By: Mary Neill

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William Clyde Devane

• By Mary Neill
• Kyle
• Blanche

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William Clyde Devane Medals
Professor Dale Martin presenting the DeVane medal
to Professor Wayne Meeks in 2004.

• The William Clyde Devane Medal is the oldest and
  most prestigious award for exceptional
  instruction at Yale University.
• It has been conferred annually since 1966 by the
  Yale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa for outstanding
  scholarship and undergraduate teaching.

• The Devane Medal is awarded to a member of Phi
  Beta Kappa who has distinguished himself as a
  teacher of undergraduates in Yale College in his
  or her field.

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DeVane Medal Continued

• The medal was named for William Clyde Devane who
  was dean of Yale University from 1938-1963.
• He was also the president of the Yale Chapter of
  Phi Beta Kappa, and former president of the
  United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa.

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William Clyde DeVane Professorship

• The William Clyde DeVane Professorship was
  established in 1969 with a grant from the Old
  Dominion Foundation.
• It honors William Clyde DeVane, a past dean of
  Yale by addressing his concern that undergraduate
  education not become excessively narrow and
  departmentalized.

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Books

• A Browning Handbook Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955
• Higher Education in Twentieth Century America
  Harvard University Press, 1965
• Brownings Parleyings Russel, 1964

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Phi Beta Kappa

• DeVane was a prestigious member of the Phi Beta
  Kappa Senate at Yale.
• Famous members of Phi Beta Kappa at Yale include
  but are not limited to George H. W. Bush, William
  Howard Taft, John C. Calhoun, Eli Whitney, and
  Samuel F. B. Morse.
• Each year, only ten to twelve people are elected
  to Phi Beta Kappa, which makes it such an elite
  group.
• Election is determined upon a students grades
  and also requires the person to have completed
  four terms of course work in Yale and had to have
  completed at least eighteen course credits.
• Phi Beta Kappa is a society of ideas and scholars
  and it is an institution that parallels the
  mission as Yale students to wholeheartedly seek
  an existence of light and truth.
• Phi Beta Kappa is the Nations Oldest Academic
  Honors Society founded December 7, 1776.

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DeVane and WWII

• William Clyde DeVane was considered the voice of
  liberal education during WWII.
• Even during the war, DeVane thought it would be
  wrong to abandon the liberal arts and so he
  strengthened a capacity for abstract thought.

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DeVanes History

• DeVane came to Yale from Greenville, originally a
  transfer from Furman University during WWI.
• He taught draftees how to ask for ham in eggs in
  French, which led him to understand the value of
  leisure and of privacy which were both associated
  with university life.
• In the year after WWI, DeVane shared a writing
  course with Phillip Barry, Stephen Vincent Benet,
  Archibald MacLeish, Thornton Wilder, Henry Luce,
  Briton Hadden, Walter Millis, and Wilmarth Lewis,
  as distinguished a group as was ever assembled in
  such a seminar seen at Yale.

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Interview
We received this biography from Clare Schlegel, a
member of the Yale Phi Beta Kappa Society.

• William Clyde DeVane (1898-1965), in whose memory
  awards are being presented tonight to two
  distinguished members of the Yale faculty, was
  Emily Sanford Professor of English and Dean of
  Yale College. In that office, according to a
  colleague, he served with a rare combination of
  firmness, good nature, and endless patience for
  twenty-five years, from 1939 until 1963. Dean
  DeVane was born in Savannah, Georgia, and earned
  both the Bachelor of Arts degree (in 1920) and
  his PhD in English (in 1926) at Yale. He wrote
  his dissertation on the poetry of Robert
  Browning, and his scholarly interests and
  publications throughout his career concentrated
  on nineteenth century English literature,
  including studies of Tennyson and Charlotte
  Bronte.
• He taught for eight years as instructor and
  assistant professor in the English department at
  Yale before moving to Cornell, where he held the
  Goldwyn Smith Professorship of England and served
  as chairman of the department. In 1938, he was
  recalled to Yale to assume the deanship, in which
  position he remained for the rest of his career.

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Interview Cont..

• In addition to his service to undergraduate
  education, he was literary editor of The Yale
  Review and a governor of the Yale University
  Press. Among his many contributions to the New
  Haven community, he was President of the Board of
  Foote School and also of the Prospect Hill
  School. Nationally, he was elected chairman of
  the American Council of Learned Societies and
  president of the Academic Deans of America. He
  held the rank of Chevalier in the French Legion
  of Honor.
• Dean DeVane was the recipient of many honors and
  awards, including thirteen honorary degrees, but
  he had special regard for his membership in Phi
  Beta Kappa, to which he had been elected at Yale
  in 1920. He served as member, chapter officer,
  senator and, from 1961 to 1964, as president of
  the national Phi Beta Kappa Society. In 1966, the
  membership of the Alpha of Connecticut chapter
  established this award in recognition of Dean
  DeVanes leadership in the field of undergraduate
  education and his personal dedication to teaching
  and scholarship. Two medals are presented
  annually one to an emeritus member of the
  faculty and one to a current member with no fewer
  than five years of service on the faculty.

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DeVane at Yale

• It was said that everything he (DeVane) was
  asked to do he looked on as an opportunity.
• He rarely said no to an invitation or assignment
  because he liked the pace of consecutive
  challenges.
• However, having so much power during the war was
  not what he wanted, and he never really wished
  for it.

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DeVane at GHS

• During high school, he was a member of the
  basketball team, chess team, and football team.
• He led his basketball team to victory by sinking
  21 consecutive foul shots at a game.
• His involvement in GHS teams taught him how to
  stay composed under times of pressure.

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Sources

• http//books.google.com/books?ida3ncweUli9UCpgP
  A27lpgPA27dqwilliamclydedevanesourceblots
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  eicHEISo2fJ8iJtge67Nj4BgsaXoibook_resultctr
  esultresnum9PPA28,M1
• http//www.yale.edu/pbk/home.html
• http//www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/ybc/v26.n2.news.06
  .html
• http//www.yale.edu/pbk/devane.html
• http//www.yale.edu/english/intro-history.html
• http//www.questia.com/library/book/a-browning-han
  dbook-by-william-clyde-devane.jsp
• http//www.yale.edu/terc/democracy/
• http//opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id3976
• http//books.google.com/books?ida3ncweUli9UCpgP
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  ei7YkRSsf2GIGEtwfR4bT9BwsaXoibook_resultctr
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• http//findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5243/is_19
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• http//images.library.yale.edu/madid/showthumb.asp
  x?q10653qc1containsqf1subject1qx1004.1