School Notes: School of the Environment
January/February 2016

New fellows in sustainability

F&ES has selected two scholars to serve as the school’s first James and Mary Pinchot Fellows in Sustainability Studies. Michael Mendez, a postdoctoral scholar and instructor at the University of San Francisco, and Sarah Vaughn, a public fellow for the American Council of Learned Societies, will begin their three-year fellowships during the summer of 2016. The new fellowship was introduced to attract emerging scholars and early-career faculty who will enrich the quality of the school’s scholarship and contribute to the diversification of the field of environmental and sustainability studies. They were selected from more than 200 applicants. 

Exploring urban climate challenges

What happens in China’s growing cities will impact the entire planet, F&ES professor Karen Seto tells her students. So it’s important, Seto says, to engage with the issues taking place there—and with the people working at the leading edge of science and policy solutions. These days, it helps that Yale has its own home in China, the Yale Center Beijing, a first-of-its-kind hub where the university can convene and host meetings and conferences in the heart of China’s capital. In late October, a group of F&ES faculty, staff, and students did just that, hosting a workshop on urban climate issues that featured experts from government, academia, and the nonprofit world. The events were led by Seto, associate dean of research and professor of geography and urbanization science at F&ES; Xuhui Lee, the Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor of Meteorology at F&ES; and Professor Peng Gong of Tsinghua University. “Convening such high-level discussions is something that Yale can not only do, but it’s something that we do pretty well,” Seto said. “We’re seen as an honest broker. We have the scientific and policy expertise, and we have an amazing network of alumni working on these issues.”