SEEN AROUND

1. The School community comes together from near and far, spreading joy on One Day for Berkshire. 1,963 donors participated in the eighth-annual event and raised an incredible $478,000 for the Annual Fund in one day.

2. A gauntlet of faculty, staff, and students say farewell to science teacher and Senior Faculty Member Anita LooseBrown, recognizing her remarkable 35-year teaching career at Berkshire.

3. Jessica Lomo ’23’s mixed media pieces, “Three Masks” (on wall in background), were selected for the 2023 Arts Department Purchase Prize and will be permanently displayed in the Kennard Visual Arts Center.

4. Third formers bond over a whitewater rafting trip on the Deerfield River. A memorable retreat for the Class of 2026!

5. “Grease” is the word on the ice. The Pink Ladies from Buck perform an electrifyin’ routine at Winter Carnival.

Dear Berkshire Community,

I hope this finds you all enjoying the last few weeks of summer with family and friends. In addition to sharing glimpses from campus over the past academic year, this issue of the “Berkshire Bulletin” introduces you to a number of impressive alumni making their marks on the world as small business owners. Building your own business from the ground up requires tenacity, resilience, and a deep belief in oneself, all of which are on full display in these stories beginning on page 36.

As we prepare to open the 2023–24 school year, I’m excited to share updates about Berkshire’s student center project, the shift of our academic calendar to trimesters, the NEASC accreditation process, and our warm welcome to new Bears. Each of these moments shares a common thread: Berkshire’s intentional planning for both our brightest immediate and long-term futures.

Construction of the renovated and expanded student center began in June, and we expect to open during the late fall of 2024. This space remains the heart of campus, and will include full renovations and additional space for the dining hall, student gathering spaces, music center, student life offices, mailroom, and bookstore.

During the construction period, we have temporarily relocated the above spaces to the Jackman L. Stewart Athletic Center, the Soffer Athletic Center, and additional spaces in Berkshire Hall and Morgan-Bellas-Dixon. We are fortunate as a school to have this flexibility, and in many cases these temporary spaces are larger than those we use currently. We’re especially mindful of the impact of this change on this year’s sixth formers, so we have engaged with the Class to welcome their ideas about the design of the temporary spaces, and we have established some special perks available only to the Class of 2024. For more on the new student center, see page 8.

Beginning this fall, Berkshire will move to a trimester model for our September-June academic calendar. This change reflects the comprehensive work of our academic leadership team over the past 18 months. The new model provides a number of benefits as it more closely follows the natural fall/winter/spring rhythms of the seasons, vacations, and our athletic seasons; provides our teachers greater flexibility with their pedagogy, curriculum design, and assessment models; and reduces the number of grading periods during the school year from eight to six, thereby allowing our students more time to settle into the expectations and academic demands of a slightly longer trimester. We’re excited that this move supports the academic scholarship, holistic wellness, and overall pace of life at Berkshire for all our students.

Last year, Berkshire engaged in a comprehensive selfstudy as part of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) re-accreditation process. Independent schools complete this evaluation once every 10 years, and it includes gathering feedback across the entire Berkshire community to assess how well we deliver on our mission. We were proud to receive a strong foundation report from NEASC following their initial visit in April. In late October, a larger visiting team of nine independent school educators returns to campus over three days to assess our progress against the NEASC program standards used for all New England independent schools. Their visiting report will be made available to all members of the community and will serve as an important benchmark to support our planned update to the School’s strategic plan.

Following another successful admissions year in which we again welcomed over 1,400 applications, Berkshire will welcome 135 new Bears from 23 states and 14 countries this fall. This talented group of students brings a wide range of interests and experiences, immediately making our community stronger by their arrival.

In closing, all of us at Berkshire are excited to begin another school year together. As you can see from the updates above and the many other initiatives on campus, we continue to ambitiously and humbly chart our strongest path forward as a school. We’re guided always by our obligation to prepare students not just for school but for life, and we’re grounded by the timeless values that continue to define the experience for all of our young people here. I hope to see many of you this fall and throughout the year either on campus or at upcoming events across the country and world. Your connection to Berkshire and your belief in the important work we commit to each year help make us the community we are. We need all of you, so stay close, stay connected, and thanks for all that you continue to do for Berkshire!

With warmest wishes,

Pieter Mulder P’22,’26 Head of School