Robert A.M. Stern (M.Arch 1965), founder and senior partner in the firm of Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York City and dean of the School from 1998 until 2016, is the recipient of the 2017 Topaz Medallion, awarded jointly by the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in recognition of outstanding service to architectural education. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received both the Athena Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Board of Directors’ Honor from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America, was the tenth recipient of the Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum, and laureate of the Driehaus Prize for traditional and classical architecture and urbanism. Prior to becoming dean at Yale, Stern was a professor of architecture and director of the Preservation program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. He served from 1984 to 1988 as the first director of Columbia’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Stern has lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on both historical and contemporary topics in architecture. He is the author of several books, including Pedagogy and Place: 100 Years of Architecture Education at Yale and Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City. In 1986 Stern hosted Pride of Place: Building the American Dream, an eight-part, eight-hour documentary television series aired on PBS. In the fall of 2001, Stern lectured at Yale as the William Clyde DeVane Professor.