Roz Milstein Meyer received an Elm Award at a recent ceremony honoring members of the New Haven and Yale communities for their efforts to sustain and strengthen the two communities. As noted in an online article in the Yale Daily Bulletin:
“Yale University President Richard C. Levin and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. honored 12 individuals and one group with Yale University Seton Elm-Ivy Awards at a ceremony on campus on April 27.
“The Elm-Ivy Awards recognize people whose leadership helps sustain the strong collaboration and supportive partnership of the university and its hometown. Each year, some of the most outstanding efforts that enrich the ‘town-gown’ relationship are recognized through these awards.”
Below is the citation read at the ceremony:
ROSLYN (ROZ) MILSTEIN MEYER
ELM AWARD
It’s a good thing for our community that Roslyn Milstein Meyer transferred from Cornell University to Yale in 1969, when Yale admitted women. After earning master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology at Yale, she and her husband decided to remain in New Haven. She has ever since served as a model of leadership and social change in our community. Ithaca’s loss was certainly New Haven’s gain.
Known to friends and colleagues as “Roz,” in 1991, she cofounded LEAP (Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership), a mentoring program that trains high school and college students to provide academic and social enrichment to inner-city youth. Roz’s goal is to “help inner-city youth view education as an avenue to get out of poverty.”
Five years later, Roz also served as a founder of the city’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, which brings performers and artists from around the world to New Haven annually during two weeks in June. The event aims to break down racial and socioeconomic barriers through the arts.
Her most recent philanthropic venture is the creation of the Milstein Meyer Center for Melanoma Research and Treatment, with the goal of developing new treatments for this disease.