Class of 1956 65th Reunion - Program & Schedule

Welcome to our 65th Reunion! Your first stop when arriving in New Haven is Jonathan Edwards, our home for the weekend. YAA staff and students at the Class Help Desk in the Jonathan Edwards Common Room will be ready check you in and provide nametags, reunion souvenirs, and campus housing keys if you are staying in the college. Staff and studentswill be on hand to answer your questions throughout the weekend.

Class Help Desk Hours
Thursday: 1 pm - 11 pm
Friday: 8 am - midnight
Saturday: 8 am - midnight
Sunday: 8 am - 1 pm

If you are arriving today, your first stop is Jonathan Edwards College, our home for the weekend. YAA staff and students at the Class Help Desk in the Common Room will be ready to check you in and provide reunion materials, including campus housing keys if you are staying on campus.

Valerie Hansen, Stanley Woodward Professor of History

China’s long history as a powerful agrarian state has distracted many from its very real engagement with the ocean. Its contacts with South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa date back to the year 1000 and even before. Drawing on information from shipwrecks, maps, and descriptions of voyages and foreign lands, this talk traces China’s long engagement with its maritime neighbors, a topic of particular importance given China's recent expansion into the South China Sea.

Join the Lillian Goldman Law Library staff for a guided tour of the “Constance Baker Motley: Lady of the Law” exhibit. Drawing on images and personal items from the collection of her family, and from her own words in her autobiography, the exhibition offers a glimpse of Motley, brilliantly at work, from her childhood in New Haven through her career as a Civil Rights attorney, New York Senator, and federal judge. Meet at the front entrance to the Law School. This tour is limited to 25 people; repeated at 10:30 AM.

Indy Burke, Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean of the Yale School of the Environment; Professor of Ecosystem Ecology

Environmental challenges today are more acute than ever, and not likely to decrease with the growing global need for resources to support human society. What is the role of a university in addressing these issues, how is that changing at this particular time in national history, and how is the Yale School of the Environment contributing to solutions?

Four years in the making. Five traditional spaces made new. Five new spaces for making traditions. One hundred and twenty years of history stand behind Yale Schwarzman Center, and we’re excited to open our doors to you. At YSC, new and restored spaces are designed to be focal points of university life. Spaces for meetings, dining, and relaxing provide a host of ways to connect, create, and collaborate within and beyond campus. The YSC Team would like to extend an invitation for you to tour the Center – your Center. During your visit, you’ll be led through the various YSC spaces by a tour guide while you explore our tour mobile website which features original research, archival images, and alumni interviews. Tours will begin at 9:00 and 9:30 am; expect the entire visit will last around 75 minutes. Meet in the Woolsey Rotunda.

Four years in the making. Five traditional spaces made new. Five new spaces for making traditions. One hundred and twenty years of history stand behind Yale Schwarzman Center, and we’re excited to open our doors to you. At YSC, new and restored spaces are designed to be focal points of university life. Spaces for meetings, dining, and relaxing provide a host of ways to connect, create, and collaborate within and beyond campus. The YSC Team would like to extend an invitation for you to tour the Center – your Center. During your visit, you’ll be led through the various YSC spaces by a tour guide while you explore our tour mobile website which features original research, archival images, and alumni interviews. Tours will begin at 10:00 and 10:30 am; expect the entire visit will last around 75 minutes. Meet in the Woolsey Rotunda.

Sten Vermund, Dean and Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health; Professor of Pediatrics

The past three years have confirmed and extended findings and prior predictions on the climatological changes consequent to greenhouse gas release.  In his talk, Dean Vermund will review selected climatological highlights, discuss mitigation efforts, and bridge these challenges to implications for human health. Serious consequences of global climate change are resulting in adverse health effects. Hence, the presentation will address strategies for adaptation to planetary warming, loss of species diversity, and human population growth.

W. Mark Saltzman, Goizueta Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemical & Environmental Engineering & Physiology

In this talk, Professor Saltzman will describe the role of engineering in creation of medicines of the future. Over the past two years, for example, we have seen the introduction of nanoparticle vaccines that were rapidly developed from concept to testing to deployment. But even more is on the horizon, such as nanoparticle-based treatments for brain tumors, targeted correction of genetic diseases, transplants that are invisible to the immune system, long-lasting, safe prevention of UV-mediated DNA damage in skin, and inhalable vaccines.