School Notes: School of the Environment
November/December 2016

Online courses focus on the universe

A series of F&ES online courses examining the nexus of cosmology and ecology is now available to global learners through Coursera, the world’s largest provider of massive open online courses (MOOCs). The four six-week courses, which weave the discoveries of evolutionary science with the humanities, are the school’s first MOOCs and the first online “specialization” offered by Yale University. With the theme “Journey of the Universe: A Story for our Times,” the courses are taught by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, senior lecturers and research scholars at F&ES and the Yale Divinity School. Tucker and Grim coproduced the 2011 Emmy Award–winning film, Journey of the Universe, which premiered at F&ES and was broadcast on PBS. The film and the accompanying book provide the source material and inspiration for the online courses. 

Scientist awarded Wilbur Cross Medal

Conservation scientist Eleanor Sterling ’83, ’93PhD, chief scientist at the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, received Yale’s prestigious Wilbur Cross Medal on September 22. The honor is presented each year by the Graduate School Alumni Association to a small number of outstanding alumni. Sterling is the third graduate of F&ES to receive the honor. Sterling’s career as both an academic and practitioner spans biological conservation, scientific research, environmental education, and program administration. Her research has taken her to some of the most biologically rich, but least studied, regions of the world, where she worked across academic disciplines and forged effective partnerships with NGOs, governmental agencies, and indigenous communities. Sterling recently credited her teachers and time at Yale for helping to set the course of her career. “Often people tell you not to go to your undergraduate institution to do your graduate work, that you really should branch out and learn from other people,” she said. “But I think it was one of the best decisions I could have made; I really grew from being an undergraduate and graduate student at Yale, in very different ways. I hugely benefited from the education I got there and the people that I met, both students and professors.”