The Secret Language of Yale SOM’s Coat of Arms
The story behind the symbol that launched the school involves a last-minute scramble and a Yale employee who was fluent in the ancient tongue of heraldry.
The Historian’s Notebook: 50 Years of Business & Society is a blog series created in honor of the 50th anniversary of Yale SOM in September 2026. The series is written by Yale SOM’s resident historian, Michelle Spinelli. Reach out if you have an idea for a blog post, memories or photos to share, or an inquiry about SOM history.
It was a race against time. Yale SOM was only months away from opening its doors, and unlike Yale’s other professional schools and colleges, it had no coat of arms—no symbol to anchor its identity, no emblem to grace its banners or documents. Founding Dean William Donaldson turned to Christopher Jones, an associate from his days at the State Department, and asked him to create a coat of arms—also known as a shield—from scratch.
Jones came back with a rendering of a conference table—“the beginning of most business discussions”—flanked by four chairs on each side, symbolizing negotiation. Ultimately, the table would be divided in the middle, with the top half in gold and the bottom half in silver to symbolize the school’s dual commitment to the public and private sectors. The chairs—four of gold and four of silver—would sit against the opposite-colored sides of the table, to indicate the importance of cross-sectoral collaboration in addressing common problems. Above, the university seal sat on a blue background.
Donaldson liked what Jones envisioned, as did Henry “Sam” Chauncey, then secretary of the university. But to truly be a coat of arms, Chauncey pointed out, the design needed an essential element: heraldic language. Without it, Jones’s design would be nothing more than a logo dressed up in armorial style. “Who here speaks that?” Jones asked.
Chauncey directed Jones to Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, where he found Harry Scammell, curator of Yale’s bookplate collection and, by his own description, a “pursuivant of arms.” Scammell, who had come to Yale from the British Museum, was excited to take on the project; this would be his first opportunity to use his heraldic training at Yale.
Heraldry originated in Europe in the 12th century to distinguish one armored knight from another on the battlefield, where full armor made individuals unrecognizable. Soon, institutions—universities, guilds, and cities—adopted it as well, using it to assert identity and legitimacy.
Every coat of arms has a blazon—a precise description of its elements and colors and their arrangement—given in a highly standardized language consistent with the laws of heraldry. For SOM’s coat of arms, the blazon read Vert, a lozenge per fess Or and Argent, between chief four plates, in base four bezants: on a chief the Arms of the University.
Before the graphic could be used in ceremonies and official documents, it needed to be formally rendered. John O. C. McCrillis of Yale University Press completed that step with little time to spare.
On September 13, 1976, as the school convocated for the first time, the SOM coat of arms and banner were unveiled. In a letter to McCrillis the following day, Donaldson thanked him for accommodating an “impossible” timeline, adding that he hoped McCrillis felt like he was “very much a part of our fledgling, but exciting new enterprise.”
What began as a last-minute scramble had become a symbol designed, like all heraldry, to endure.
