Class News
L-R: Acting President and Vice President of the Fifty Vanderbilt Foundation, Charlotte Hitchcock, MPH ‘91 – Gov. George E. Pataki, ‘67 – Kathy Edersheim, ’87 President of the Fifty Vanderbilt Foundation, at the Foundations’ Medal Gala at the Yale Club of New York City on October 19th.
Former New York Governor George Pataki was honored by the Fifty Vanderbilt Foundation at a medal gala held at the Yale Club of New York City on October 17. He received the J. Scott Glascock Medal in recognition of his outstanding service to the State of New York.
Previous recipients of the Medal include Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, JD ’79, LLD ’13, and the late David Swensen, Ph.D. ’80, Yale’s legendary chief investment officer.
The award citation reads in part:
“Today, we celebrate not only what Pataki achieved, but how he led—with vision, courage, and a profound sense of responsibility to the people he served. From guiding New York through crisis to advancing historic protections for the environment and extending humanitarian support across borders, he exemplifies the ideals of public service. For his extraordinary leadership and lifelong dedication to the public good, we are proud to award The Honorable George E. Pataki with the J. Scott Glascock Medal.”
The event program offers a detailed biography of George’s career and public service, illustrated with a rich collection of historic photographs from his life and leadership. You can access it here.
At the announcement ceremony for the Edward P. Bass Deanship of the Yale School of Architecture, L-R: former Yale President Rick Levin, President Maurie McInnis, Ed Bass ’67, and former President Peter Salovey.
Our classmate, Edward P. Bass ’67, ’72 Arch, has endowed the Edward P. Bass Deanship of The Yale School of Architecture. The endowment is a group gift spearheaded by his wife, Sasha C. Bass, and follows in the tradition of generous support by the School of Architecture Class of 1972. It ranks among the largest gifts in the School’s history.
The gift grows the School of Architecture’s endowment and ensures that every Dean—beginning with the current Dean, Deborah Berke—will have permanent support to realize their goals for the School and its community.
“The School of Architecture embodies the type of interdisciplinary study and practice that is a hallmark of Yale,” says President Maurie McInnis. “Its alumni, faculty, and students design the world around us, and their work benefits communities all over the world. This generous gift in honor of Ed Bass supports a strong future for the school and reinforces its role as one of the top architecture schools in the nation.”
“I am honored to be the inaugural Edward P. Bass Dean,” says Berke, who has led the school since 2016 and is the first woman to serve as its dean. “I am grateful to Ed and to Sasha, who, with this gift and through their service to the school, help us maintain our high standards of design education and nurture the future leaders of the architecture profession.”
Berke first joined the school as a professor in 1988, and in 2023 was appointed the J.M. Hoppin Professor. Berke’s vision for the School of Architecture includes a debt-free education for all students of architecture at Yale. During her deanship, the school has tripled financial aid, making architectural education more accessible; expanded the faculty, attracting the world’s best architects, architectural historians, and practitioners from a wide variety of backgrounds; and founded new academic programs such as the Center for Ecosystems in Architecture and the Yale College Urban Studies major, thereby widening interdisciplinary, cross-campus, and Yale-New Haven collaborations to make the School of Architecture a hub for hands-on education.
Ed Bass, who studied at the School of Architecture as a member of the Class of 1972, is a longtime supporter of the school. His many contributions to the pedagogy and culture of the school include the Robert A.M. Stern Rome Program, supporting drawing skills and architectural travel; the Edward P. Bass Fellowships, in which graduates from Yale are supported in their studies at Cambridge University and vice versa; and the Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Architecture Fellowship, which brings prominent real estate developers to teach an advanced design studio in partnership with an architect.
“Ed’s wide-ranging interests and his passion for Yale’s mission have helped shape Yale’s campus and so many of its programs,” says Provost Scott Strobel. “The naming of the School of Architecture Deanship in his honor is a fitting tribute to his lifelong dedication to the University.”
In addition to his support of the school, Ed Bass has contributed significantly to the strategic development of Yale’s campus, with a lead gift that enabled the recent renovation of the Yale Peabody Museum, as well as support for the construction of the Yale Science Building, the Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center, Benjamin Franklin College, and Pauli Murray College. He has also given to numerous other initiatives, programs, and facilities across the university.
Ed’s volunteer service to Yale includes time as a Senior Fellow of Yale’s Board of Trustees and Chair of its Building and Grounds Committee, on which he still serves as an advisory member.
Sasha and Ed Bass serve together on the School of Architecture Dean’s Council and the Peabody Museum Leadership Council. They are also honorary Co-Chairs of Yale’s For Humanity campaign.
“Endowing the Deanship is a gift that honors Ed and his impact at the School of Architecture,” says Sasha Bass. “At the same time, it provides important support for the Dean’s strategic vision for the future of the School. It is for me an honor and a privilege to support in a meaningful way the goals of the Dean, the School, and of Yale.”
“I am proud to have my name permanently associated with the Deanship at the Yale School of Architecture,” said Ed Bass. “The School is doing the important work of educating and inspiring future generations of architects who will contribute, through their work, solutions to a range of problems facing humanity while also creating a more beautiful world. It is meaningful to know that Dean Berke and future Deans will have resources to keep the School nimble and responsive to the needs of its students and the wider world.”
A celebratory ribbon-cutting marked the April 12th reopening of the Linonia & Brothers Reading Room in the Sterling Memorial Library.
President Peter Salovey watches as Fred Berg ‘66 cuts the ceremonial ribbon, joined by University Librarian Barbara Rockenbach (L), Mrs. David Swenson (second from L), and President Peter Salovey (R).
The room where we all loved to read – and nap – has been beautifully restored and thoroughly renovated with the latest technology, thanks in large part to several of our classmates.
A gift from the Rossi Foundation, headed by John Raben ’67, helped to restore the “Rossi Alcove” in the new L & B.
Classmate Steve Stack also made a significant gift, enabling the renovation of another L & B alcove, one of six in the L & B.
[Please note: below is a slideshow. You can let it automatically shift photos, or navigate with the small L-R arrows at the sides, or with the circles along the bottom. All three ways will work.]
’67 Classmates John Raben (L) and Steve Stack (R) joined Yale dignitaries and other major donors to the renovated Linonia & Brothers Reading Room in the Sterling Memorial Library are seen at the reopening ceremonies on April 12th.
From the floors, walls, artwork, rugs, and furniture to the hidden Wi-Fi connections, the L & B Room is in absolutely top form – and function. It is a blessing to today’s Yale students, as it was to those of us who used it and loved being there during our time at Yale. Thanks to our classmates and the other significant donors who made the renovation possible.
John W. Jackson ’67
Since its inception, the Yale Medal, the highest honor presented by the Yale Alumni Association, has been presented to 346 individuals who have shown extraordinary devotion to Yale’s ideals and demonstrated their support through extensive, exemplary services to the university and its schools, institutes, and programs.
John will be officially honored in a special ceremony to be held this fall.
The official citation:
John Jackson ’67
John Jackson ’67 has been a devoted university leader over a 60-year relationship with Yale. He served as regional co-chair for the… and for Yale Campaign in 1991 and currently serves as honorary co-chair on the for Humanity campaign committee. Jackson is a member of the President’s Council on International Activities, which he chaired for eight years. Prior to Yale, Jackson was educated at the Gordonstoun School in Scotland, spent his Yale Junior year abroad in Paris at L’Institut de Science Politiques, and earned an MBA from INSEAD, France.
His career in international business further fostered a keen awareness of world issues, and in 2009 Jackson made a transformative gift to establish the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale. This hub of faculty members and Senior Fellows educating students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels flourished, and in 2019 the Yale Corporation voted to transform the institute into the Jackson School of Global Affairs, the first new professional school created at the university since the School of Management in 1976.
Jackson’s engagement with the new school continues, with service the Board of Advisors. He has also cultivated a strong connection to the Yale University Art Gallery through the gift of his Numismatic Collection, including an endowed curatorship.
Over the years, Jackson’s contributions and advisements have changed the landscape of Yale, helping equip the university to train the leaders of tomorrow to address global problems and to create public policy that will contribute to the world and shape a better future for all humanity.
L-R: Steve Stack ’67, Fred Berg ’66, Dave Richards ’67
Touring Sterling Memorial Library’s Linonia & Brothers Reading Room — in which many of us both studied and napped — were, left to right, Steve Stack ’67, Fred Berg ’66, and Dave Richards ’67. L&B is undergoing a $10 million renovation (requiring hard hats), and all shown here are members of the Librarian’s Development Council, through which these funds are being raised. Fred Berg’s family has made a major gift for the restoration of the entry to L&B, which will now be renamed in his family’s honor. A gift to restore one of the alcoves has been made by the Rossi Foundation, headed by John Raben ’67. When L& B is restored to its former glory (although now with wireless connections and air conditioning hidden behind old bookcases), this ugly green carpet will be replaced by hardwood floors decorated with specially designed area carpets. Let’s see if future generations of Yalies can stay awake in that ever more beautiful Reading Room.
More on the L&B renovation from Yale News: Sterling Library’s L&B Room, a campus gem, slated for renovation.
(Posted April 2023)
L-R: Doug, Mike and Marshall
Doug Melamed, Mike Siris, and Marshall Pomer (left to right) had a mini-reunion last month at Stanford, where Doug is on the law school faculty. “By happenstance. it happened to be Doug’s birthday,” says Mike. “Marshall is down in Santa Cruz, and I was out there accompanying my wife, who was competing in a national duplicate bridge tourney in San Francisco.” (P.S. Karen didn’t do too badly, either, earning six more gold points on her way to becoming a Life Master.) (Posted January 2020)
Bob and Adrian
“The first photo is in front of the traditional Christmas Tree at Union Station, one of Chicago’s commuter rail stations, where we met up in the first instance,” says Bob. “The second is at an eatery in Ogilvie Station, an adjoining commuter rail station. Not shown: a post lunch walk from the west end of the Loop east almost to the Lake. (Primer on finding your way around Chicago: The Lake is always east.) Taking in, among other sites, the Hall (City Hall).
“This was a Discussion Group-inspired meet up because we did not know each other at Yale, and have had no contact since – except, recently, via the DG. We had no difficulty recognizing each other, because, really, how many other ambulatory old white guys (one with thinning gray hair, the other with thinning white hair) would be hanging around the Union Station Christmas tree at midday on a Friday? Adrian and I hope to make this an annual event, limited only by the condition that we both are ambulatory.”
(Posted January 2020)
“Dave Wenner’s Retirement Hobby”
When Dave retired in 2003 from a 30-year career in management consulting with McKinsey & Company, the first item on his bucket list was to learn about “the mysteries of the universe, from the largest scales (astrophysics and cosmology) to the smallest (quantum theory).” This was the delayed fulfillment of a childhood dream Dave had as a boy growing up near Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Dave started by consuming dozens of nontechnical books on the history of physics, astrophysics and cosmology, but soon decided to hire a post-doc to tutor him in physics, while collecting and reading first editions… READ MORE
(Posted November 2019)