Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI)

Organization Description

YCEI’s goal is to design effective approaches for supporting school communities in understanding the value of emotions, teaching the skills of emotional intelligence, and building and sustaining positive emotional climates in homes, schools, and workplaces. As a self-supporting unit within the Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Center, YCEI conducts research and training in collaboration with experts in education, psychology, policy, and technology.

Impact of SCE Support

One of YCEI’s accomplishments to date has been developing the inspirED program, which places students as the key stakeholders in their own education and asserts that they must be part of the development of the educational materials meant to serve them. Toward this end, inspirED offers a free set of resources designed to empower students in identifying and addressing issues related to their school’s climate and culture, including cyberbullying, the use of technology for teaching and learning, the role of social media in civic engagement, and digital citizenship.

The purpose of YCEI’s project is to bring this inspirED process to four regions of the U.S., empowering students to design and implement projects they believe best support healthy technology habits among their peers. Beyond achieving a deep impact on participating schools, YCEI will influence the field at large by sharing research findings from the two-year project.

YCEI is a member of SCE’s Youth Voice Challenge cohort. This group of exemplary organizations seeks answers to the question: How can young people inspire their peers to use technology in healthy ways and make digital spaces better for everyone? Learn more about the Challenge here.

Why We Invested

YCEI is a leader in supporting youth with developing emotional intelligence skills. We chose to fund this project because of its scale and its excellent approach to measurement and evaluation. In addition to reaching dozens of schools across the country, this work brings a proven, unique approach to impact evaluation that we feel could benefit both this cohort and the field at large.

YCEI’s mission is to use the power of emotions to create a more equitable, productive, healthy, and compassionate society, today and for future generations.
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