Elga R. Wasserman Courage, Clarity, and Leadership Award

In 2021, The Women Faculty Forum initiated the “Elga R. Wasserman Courage, Clarity, and Leadership Award,” an award to honor a Yale woman every year who has demonstrated tremendous courage, clarity, and leadership in their community service at Yale. The Wasserman Award recognizes the powerful contributions of women faculty and staff who are committed to strengthening the breadth, depth and the inclusivity of our university constituencies and have excelled in articulating and advancing the highest aspirations of Yale University as a whole. 

A brief view of Elga Wasserman (‘48PhD, Radcliffe,‘76JD): Elga (Steinmetz) Wasserman and husband Harry Wasserman joined the Yale community after completing their PhDs in Chemistry at Radcliffe and Harvard in 1948, he with a faculty appointment, she with a research assistantship. While they raised their family, she taught at Southern Connecticut State University and Quinnipiac College interspersed with industry work. 

In 1962, Wasserman became Assistant Dean in the Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, with responsibility for the physical and biological sciences. In 1968, when the University decided to admit women to Yale College in Fall 1969, Yale President Kingman Brewster appointed her as special assistant on the education of women and chair of the Committee on Coeducation. She devoted the next four years to guiding Yale on its coeducational course, managing key issues in admissions various academic matters and overseeing logistics such as housing in close collaboration on administrative issues with Sam Chauncey, advisor to President Brewster in those pivotal years. In reflecting on her inestimable talent set, Chauncey told the Yale Daily News:

“Elga approached her work in coeducation with diplomacy, firmness, and creative thinking. She knew there were those at Yale who opposed coeducation and she handled them with tact and skill. But when it came to crucial issues, she knew how to stand her ground and make sure the women of Yale got the best Yale could offer. … No single person did more to assure that coeducation went well than Elga, and today’s Yale women owe her a great debt of gratitude. She was a joy to work with, for she had a wonderful sense of humor and never took herself too seriously.” “In Memoriam: Elga R. Wasserman, helped bring co-education to Yale”. YaleNews. 

Wasserman received her JD at the Yale School of Law in 1976, and practiced family law in New Haven until retiring in 1995.