School Notes: School of the Environment
July/August 2013

Modernizing land stewardship

A collaboration between Yale’s Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry and Wyoming’s Ucross Foundation will help develop systems and demonstrations of integrating local know-how with modern science and technology for land stewardship in the High Plains. Chadwick Dearing Oliver, Pinchot Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies, who heads the new program, emphasizes that “effective management means efficiency on the one hand, but not losing the unique lifestyle that makes the High Plains special. That is, we need to manage for as many values as possible—and make no more tradeoffs and sacrifices among values than necessary.” The UCross Foundation is led by Raymond Plank ’44.

International environmental fellows

Nine graduate students have been selected as 2013 Andrew Sabin International Environmental Fellows, with each student to receive up to $40,000 of funding for education and post-graduate service in the environmental sector. The Andrew Sabin Family Foundation created the Sabin Fellowship program at Yale in 2011 to provide scholarship support for students from developing countries, and to provide additional postgraduate awards to those students returning to their home countries and regions to pursue environmental careers. The 2013 Sabin Fellows are Elizabeth Babalola (Nigeria), Gladys Caballero (Colombia), Sonam Choden (Bhutan), Yufang Gao (China), Renzo Mendoza Castro (Peru), Lia Nicholson (Antigua and Barbuda), Juer Song (China), Jin Yin (China), and Alemayehu Belay Zeleke (Ethiopia).

Kroon Hall is one of the greenest

In The World’s Greenest Buildings: Promise Versus Performance in Sustainable Design, Kroon Hall, home to the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, was found to be among the most energy-efficient buildings in North America, with energy use 60 percent below the average US school building. The book is the first of its kind to compare stated against measured building performance in the world’s most high-profile green buildings. Though labels like sustainable and green are increasingly common in the construction sector, research indicates that many buildings are not, in fact, delivering on their claims. In the case of Kroon Hall, while the book relied on 2011 data, subsequent adjustments made to the building’s system settings resulted in a further 25 percent decrease in total energy usage from 2011 to 2012.