Yale University Selects Australian Explorer Tim Jarvis as Yale World Fellow

NEW HAVEN, CONN., USA — July 31, 2009 — Yale University selected Tim Jarvis, a noted explorer and environmental scientist, as a 2009 Yale World Fellow. Jarvis made headlines in 2007 when he successfully retraced Sir Douglas Mawson's controversial 1912 expedition to Antarctica (that Mawson alone survived), using the same equipment and starvation rations as the original team. He subsequently authored an account of the expedition, Mawson: Life and Death in Antarctica, and was featured in an award-winning international documentary film of the same name.

The Yale World Fellows Program is building a global network of emerging leaders and broadening international understanding. The Program conducts a worldwide competition each year to select 14-18 highly accomplished men and women from diverse fields and countries for the four-month leadership program at Yale.

Yale President Richard C. Levin announced the selection of the 2009 Yale World Fellows saying, "I am delighted that these extraordinary men and women have chosen to spend time at Yale. We are certain that their leadership skills will be strengthened, and that the Yale community will benefit greatly from their presence on campus."

An environmental scientist and consultant, Jarvis is Associate Director for the global engineering firm URS Corporation. He advises developing countries on natural resource management and sustainability issues, having worked most recently in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Papua New Guinea. He also advises on contaminated land and energy efficiency issues as a principal environmental auditor and is co-authoring an environmental short course to accompany the BBC's Frozen Planet series with David Attenborough.

Jarvis is also a well-known explorer who has undertaken treks not only to the North and South Poles, and across some of Australia's largest deserts but who uses his expeditions to broaden understanding of the scale of environmental issues facing the globe. He is committed to finding pragmatic solutions to global environmental sustainability issues, and volunteers his time with a number of charitable organizations devoted to the environment and child welfare.

"I am honored to have been selected to the Yale World Fellows Program, especially given the caliber of both Yale and my fellow Program participants" said Jarvis. "This is an opportunity for me to gain new perspectives on the world and to learn about effective leadership."

Selected from outside the U.S. at a mid-career point, World Fellows come from a range of fields, including government, business, media, non-governmental organizations, the military, religion, and the arts. Joining Jarvis this year are a noted Chinese independent filmmaker, the editorial page editor of Russia's most influential business daily, the director of Turkey's Open Society Foundation, and a Saudi Arabian television personality and foundation director.

"Each of the 2009 Yale World Fellows has demonstrated an outstanding record of accomplishment and unlimited potential for future success," said Program Director Michael Cappello, Professor of Pediatrics, Microbial Pathogenesis, and Epidemiology & Public Health. "This experience will undoubtedly broaden their horizons, and we welcome them into the rich network of global decision makers trained at Yale."

The Program selection process is intense: the 15 World Fellows for 2009 were selected from a pool of more than 900 applicants from around the world. Since its inception in 2002, 140 World Fellows from 70 countries have been welcomed to New Haven for this Program.

From August to December, the 2009 World Fellows will engage in a specially designed seminar taught by some of Yale's most eminent faculty; take any of the 3,000 courses offered at the University; participate in weekly dinners with distinguished guest speakers; receive individualized skill-building training; and meet with U.S. and foreign leaders. Past World Fellows have met with then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy, then-UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis, US Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, among others.

The Yale World Fellows Program has at its core three main goals: to provide advanced global leadership training to emerging leaders from a diverse set of fields and countries, to link these world leaders to each other and to Yale in a tangible way, and to expand and deepen international understanding at Yale. Yale University is located in historic New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, the University consists of 12 schools: Yale College, the four-year undergraduate school; the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and 10 professional schools, including the Yale School of Medicine, the Yale Law School, and the Yale School of Music. Yale has a global reputation for training U.S. and world leaders – including four of the last seven U.S. presidents.