A Dean Who Raised the School’s Profile
and Broadened Its Reach Steps Down

By Joel Lang

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<p>I thought you would be interested in this article from <em>environment: YALE</em> magazine, the Journal of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.<br />
 </p>
<h3 style="color:#666;">A Dean Who Raised the School’s Profile and Broadened Its Reach Steps Down</h3>
<em><p>By Joel Lang
</p></em><p><a href="http://environment.yale.edu/magazine/uploads/09Spring-Speth-01.jpg" rel="facebox"><img src="http://environment.yale.edu/magazine/uploads/09Spring-Speth-01.jpg" border="0" style="float: right; margin: 3px 0 3px 5px;" /></a></p><p><span class="dropcap">W</span>hen James “Gus” Speth came back to Yale in 1999 to take over as dean at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, he already could claim to have won what might be considered a triple crown for Earth advocacy.</p> <p>In 1969 as a Yale law student, he helped launch the Natural Resources Defense Council and then acted as its chief attorney while it grew into one of the nation’s leading environmental groups.</p> <p>In 1982, after serving as head of President Jimmy Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality, he founded the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., now regarded as a premier environmental think tank.</p> <p>Then for most of the 1990s, he led the United Nations Development Programme, which had a $2 billion budget and offices in 132 countries at the end of his tenure.</p> <p>With such a distinguished career behind him—spanning the modern environmental movement—it was fair to wonder what Speth, who graduated from Yale College in 1964, could do to top himself.</p> <p>It turns out that he had ambitions for F&ES that were as large as those that he’d had for the other institutions he had nurtured. In fact, he set the bar for measuring his deanship early.</p> <p>“I will tell you what I am going to do, and I will do it,” he wrote in a memo to faculty on August 13, 1999, a month after his arrival. His goal, he said, was “to build…
<p><a href="http://environment.yale.edu/magazine/spring2009/a-dean-steps-down">Read the Full Article</a></p>
<p>Published by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies<br />
<a href="http://environment.yale.edu">http://environment.yale.edu</a></p>

Spring 2009 | environment:YALE

EnvironmentYale Magazine

Environment Yale Magazine: The Journal of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Spring 2009 Issue

A Dean Who Raised the School’s Profile and Broadened Its Reach Steps Down

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EnvironmentYale Magazine

A Dean Who Raised the School’s Profile
and Broadened Its Reach Steps Down