Campus and City Unite to Thank Leaders

New Haven, Conn. — Yale University President Richard C. Levin and Board of Aldermen President Carl Goldfield presented 10 Seton Elm-Ivy Awards at a ceremony on May 2, in recognition of outstanding partnerships between the university and its host city.

Elm Awards are given to members of the New Haven community, and Ivy Awards are given to Yale faculty, staff and students. This year’s Elm Awards were presented to Katrina Clark, Anthony Duff, Rafael Ramos, Shirley Neighbors and Jennifer McTiernan. Ivy Awards went to Wayne McCrae, Harlon Dalton and Lois Sadler. An Undergraduate Ivy Award was given to Diane Mosca and a Graduate/Professional Ivy Award, to the founders of the Haven Free Clinic.

Clark, executive director of the Fair Haven Community Health Center, has led the center for 33 of its 35 years. Under her guidance, the center now cares for more than 13,000 patients a year and has a staff of more than 130 working from its main campus on Grand Avenue, a satellite clinic at Bella Vista and five school-based health clinics. A 1971 alumna of the Yale School of Public Health, Clark has served as a mentor and advisor to scores of Yale University public health, medical and nursing students. The award citation praises the “dynamic and dedicated leadership she has provided to nurture generations of caring in Fair Haven.”

Sergeant Duff is Dixwell District Manager for the New Haven Department of Police Service. An alumnus of Yale College, he decided to pursue a career in community policing and joined the New Haven police. His success in Dixwell has many measures: a low crime rate, an active management team and a spirit of collaboration and teamwork that has become an inspiration for other district managers and neighborhoods. He works closely with the Yale University Police and provides constant assistance to the Dixwell-Yale University Community Learning Center. The citation reads, in part, “He has shown through his living and his leadership that New Haven and Yale University are part of one community and that we all thrive when we all work together.”

Ramos is director of Bregamos Community Theater Company. As deputy director of housing code enforcement in the City of New Haven, “he has been tireless in working to improve the safe and sanitary conditions for New Haveners across the city,” the citation notes, adding, “But today we celebrate the wonderful fact that in New Haven, a housing code inspector with a vision can also create theater companies that make a difference. His Bregamos Community Theater is dedicated to creating theater out of real life stories in our community.” He also revived Junta for Progressive Action, bringing Yale faculty, staff and students to support the revival of this effective community nonprofit organization.

Neighbors has taught biology in the New Haven Public Schools for 37 years, most recently at Hill Regional Career High School, where she was a founding staff member. Her citation notes, “She is a teacher who both demands excellence from her students and holds herself to the same high standard. She is tireless in looking for every resource and opportunity that will help her students succeed.” She created an “Anatomy Teaching Program” with Yale Professor William Stewart that became a cornerstone for the comprehensive partnership that Yale and Hill Regional High School now enjoy.

McTiernan is founder and executive director of CitySeed. She is “living proof that big dreams, unswerving determination and teamwork can nurture a small seed into a giant CitySeed that feeds the bodies and souls of thousands,” the citation reads. CitySeed’s mission is to engage the community in growing a local system that promotes economic development, community development and sustainable agriculture. CitySeed has grown into a network of markets in Wooster Square, Fair Haven, Westville and Downtown, and an ever-growing network of vendors and providers, including the Yale Sustainable Food Project. In 2006, the economic impact of the market was $1.3 million, up 30% from the previous year.

McCrae is general services assistant for Yale University Commons who is a long-time civic activist, dedicated to his Hill neighborhood through service on the Hill North Management Team and to the broader community through the board of directors of Empower New Haven. In 2006, he established a soap box derby program with the Dixwell-Yale University Community Learning Center that now has more than 70 young participants from the Hill and Dixwell who learn team-building skills and have an enormous amount of fun.

Dalton, professor of law and adjunct professor at Yale Divinity School, is author of the book, “Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear Between Blacks and Whites,” which has inspired people to see their differences as causes for celebration. He is a leader in the multi-racial Salt and Pepper community choir and an active member of the Episcopal Church of Saint Paul and Saint James. For more than two decades, Dalton has been involved in community organizing and academic research to confront the health and social consequences of HIV/AIDS, including leadership in the AIDS Interfaith Network in the community and the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS.
At the Yale Divinity School, he explores ways in which the school furthers its work in preparing students to negotiate the complex relationships at the intersection of Christianity, politics and social justice.

Sadler is an associate professor and assistant dean for Academic Affairs in Yale School of Nursing and a faculty member in the Child Study Center. A pediatric nurse practitioner, she teaches graduate nursing students as well as students in public health and divinity, in the areas of family studies, child development and pediatric and adolescent health. Since 1979, she has worked with teen parents in New Haven and taught student-parents enrolled in the Polly T. McCabe Center, a transitional public school for pregnant girls in grades eight–12. Her research and clinical scholarship have documented improvements in both quality of life and long-term health for vulnerable teens and their families in New Haven and beyond.

Mosca, a Yale College junior, is a psychology major with a focus on early education and teacher preparation. She has been assistant to the Director of Public School Partnerships, a Dwight Hall Executive Committee member, both a Community Health Educator and the co-coordinator of this group, a teacher’s assistant at Calvin Hill Day Care Center and a recent recipient of a President’s Public Service Fellowship. She has written a grant for a local nonprofit and organized the Community Health Educators’ middle school curriculum. Her award citation notes, “She has tremendous focus, a strong work ethic and tremendous energy, and is known among her friends as being an effective ambassador for the Elm City.”

The final award was given to the Haven Free Clinic and those students in the Yale University School of Medicine who run it: Karen Archabald, Ryan Hebert, Christopher Janson, Andrew Simpson, Mallika Mendu, Margaret Samuels-Kalow, Rachel Solomon and Sara Crager. The doors of Haven Free Clinic opened in late 2005 and in the time since, medical, nursing and physician associate students have seen 152 patients in over 474 visits on Saturday mornings. The patients are all residents of the Fair Haven section of New Haven and are largely undocumented and Spanish speaking. In addition to providing a wide range of primary health care services, the students provide social support and health education. The students have obtained grant support and donations to cover medications, laboratory tests and radiological studies. Physicians, nursing and PA faculty from Yale and the community donate their time to precept students at the clinic.

The Seton Elm-Ivy Awards were established at Yale in 1979 by Fenmore Seton, Yale Class of 1938, and his wife Phyllis. The awards evolved from the Elm and Ivy Fund, also created by the Setons, which identifies and honors individuals from New Haven and Yale whose work enhances understanding and cooperation between the two. The awards are so named because New Haven is called the “Elm City,” and Yale is in the Ivy League.