The F&ES Alumni Association recently won the Alumni Association of Yale (AYA) Excellence Award for Outstanding Graduate & Professional Day of Service. There were two nominations from F&ES and “both nominations were so compelling that the committee decided to honor the F&ES Alumni Association as a whole rather than being forced to pick between the two nominations,” said Alison Brody, chair of the AYA Volunteer Leadership Committee.

The 2014 Day of Service event in Louisville, Kentucky — the first such event for the Yale Club of Louisville and the First to be led by a Yale dean, F&ES Dean Peter Crane — brought together local alumni from F&ES, Yale College, the School of Medicine, the School of Music, and the School of Public Health to work together on an environmental project at the Parklands of Floyds Fork. Founded by Dan Jones ’84 B.A., ’06 M.F., the Parklands is an innovative network of urban parks created to preserve a vanishing landscape while, in the tradition of Frederick Law Olmsted, “bringing nature into neighborhoods” as a way of shaping a city’s geography, its social interactions, and its economies.

Dean Crane’s leadership set an example for the community of over 4,500 alumni of F&ES, underscoring our School’s commitment to public service and demonstrating strong support of an alum’s professional work.

On the same day, the F&ES Class of 2014 organized Yale Day of Service activities in collaboration with the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) and Yale-Myers Forest. Fifty soon-to-be alumni (one third of the graduating F&ES class) participated in the Day of Service activities, either working with URI to plant trees along the Farmington Canal trail in honor of long-term Yale employees or assisting with trail maintenance, meadow restoration, and habitat improvement projects at Yale-Myers Forest. This was the first time a graduating class from any Yale professional school has participated in the Day of Service. 

“Broad participation in our graduating class’s Yale Day of Service activities allowed us to build community, celebrate our time at Yale, and deepen our sense of connection with landscapes that are important to F&ES students, while giving back to our communities,” said Julia Golomb ’14 M.E.M. “The event affirmed our sense of connection to Yale and instilled a sense of responsibility as young alumni.”

— Kristen Clothier