School Notes: Yale Divinity School
May/June 2020

Largest gift in Divinity School history will help fund ‘Living Village’ project

Yale Divinity School has received a leadership gift from George and Carol Bauer to support construction of the Living Village, a sustainable residential complex. The Bauers and their family are contributing $15 million, the largest single gift in the history of YDS and one of the largest gifts ever made to a divinity school. The 155-unit Living Village will be a complex of buildings constructed to meet the stringent requirements of the Living Building Challenge—a green building certification program and sustainable design framework that visualizes the ideal for the built environment. The complex will be constructed with environmentally friendly materials and will be off the utility grid. It will collect and refine its water on site, produce more solar electricity than it needs, and supply surplus power to the Yale Divinity Quadrangle. All waste will be processed on site. “The Bauers’ investment will help us solidify Yale Divinity School’s place as a leader in theological education,” YDS dean Greg Sterling said. “More than a series of buildings, the village, in tandem with our existing quadrangle, will create a holistic environment where students will learn, live, and worship together and in harmony with the natural world.”

Lecturer named the Clement-Muehl Professor

Christian Wiman of the Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music has been named to Yale’s Clement-Muehl Professorship of Communication Arts. A poet and educator who focuses his research on the language of faith, Wiman is the author, editor, or translator of 12 books, including Hammer is the Prayer: Selected Poems, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, and the new volume Survival is a Style: Poems. Wiman joined the Yale faculty in 2013 as a senior lecturer in religion and literature at YDS and the ISM.