We’ll prepare those bags. 

For our remote first-year students:  We’re going to send you some TrumGear!  We’ll let you know when we put it in the mail so you’ll know to look for it.  (And, by the way, we miss you!)

For everyone:  Our first-years may not even realize this, but we have a group of individuals affiliated with Trumbull who are known as Trumbull Fellows.  Each of you (whatever your year) has been assigned one of these people as your advisor but there are others as well.

We’d like everyone to get to know some of them.  We will plan to meet in small enough groups that each person can actually introduce themselves to the Fellows, talk to them, and ask them questions.  They may have questions for you as well.  If some nice connections and networking occur, that would be terrific.

We are busy setting the dates for these sessions but know they will all take place on Zoom, almost all will occur early in the evening (think about 7 p.m.) and they will last about one hour.

Below I list some of the sessions that will take place.  Each will be open to a limited number of students, so I cannot guarantee that everyone who would like to attend a particular one will be able to do so.  Here’s what to do.  Look them over and see what ones look interesting to you.  Then send me an email (copy our Operations Manager, Deborah.Bellmore) indicating your interest.  The header of the email should be “Fellows Zoom Meetings: 1)…., 2)…..3…..” with the dots filled in with your first, second and third choice meetings.  Dates are being decided upon so if there are evening dates that are definitely out of the question for you, please indicate that in the body of your email.

Sessions that are currently planned (and there will probably be more)

#1   Public Health:   Meet the Dean of the School of Public Health (Dr. Sten Vermund) and School of Public Health professor Dr. Joan Monin, both Trumbull Fellows.

#2   Meet Yale’s Provost:    Meet Yale’s Provost and Trumbull Fellow, Dr. Scott Strobel
who will tell us about “Running a university from one’s bedroom.”  Just like the rest of us, he has found himself confined by CoVID but he’s carrying on anyway.

#3 Poetry for Pandemic Times:  Meet one (possibly two – this is still in the works) Professor of English at Yale (and Trumbull Resident Fellow) Dr. Ayseha Ramachandran who will talk about and share poetry.  (This one would probably occur on a Thursday evening and might be a recurring one if there is enough interest.)

#4 Art:   Meet Dr. Mark Mitchell, curator of American Art at Yale Art Gallery (and Trumbull Fellow) for a discussion of art. 

#5   I had no idea of what I wanted to do for a career when I was an undergraduate but I ended up in a good place.  Meet several Fellows of Trumbull who report not having had a clue of what they wanted to do when they were undergraduates but who ended up doing some pretty interesting and gratifying things. 

#6.  Medicine:   Meet a number of Trumbull Fellows who are involved in practicing or teaching medicine now.  All are affiliated with Yale.  We may just include another person or two who thought they were going to go into medicine while they were undergrads but who later did other things instead. 

#7   Law:    Meet our Trumbull Fellows and alums who are now lawyers to hear their perspectives on their careers.  They will be open to your questions as well. 

#8   Cooking:    Meet Trumbull Fellows who are very accomplished in one area or another but who all share a love of cooking.

Warmly, Head Clark