Adopted in 2023
1) Continue to improve student financial aid
Financial aid is currently the largest item in the Divinity School’s budget—35 percent of the total—and remains a top priority among the goals (as it was in the previous strategic plan, 2015-2022). The School now provides full-tuition scholarships for all students in need. One new aim is to offer enhanced living-expense stipends that are more competitive with Harvard and Princeton. YDS hopes to raise an extra $2 million a year in new endowments and increase the student-focused Annual Fund. Other objectives include strengthening work-based financial support (student jobs and field education) and boosting the ministerial leadership scholarship dollar amount to match other premier scholarships. YDS offers 29 premier scholarships currently.
2) Continue work to create a community in which all can feel welcome
A five-year plan is providing tactical guidance at each step. Current goals include a stronger focus on training for restorative justice practices that address campus conflict resolution; fundraising for an endowed chair in Latine Studies; community-building with students who identify as LGBTQIA+; hiring a mental health counselor in the Office of Student Affairs; updating inclusive language guidelines for Marquand Chapel to underscore disability awareness; and organizing an All-School Read discussion around the book The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and the American City.
3) Continue commitment to the Living Village and new environmental initiatives
Phase I construction on the regenerative student housing complex, the Living Village, started in October 2023. Fundraising for Phase One is in its final stage. Phase Two fundraising and construction will follow, along with the development of curricular and other programming designed to train students to serve as “apostles of the environment” in their lives and careers. The School has established a new faculty chair in environmental ethics and has hired a new staffer to help manage related YDS programming around environmental justice, sustainability, and climate change. Pledges of more than $83 million have been made for the Living Village—closing in on the total project cost of $85 million.
4) Rethink ministerial formation
In the wake of the pandemic and other destabilizing trends, an unpredictable future for organized faith has prompted YDS in recent years to reassess the M.Div. program, including its course requirements, goals, and mission, in order to ensure the future vitality of the degree. A task force has recommended a roadmap for rethinking ministerial leadership today and tomorrow. Central to the reassessment is an M.Div. curricular review, which is now underway during this academic year. The aim of curricular review and possible revision is to better align the degree with student goals, faculty values, and contemporary vocational pathways. “The M.Div. will remain central to our mission and identity,” Sterling said. “The question is: how can we adapt it to the rapidly changing context in which our students will pursue their callings.”
5) Cultivate greater global awareness and enrollment
This strategic goal reflects the shift of the global Christian center of gravity from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere. The goal commits YDS to enrolling a larger number of international students and providing greater financial support to them. Currently the international enrollment at YDS stands at 12-15 percent, roughly the same as that of Yale College. Aims include new exchange programs, global institutional partnerships, and larger stipends so students can afford to live in New Haven.
The overall strategic package will take YDS through the 2026-27 academic year, at which time (June 2027) Dean Sterling’s third term as dean will end. The five goals were identified this past year through a series of consultations similar though not identical to the process used for the 2015 plan. For this strategic plan, an external consultant was hired, three deans of peer institutions were interviewed, and a list of eight potential goals or pivot points was considered. YDS sponsored a student town hall, faculty retreat, staff gathering, and Dean’s Advisory Council meeting to narrow the list and refine the five goals.
In the case of the longer-term goal of a Ph.D. program, the dean has formed a task force to research its prospects and trajectory. YDS is the only divinity school among its peers without a Ph.D. program. (The School provided such a degree until the early 1960s, when the program moved to Yale’s Religious Studies department.) A Yale Ph.D. housed at YDS would be a powerful draw for both faculty and students, proponent say, and enhance the School’s curricular options. Major challenges would be to work out a program in agreement with Yale Religious Studies downtown and raise enough endowment money to support approximately five students a year for a customary six years of study.
Page updated July 2025; please note that several of the goals described above are now accomplished.