Bildner '06 Awarded Yale's Highest Honor

Congratulations go once more to Eli Bildner, MKA class of 2006, who received the highest academic honor awarded to any Yale College graduating student, the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize. Dean of Yale College Mary Miller awarded the prize in front of thousands of students and families at Class Day on May 23 and presented it again at the Yale College Commencement on May 24. The prize is awarded to that "senior who, through the combination of intellectual achievement, character, and personality, shall be adjudged by the faculty to have done the most for Yale by inspiring in his or her classmates an admiration and love for the best traditions of high scholarship."

In her presentation, Miller stated, "Elected to Phi Beta Kappa after four terms, Eli Bildner graduates summa cum laude with Distinction in his History major. His 3.97grade point average cannot adequately convey the scope of his intellectual interests, ranging across political and literary theory, Jewish intellectual thought, Chinese language and culture, micro finance, community development and environmental sustainability. That breadth is matched with an extraordinary depth of scholarship, research and understanding, all then put to practical use in his work for social and environmental justice.

As the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Executive Director of the Elmseed Enterprise Fund, Mr. Bildner encouraged sustainable economic self-reliancein the greater New Haven area. Acting globally as well as locally, he went to Kazakhstan where he created a sustainable production and consumption curriculum for that country's technical universities.

Having traveled to China with the support of the Richard U. Light Fellowship to educate himself on that nation's environmental crisis, Mr. Bildner will return there next year, as a Fulbright Scholar, to study the array of ecological challenges that have been introduced by decades of economic growth.

Modest and unassuming despite his impressive accomplishments, Mr. Bildner has been praised by a Yale instructor in this way: "He has the heart of a poet, the rigor of an economist, the discipline of an athlete, the gentleness of a true teacher, the demeanor of an ambassador."

For the remarkable record of what he has done and in admiring anticipation of all he will do, Yale College takes great pleasure in bestowing the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize upon Elias Spungen Bildner."