Mellon Senior Forums

Mellon Forums  are scheduled at the beginning of the Fall term. An informational session will be held in September, be on the lookout for an email with information. If you are a Pierson senior and are interested in presenting, please email marquita.taylor@yale.edu. Announcements for each Forum will be emailed to Pierson Seniors prior to each event, and senior Piersonites may RSVP if they wish to attend any of the Forums.

What are Mellon Senior Forums?

Mellon Senior Forums at Pierson College seek to foster in our Seniors the sense of belonging to the community of scholars. Organized in the form of dinner meetings to which both Seniors and Fellows of the College are invited, they provide some of our most talented students the opportunity to present the results of their independent research projects. The Forums also offer the possibility of especially close interaction between the head of college, the Dean, and Pierson Seniors in comfortable and intimate surroundings. Pierson holds a number of Senior Forums each term. After dinner is served, two students deliver research papers, usually fifteen-twenty minutes in length, to an audience of about twenty Seniors and Pierson Fellows. Attempts are made to cover a wide range of topics in various branches of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Natural Sciences. Each paper is immediately followed by a lively and intense question and answer period which permits the Senior to clarify (and perhaps modify) his/her critical stance.