School Partnerships

Students and faculty from the Yale School of Medicine help teach anatomy and physiology lessons to Hill Regional Career High School students in New Haven. Juniors enrolled in anatomy and physiology courses visit the Yale Medical School Anatomy Lab twice per month. Activities range from learning about anatomy from dissected cadavers, to practicing aspects of physical exams and ultrasounds.

Dwight Hall at Yale, in partnership with Cooperative Arts & Humanitites High School, provides a free, innovative after-school program for more than 350 high school students in a supportive, nurturing, and safe environment. Co-Op After School leaders work closely with administrators, counselors, and school-day instructors to provide a wide range of offerings that meet the needs of New Haven high school students.

Community Health Educators (CHE) is a student-led group dedicated to promoting health education on campus and in the greater New Haven community. CHE implements an annual health education program in several New Haven public schools with the hopes of empowering students to make informed decisions about their health and fostering conversations around topics that are traditionally stigmatized. The curriculum consists of interactive workshops/activities delivered through a peer-to-peer model.

Students in the Public School Internship Program serve in a critical role as liaisons between a New Haven public school and the Yale community by strengthening current volunteer efforts and finding new ways to match resources at Yale with the needs of each school. Interns provide resources such as tutoring, assisting teachers in classrooms, and special programming to enrich current classroom lessons. In this two-year role, interns are placed at New Haven K-8 and high schools and work closely with school leaders to determine how best to serve the needs of each particular school community. The program is sponsored by Yale's Office of New Haven Affairs.

First at Yale raise awareness of FIRST® Robotics and offers mentoring to local high school robotics teams in New Haven, to robotics teams globally through video calls, and volunteers at tournaments throughout New England, New York, and beyond.

The Yale partnership with Hill Regional Career High School, a health-sciences magnet school in New Haven, provides high school students access to Yale classes, laboratories, and structured internships. In addition to the Anatomy Teaching Program, the Yale Simulation Academy invites students to the state-of-the-art Yale Center for Healthcare Simulation to practice hands-on medical treatments. Juniors who have graduated from the program serve as peer mentors.

Yale Pathways to Arts & Humanities annually welcomes hundreds of New Haven public high school students to Yale’s campus for dozens of arts and humanities programs and events. Pathways to Arts & Humanities explores how humans use literature, art, music, theater, history, and language to understand our connection to the world and to one another. Programs encourage creativity, help solve real-world problems, and allow students to become civically engaged both locally and globally. The highlight of the program is the free, two-week on-campus summer program.

Shafer Scholars are New Haven high school juniors nominated by their high school guidance counselors to enroll in a five-week Yale Summer Session program in the summer between their junior and senior years. A scholarship from the Shafer family of New Haven provides full tuition for two courses, room and board, a book allowance, and a stipend for each student. Students take Yale College courses in the company of college students and are able to earn college credits. Shafer Scholars live on campus in one of Yale’s residential colleges for the duration of their program and have the opportunity to participate in co-curricular, recreational, and social programs with students from other high schools and colleges from across the country.

The Comer School Development Program designs and delivers customized professional development experiences for pre-K to 12 educators at the school and district levels. Created by Yale professor James Comer, MD, MPH in 1968, the SDP's approach focuses on applying knowledge of the developmental and learning sciences and the Comer Process guiding principles to create a positive classroom community. SDP began in New Haven's two lowest income and lowest achieving elementary schools and increased their performance, attendance, and behavior to rival the city's highest income schools.

The Yale Simulation Academy (YSA) is a procedure-based anatomy and physiology curriculum spanning the school year. Students from three New Haven Public Schools - Hill Regional Career High School, Hillhouse High School, and Wilbur Cross - come to the Yale Center for Healthcare Simulation one day a week to work with physicians and faculty at the Yale School of Medicine. The program employs active engagement as the vehicle by which students learn to apply concepts in biology, math, physics, and chemistry through advanced medical procedures. YSA exposes students to the varied careers within the biomedical sciences, promotes peer mentorship, and supports those interested in higher education.