Div Dictionary: LPM

LPM (n): Leadership in Public Ministry, a course offering from Yale Divinity School that satisfies the internship requirement for M.Div students.

Like CPE, LPM is another acronymic way that divvies can spend a summer getting course credit and being paid for it. (LPM was also offered during the school year this year; it's slightly unclear whether that'll happen again.) In brief, students spend the summer being trained as community organizers, and then applying those skills in a variety of internship placements around Connecticut. Students in LPM are charged tuition for the three hours of course credit they accumulate, but they are also paid (in the form of a grant through the Financial Aid Office) for the internship they work.

ETA: My pants are burning. Turns out CPE does cover your internship requirement via transfer credit. Mea culpa; I misread an earlier comment. (Thanks for keeping me honest, Susan.)

From the LPM website:

Leadership in Public Ministry is a supervised ministry course designed to teach students how to work with others to create change in community. Students learn about how community leaders define leadership and how they become leaders. They also learn how to practice justice and use power in ways that are biblically based and theologically grounded. The course is now being offered in both the summer and the academic year. Both terms start off with a period of intensive classroom training and continue with work in a local site under the supervision of an experienced practitioner. This is combined with regular classroom meetings designed to enrich the concepts and skills taught in the initial training, as well as to offer reflection time for interns to share their experiences.

For years, the LPM team has partnered with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based organization in Southwest Florida which organizes for worker's rights on the huge agricultural corporations there. The course culminates in a trip to Immokalee, which is where our intrepid LPM 2009 folks are right now. In a van. Driven by Susan O. (I'm somewhere between jealous and pity on that one.) In the winter of 2009, some of the CIW organizers visited YDS, and that's where the photo at right comes from.

(Photo bonus: Can you find your two BTFO 2009 leaders in the photo above?)

-Kate

(Photo bonus answer: No, you can't, because we're too small and blurry.)

Div Dictionary: Archie Moore’s

Archie Moore’s (n): The only bar I can walk to in my neighborhood. Also serves food.

Because of Archie Moore’s proximity to the Div School, and the necessity of beers after or during certain moments of theological ferment, you’ll end up at Archie Moore’s many times during your divinity career. Many, many times. You’ll go there for meetings, you’ll go there for lunch, you’ll go there for birthday party beers.

Sigh.

Let me be honest with you. I don’t really like Archie’s. This is probably yet another symptom of having moved here from Chicago: the phrases “only bar I can walk to in my neighborhood” and “Wow, three dollar beer, that's cheap!” make me weep into my Old Style. My drinking career started in a city once described on This American Life as (and I paraphrase) “a magical place with a bar on every corner, where the downtown smells like chocolate.” (This of course before the whole EPA thing.) I’m kind of still searching for my Jimmy’s East, and the fact that when I find it I’ll have to drive/bum a ride/take a cab there irks me.

Viewed through an objective lens, though, there’s a lot to love about Archie’s:

It’s really close to campus.

It serves beer.

It also serves food. Wings are a specialty, but Archie’s has a full menu that includes burgers, salads, and even desserts. It’s no $5.00 Reuben, but the Cajun fries are delish.

You can take your kids there. Yep, for serious. My friend Zach told me it’s one of the best East Rock restaurants to take his three-year-old daughter to. I totally made this face when he said it, but his reasoning is pretty good. Your kid can make any kind of mess they want at Archie’s while they nosh on chicken fingers and the like, while you enjoy adult food and beverage. The waitresses have seen much worse, and that mess was generated by a bunch of seminarians. I still recommend you evacuate the children before the Div School posse takes over the back room.

One of the sweeter things about Archie’s is how much they like Div School kids. Several friends of mine are on a first-name basis with some of the waitresses, and some of the staff made appearances at graduation-week barbecues so they could meet their favorite patrons’ families. Also, Sandra really likes Archie’s (now that she lives in a different neighborhood, the California grilled cheese is a treat for her). Even I can’t totally hate this place.

-Kate

Div Dictionary: CLC

CLC (n): the Community Life Committee, YDS’s school-sponsored social scene.

From unpromising beginnings, I’ve had quite a productive day. Having just woken up from a 45-minute reward nap on the CLC/BTFO office couch, it occurred to me that many of you may not actually know what the CLC is. (BTFO, I assume, you’ve got down.)

Whether out of concern for building a real sense of community among YDS folk, confusion over how to blow endowment funding, or concern that the dorkier among us might not be able to build social lives without a nudge or several, YDS sponsors a huge number of events on campus. The ones that aren’t lectures or conferences, the parties, study breaks, movie screenings, happy hour and other such frivolity, are often sponsored through the Community Life Committee. Since we love our acronyms around here, we just say “CLC.” Here’s a much better description than my nap-addled brain is going to put together, straight from the CLC website:

The YDS Community Life Committee (CLC) seeks to provide opportunities for fellowship, spiritual and intellectual growth, rest, celebration, and relaxation for the YDS Community. The Community Life Committee (CLC) is a Standing Committee of the General Faculty of the Divinity School comprised of faculty members, administrators, and student Representatives. The CLC allocates funding to student groups, is responsible for the annual Back-to-School Cook-out, the Christmas Party, Spring Fling, the All School Conference, Fatted Cafés, Coffee Hour, and more!

Faculty members and administrators are appointed by the Dean, with one serving as co-chair. The other co-chair is held jointly by the student co-coordinators. Other students serving on the Committee include four elected members of the student body: a first-year student, a Master of Divinity student, a Master of Arts in Religion student, and an at-large member. The Student Council President may also serve on the CLC.

On this website you can also take a gander at the impressive number of student activities YDS has going on. (Remember that we’re a mere 350-students strong, and that many of us are supposed to be spending all our time studying. In that light in particular, that’s a pretty active group of folk.) Since CLC funds student groups, most on-campus student-produced events are at least partially CLC funded. CLC also funds and produces the BIG campus events – like our end-of-semester parties: the Advent Party and Spring Fling. Generally, if you’re eating free food on campus, you’re probably at a CLC event. If you’re drinking free beer on campus, you’re definitely at a CLC event. The CLC is headed by a faculty member and two students (not gonna lie, I just learned that from the website). Last year’s student CLC coordinators were also at just about every event that happened within a 10-mile radius of campus to provide support and Key Lime Pie.

The one thing the CLC doesn’t fund is BTFO, which is why I will kindly redirect all your complaints about the lack of beer and Key Lime Pie elsewhere.

-Kate

PS: I just want to say that I tried pretty hard to Google-image some photos from Spring Fling and the Advent Party, and they were all photos of Dale. (And this gem, of our registrar, Lisa Huck, which is my new favorite thing on the internet -- pending zooborns.com update, of course.) Yet, when you Google "Dale Peterson"? Nothing.

Div Dictionary: CPE

CPE, (n): Clinical Pastoral Education, a hospital chaplaincy work/study program which many YDS students do during one of their summers.

CPE is basically a crash course in pastoral care, usually in a hospital setting. Students spend about half of their time in class, group sessions, and other teaching modules, and about half serving as real-life chaplains. CPE programs usually include some time spent "on call," when students spend the night in the hospital with a beeper, and are called to all sorts of trauma cases.

From the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education's website: "Clinical Pastoral Education is interfaith professional education for ministry. It brings theological students and ministers of all faiths (pastors, priests, rabbis, imams and others) into supervised encounter with persons in crisis. Out of an intense involvement with persons in need, and the feedback from peers and teachers, students develop new awareness of themselves as persons and of the needs of those to whom they minister. From theological reflection on specific human situations, they gain a new understanding of ministry. Within the interdisciplinary team process of helping persons, they develop skills in interpersonal and interprofessional relationships." Mmmmyeah, that tells you just about nothing.

Some denominations (like mine) require students to do a unit of CPE to be ordained, but some YDS students who are not required to do CPE choose to take a unit because it will inevitably help them build great skills for ministry. YDS also pays its CPE students - not much, but about $3,100 over the 10-week summer - as well as awarding an elective credit. (Or three credit hours, which is the equivalent of one class.) Rarely but occasionally, students choose to do an extended or full-year CPE program, which meets only one day a week throughout the academic year.

Ed. note: The above image is the photo that came up first when I did a Google search for images using "chaplain." Although CPE involves extreme sleep deprivation during on-call, it will likely not turn you into a literal zombie. That's some pretty amazing liturgical garb, though.

Div Dictionary: East Rock

East Rock (n): 1) One of two huge bluffs which bookend New Haven. 2) The park surrounding this bluff. 3) The neighborhood directly south of this park.

New Haven history Quickie: originally founded as utopian Congregationalist Community, New Haven is nestled between East and West Rocks – two rocky crags which neatly bookend the original city grid. The streets were originally gridded (or so people claim – I’m from Chicago and I know from gridded; I have my doubts), with the grid tilted so that the north-south thoroughfares led towards the twin bluffs. YDS is closest to East Rock, which you can see clearly from the back of the quads.

East Rock Park is one of my favorite things. In addition to providing baseball and soccer fields, basketball courts, and a river for boating, East Rock has miles of trails, paved and unpaved. You can bike to the summit of East Rock on paved trails, hike up through the wooded ones, or attempt to climb the accurately named Giant Steps (pictured above) – which are probably the most direct route, but also the steepest. Once there, you’ll have panoramic views of the city of New Haven, as well as Long Island Sound. If it’s a clear day, you can often see all the way to Long Island itself. During the summer, there’s almost always a guy in a truck up there selling ice cream, and a decently clean porta-potty over by the tennis courts. East Rock is HUGE – I took a three-hour walk there recently and still haven’t been able to find the rose garden. Enjoy getting lost in there.

At the southern foot of East Rock lies the neighborhood of East Rock, the neighborhood where many of you will be taking up residence. Local merchants line Orange Street, including European grocers Romeo and Cesare, Lulu’s Coffee House, and further down, Oriental Pantry, which has some great Kim Chi. On sunny Spring and summer days, East Rock is rife with tag sales, where you can furnish your apartment for cheap.

Ah, East Rock. Time for another long walk.

-Kate

Div Dictionary: GPSCY

GPSCY (n.): 1) The Graduate and Professional Students’ Center at Yale. 2) The only place I can find $2.00 PBR’s in this town.

New Haven’s got plenty of places to get your drink on, but few of them as cheap (read: Yale-sponsored) at the Graduate and Professional Students’ Center at Yale, or simply GPSCY (pronounced “gypsy”). Although the “center” part of its name implies it must perform some other services, it’s website betrays that GPSCY is essentially a bar. A really cheap bar, that is. The bar is actually called “Gryphon’s Pub,” but call it that and 99% of divvies will have no idea what you’re talking about. Its just GPSCY.

GPSCY runs many weekly specials, including weekly Karaoke, and Monday Night Football specials, but the one you’ll really care about is 2-for-1 Wednesdays. From open to 11pm, when you buy one drink, you’ll get a ticket you can redeem later that night for another drink. Wednesdays are also the traditional Div School night – you’ll usually find a crowd of us downstairs by the bar, or outside talking to Forestry kids if it’s a nice night.

To get into GPSCY, you’ll need to buy a membership at the beginning of the year. This’ll run you less than $10, and means you never pay cover. They’ll stick a little sticker on the back of your Yale ID card, and you’ll have to bring that AND your ID that proves you’re 21+ to get in every time.

Don’t worry – we’ll be introducing you to GPSCY during BTFO. And if you’re very, very good, Sandra and I will do a karaoke number for you.

-Kate

Div Dictionary: Refectory

Refectory (n.): Sterling Divinity Quadrangle’s source for meals, unless you REALLY like vending machine food.

Since back-to-back classes on Holy Hill don’t really give you enough time to get down to Yale’s main campus and back for lunch, SDQ is equipped with it’s own cafeteria and dining hall, known as the refectory. The refectory is open from around 7am until 2pm every day, and serves sandwiches, hot lunch entrees, packaged stuff and salads. There’s a grill in the back that I always forget about, and enough soda choices to make anyone happy (until they run out of Diet Coke, which makes me distinctly unhappy).

When you begin the school year, you’ll automatically be charged a $400 board fee. You’ll get that money back though – it’s loaded onto your student ID so that you can use it to purchase food at lunch or between classes (or, for the ambitious among us, before classes too). If you don’t use up all $400 in the fall semester, it will roll over to the spring semester. If you don’t use up all that money during the spring semester, you will never see it again.

To spend $400, you may need to employ a little strategy. Since the refectory stocks canned goods and household items, you can buy a lot of tissues or buy cans and donate them at Marquand chapel (the chapel team puts out a basket and make sure it gets to a deserving charity). Some commuting students buy more than they need to take home to hungry kids or spouses. The staff will also take your points at the end of a term and use them when students like me come to the register with $8.00 worth of food and only $6.57 remaining on their card balance. You could also just be me, and be on campus almost every day for lunch, and run through $400 in no time.

This all sounds a little silly, but please remember – the refectory is hardly a money-making operation. It’s a service provided to us so that we don’t have to rely on the vending machines, or troop all the way down to Commons every day. The refectory also provides space for the community to eat together (in a scant 77 seats, so it’s more like a portion of the community). There’s even a community kitchen in the back where you can store and warm up food, as well as use and wash plates and utensils – remember, jut a few minutes spent over the sink will help reduce YDS’s carbon footprint!

-Kate

Div Dictionary: Dale Mail

Ed. Note: Here at YDS, we throw an awful lot of jargon around. Acronyms, colloquialisms, you name it. "Div Dictionary" is a recurring feature which will seek to clarify some things. You can search for other posts like this by clicking "Div Dictionary" in the "labels" menu at right.

Dale Mail (n): Email communications sent to all of YDS; our primary method of information distribution. (At right: The eponymous Dale Peterson, YDS Dean of Students, proprietor of the candy bowl, all around great guy.)

When I was going through BTFO, I kept asking what this "Dale Mail" everyone kept talking about was and how I could sign up for it. This was before I was getting 45 emails a day from Dean of Students Dale Peterson. Basically, if you've got anything to announce to the YDS community - financial aid deadline, upcoming lunch program, lost and found notice - you send it to dalemail@yale.edu. Emails are forwarded to the entire YDS community. You are automatically going to receive these emails. So don't worry, you'll be ankle deep in them soon enough.

Dale Mail can be somewhat overwhelming. I for one have set up a filter on my GMail* so that all of my Dale Mail skips my inbox. (I use my inbox as a to-do list, so seeing 50 unread emails in there whenever I opened it up gave me mild panic attacks all the time.) With all the relatively unimportant stuff (typical emails include "LOST BAG!" and two hours later "BAG FOUND!"), it's easy to write Dale Mail off. But please don't! All kinds of interesting and important information goes out - scholarships, lectures, worship services, etc. all get announced via Dale Mail. Stop reading it entirely and you might miss when to turn in the FAFSA or where to find the free food.

-Kate

* We can talk about how to forward all your @yale.edu email to another account if you want. It was very easy, and enables me to do a lot more with my inbox.