Yale School of the Environment

10/08/2026

In 1507, in a small French mountain town, a group of scholars led by Vautrin Lud sat down with travelers' accounts of a world they would never see and drew a map that named a continent for the first time. They had no satellites, no ground data — just fragments of information, secondhand and incomplete, that they pieced together to create the Waldseemüller map, the first to use the name “America.”

Five centuries later, Professor Karen Seto is also mapping places she has never set foot in, using satellite data rather than travelers' tales and other secondhand accounts.

Her pioneering research on urbanization has earned her the Vautrin Lud Prize, geography's highest honor. The prize, which is named for Vautrin Lud, who led the circle of scholars, honors a geographer for their body of work and is awarded through an international process involving 300 geographers and a seven-member jury. She is the first woman from the United States to be awarded the prize. Congratulations Professor Seto!

10/07/2026

Are you a mid-career environmental leader seeking to deepen your influence? YSE's one-year, fully residential Executive Master’s in Environmental Management (EMEM) or Forestry (EMF) is designed for professionals with at least 10 years in environmental or adjacent fields. Gain cutting-edge skills, network globally, and drive real solutions. https://yse.to/executivemasters

10/07/2026

A new history of the Yale School of the Environment explores the people, turning points, and debates that shaped the school — and what its evolution reveals about the future of environmental leadership. Read more in Canopy. Link in the comments.

10/06/2026

Dean Burke sat down with Alison Cole ’99, executive director of the Yale Alumni Association, to talk about her focus on increasing scholarship support and the importance of maintaining and modeling optimism. She also reveals her favorite New Haven pizza place (which bucks the recent trend).

Welcome to Yale Afternoons with Alison! In this series, Alison Cole...

10/06/2026

The Forest School at YSE is offering a three-day intensive wildlife monitoring course at Yale-Myers Forest Camp. The course will provide an overview of wildlife ecology, conservation, and management issues and link to relevant wildlife monitoring approaches using case studies from across North America. Register here: https://yse.to/o8

10/05/2026

Ahead of her upcoming talk at YSE, Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Dawn Wright discusses the scientific advances revealing the ocean floor, and why the work is increasingly urgent for climate resilience, coastal safety, and global commerce.

Ahead of her upcoming talk at YSE, Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Dawn Wright discusses the scientific advances revealing the ocean floor, and why the work is increasingly urgent for climate resilience, coastal safety, and global commerce.

10/02/2026

The sun putting on a show over Kroon. 📸 Theo Wang '28 MEM

10/01/2026

As a child, Kumaresh Ramesh ’26 MEM saw firsthand how much energy matters after living through rolling blackouts. "I was just a kid, but I wanted to fix that," he recalls. The Three Cairns Scholar came to YSE to focus on energy issues. Watch to hear his favorite class, how he describes his YSE experience, and what he's taking with him as an alum.

09/30/2026

Ben Christensen '20 MEM, grew up in New Mexico, where trees were his childhood companions. Today that background, along with his experience at national labs and in federal forest policy, informs his work as CEO of Cambium, a wood marketplace bringing sustainability and data to the forest products supply chain.

Roughly 426 million tons of wood are wasted in the U.S. every year, and less than 5% gets reused. Cambium is changing that by sourcing salvaged trees nationwide, using data to bring transparency to pricing and traceability.

His story is part of a broader look at why mass timber is drawing growing interest from developers and investors as a low-carbon building option. Read more here:

Mass timber has broad appeal for project efficiency and sustainability, giving it a very long runway for growth and investment in the next few years.

09/30/2026

YSE is hiring an Assistant Professor of Business & the Environment, Sustainable Finance or Environmental Markets. We welcome applicants from business, finance, economics, marketing, supply-chain management, environmental markets, and related fields. Research topics could range from climate risk and insurance to conservation finance, carbon and timber markets, land transactions, and more.

Candidate review begins October 15. Details and application: https://yse.to/o7