Sprague Hall (Yale University)
Once a year, during the homecoming weekend, Yale University hosts its annual Alumni Assembly and Convocation. This is the gathering of alumni volunteers and leaders from around the world, from all of the various graduate schools and undergraduate classes, and the leadership of all the “Shared Interest Groups” (which includes sports teams, publications, singing groups, and all manner of affiliations). It is a three-day event with the first two days consisting of many optional lectures and tours, plenary sessions to hear directly from the University President and Corporation Board Members, lunches, and a grand dinner to honor the five annual recipients of the “Yale Medal” (the highest honor that the University bestows on its alumni volunteers). The final day, attendees are invited to attend Yale’s last home football game or go to one of the University’s dozens of museums and galleries if their interests are less sporting.
Sterling Law Building (Yale University)
Terms of service and attendance to the Assembly are generally limited to three years. Since my graduation, I have attended as a representative of the Yale Club of New York, the representative (and later the President) of the Yale Association of Rhode Island, a representative of my class helping organize five-year reunions, and even as a Class Agent (volunteer fundraiser). Attending takes time out of the delegates’ schedules, costs the price of travel and hotel and yet the demand for delegation places is so strong that the University tries to limit people to just three years in any representative role so that more people are able to experience the Assembly and get to share their perspectives in all the many activities that are organized during the assembly of alumni. Many people travel to New Haven from every corner of the world just to participate in this annual gathering.
Yale Medal dinner held at the “Commons”
Returning from this year’s Alumni Assembly, I thought to myself, “What is it that makes the gathering so popular and enjoyable?” For me, it is a chance to return to a place where I had spent four years of intellectual, social, and athletic development. In the time from my graduation to the present, the University’s budget has expanded from $440 million in 1985 to more than $6 billion today. Similarly, the endowment has grown from $1.3 billion to more than $48 billion. Although as students we did not realize it, the campus of our college years was suffering from a lot of deferred maintenance. These days, all those deficiencies have been corrected, and everything looks absolutely spectacular. The original 12 residential colleges of that time look better and newer today than they did 40 years ago. Two additional residential colleges have been constructed to the same high standard to allow Yale’s undergraduate population to grow to nearly the same size as its Ivy League competitor in Cambridge, and hopefully disappoint fewer alumni parents each year as the admission rate has fallen to less than 5%). With regard to new buildings on campus, there are many, and they have been built with an extraordinary sense of design and quality. New Haven, too, has greatly improved. There were once areas immediately surrounding the campus where students did not travel after dark. Now, many of these places have been transformed with chic restaurants and stylish walk-up apartments, teaming with activity and nightlife.
Woolsey Hall (Yale University)
Among the many noteworthy spaces I visited again this year were “The Commons” (the extraordinarily large, high-ceilinged dining hall where the Yale Medal dinner was held), Woolsey Hall (Yale Gilded Age Concert hall with ornate organ and ceiling), and the Tsai Center (a new glass-walled structure built in a previously empty interior courtyard). I also enjoyed taking a tour of Yale’s British Art Center (the largest collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom), which has just completed a spectacular two-year renovation.
Yale Tsai Center
Traveling back to the campus is like revisiting an old friend or flame, only to discover that they are looking stronger and more attractive than ever, which is an extraordinary experience after a long absence. Coming to campus and seeing the students roaming around the campus as we once did is also like stepping through a time machine. They look and act much as we once did, unaware that they will soon be replaced on campus by successive generations of students. It is a reminder of a time and place when all the possibilities seemed infinite, matched only by the students’ ambitions and hopes to positively impact the world.
Yale British Art Center (1977, Renovation Completed 2025)
As an architect, I am also drawn back by the architecture, both old and new. I see the old architecture in greater detail and admiration than I ever did as a student, and I marvel at the new architecture as well, built to utilize new technologies for new purposes and yet made to be complementary to the existing buildings and campus.
This year much of the focus was on how the university is going to have to change its direction now that Congress has passed an 8% tax on non-profit income. This tax in 2026 will apparently be $280 million, very similar to the amount of money the university was allocating to student support so undergraduates had an average of less than $15,000 debt at graduation from Yale College, which is among the lowest in the country at private collegiate institutions.
Yale British Art Center (1977, Renovation Completed 2025)
If you would like to have your New England home or building designed by someone who not only benefited from an education at Yale, Cambridge, and Columbia Universities, but by someone who is continually renewing and enhancing their education at these and other places of higher learning, we hope you will reach out to A4 Architecture sometime soon. We look forward to achieving great designs together.
Ross Sinclair Cann, AIA, LEED AP, is a historian, educator, author, and practicing architect living and working in Newport for A4 Architecture and is Founding Chairman of the Newport Architectural Forum. He holds honor degrees in Architecture and Architectural History from Yale, Cambridge, and Columbia Universities, teaches in the Circle of Scholars program at Salve Regina, and has been a licensed architect since 1993.