Season's Greetings from Yestermorrow

p.s. this amazing stone arch was created on the Yestermorrow campus by Thea Alvin's class the Art of Stone, which is coming up again in May 2011. Photo by Tonia Sing Chi.

Happy Holidays from the Super Yester Crew

The Super Yestermorrow staff and interns gathered to celebrate the holidays and send off our departing interns Annie, Tonia, Lylee and Lindley. We'll miss you ladies!
(also missing from the group photo: Heidi, Lisa and Lisette)

Sprucing up the campus!

The new studio floor- a beautiful burgundy. Check this out because it will probably be a very long time before the studio is this clean again!

New netting and rope railing in the treehouse helps to prevent people from falling out!

Tonia painted her room in the Chalet using a natural wheat paste paint inspired and informed by the Natural Paints and Finishes class.

Simple and sweet! New handrail for the strawbale cabin.

Holiday Wish List

What's Santa bringing you this year for the holidays? As you're thinking about your gift list this year, please keep Yestermorrow in mind. You know how sometimes it's the little things that can make a huge difference? We've put a few things on our Wish List that we think would really improve the student experience here at Yestermorrow, but which just aren't in the budget this year. To make it easy for you, we've created an online Wish List on Amazon.com where you can order items and have them shipped directly to Yestermorrow.

Here are a few of the things on our Wish List:
LCD Projector
120" Projector screen
Wireless pointer/controller for presenters
Refrigerator for kitchen
Solar lanterns for cabins
Webcam and microphone (to enable one of our computers for Skype)
Solar landscape spotlight to illuminate entry sign
Solar wall lights (for cabins)
Solar lights for camping area/trail
Solar motion detector light for parking lot
Postage scale for the office
Labeler
Folding Chair Cart for the studio
Whisperwall fan for Chalet bathroom
Alarm clocks and reading lights for the dorm rooms

You can see a complete wish list of items also on the Donate page of our website:
http://www.yestermorrow.org/wish-list/

Thanks Santa for thinking of us!
The Yestermorrow team

Art Auction a Huge Success!

The 6th Annual Art Auction held on December 4th was a great success, raising over $6,000 for Yestermorrow's Scholarship Fund and bringing together 150 of Yestermorrow's supporters for a fun evening of art appreciation, networking and money-raising. The winner of the Kayak Raffle was drawn - congratulations to Carol Baringer for buying the winning ticket! And many thanks go to Dave Sellers, our auctioneer, who entertained the crowd with many stories about the featured artists, the artists and donors who contributed items to the auction, and the staff, interns and volunteers of Yestermorrow who pulled off a great event. In case you missed the event you can check out a slideshow of images taken by our current intern Tonia Chi.

Semester Programs Update

Here at Yestermorrow we are ramping up to launch our new Semester Programs, offering both an undergraduate 16-week Sustainable Design/Build Semester Program in Fall 2011 as well as a 6-month graduate level program in Integrative Design/Build in the spring/summer of 2012. This major initiative is the result of many years of dreaming, planning and strategic thinking about the future direction of Yestermorrow and how to create more in-depth learning opportunities and broaden our reach.

While we’re still working out many of the details, and will not officially launch the program until January, I am excited to announce two exciting developments:

1) We have hired José Galarza as our new Director of Semester Programs. Many of you have gotten to know José over the past year and a half in his roles as our Community Outreach Coordinator and 2010 Natural Building Intensive Program Director. José will take on this new full time staff role starting in January and will be responsible for overseeing the development, content, and performance of the school’s semester programs, managing faculty members, and providing student support services.

2) We are currently soliciting applications for the two lead faculty positions for the Fall 2011 undergraduate Sustainable Design/Build Semester Program:

a. Lead Faculty (6 month full time position)

b. Lead Build Instructor (2 month full time position)

For more information on both of these positions, please visit our website for full job descriptions. Applications will be accepted through February 15^th. Please help us spread the word about these exciting new opportunities, and consider throwing your hat in the ring if it sounds like it would be a good fit.

We are also in the midst of finalizing academic partnerships to grant college credit for these programs, so stay tuned for details on that in the next month or two. We are also looking for any personal contacts you may have at different colleges and universities that we can tap into as we start outreach and marketing for these programs in January. Please email me with contact information (name, college, position, address, email, phone) for anyone you think would be able to put up a poster at a college, help arrange a campus visit, or just put the word out to students.

Things are really coming together and while we continue to stay focused on maintaining the excellence of our current short courses and certificate programs, I also believe these new semester programs will really push Yestermorrow to the next level in terms of impact, providing an immersion in the design/build approach that’s available nowhere else in the world.

Happy December!
Kate Stephenson
Executive Director

p.s. We are extremely grateful to Jon Mingle, who as our Semester Program Coordinator over the past 8 months has helped “midwife” this initiative and who has done a stellar job juggling the many pieces to pull this together. He’ll be leaving us at the end of December to head back to India where he has worked over the years leading educational programs and helping to build communities in Ladakh.