Seton Elm-Ivy Awards Honoring Outstanding Contributors to New Haven-Yale Relations will be Presented at Yale University on April 30

Yale University and the city of New Haven enjoy a strong relationship, with success evident in efforts to create new companies and jobs, increase neighborhood homeownership, build academic partnerships with public schools, and promote the vital downtown that is a center for retail, restaurants, residency, and arts and culture.

This cooperative relationship between Yale University and its hometown community works because of the commitment and leadership of countless people on campus and throughout New Haven. Each year, outstanding individual effort to grow the partnership between “town and gown” is recognized through the Seton Elm-Ivy Awards.

The Awards were established in 1979 through the inspiration and support of Fenmore (Class of ‘38) and Phyllis Seton, who have established an endowment at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to support the awards. The first Elm and Ivy Awardees were named in 1980. Since that time, 242 individuals have been honored.

Individual Elm Awards are given to adults in the New Haven community. Ivy Awards are given to Yale staff, faculty, and students.

The 24th Annual Seton Elm and Ivy Awards will be presented by President Richard C. Levin and Mayor John DeStefano, Jr., at a special luncheon on Wednesday, April 30, 2003, from 12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m. at the President’s Room at Woolsey Hall.

The recipients of Elm and Ivy Awards this year include:

Richard Abbatiello: President of the Board of Directors of the Farnam Neighborhood House and member of the New Haven Board of Education. Richard Abbatiello has been a longtime champion of cooperative programs between the New Haven Public Schools and Yale University, through which more than 10,000 New Haven school children a year participate in free academic programs on campus during the school year. In his volunteer service at Farnam Neighborhood House in the Fair Haven neighborhood, he has facilitated numerous clinics at Farnam led by Yale University coaches such as James Jones of the basketball team and worked with Yale University to host the annual Farnam basketball awards banquet at Yale’s Lanman Center for more than 500 children and their parents.

David Alvarado: Executive Director of the Hill Development Corporation of New Haven. David Alvarado has led the Hill Development Corporation’s ambitious program of renovation and new construction of affordable housing and first-time homeownership opportunities in the Hill neighborhood. These efforts include the rehabilitation or new construction of more than 100 units of housing in the Hill to which Yale University has contributed financial investment and technical assistance. HDC has consulted closely with Yale University in the development of new facilities such as the new medical research facility on Congress Avenue recently opened at the School of Medicine. Mr. Alvarado has also taken HDC on-line, creating a website (www.hdcofnewhaven.org) in conjunction with web designers from the Yale University School of Medicine.

Iona Black: Lecturer in Chemistry at Yale University. Iona Black has contributed her time and talents to numerous outreach programs and partnerships with the New Haven Public Schools, including the SCHOLAR Program through which 75 students from the Hill Regional Career High School live on campus during the summer in a free academic program focused on chemistry, biology, and physics. She is also active with the Citywide Science Fair co-sponsored by the New Haven Public Schools, Yale University, and other partners, which now reaches more than 9,000 school children from over 40 city schools.

Cornelius Beausang: Associate Professor of Physics at Yale University. Cornelius Beausang has been a leader in linking Yale University Physics Department with the local community. He established the Physics Olympics in 1998 to motivate high school students to think about studying physics now and in college. In the fifth competition in October 2002, more than 50 teams of four students drawn from throughout Connecticut participated. Professor Beausang has also been a leader in applying Yale University’s resources to assist local public safety professionals deal with the challenges of homeland security. He has created a 4-week training program for area first responders to understand radiation and related security issues. The first session in 2002 attracted close to 20 participants from the New Haven Department of Police Service, Yale University, Connecticut State Police, and the FBI. It was so successful that further sessions have been planned for

Elaine Bonifield: Yale University School of Drama, Class of 2003. Elaine Bonifield is one of only three students ever selected to serve two summers in the President’s Public Service Fellowship, a program by which more than 250 Yale students have served as full-time, paid interns in New Haven nonprofit and public sector organizations. Ms. Bonifield worked for the Arts Council of Greater New Haven on projects including the Arts and Entertainment Facilities Study for the City of New Haven and fundraising programs that netted over $200,000. On campus, she helped lead the implementation of an audio description program that allows visually impaired patrons to enjoy productions at the Yale Repertory Theatre.

Richard Burger: Professor of Anthropology and former Director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Richard Burger served as director of the Yale Peabody Museum from 1995 to 2002, increasing the museum’s programs with New Haven community. During his tenure, the museum developed the Peabody Fellows program is a science literacy initiative for New Haven elementary and middle school teachers, students and their families. In 1996, Professor Burger established an Events Department at the museum and in 1997 it inaugurated the most successful event in the museum’s history, the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day family festival, which now alone attracts more than 5,000 visitors. Today, the Events Department oversees more than 50 public programs annually, the more popular of 2002-2003 being the week-long Dino-Days, the Paleo-Knowledge Bowl, the Cultures of Native America, Taino: A Celebration of the Original Caribbean Peoples, the Source to Sound River Cleanup, and the Dog Days of Summer. The newest addition to this list is Fiesta Latina, created by Professor Burger to celebrate Latin American cultures in New Haven. Held for the first time this past March, Fiesta Latina was organized with local community groups, including Junta for Progressive Action in the Fair Haven neighborhood. Over 2,400 visitors attended this one-day event, many of whom had never visited the Museum before.

Louise Davis: Yale College Class of 2003. Louise Davis served in 2002 as co-coordinator of the Executive Committee of Dwight Hall at Yale, which facilitates volunteer community service by more than 3,000 Yale College students each year. Additionally, Ms. Davis created a new student service program, Community Health Educators, to help provide comprehensive health education for teenagers. With the support of Dwight Hall, the New Haven Public Schools, and the State Department of Higher Education, Louise designed a standard curriculum, method of delivery, and health education manual for Yale volunteers to take into the high schools. Today, the program flourishes with 60 Yale student volunteers training high school community health educators in Wilbur Cross High School, Hill Regional Career High School, High School in the Community, Cooperative Arts and Humanities Magnet High School, and the Connecticut Job Corps Center.

Richard Hegel: Yale College Class of 1950, City Historian of the City of New Haven. For the past four decades, Richard Hegel has served the Yale and New Haven community and is often found at the nexus of both. He has served as the President of the Yale Club of New Haven, the New Haven Preservation Trust, the Women’s Seamen’s Friends Society and also as Executive Director and Board member of the New Haven Colony Historical Society. Mr. Hegel has served for over twenty years as the Municipal Historian of the City of New Haven. Though trained as an engineer, Dick is a prolific writer and scholar of New Haven history. In 1981, he edited New Haven An Illustrated History. He is the author of Nineteenth Century Historians of New Haven (1972) and also Carriages from New Haven (1974). Twenty historical articles or special publications have also appeared under his name, many written jointly with the late Floyd Shumway, Yale Class of 1939.

Helen Kauder: Executive Director of Artspace. Helen Kauder has led the revival of Artspace, New Haven’s premiere organization dedicated to contemporary arts. Starting in a space donated by Yale University on College Street, she has mobilized a dedicated group of board members, staff, and community volunteers to establish Artspace in its new home at Orange and Crown Streets. Designed by a Yale faculty member and students in the Yale Urban Design Workshop, the space is a beacon and a catalyst for the continued redevelopment of the Ninth Square district. The annual Citywide Open Studios now attracts more than 10,000 visitors to artists’ studios and other spaces, including University venues, to appreciate the work of more than 350 visual artists in the region, including established artists.

Carolyn Kinder: Assistant Principal of Sheridan Academy for Excellence Middle School. Carolyn Kinder has been a leader in the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute since she first participated in 1980. Last year, for the 19th time, she was an Institute Fellow, developing curriculum for New Haven Public School students while taking part in a collegial seminar comprising teachers from across New Haven and a University faculty member. Ms. Kinder has not only been a Fellow herself - one of 560 New Haven Public School teachers who have participated in the program - she has been a key member of the Institute’s district-wide Steering Committee and of the National Implementation Team and she played a key part in orchestrating the Institute’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration in November, as well.

Jacques Pouhe and Enoch Wu (Joint Award): Yale College Class of 2003. Jacques Pouhe and Enoch Wu are the founding student co-coordinators of Yale University’s America Counts tutoring program with the Fair Haven Middle School. Through this new program they helped design in collaboration with the New Haven Public Schools, 66 Yale University undergraduates worked as interns paid by Yale through the federal work-study program and brought 18,000 hours of direct quality instruction to the 5th graders of the Fair Haven Middle School.

Sharon Sanderson: Recruitment and Placement Officer, Yale University School of Nursing. Sharon Sanderson has worked at Yale for over 25 years. In her current role, she has built deeper relationships between the School of Nursing and its neighbors in the Hill neighborhood. She connects college-bound high school students from the Hill Regional Career High School with Yale nursing faculty and students for assistance in developing their college applications. She has also established ties between YSN and the Sacred Heart School, mobilizing Yale nursing students to regularly tutor or teach classes on health and science, and organizing a program of computer equipment donation.

Mary E. Schwab-Stone, M.D.: Harris Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry, Yale University Child Study Center, and Associate Professor of Psychology. When Mary Schwab-Stone began at the Yale University Child Study Center 15 years ago, the New Haven Public Schools had requested clinical services to help with Special Education programming. Over the years, Dr. Schwab-Stone has helped develop what is now a formal Clinical Consultation Service for New Haven’s Special Education Department. In this program, approximately 35-40 children and youth are evaluated each year to provide diagnostic assessments, educational programming recommendations, and advice on program and policy issues to Special Education, and training new generations of child psychiatrists on how to work in and with schools. Since 1992 she has developed and led an applied research program, which has as its overarching goal the assessment of mental health symptoms, competencies, problem behaviors, and risk factors in the middle and high school population. The Social and Health Assessment (SAHA) Program surveys over 3000 youth at each administration, and over the seven waves the program has conducted over 23,000 assessments to assist New Haven Public School officials as they develop policy more effectively.