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’Founded by two great universities’: we had a little bit of a debate among the faculty—it may have been a staff person because some of the comments were anonymous—that saying ‘great universities’ was not modest enough, but I felt that if you said ‘two reasonably good universities’ or ‘two decent universities’ or ‘two noted universities’ it wouldn’t be a strong enough statement. And then, also it suggests partnership, and there was some indication—what we’ll talk about later on—that some people at Yale thought NUS might not be good enough to be a partner. I wanted to assert the equality of the two partners in this relationship.

I suppose some even then might have thought that emphasising the founding universities was a problem, but I think it’s important to understand that we’re the product of a partnership between two universities and that’s where this College comes from. It’s not a freestanding college, I think that’s important.

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’Founded by two great universities’ is because there is constant engagement with NUS and with Yale. NUS is where we are co-located, and basically by the dictates of geography we are able to do a lot more things with NUS, and we build relations with the departments—not just the academic departments, but with the departments that support us in HR, finance and other functions. Yale is further away, but Yale remains committed to us in wanting to build a very strong college. So, their faculty gets involved in our search committees, our curricular review committees, and the Yale President sits on our Board, as does the NUS President. So, they guide the development of the College. So, we are able to draw on the guidance, the strengths, and the resources of our two great universities, and we continue to do that.