Class News

’64 Class Council renews support for URI summer intern

February 8, 2020

At the annual 1964 Class Council Meeting on February 8, 2020, the Council renewed Class support to underwrite a summer intern in the Urban Resources Initiative (URI).

Our Class has a long tradition of supporting summer interns at the School of the Environment (until recently known as the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies) and recently in the affiliated URI program. Classmates will remember that Gus Speth served as Dean at the School for 1999-2009, during which period Rick Kroon and his family gave the naming gift for Kroon Hall. Currently, Chris Getman leads “The Friends of URI.”

This Class donation was made with the following citation:

The Yale Class of 1964 awards a 2019-20 URI Internship Subsidy in memory of our classmate, Strachan Donnelley (1942-2008), a philanthropist and philosopher who made a lifelong study of the intricate relationships between humans and nature in pursuit of a conservation-centered concept he called “democratic ecological citizenship.”

URI, under the direction of Colleen Murphy-Dunning at the Hixon Center for Urban Ecology, provides material supplies, technical advice, and classroom-based and hands-on training to support resident-driven community greening projects. Since 1995, URI has completed more than 310 diverse urban restoration projects with an annual participation of about 1000 New Haven residents.

At our 55th Class Reunion in 2019, URI recognized the Class of 1964 with a named bench in one of their greenspaces.

You can watch a video report made by our 2019 URI summer intern Amy Xu.