Letter from Dean Charles Announcing the Broad Center at Yale SOM
It is with profound excitement that I write to share with you the news of a new initiative at SOM that will advance the school’s unique mission and promises to produce lasting and profound benefit to society at large.
Dean Kerwin K. Charles sent the following message to the Yale SOM community on December 5, 2019.
SUBJECT: Tremendous news for Yale SOM
It is with profound excitement that I write to share with you the news of a new initiative at SOM that will advance the school’s unique mission and promises to produce lasting and profound benefit to society at large.
Supported by an historic gift of $100 million from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Yale SOM is launching the Broad Center at the Yale School of Management. This new initiative will provide SOM’s unique brand of management training to leaders of major public school systems in the U.S. By enhancing the capacities of these pivotal education decision-makers, the Broad Center at Yale SOM will have a transformative impact on the lives of the millions of young people who rely upon the public education system for the high-quality, effective schooling that society owes them.
Using the expertise of our faculty, alumni, and others in the SOM family, the Broad Center at Yale SOM will build upon the work and mission of the previously independent Broad Center. Our new center will run a Master’s in Education Management, intensive executive training, and colloquia and other events that bring together practitioners, scholars, and policymakers. Do read more of the details about the new programs on our website.
By contributing to the improvement of public education, the Broad Center at Yale SOM will help remove arguably the key impediment to upward economic mobility and greater socio-economic equality. Most of my scholarly life has been devoted to studying the factors that delimit individuals’ life prospects and inhibit the full flowering of their human potential. The aims of this new center thus cohere closely with my own research and teaching interests. More generally, though, I am confident that the center’s ambitions will also resonate with most of you, given the school’s distinctive aspiration since its founding to educate leaders for all sectors—public, private, nonprofit—and the animating belief shared by us all that leaders who attack problems with analytical rigor, energy, and caring have profound impact on society.
I am also excited because the new programs will have synergistic benefits for everything we do at the school. Alongside the general management knowledge embodied in our MBA, we now have programs across a range of domains that are defined by a) complex challenges, b) the juncture of actors from all sectors, and c) the potential for outsized impact on both individual lives and large communities. These include asset management, healthcare, sustainability, global leadership, financial stability—and now education. These programs are not distinct silos; they are linked by the substrate of our mission, and a regular pulse of communication exists among them. The same faculty teach across programs. Students often sit in the same classes or collaborate on events and activities. What is learned in one endeavor is evaluated, assessed, and turned to the benefit of others.
I wish to conclude by extending my deepest thanks to Eli and Edythe Broad, their leadership team at The Broad Foundation and The Broad Center, President Peter Salovey, and the many SOM staff who provided invaluable assistance during this process. Appreciation should also be extended to my predecessors in this office, whose unstinting efforts put the School of Management in a position to launch this new initiative. Finally, I want to thank all of you. Your energy, your spirit, your encouragement, and your belief that we are engaged in a special project at this school, one that seeks to change the world for good, have been of deep value to me.
Regards,
Kerwin Charles