Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

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The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies was founded as the Yale School of Forestry in 1900 by Gifford Pinchot, head of the United States Division of Forestry, and Henry Solon Graves, both Yale graduates who had attended forestry school in Europe, there being no professional forestry schools in the United States at the time. Graves became the first dean of the school. The school changed its name to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 1972.

The school offers classes at Sage Hall, Greeley Labs, Marsh Hall, the Environmental Science Center, the houses at 230 Prospect St., 301 Prospect St., and 380 Edwards St., and teaches the Yale College undergraduate courses needed for the Environmental Studies major. The school is currently in the final design phases of a new building that will consolidate most of its offices and classrooms. Named for the Philanthropist Richard Kroon (Yale Class of 1964, the building will have 50,000 square feet of space and is scheduled for completion in 2008.[1] A program is available in which a Yale B.S. and a masters degree from the Forestry school can be earned in five years. The school grants the following degrees: Master of Environmental Management (MEM); Master of Environmental Science (MESc); Master of Forestry (MF); and Master of Forest Science (MFS); Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.); and the Doctor of Forestry and Environmental Studies (DFES), which is being phased out in favor of the Ph.D.

Summer sessions of the School of Forestry were held on the Pinchot estate, Grey Towers, in Milford from 1901 to 1926. (The site is now Grey Towers National Historic Landmark).

The Yale School of Forestry owns and manages 10,880 acres of forestland in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The Yale-Myers Forest, in Union, Connecticut, donated to Yale in 1930 by Forestry School alumnus George Hewitt Myers, is managed by the school as a multiple-use working forest. Yale-Toumey Forest, near Keene, New Hampshire, was set up by James W. Toumey (a dean of the Yale Forestry School) in 1913. Other Yale forestlands include Goss Woods, Crowell Forest, Cross Woods, Bowen Forest, and Crowell Ravine.[2]

[edit] Student Groups

The School has an active tradition of student involvement in academic and extracurricular life. Many students take part in Student Interest Groups (SIGs), which organize events around environmental issues of interest to them. There are also purely social and recreational groups, such as the Forestry Club, which organizes Friday "TGIF" happy hours and School parties; the Polar Bear club, which swims monthly in Long Island Sound under the full moon (year-round); Veggie Dinner, which is a weekly vegetarian dinner club; and the Loggerrhythyms, which is an a capella singing group.