Category: Village Voices

Greg Sterling is Dean of Yale Divinity School, a position he has held since 2012. Sterling came to YDS after a 15-year tenure as the graduate school dean of the University of Notre Dame, where he had been teaching since 1989. This conversation took place in January 2023 and launched the “Village Voices” oral history…

Greg Sterling is dean of Yale Divinity School. In this second half of an interview that took place in January 2023, he shares details about his lifelong interest in environmental stewardship as a citizen and educator. The dialogue transitions to further conversation about YDS’s Living Village project and its potential, as Sterling sees it, to…

In the first “Voices from the Village” conversation with Bruner/Cott partners Jason Forney and Jason Jewhurst in January 2023, the architects provided a behind-the-scenes look at the process of applying for the 2015 feasibility study that would propel the Living Village into its concept- and schematic-design phases. The business partners reconvened several days later in…

Architects Jason Forney and Jason Jewhurst are co-owners, with Dana Kelly, of Bruner/Cott Architects, which they acquired from original founders Simeon Bruner and Leland (Lee) Cott in 2016. That same year, they oversaw completion of the R.W. Kern Center, a multi-use campus facility at Hampshire College that was only the 17th building to earn full…

Jennifer Herdt is Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. She joined the YDS faculty in 2013 and served as academic dean from 2013 to 2021. Thanks to her interest in moral formation spanning multiple historical eras, Herdt helped to spearhead the 2016 launch of a Master of Arts in Religion…

Peter Salovey is president of Yale University, a position he has held since 2013. Here he reflects on the ways in which the Living Villages resonates with his personal call to environmental stewardship, and with the stewardship plans that are unfolding for the wider university. This conversation took place in February 2023, shortly after Salovey’s…

Eric Höweler founded Höweler+Yoon with Meejin Yoon in 2004. From an invited shortlist of five firms, the design studio was chosen to shepherd the Living Village from schematic design to construction drawings and completion, as part of a team that includes Boston’s Bruner/Cott Architects and Philadelphia-based landscape studio Andropogon Associates. Over several February 2023 conversations…

Jason F. McLennan is the creator of the Living Building Challenge, which is known as the world’s most stringent sustainability building certification program. He is the founder and former CEO of the International Living Future Institute, and in 2022 his studio McLennan Design merged with the global architecture firm Perkins&Will, where he now serves as…

At the time of this interview, Gabe LePage was a joint-degree student in Yale Divinity School and the Yale School of the Environment. Caity Stuart was earning a Master of Divinity at YDS. Prior to their enrollments, he worked in asset-based community development and small-scale agricultural training, and she worked as an environmental educator in…