Author: Wayne Willis

I was introduced to Yale intermural volleyball before I even was admitted.  Touring Yale as a HS senior in the Fall of ’64, my guide, Dan Bender (Stiles, 67) was showing me around, and he invited me to come with him to his volleyball game. Since I was wearing sneakers, they allowed me to play a few points, and it was really, really fun.  I had never played indoor volleyball before.  Needless to say, as…

I didn’t have any real interaction with Brian during our Yale years.  He was, of course, a star.  I was a lowly hacker-type athlete, blessed with size enough to play in high school but not gifted enough for intercollegiate athletics. Happily, the intermural programs gave me an outlet for some play and for some exercise. So imagine my delight when, one day, we were playing in the 5th floor gym, and Brian played on the…

Does anyone remember Peachy Kuehn? I remember him from Fellows’ Dinners, where, slightly inebriated, he’d hold forth with shockingly liberal opinions — shocking to me because he was an “adult” and my other role models for adults (my parents, my HS teachers) were either conservative or centrist. Imagine my surprise when I got a note in January of Sophomore year that the dean wanted to see me. I dutifully showed up, sat opposite him at…

When Chris Argyris spoke to us Freshman year, he blew my mind.  Never before had a businessman seemed to me to be so insightful into human nature.   He was articulate, persuasive and funny. He could even be sacrilegious, once referring to my Catholic Church as “the marketing department of the Lord.” I never got to take any of the group dynamics classes he famously taught.  But his “Organizational Behavior” wing of the Department was particularly…

Yale School of Management During the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, my parents took me around to look at colleges.  We stopped in New Haven in July.  The campus was mostly deserted.  I got a map and walked around, eventually walking into a building on Prospect Street (where the Becton Engineering building now is) that housed the Department of Industrial Administration. There I looked over the bulletin boards, agog at…