CA Magazine Fall 2012 by Concord Academy

fall 2012

90th Celebration Moriarty Athletic Campus Opens The Innovation Issue

Seo Hee Lim â&#x20AC;&#x2122;13 Cyanotype from Photography 3, Spring 2012

CO NCORD ACADEMY MISSION Concord Academy engages its students in a community animated by a love of learning, enriched by a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, and guided by a covenant of common trust. Students and teachers work together as a community of learners dedicated to intellectual rigor and creative endeavor. In a caring and challenging atmosphere, students discover and develop talents as scholars, artists, and athletes and are encouraged to find their voices. The school is committed to embracing and broadening the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and talents of its people. This diversity fosters respect for others and genuine exchange of ideas. Common trust challenges students to balance individual freedom with responsibility and service to a larger community. Such learning prepares students for lives as committed citizens.

fall 2012

Editor

Anne-Marie Dorning Design

Irene Chu ’76 Report of Giving Editor

F E A T U R E S

Ben Bailey ’91 Director of Annual Giving

Orientation

Editorial Board

Meet CA’s New Dean of Faculty

Karen Culbert p’15 Director of Stewardship

Anne-Marie Dorning Associate Director of Communications

John Drew Academic Dean

17 Still Going Strong 18 Commencement 22 Reunion

Carol Sacknoff Director of Stewardship

26 Moriarty Athletic Campus Dedication

Pam Safford Associate Head for Communications, Enrollment, and Planning

Hilary Wirtz

page

29 CA Turns 90 33 New Trustees

Advancement Office

Billie Julier Wyeth ’76 Director of Alumnae/i Programs

39 CA on the Cutting Edge: Innovators

48 Leadership Report of Giving 2011–12

CA Magazine is printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink.

Read it? We would like to know what you think about the stories in CA Magazine. Please write and tell us. We may edit your letters for length but we want to hear from you. Please send correspondence to: Anne-Marie Dorning CA Magazine 166 Main Street, Concord, MA 01742 Email: adorning@concordacademy.org

Cover photo: Drew Gilpin Faust ’64 at CA’s 90th Anniversary Celebration by Tim Morse

Message from the Head of School

Campus News

Faculty Profile

CA Bookshelf by Library Director Martha Kennedy

Arts Q&A: Sharon Oleksiak ’83

Athletics

Alumnae/i Profiles Catherine Smith ’71 Lasell Jaretzki Bartlett ’66 Philippe von Borries ’97 and Justin Stefano ’98 Kate Hammond ’88 by Nancy Shohet West ’84

Alumnae/i Association Update

In Memoriam

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

D E P A R T M E N T S Committed to being a school enriched by a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Concord Academy does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, creed, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin in its hiring, admissions, educational and ﬁnancial policies, or other school-administered programs. The school’s facilities are wheelchair-accessible.

September 2012

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

ike many people, I spent at least a portion of my summer detaching myself from the electronic devices that have become an integral part of my daily routine. While on vacation I limit my email check-in to once a day, and I leave my laptop behind in my office. This “detachment” gives me the silence and distance I need to recharge myself. For me, the use of technology is not second nature—though it assuredly is for our students—but I have learned to incorporate it into my life in ways that make everyday tasks a little easier. Lately, however, I have been reflecting on what is being lost by our increased reliance on “time-saving” devices. Is the seemingly never-ending cycle of ‘newer and faster means better’ going to forever dominate our lives? And if so, at what cost? Questions like these, about the use of technology in the classroom, have been swirling around educators for years. On one side of the debate are those who believe that the classroom should reflect the twenty-first-century world our students live in; those who hold this view encourage students to use and learn with twenty-firstcentury tools and media. On the other side of the debate are those who believe those same tools and media distract students and thus detract from the learning in the classroom. At Concord Academy, we have approached this critical debate a bit differently. Last year, some of our faculty came to us because they had an idea—an idea to put students in greater control of their own learning. They wanted to give their students the means to organize material according to their needs, to create their own archives, and to share information with each other and with us. These teachers turned to us and said “How can you help us do that?”

Gabriel Cooney

message from the head of s c hool

As we took a step back to think about the problem we were trying to solve—that of maximizing the opportunity for our students to be creators, and minimize the instances where they are passive receivers of content— we began to analyze the potential solutions. How could we incorporate technology into our educational model without just reaching for the latest hardware? How could we use technology as a tool, and not allow it to become an end in and of itself? How we could enhance the classroom experience with technology and not create barriers between our teachers and their students? In short, how could we become innovators? The solution we came up with is a schoolwide initiative dubbed TELE: Technology-Enabled Learning Environment. It has several components, but one of the most important is the use of Evernote, a Web-based application that will allow anyone on campus to collect and share information in a single place. History Department Chair Kim Frederick and Academic Dean and science teacher John Drew tested out the use of Evernote in the interdisciplinary Boston Class this past spring. Both teachers were able to compile material for the course in one place and allow students to share that information and post their own photos, research, and links. As the weeks went on they noticed something. Students began to interact with the course material in a way they hadn’t before. In the end, the use of technology allowed threads of information from both the students and the faculty to form a rich classroom tapestry. Ultimately, this is where we see technology ﬁtting into the Concord Academy tradition. Technology at CA is about facilitating collaboration: between students and faculty, around ideas, and throughout our institution. A system like Evernote, which is built for collaboration, puts our faculty and students in the foreground and allows technology to take a backseat. To us, this is just one more way the learning experience at Concord Academy remains the driver for all that we do. As we celebrate our 90th anniversary and reﬂect on the past century and all that has changed within this remarkable school, we can also celebrate the knowledge that some things, the essential things, will always remain the same.

Rick Hardy Head of School Dresden Endowed Chair

LETTERS to the EDITOR (ha-ha!), that I sent Concord Academy a gift subscription to Rodale’s Organic Gardening. I had no idea if anyone read it, just kept blithely renewing the subscription each year as my donation, instead of a check, hoping it would spark some interest in someone. Well, eventually the school librarian wrote me a note, to

say no-one was reading it, and I returned to writing checks to the school. Well, now we have come full circle, and this is the rage! And it’s wonderful. Tryna Van Dusen Fredregill ’63

Corrections A photo of Imaginary Invalid on page 18 should have been credited to Ian Hannan. A photo on page 16 was incorrectly identified as Tyler Andrews ’08. CA Magazine regrets the errors.

Orientation 2012

your latest issue of CA Magazine highlighting alumnae/i who are working to “Protect Our Planet.” What’s interesting is, back in the seventies, I discovered organic gardening and was so enthusiastic about this new method of gardening which was actually as old as the earth

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

I WAS DELIGHTED to see

Day students: 58 Boarders: 50 Females: 58 Males: 50

C ONV OCATION

They speak many languages: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Creole (Cape Verdean), English, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, and Turkish.

They believe in service to others. The following is a partial list of organizations for which they have volunteered: Acton Food Pantry Africa Reads

Many books have inspired them: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Harry Potter series by JK Rowling, Percy Jackson and The

Belmont Food Pantry BookPals Brookline Food Pantry Cradles to Crayons Gaining Ground Heading Home Malawi Project Northeast Animal Shelter Open Table Red Cross Special Olympics Veterinarian Animal Rescue Walden Woods Project Walk for Hunger Walk for Juvenile Diabetes Youth in Philanthropy

Source: CA Admissions Office

2012

oncord Academy kicked off its 90th year with a warm and welcoming Convocation. Head of School Rick Hardy addressed the assembled group, comprising members of the board of trustees, faculty and staff, faculty emeriti, and students, who had gathered in the Chapel, some for the very first time. Hardy eased the fears of the one hundred eight new student members of the CA community by talking about his own nerves: “. . . the beginning of each new year finds me eager to start, and also nervous . . . I now under-

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

stand that this feeling reflects the uncertainty of what lies ahead, but also the thrill of possibility, the promise of a new year.” He told those new to the CA community that they had been chosen because “we know that you that you will contribute in a host of important ways to our community.” In her speech, this year’s Student Head of School, Kelsey McDermott ’13 told the assembled students that each of them had something different to look forward to this year. “For the freshmen, it’s becoming part of CA and making new friends. For the [returning] sophomores, it’s furthering the friendships made last year and continuing to explore new interests both inside and outside of the classroom. Juniors have ring begs and, unfortunately, SATs to look forward to, and seniors have coffeehouse, chapels, and graduation,” said Kelsey, who added that despite their differences, the students had one thing in common, “. . . something that we all have to look forward to is

Photos by Tim Morse

CAMPUS NEWS

Who They Are One hundred eight new students arrived at Concord Academy on August 31, 2012, to begin the school year — and a new adventure. Just who are these newcomers? We’re going to let the numbers tell their story.

Olympian by Rick Riordan, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Paper Towns by John Green, Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan.

They come from: CA, CO, FL, GA, HI, IL, MA, ME, NC, NH, NJ, NY, PA, and VT. 13 percent are international students.

spending the next nine months together as a community.” This year’s faculty speaker was Susan Adams, a forty-oneyear veteran of CA’s Modern and Classical Languages Department, who also had important stints as college counselor and dean of faculty. On campus, Adams is affectionately referred to as Frau Adams because her devotion to the German language knows no bounds. That love was on full display in her speech as she recited a poem in German by Rose Ausländer. Adams then urged the students to internalize the lessons of the poem. “Throw your fear

into the air. This is a school where you can do that . . . You have come to a school that will allow, even expect, you to be what you are and give what you have. You have come to a school where teachers and students work together to build a community,” said Adams. Rick Hardy echoed the theme of community and said, “The journey that you are beginning today is one that we are all beginning; and wherever we go, we will get there together.” After a reception on the Chapel lawn, the CA students headed off to class.

The Great Wall by Isaac Levine ’14

efore I traveled to China, it seemed as far away culturally as it was geographically. The Great Wall, the Yangtze, and Tiananmen Square appeared grand and romanticized in the books I had read and the photographs I had seen over the course of my education. So, when Mandarin teacher Wenjun Kuai announced a ten-day trip in March to the far-off nation, I immediately emailed her for more information. I finally had an opportunity to turn the intangible into the tangible, the abstract into the literal, fiction into reality. We landed in Beijing, and over the course of the next few days, we visited many of the sites that I had come across in stories and photographs. We made our way across Tiananmen Square and under its famed gate, decorated with Mao’s dominating portrait, and into the Forbidden City, where we able to witness the grandeur of Beijing. The Olympic Village, the Great Wall (which provided Alex Poorvu ’14, history teacher Ed Rafferty, and me with a near-vertical running course), and the Ming Tombs only further confirmed this immensity, and I soon felt smaller than ever. After our time in Beijing, we boarded a flight to the inland city Chongqing. Lily Li ‘13 and her family and friends enthusiastically greeted us at the airport and brought us to our hotel. In the absence of a tour guide, we were able to explore the city by ourselves. We spent one glorious evening cruising on the Yangtze River with Lily’s friends. The next day we arrived at Chongqing No. 11 Middle School for a “cultural

exchange.” In a gymnasium packed with students, teachers, photographers, and videographers, we were treated to music, dance, and poetry, both new and traditional, by the students of Chongqing. Afterwards, gift-bearing students swarmed us, asking for autographs, photos, and email addresses. It was fun, for a while, being celebrities, but it was even more fun when I got an unexpected invitation to the stage during one of the music performances. One group, a rock band, asked if any of the CA students could sing. Petrified by the thought of being chosen, I shrank in my seat. And, just my luck, I was chosen. However, seeing my confused and worried face, the musicians placed in my hand something familiar: a set of drumsticks. I spent the next five minutes jamming on stage. Playing music with the students of Chongqing somehow dissolved the language barrier that had created a distance between us. On our final leg of the trip we visited Shanghai, a metropolitan center not unlike any large American city. We took a trip to the top of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower where we were able to see the enormous urban landscape spread out beneath us. We visited the birthplace of

Chinese communism and even went shopping in a small fishing village right outside the city. My favorite part of the trip, however, was later that evening. Restless, and craving some real Chinese street food before we were to head back, Wenjun, Ed, a couple students, and I went on a walk well into the night. We searched and searched, and leaving the lights of the shops behind us, we wandered under a railroad bridge and found a man cooking skewered lamb and stinky tofu. The latter, certainly beyond my palate, was followed up by some of the most delicious lamb I have ever eaten. And we just stood there, under the bridge, indulging in the moment and in the food. Later, upon reflection, I realized I felt closest to China when I was eating stinky tofu and grilled lamb under a railroad in Shanghai, when I learned Mandarin words and phrases on the bus with friends, and when I jumped on stage to play music with my Chinese peers. It was those moments when I felt like I was really in China. China is a country of grandeur and culture; however those special moments made the country seem more intimate — and unforgettable.

Isaac Levine '14 and seven other CA students traveled to China in March, 2012 with Mandarin teacher Wenjun Kuai and history teacher Ed Rafferty. 5

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

CAMPUS NEWS

The InSPIRE program is designed to offer experiential learning opportunities for rising seniors. Students are placed in unpaid internship positions at area hospital or university lab settings. The program is currently overseen by faculty member Amy Kumpel.

SERVICE TRIPS For the past five years, CA students, faculty, and chaperones have delayed summer vacation plans and traveled instead on a school-initiated service trip. This year three separate groups headed to Nicaragua, Vermont, and New Orleans.

InSPIRE by Ryan Hussey ’13

n my first day of work at the Girguis Laboratory at Harvard University, I walked purposefully down the long, winding hallway, hoping I would end up at the right room. When I finally found the right office, I lingered outside the door, waiting until 9:00 a.m. on the dot to knock, enter, and meet my graduatestudent mentors for my first day of work. Although I was extremely nervous, Roxie, Heather, and Kiana put me at ease immediately. They gave me a tour of the immense lab space— spread out over two floors— and showed me the “intern bench,” the lab bench and desk where I would work on my research. Not long after, I jumped right into learning the different procedures for Roxie and Heather’s experiments, and I was settled in. Girguis Laboratory does research in the field of marine microbiology, specifically about marine life found at

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

deep-sea vents. Though I worked on two different experiments, both were related to the effect of microbes on the concentrations of the different gases being constantly released from deep-sea vents. I have taken biology, chemistry, and physics at CA, and a semester of environmental science at the Mountain School, but this field was entirely new to me. My mentors taught me not only about the subject itself, but also how to do research and discover entirely new things in this budding field. Because so many of the lab experiments have never been done before, I learned a lot about innovation and onthe-job problem solving, let alone the determination necessary to be a scientist. I now know that each step of an experiment is critical, from the simple act of washing lab dishes to analyzing the final data.

Nicaragua athematics teacher George Larivee, together with French teacher Tonhu Hoang, accompanied a group of six CA students to Nicaragua to set up libraries and teach science to elementary school children. Larivee has led this trip for three years, to build libraries in impoverished communities and promote cultural exchange. The first stop was a tiny school in the village of El Regadio. The CA students came prepared with boxes of simple scientific instruments: microscopes, telescopes, prisms, magnifying glasses, tuning forks, and other teaching tools. They divided the twelve schoolchildren into two groups to let them touch, play, and experiment with the scientific devices. Of course, all lessons no matter how rudimentary, had to be conducted in Spanish, which proved to be a something of a challenge. “The students quickly established a rapport with the Nicaraguan children and

engaged them in the lessons. It was very impressive,” said Larivee. The students traveled to a total of five villages, where at every stop they polished their Spanish and their teaching skills. Along the way, they built two libraries populated with donated books. Funding for the supplies and books came from individual donors and from a generous donation from CA’s volleyball team, which sold T-shirts to raise money for the project. Planning for the next service trip is already under way. George Larivee contributed to this story.

he tiny state of Vermont was hit hard in 2011 by Tropical Storm Irene. Widespread flooding washed away homes and devastated local communities. A group from CA traveled to Brattleboro, Vermont, to help rebuild Tri-Park, a mobile home community. Chaperones included Dean of Students and Community Life David Rost,

Library Director Martha Kennedy, Concord Academy nurse Gianna Drew, and foreign language teachers Laura Twichell and Aida CamposNava. Glen Park lost one-third of its homes, most owned by senior residents. CA students including Corey Rost ’15, Sophie Drew ’15, Lindsay Klickstein ’15, Hadleigh Nunes ’15, Lauren Jaeger ’14, Charles Manzella ’14, Adam Sodano ’13, and Nick Alvarez ’14 helped with painting, roof repair, tree planting, and plenty of debris removal. “What stands out for me was the work of our stu-

dents, their efforts clearing away debris will allow a new home to be delivered for an 80-year-old resident. I will also always remember the magnificent setting and hospitality of Road’s End Farm,” says David Rost. Road’s End Farm is a horseback-riding camp and working farm located just a few minutes from the Tri-Park community. Rost says that CA chose Vermont for one of the service trips this year to remind CA students that there are many “needs locally.” And, in just a few short days, it was clear that in Vermont some acts of simple human kindness lifted the spirits of the elderly residents. “The residents were brightened by our volunteering, as it was a reminder that they were not forgotten,” says Rost.

New Orleans A students and their chaperones headed down to Louisiana to help the community get back on its feet after several devastating natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The mission of the New Orleans service trip has changed somewhat over the years. In the beginning, right after Hurricane Katrina decimated the region, most of the work involved digging out and cleaning up. This year, the work revolved around helping feed people in the local community. Institutional poverty remains a deep problem down in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, according to mathematics teacher Kem Morehead, one of the chaperones on the trip. Morehead, along with Kim CrawfordHarvie, Susie Nacco, Assistant Dean for Community and Equity Ayres Stiles-Hall, and Director of Financial Aid John McGarry, accompanied CA students including Diane Wald ’13, Sarah Eberth ’13, Ishbel McCann ’14, Seija Samoylenko ’13, Jake PhilbinCross ’14, Tyler Parke ’15, and Matt Goldberg ’14. The CA group was hosted by Our School at Blair Grocery, a reclaimed grocery store committed to the education of local youth and sustainable community development. For six days students and their chaperones weeded gardens, ripped overgrown vines from fences, shoveled dirt, and harvested vegetables and herbs. Our School at Blair Grocery serves as a large community farm which employs and teaches local teenagers and grows fresh food for the peo-

ple in the surrounding communities. Local families from the Lower Ninth Ward can come by with vouchers to get produce and other fresh food. “The poverty level is intense. People are hungry and disenfranchised. Our School at Blair Grocery helps empower people to help themselves,” says Morehead. Just a few months after the CA group came home, the farm at Our School at Blair Grocery was hit by Hurricane Isaac. The community is currently cleaning up again.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

Vermont

Carly Nartowicz

Meet CA’s New Dean of Faculty

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

A’s Dean of Faculty Jenny Chandler officially made the move to campus this past July. Within a few short days, she had managed to unpack most of her boxes and find her way to the Upper Stu-Fac without getting too lost. “I’m excited to be a resident on campus and a part of this special community. The surroundings are enchanting,” says Chandler. In a way, Chandler’s journey to CA began back in 1985 at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in Fairbault, Minnesota. Chandler taught middle school classes there for three years. “I enjoyed the challenge of preparing for a class, figuring out how to excite students, engaging them in discovery, and making materials and ideas so meaningful to me accessible and, ideally,

meaningful to them. I also grew to love what happens over the course of a class. My students have been some of my best and most memorable teachers. Teaching is such a privilege to me,” says Chandler. Her hours in the classroom solidified Chandler’s interest in education. She vividly remembers being with her students in 1986 when the news broke that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded. “I reacted to that event as a teacher. I thought about Christa McAuliffe and what she was trying to do. That was a transformative moment for me because it made me think more deeply about what I love to do,” says Chandler. Within a few years Chandler had enrolled at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, after which she became the dean of students at Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Moving to the Berkshires was a coming home of sorts for Chandler, who grew up in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Her family moved to Williamstown when Chandler’s father was named president of Williams College in 1973. John Chandler was also president of Hamilton College from 1968–1973. Jenny Chandler’s position at Miss Hall’s School evolved from dean of students to assistant head and then dean of academics and faculty. After twenty-three years at Miss Hall’s, Chandler was looking for new challenges and something, perhaps, a bit more focused on the support and oversight of faculty. “I was looking for a school that matched its mission in a very real way,” says Chandler, who believes that at CA she has found such a school. She came to that conclusion, in part, after meeting a group of CA students during her interview process. “Those kids spoke about their teachers’ capacity to deliver great content in an engaging way and the joy they had doing it. Their enthusiasm was very real.” As dean of faculty, says Chandler, one of her jobs in this first year will be “to listen for and capture what distinguishes teaching at CA.” She is also looking forward to teaching Profiles in Leadership in the spring, a course she has developed over the last two years. She has been teaching U.S. History 2 this fall. “My aim is to get students to appreciate their own capacity to lead. I appreciate that at CA I have been given solid time to prepare for the courses that I will be teaching,” says Chandler. “That is a real gift.” Still, Chandler will be taking time away from unpacking and class prep to indulge in a few guilty pleasures. That includes eating a cupcake or two, and taking long walks in town with her Dalmatian Gracie and on some of the trails around the CA campus. She also looks forward to welcoming her son Owen home to CA when he visits from Sarah Lawrence College, where he is a sophomore. She also hopes to make time to finish her current bedside books, Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking and Rachel Maddow’s Drift. As she sits in her new office, Chandler says she often thinks back to the experiences that brought her to Concord Academy. “I think about the events that have shaped my journey and I have really begun to realize that this is what teachers do—we help students navigate and shape their own journeys. CA seems to honor this connection in a very thoughtful and distinctive way.”

to be young and female working there.” The job itself capitalized on Kumpel’s skills as an engineer, but it lacked what she craved most — collaboration with other professionals and interaction with the students she had come to miss. After a few months, Kumpel knew she made a mistake. “I missed that every single day in the classroom is different. I love the unpredictable nature of teaching, and I missed being with high school students,” says Kumpel. “I just think they’re awesome.” In short order, it was clear to Kumpel that she would leave engineering for good and rejoin teaching. Since fall 2008, Kumpel has taught

FAC ULTY PR OFILE

“I wanted to be around my family.” She chose to resume a career in engineering, thinking that she should give it one more try. After all, she had completed years of schooling to become an engineer, and as much as she loved the classroom, it made sense to Kumpel to give her chosen career another go. She signed on as a systems engineer with the defense contractor Raytheon. For a year, Kumpel spent her days working on the Patriot missile. “I had some experience working on missiles at Georgia Tech, so it wasn’t that big of a leap,” says Kumpel. “I really love the way engineering teaches you how to think and solve problems, but it was tough in 2005

Tim Morse

n the span of just three years, Amy Kumpel went from being a systems engineer at Raytheon working on the Patriot missile, to a math teacher at Concord Academy. Now that she’s traded weapons for lessons, Kumpel says she couldn’t be happier. Kumpel grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts. While she chose to go to Tufts University because it had a terrific engineering programming, perhaps more importantly for Kumpel it was also just a few miles from her parents’ home. “I was a homebody,” admits Kumpel. “I applied only to colleges within a two-hour drive of my house.” After graduating in 2001 from Tufts with a BS in mechanical engineering, Kumpel headed to the Georgia Institute of Technology to pursue a master’s degree in aerospace engineering. Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to finish a PhD. Instead, once again, she looked to her family for advice. “What do you do when you’re 22 and don’t know what to do with your life? You call your Mom. She said, ‘You know, I always thought you would be a great teacher,’” says Kumpel. And with that Kumpel was off and running — again. For two years, she taught physics at an independent school in Atlanta. Kumpel says now that she loved the job. It was “trial by fire” in that there wasn’t a lot of mentoring in the classroom. Still, she enjoyed being in the classroom with a diverse and highly motivated group of students. Yet, home once again tugged at Kumpel’s heartstrings. “I wanted to be closer to the Boston area,” says Kumpel.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

From Missiles to Math

F A C U LT Y P R O F I L E

both Accelerated Physics and mathematics as a faculty member at Concord Academy. “I love that CA students actively engage in their own learning process,” says Kumpel, “They are not just going to sit back and listen to what the teacher has to say. They push back in a very intellectual way.” Kumpel has also been instrumental in continuing the InSPIRE program begun by then-Science Department Head Michael Wirtz. The unpaid internship program, designed to provide CA students with hands-on experiential learning opportunities, places rising seniors in hospital or university lab settings for the summer. This year, Kumpel found placements for twelve students in research labs at Brandeis University, Tufts University, Harvard University, Tufts Medical Center, and Boston College. As for Kumpel, last year she packed up her belongings and her cat Fenway and moved into Wheeler House as a house parent, where she has come to enjoy her ability to interact with CA students outside of the classroom. Every day, says Kumpel, she is grateful that she traded a life working with missiles for one solving math problems in the classroom. “To watch a student have their ‘Aha!’ moment, when they struggle and then all of a sudden all those puzzle pieces fall into place . . . that moment is by far the most rewarding,” says Kumpel.

From the series “Occupied” by Cynthia Katz, 2012

Platter created by Ben Eberle ’99

Newsmakers English teacher Cammy Thomas has learned that her second book of poems, Our Dark Game, has been accepted for publication by Four Way Books in New York. It will appear on bookshelves in late 2014. Concord Academy’s photography teacher, Cynthia Katz, was invited to participate in “Blink,” a photography pop-up exhibition at Digital Silver Imaging in Boston, Massachusetts. Katz was selected for her moving black-and-white images.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

Ceramicist Ben Eberle ’99 had a large platter selected for an exhibit in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The 20th Annual National Strictly Functional Show is a juried exhibition that showcases the best of functional ceramics in the United States. Director of the Theatre Program David R. Gammons’ production of Red received the Outstanding Production award at the 30th annual Elliot Norton Awards. Red was the most nominated single production at the awards, with a total of five nominations and two wins. The play revolves around the life of artist Mark Rothko.

Well before Barnes began work on the PBS Frontline documentary, “The Mormons,” she developed a deep fascination with Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. What most impressed her were the early writings of Smith, notably the joyful humor and originality of the young prophet’s revelations that eventually directed him to write the Book of Mormon. During the extensive research phase of the documentary, Barnes discovers her own ancestors joined the early church as converts, following Smith out west in the 1830s. Barnes wrestles with the issues raised by her near conversion to Mormonism while writing the film. Despite seeking continued guidance from missionaries and attending services, she cannot completely reconcile her beliefs with the tenets of the Mormon faith, although her connection to Smith remains steadfast.

David Duffy ’75 In for a Ruble St. Martin’s Press, 2012 Fresh from a 2012 Edgar nomination for Best First Novel for Last to Fold, Duffy strikes again, in this, his second venture into the crime fiction annuls. Attempting to keep depression at bay, Turbo Vlost, private eye, reluctantly takes on an assignment from a billionaire about to claim the winning bid for a huge media outlet. Initially hired to figure out who is hacking into the company’s computer system, Turbo finds himself ensnared in a volatile mix of Russian mobsters and dark family secrets. It appears that everyone is out to make a bundle, including the client’s son, who’s running a disturbing, yet financially lucrative, side business while at boarding school. The evidence is in — Duffy has the makings of a terrific new crime series, so stay tuned for the follow-up that is sure to come.

Philip McFarland, Teacher Emeritus Mark Twain and the Colonel: Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Arrival of a New Century Rowman & Littlefield, 2012 Two iconic figures of the American past clashed mightily over political, economic, and social viewpoints. Though he never publicly shared his views, Clemens professed in personal writings that Roosevelt was “by far and away the worst President that we have ever had.” While Clemens held fiercely to anti-imperialism, Roosevelt’s views pushed for United States dominance in the years during and immediately following the Spanish-American War. When personal tragedies struck both men, specifically the loss of loved ones, their reactions to them differed greatly: Clemens brooding and selfflagellating, Roosevelt dismissive and near blameless. McFarland’s close examination of the crucial years between 1890 and 1910 reveals much about the two men, including their influences and perspectives on a rapidly changing nation.

Betsy Thompson ’87, illustrator; Janet Halfmann writer Eggs 1 2 3: Who Will The Babies Be? Blue Apple, 2012 This delightful natural-history counting book is richly illustrated with Thompson’s textured collages. Fold-out pages allow for interactive close-ups of the various creatures that emerge from a wide range of eggs. Animals from land and sea, and even ordinary suburban backyard beasts, cast a magical light on this routine cycle of life. Eggs 1 2 3 is perfect for the curious preschoolers who enjoy knowing the hows and whys of the world around them.

CA Bookshelf by Library Director Martha Kennedy

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

Jane Barnes ’60 Falling in Love with Joseph Smith: My Search for the Real Prophet Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2012

David R. Gammons

ARTS Upbeat music from the eighties filled the Performing Arts Center (P.A.C.) when the Directors Seminar Production of The Breakfast Club made its debut on CA’s stage this past year. Abby Brooke ‘13, Ellie New ‘14, Josh Shapiro ‘14, Evan Turissini ‘12, and Wyatt David Welles ‘14, played the lead roles in the play based on the 1985 John Hughes film. For those too young to remember the movie, it revolves around five teenagers thrown together in an empty library for detention. In addition to the eighties hits, the student band 6Foot6 also contributed music to the production.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

hrongs of students, faculty, and staff packed the Ransome Room to view CA’s semiannual visual arts show. Gigantic self-portraits filled one wall, haunting blue-tinted photographs stood out on another, and beautiful ceramic objects dotted the room. In all, more than one hundred and twenty works by student artists were on display. Artwork by Charlotte Weiner ‘13

Liza Voll Photography

grown in size and scope over the years, and now it draws aspiring dancers from New England and beyond. Nearly one hundred advanced-level performers participated in the three-week intensive program aimed at students of contem-

porary dance. Students participated in workshops on technique, performance skills, and repertory as well as the Choreographers’ Project, in which dancers participate in the creation of new work under the guidance of fellowship recipients. The program included a performance series at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, Massachusetts. A staging of Merce Cunningham’s How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run received an enthusiastic response from the press and public alike. Two readers with CA ties accompanied the performance, actor Oliver Platt P’12 and poet Robert Pinsky P’94. Congratulations to Summer Stages Dance at Concord Academy for fifteen wonderful years.

David R. Gammons

rnest Hemingway’s classic novel A Moveable Feast was the inspiration for another Directors Seminar Production, Running with the Bulls. The play is set in Paris in the 1920s and focuses on Hemingway, his wife, Hadley, and the vibrant expatriate community in which they lived and loved. Regina Coyle ’13, Louisa Dodge ’14, David Lander ’13, Liz Gootkind ’13, Lucy Farnsworth ’15, and Sophia Steinert-Evoy ’13 were among the cast and crew.

David R. Gammons



his year Summer Stages Dance at Concord Academy celebrated its fifteenth year. The program, under the guidance of CA’s Performing Arts Department Head Amy Spencer and Dance Program Codirector Richard Colton, has

olta burst onto the stage last spring. Director of the Theatre Program David R. Gammons coconceived and codirected the production, along with Theatre Program Guest Artist Jennie Israel. The “passionate evening of poetry, music, and movement” was inspired by William Shakespeare’s sonnets. The performance featured the entire Theatre 3 Company. Original music was performed by Adam Stone ’04.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

Photos by Tim Morse

Art work by Caelyn Kwak ‘12, Eliza Guion ‘15, Phoebe Chatfield ‘14, and Kris Kim ‘12

Q&A

Sharon Oleksiak ’83

Sharon Oleksiak ‘83 is president of FRIDA Glassworks, a glass design company based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She has been designing with glass for the awards and recognitions market for the past twenty years. Oleksiak majored in art history and economics at Brown University and earned a master’s degree in interior architecture from the University of Massachusetts as well a master’s degree in industrial design from the Pratt Institute. Oleksiak lived in New York for years before moving back to Rhode Island where she is now based. She has designed with crystal and glass for all types and sizes of entities, from the Elton John Aids Foundation, to Swarovski International, Microsoft, the Terezín Chamber Music Foundation, and most recently UNESCO.

CA What is your process?

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

SO It’s quite simple on the surface, I just start sketching. Underneath, however, an enormous amount of thought goes into my designs. After meeting with a client to see what his or her focus is for the product they have asked me to create, I try to pare down these ideas to one simple concept and visual, reflective of my client’s purpose or mission. With the Elton John Aids Foundation the grand piano—his piano—has gorgeous form. I started drawing the curves and shapes that to me recall a grand piano. At the same time, I needed to incorporate the Aids Foundation logo and color, which is not so easy in glass. Once I have some initial ideas on paper, I think about how they

can be translated into glass and the manufacturing processes involved. When my ideas have jelled, I draw the objects on the computer and prepare construction drawings for prototyping. There is a power to making an object and bringing an esoteric idea to life, and to me an enormous amount of satisfaction, once the prototyping begins. CA Tell me about your preferred medium — crystal? SO Crystal is soft to cut and polish with extraordinary reflective and refractive qualities. It has an incredible ability to throw light with prismatic affect. It is one of the oldest materials made by man, and yet today it is used in many high tech applications. Although I understand the mate-

rial quite well, there are always surprises with a finished product in glass. During the design and drawing stage it is impossible to guess exactly how light will be thrown or reflections carried through the piece, until you actually hold it in your hand and spin it in the light. CA You produce a lot of commercial work, do you consider yourself an artist? SO Other people call me an artist because that is how I approach my life and my work. I don’t know that I feel worthy of the term. I do know that I am passionate about creating good design for the average person, whether it is an object or a space. I truly believe in the Bauhaus concept that good design can and should be accessible to everyone. There is so much bad design in glass around us that it has cheapened the material. I wish to change this. In the end, I consider myself a problem solver and an object maker—objects that have meaning for me, and others. One of my favorite projects was working with the Terezín Chamber Music Foundation to create their legacy award. The Foundation is dedicated to preserving the music and art created during WWII in the Terezín concentration camp and every year they honor a benefactor of the foundation. The idea we chose to work with was to take an actual brick from the wall of the concentration camp in Europe, ship it back to Rhode Island, pull a mold from it and cast it directly

into crystal. The engraving was a very simple line along the bottom of the brick. It was almost like a tombstone manifested in crystal, rather than stone. The form is very simple, quiet in its presence, but at the same time, heavy with meaning.

Oleksiak recently won the Silver Design Award for commercial interiors in Rhode Island. Along with her work in glass and crystal, Oleksiak continues to maintain a lifelong passion for interior design.

ATH LETIC S CA athletes ran, jumped, slugged, and lobbed their way to a series of spring sports victories. The girls tennis team dominated rivals Dana Hall for the Eastern Independent League (EIL) Pool B Tournament title. The boys tennis team also turned in a not-too-shabby second place performance in the EIL. Over on the baseball diamond, CA made it to the finals of the EIL Baseball Tournament thanks to a strong showing by pitcher Tim Chamberlin â&#x20AC;&#x2122;12, who managed to hold off two strong hitters from the top-seeded Pingree School. The team waged a hardfought battle for the championship with Berwick, but ultimately had to settle for a second place finish. A total of ten CA athletes competed in the NEPTSA Division III Track and Field Championships â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and came home with slew of personal bests, four school

CCOONNCCOORRDDAACCAADDEEMMY.Y.OORRGG FFAALLLL 22001122

SPRING HIGHLIGHTS

AT H L E T I C S

records, and three championship performances. Katie Krupp ’12 had the best single day performance of any athlete in CA track history — winning three separate New England championships. Katie set a facility record in the 100M hurdles. Then, in the 300M hurdles, she won her second championship of the day by posting one of the fastest times in Division III history. To finish up the day, Katie propelled herself through the air to post a record triple jump of 35-feet 6-inches and capture her third championship. Head coach Jon Waldron said, “Katie represents all the best things about CA’s program — she works hard to be competitive as an individual athlete, but cares just as deeply about the team’s progress. She’s also not afraid to take risks and try new things.” CA runners posted some blistering times. Sophie Drew ’15 placed twelfth in the 800M with a time of 2:39.75. Lindsay Klickstein ’15 ran a personal best of 5:32:78 in the 1500M — good for ninth place. In the 3000M, Alyssa Taylor also clocked in with a personal best — and school record — of 11:46:61 for a fifth place finish. Adam Pfander ’12 placed fifth in the 3000M, setting a new school record of 9:50.01. “It was a very exciting end to a very exciting season,” said Jenny Brennan, CA’s director of athletics. With additional reporting by Jon Waldron and Jenny Brennan

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

Still Going Strong

Some CA alumnae/i remain committed athletes long after graduation. Here are the stories of three alumnae from the 1960s who still excel in their chosen sport. Betty Glover ’63

ifty years ago at CA, when we played field hockey, lacrosse, or soccer, I always wanted to play center halfback because that player got to run the most. But then, after almost four decades of inactivity, in my mid-50s I got a shock. When I looked in the mirror I saw an out-of-shape person staring back at me. So I began taking cardio classes, and to my surprise I fell in love with physical exercise. At age 62, I began to train with a running club. I kept getting faster and faster, gaining in endurance. Very soon I was racing and winning awards. Now, at age 67, I am ranked number one in the MD/DC/VA region in my female division age 65– 69. My CA friends know I am very much a Type B personality — mellow and laidback. In a race, however, I’m a monster. In five years, I have competed in almost one hundred races, including distances up to 50K. On a good day I am world-class, and it’s a thrill to be invited to start at the front of a big race right behind the elites. Discovering my talent late in life makes it all the sweeter. I do not take this gift for granted. To express my gratitude I give back by volunteering as a coach. The opportunity to help others learn to love running makes me more grateful still. — Written by Betty Glover ’63

Judy Scott Evans ’63 — Tennis t CA, Judy Scott Evans ’63 played on the red tennis team. “I just remember playing very ferociously against the blues,” says Evans. At the time, tennis teams were divided by colors — the reds against the blues. Fast forward fifty years or so, and Evans is now the number two USTA player in the 65-plus age group in Northern California, which is quite an achievement for someone who has

been through three hip replacements and a knee surgery. Her tennis game has evolved somewhat since her days on the CA courts. “In your 60s it’s more of a mental game. Now I silently do the accounting. Do I really want to run this ball down with my hips?” says Evans, who also takes stock of her opponents’ weaknesses. “You figure out if your opponent has a brace on her knee for lateral movement, then adjust your play accordingly.” She has retooled her game and added a drop shot and a topspin lob to vanquish her opponents. Evans believes her years as a player on Concord Academy’s “red” team prepared her for a future as a USTA tennis star. “Tennis really is about being a chameleon.”

Rebecca Ramsay ’64 — Running ebecca Ramsay runs for the joy of it — she just happens to be pretty fast as well. Last fall, Ramsay came in 23rd out of 217 runners in her age group (60– 69) at the Tufts 10K race in Boston, Massachusetts. These days, though, she isn’t focused on her speed. Ramsay says she wants to see how “enjoyable” she can make her running. To that end, she is trying to adjust her running stride to lean forward so that she can “use the effect of gravity” to reduce the effort in her running — a technique promoted in the book Chi Running, by Katherine and Danny Dreyer. Ramsay is also concentrating on being “aware of the contact of all of our toes with the ground.” Ramsay’s father participated in track sports, so you could say it runs in the family.

Congratulations to all the Concord Academy alumnae/i who are still active in athletic pursuits.

Rebecca Ramsay ’64

n September we received word that former Head of School Tom Wilcox had completed his first triathlon at age 65. Wilcox competed in the Celebrating Heroes Triathlon in Columbia, Maryland. The race included a 1000M swim, 17.5-mile bike, and a 5K run. He placed fourth out of eight in his age group and beat nearly three hundred competitors to the finish line — not bad for being one of the oldest people to enter the race.

Former Head of School Tom Wilcox and his wife Whitty Ransome

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

Betty Glover ’63 — Distance Running

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

A Day of Celebration and Inspiration Photographs by Tim Morse

s the Concord Academy Class of 2012 gathered on the Chapel lawn for the Commencement exercises, a bright June sun warmed the assembled crowd of students, parents, faculty, family, and friends. As is tradition at Concord Academy, there were no caps or gowns to be seen. Girls wore white, boys dressed in jackets and ties. To begin the day, the President of the Board of Trustees, John Moriarty p’02, ’05, ’07—who has seen three of his own children graduate from CA— gave a short, heartfelt speech. “I am sure that for many of you these last few weeks have been full of angst; last chapel, last game, last performance, last CA English class, but CA doesn’t go away,” said Moriarty. “As you pursue new things you will be extending the reach of CA and CA will be here for you, your friends, fellow alumni, and CA parents past and future—wherever you may land.” Head of School Rick Hardy then addressed the parents of the Class of 2012. He thanked them for “trusting us with your sons and daughters, and

for partnering with us in helping them to learn and grow over these past four years.” Hardy went on to talk about the unique character of this class of graduates. “They are good-natured, curious, quirkily intellectual, and unfailingly creative; not so much skilled at thinking outside the box as incapable of thinking inside it,” he said. “These seniors have led the school so well for the past nine months, and we are proud of and grateful to them for all that they have done to make this year a success.” Student Head of School Johnny Murchison ’12 recognized the dedication of CA’s faculty. “We feel incredibly lucky to have learned from a faculty so distinguished as this one, not only in title and tenure but in talent and passion as well,” he said, at which point the crowd erupted in applause. Senior Class President Pauly Daniel ’12 introduced the speaker for CA’s eighty-ninth Commencement, Robert Pinsky. In a funny and, at times, touching speech, poet Robert Pinsky p’94, told the graduates and assembled guests that 19

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

Ashley Campbell ’12 and Rhea Roy ’12

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

To watch the full Commencement 2012 address please go to: http://youtu.be/T0w7FVLwn-w

For more Commencement 2012 photos visit concordacademy.org

Sean Pathawinthranond '12

Left to right: Kathleen Cachel ’12, Hadley Allen ’12, Corie Walsh ’12, and Sara Makiya ’12; Naseem Silver-Hajo ’12; Natalie Wang ’12, Michelle Wiryadi ’12, English teacher Parkman Howe, Emily Wang ’12; Rick Hardy congratulates a graduate; Middle row: English teacher Abby Laber hugs a graduate; Family and friends on the Quad; James Wyrwicz ’12; Graduates singing the school song; Megan Robidas ’12, Bruce Duggan ’12, Ashley Brock ’12, Max Samels ’12; Sofia Lapides-Wilson ’12; Bottom rows: Corie Walsh ’12; Eliza Harrison ’12, Lily Platt ’12, Stephanie Spies ’12, Taylor Fallon ’12, and Anna McCormick-Goodhart ’12; Ben-Ben Fleuragaste ’12 and Christiaan Pfeifer ’12; Coleman Craddock-Willis ’12; CA Chorus; Charles D. Bryant ’12

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

instead of talking about traditional commencement topics like “the future” and “hope,” he would instead “talk to you about the past and despair . . . What you will seek in the world, I hope, will be a difficulty that is worthy of you,” said Pinsky, as he told the graduates that he had spent his life engaged in “the difficulty that obsesses me and attracts me and makes me want to go back to it . . . ,” namely, his poetry and his writing. Pinsky is an editor for the online magazine Slate and was U.S. Poet Laureate for an unprecedented three terms. Pinsky is also the founder of the Favorite Poem Project, which brought poetry into the mainstream in America. He is currently a professor at Boston University. After reading several poems, one written by the painter Michelangelo, Pinsky told the graduates that he had one simple wish for them. “I wish for you that you listen to the past and leave something good for the future.” He concluded by saying, “I’m proud of you. I am proud that you asked me to talk to you and I wish you worthy and pleasurable difficulties in your life.” Then it was time for the awarding of the diplomas. Stephanie Michelle Spies ’12, was the first graduate to be awarded a green, leather-bound diploma. Eliza Woods Harrison ’12 threw her arms in the air upon receiving hers; Lizzie Rodgers ’12 let out a small scream. Through it all there was laughter, applause, even a few tears. The traditional green sock stuffed with dollar bills donated by each member of the graduating class, a gift for the last graduate to receive a diploma—went to Charles Bryant ’12. The ceremony concluded with a spirited rendition of the school song “Concord, Concord.” With that, the ninety-minute commencement exercises, marking both an end and a beginning for the CA Class of 2012, came to a close.

Reunion 2012

CA Alumnae/i Reconnect and Remember PHOTOS BY TIM MORSE

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E F A L L 2 0 11

n a Kodak-worthy weekend this past June, more than 400 Concord Academy alumnae/i gathered on the Main Street campus and basked in the warm sunshine as they took part in a reunion weekend that celebrated old friendships and created new memories. The two-day slate of events began with a talk about the state of the school today, led by Head of School Rick Hardy, who was joined by Academic Dean and science teacher John Drew, history teacher Sally Zimmerli, and former student head of school Dani Girdwood ’11. Then it was on to a casual wine tasting featuring faculty oenophiles Parkman Howe, Stephen Teichgraeber, Keith Daniel, and Nicole Fandel. Afterward, alumnae/i gathered for dinner accompanied by coffeehouse music performed by Ross Adams and Rachel McColl Vuolo ’91. Later in the evening it seemed no one could resist the ice-cream sundae buffet featuring ice cream from Christina’s Ice Cream, owned by Marion Odence-Ford ’82 and her husband, Ray Ford. Yoga class kick-started Saturday’s jampacked schedule, followed by a series of workshops and presentations. Hilary Price ’87, creator of Rhymes with Orange, explained to an assembled group of admirers what it was like to

write a daily comic strip. And about fifty people gathered in the Josephine A. Tucker Library to take part in a panel discussion about social innovation moderated by CA faculty members Liz Bedell and Susan Flink, with panelists Sarah H. Elliston ’62, Marian Lindberg ’72, and Johanna Rosen ’97. In the afternoon, dozens of alumnae/i gathered in the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel for a memorial service to remember the passing of beloved friends, relatives, and colleagues as the gentle notes of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir D’un Lieu Cher drifted across the campus. While the mood was reflective and nostalgic in the Chapel, on the rest of campus it was anything but. Members of the Class of 2002 held court in the gymnasium, where they hosted a fast-paced basketball game. On the Quad, alumnae/i, many with new families in tow, engaged in animated discussions with former classmates. At one afternoon workshop, Associate Head of Communications, Enrollment, and Planning Pam Safford, together with Director of College Counseling Kate Peltz, presented a slide show on “Enrollment Trends in the 21st Century.” At the same time, just up a flight of stairs, a standing-room only crowd listened as Ally Anderson-Spivy ’57, Julia Rappaport ’02, Andrea Silverman Meyer ’87, and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi ’87 discussed the craft of writing.

Taibbi described his post-CA years at New York University and then, later, writing for the Moscow Times. “If you’re immature, deluded, or pretentious your writing will be bad . . . you have to be sensitive to your own ﬂaws, and it’s a painful process,” said Taibbi. For Taibbi that painful process has evolved into a thriving career as an author and writer who is perhaps best known for his bold coverage of the ﬁnancial crisis. After the discussion, a lively Q and A lasted well into the afternoon. Tours of the Moriarty Athletic Campus also took place throughout the day. As events wound down and the sunlight faded, alumnae/i spread out across the campus and headed off to dine with classmates from years past. Reunion classes from 1942 to 1967 gathered in the Dance Studio, while other groups from the classes of 1972 to 2007 got together for casual dinners on the Quad and in the Stu-Fac. On Sunday, as former students packed their bags in preparation for leaving Concord Academy once more, it was clear the thrill of being back on campus and the joy of talking with old friends had made for a memorable weekend.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

Scenes from Reunion 2012

— Joan Shaw Herman Distinguished Service Award — THIS YEAR there were two recipients of the Joan Shaw Herman Award, Ellen Smith Harde ’62 and the late Jennifer Moulton ’67. During reunion weekend, alumnae/i filled the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel to celebrate the work of both women. Jennifer Moulton ’67 (Posthumous award )

ennifer spent most of her life in Denver. It was for her work as planning director of the Mile-High City that she was honored with the award. Jennifer graduated with honors from Colorado College and earned an architecture degree from the University of Colorado in Denver. In 1991, she became planning director of Denver and spent the next decade transforming the city into the cosmopolitan hub it is now. Jennifer played a role in expanding the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Library, redeveloping Lowry Air Force Base, Denver International Airport, Coors Field, and St. Luke’s Hospital, as well as updating

J C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

some of the city’s deteriorating public housing projects. There is a memorial to Jennifer in Denver’s municipal building. The words “You didn’t know you came to make a city” are printed on the memorial in honor of Jennifer’s tireless dedication to the city she loved. Jennifer’s mother, Alice Moulton, accepted the award on her daughter’s behalf. “Thank you for honoring Jennifer,” said Alice. “She loved Concord and CA and always said any success later in life stemmed from the education she received here. This school changed Jennifer, and Jennifer helped change Denver to make it the city it is today.”

Ellen Smith Harde ’62

hen Ellen Smith Harde ’62 moved to Westford five years after graduating from CA, the small town had apple orchards and a wellknown ice-cream stand but didn’t have a community center or a recycling program. So Ellen got to work. She ran for office and became the first selectwoman in Westford’s history. She created the town’s first recycling program and became chair of the Westford Recycling Commission. She helped with the restoration of the town common. In 1993, she was elected town moderator and has remained in that position unopposed ever since. In 1973, Ellen also spearheaded the effort to convert an

old school building into the town’s community center. “I can’t quite decide if Concord Academy gave me the values and skills to do what I have done in Westford, or if those values and skills were nascent in me and it took Concord Academy to bring them out,” said Ellen, who has also written three books about Westford’s history, making her the unofﬁcial town historian, as well. Ellen said she took some of her inspiration from Elizabeth B. Hall, who moved the Chapel building from New Hampshire to the Concord Academy campus in 1956. “She wanted some pews, but she decided to move the whole building instead. She didn’t have permission to do any of it; she just did it,” said Ellen. The same can be said of Ellen Smith Harde as well—she just did it, and did it well.

Reunion Snapshot

Holly Loring ’72

Walking around campus on a sunshine-filled Saturday, it would have been hard not to notice Holly Loring ’72 walking around, too. Loring was toting an old, worn guitar case. It turns out Loring bought the Suzuki guitar from when she was a sophomore at CA. She returned a “too small” ski jacket, a gift from a relative, to the now-defunct Jordan Marsh and used the proceeds from the return to buy her first guitar. “I’ve had it ever since,” said Loring. Music has always been an important part of Loring’s life. “I was fortunate in that singing came naturally to me. My mother had a good voice and also loved to sing, and our whole family would sing songs in the car when we traveled,” said Loring. “Initially, as an individual singer, I was inspired by the folk singing of Peter, Paul and Mary and of Joan Baez.” After teaching herself to play the guitar, Loring set the words of First Corinthians 13:1 8 — those carved on the front wall panels of the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel — to music. Loring played the song during a vespers service, and that performance helped her overcome a lifelong stage fright. “I’m quite sentimental, and this guitar started me on a music career,” said Loring. The case was bound with tape and covered in stickers, evidence of a lifetime of travels near and far.

Reunion Class Photos

Class of 1952

Class of 1957

Class of 1967

Class of 1972

Class of 1977

Class of 1982

Class of 1987

Class of 1992

Class of 1997

Class of 2002

Class of 2007

962 Class of 1

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 12

Class of 1947

Please visit bit.ly/careunion2012 for more photos from Reunion 2012!

O Photos by Tim Morse

For more Opening Day photos visit concordacademy.org

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

LET THE

GAMES

BEGIN 26

n a glorious late summer afternoon, the Moriarty Athletic Campus officially opened for business. At precisely 2:45 p.m., dozens of Concord Academy athletes streamed off buses and onto the fields ready to play their matches. During a brief opening ceremony, Head of School Rick Hardy addressed the crowd, “Welcome to opening day. It was five years in the making but I think you will all agree that it was well worth the wait.” Judging by the crowd’s enthusiasm, everyone agreed that it was. Co-heads of the Athletic Advisory Council David Lander ’13 and Eliza Thomas ’14 shared their thoughts with the assembled group. Eliza spoke for many CA athletes when she said, “I have always wondered what it would be like to play on these fields with these teammates. That is going to be one of the best feelings for me.” As the students, faculty, staff, and parents gathered around a large bell in front of the field house, Athletic Director Jenny Brennan explained its significance. “Every time a CA team wins on these fields, a player will be designated to ring the victory bell . . . I’m sure we will be hearing that sound a lot around here,” said Brennan. The assembled team captains then moved closer, pulled the rope, and the bell rang out for the first time. The Moriarty Athletic Campus was covered in a sea of CA-green all afternoon, from the emerald green of the grass fields; to the green T-shirts with Moriarty Athletic Campus Opening Day emblazoned on the back; to the smiling students sporting green face paint. Music by the CA Drum Corps and the Halsey Hutchinson Trio energized the upbeat crowd, many of whom danced along to the beat. During her speech, Eliza Thomas ’14 said the CA athletes wanted to “make these fields proud.”And on the opening day the teams did just that. Charlotte Weiner ’13 scored the first goal on the property. The girls varsity soccer team ended its match in a tie while the boys varsity soccer team won its game 7– 0. It was a terrific end to a perfect day.

O The Moriarty Family

n Friday, November 2, more than five hundred members of the CA family gathered under a white tent for the formal dedication of the Moriarty Athletic Campus. In his address to the assembled gathering, Head of School Rick Hardy offered up something of a history lesson. “The ground we are standing on actually has a CA connection that goes back hundreds of years. Ancestors of Emily Wheeler, a member of the Class of 1970, farmed this land beginning in the mid-seventeenth century.” Now, in the twenty-first century, the former farmland is the site of a new and spectacular athletic facility, with tennis courts, playing fields, a baseball diamond, and a field house — all of

which will provide a vital and necessary boost to CA’s thriving athletics program. Rick Hardy credited Board of Trustees President John Moriarty P’02, ’05, ’07 as the man with the leadership, vision, and financial support needed to drive the project forward from the initial purchase of the land in 2007 to the final completion of construction and landscaping this past August. Along the way, a small army of talented people also helped bring the project to fruition, including CFO Judi Seldin P’15, the entire Concord Academy advancement staff, and the board of trustees, in particular Tony Brooke P’07 ’09 ’13 and former trustee Ann Gund P’08, both of whom, said Hardy, provided “critical wisdom and leadership along the way.” When Rick Hardy recognized the hard work and dedication of CA’s Director of Operations Don Kingman, who shepherded the construction

Left: Inside the new field house From top: A group of new CA students enjoying the day’s events; Nancy Parssinen Vespoli ‘73

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

CA Dedicates Moriarty Athletic Campus

of the project from start to finish, the audience erupted with sustained applause. After a series of heartfelt acknowledgments by Hardy, Nancy Parssinen Vespoli ’73 addressed the crowd. As a CA student, Vespoli played field hockey, basketball, and softball. She later took up rowing as a student at Dartmouth College and earned a spot on the 1980 U.S. Women’s Olympic Rowing Team. Vespoli talked about the importance of athletic endeavor in her own life. “It was natural when I arrived at CA to continue playing sports. It was just what I did. Being outdoors watching the leaves turn in the fall and the grass turn green in the spring, building skills, focusing during intense competition, and getting closer to teammates through working together, that is what sports meant to me,” said Vespoli. After graduating from CA, Vespoli devoted herself to the sport of rowing, first as a participant and then, with her husband, manufacturing competitive crew shells. She called her love of athletics an important, guiding force in her life, one that was first developed at CA. Vespoli also had some specific words of encouragement for the CA athletes in the audience. “I expect great things from CA teams lucky enough to practice and play here . . . Congratulations and best of luck! You never know where Concord Academy fields will take you,” said Vespoli.

Current CA athlete and cohead of the Athletic Advisory Council David Lander ’13 told the audience what it had been like to play on the new fields this fall. “With the fields right next to each other,” said David, “our teams have a sense of camaraderie; the school is competing together.” It was perhaps no accident, then, that CA won the Chandler Bowl for the first time in twenty-one years earlier this fall, playing on these new fields. In his final tribute to the Moriarty family, David referenced John Moriarty’s experience constructing buildings. “This building may not be the largest or most complex, but it is, perhaps, the most special,” said David, “because it was not just about creating a building; it was a place for building — building character and teamwork and spirit. Mr. and Mrs. Moriarty, you gave us an enormous gift . . . you gave us a place to feel

M O RI A RTY ATH LET I C CAM PUS

BY THE NUMBERS 2,400 gallons of paint

25,520 plugs of switch grass

16,210 feet of drainage pipe

495 trees and shrubs C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

280,000 square feet of sod

214,897 square feet of grass seed

1 victory bell

Photos from our #90yearsatCA Instagram challenge.

unity and pride. Now, from all of us at CA, we want to give you our thanks.” Finally, Board of Trustees Treasurer Jeff Eberle P’99 ’04 looked to the future, calling the playing fields a “dream come true” and a “catalyst to reimagine how we will use the Main Street campus.” In the end, of course, this day was about saying thank you to the Moriarty family. John, his wife, Carol, and their three children, Kate ‘02, Claire ‘05, and John Jr. ‘07, all CA graduates, were presented with a special commemorative victory bell as a gift. The family gathered around and rang the bell as the CA community gave them a standing ovation. As the speeches wrapped up, people headed for tables loaded with tiny chocolate cupcakes sporting “90” written in green icing, fresh apples, and apple cider. On the farmer’s porch, students devoured apple cider donuts and caramel apples, courtesy of the CA Alumnae/i Association. And inside, a few faculty, students, and guests huddled around the fireplace, seeking warmth and sharing stories and laughter. And then in a fitting end to a triumphant day, dozens of CA athletes took to the fields to prepare for their upcoming matches. Later that afternoon CA emerged triumphant — the girls and boys soccer teams won their games, and the hard-fought field hockey match ended in a tie.

The gymnasium quickly ﬁlled as more than 900 members of the CA

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

riday, November 2, dawned clear and crisp. The fall air contained the ﬁrst hint of winter and something else—a dash of excitement. After months of planning, CA’s 90th anniversary celebration had ﬁnally arrived. Guests began to stream in hours early, eager to take part in this happy and historic occasion.

“And so as I anticipated my remarks here today, to celebrate this place that so profoundly influenced me, I asked myself, what in Concord Academy’s past has made it distinctive? What about its history makes it the Concord Academy of today?”

Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

family took their seats. Head of School Rick Hardy began his address by reminding the audience of Concord Academy’s remarkable journey. “Ninety years ago, in September 1922, Concord Academy’s founders set out to establish a girls’ school—not a finishing school, but one where academic effort and scholarship were the focus,” said Hardy. One had to look no further than the front row, and the keynote speaker, to see just how successful the founders were at their mission. The president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust ’64, sat there with her husband, Charles Rosenberg, and many former classmates and friends. The honor of introducing Faust went to Teacher Emerita Sylvia Mendenhall, her former advisor and teacher. Mendenhall recalled a faculty meeting in 1960 that included a discussion about a new freshman boarder from Virginia—a twelve-year-old girl known as Drewdie who had just arrived at CA’s campus. She was confident, independent, and eager to try new activities. Mendenhall said Faust launched herself into life at CA with enthusiasm and distinguished herself as a remarkable student. Now, fifty-two years later, Faust was back on campus as the keynote speaker for CA’s 90th anniversary celebration. Faust took the stage to sustained applause. She began her speech by reminding the audience she had been connected to Concord Academy as a student and alum for more than half its existence. “I believe that the present is a product of the past. Just as childhoods shape who we are as adults, so origins shape institutions and what they become,” said Faust. “And so as I anticipated my remarks here today, to celebrate this place that so profoundly influenced me, I asked myself, what in Concord Academy’s past has made it distinctive? What about its history makes it the Concord Academy of today?” The answer to that question, according to Faust, could be found in the person of Elizabeth B. Hall, CA’s headmistress from 1949 to 1963. Hall had a profound effect on Faust during her years at CA, and on Concord Academy as an institution.

about what college you get into or what honors you may

Schlesinge r

Library, Ra dcliffe Inst itute, Harv ard

University .

achieve. It is about truth, justice, mercy, service, love.”

“During the 14 years of her leadership, the campus was transformed from a local institution of nine grades and 130 students into a nationally recognized, four-year college preparatory high school of 220 students with a growing and more diverse faculty,” said Faust. “As the New York Times noted in her obituary, she turned ‘a genteel ﬁnishing school’ into ‘one of the most dynamic girls’ preparatory schools in the East.’” Faust remembered Hall in a pearl necklace “sweeping across campus trailing a string of miscellaneous dogs, exhorting us to think for ourselves, whistling through her teeth in assembly to call us all to order.” Hall’s children donated her papers to the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, a gift that allowed Faust to “supplement her memory with history.” She recalled that Hall would talk to the students about “the Big Questions—democracy, freedom, war, love.” Faust then read a simple handwritten note found in Mrs. Hall’s papers. “Dear Mrs. Hall, Could you please talk about revolutions on Friday. On Wednesday could you talk about life. Thank you.” Faust said it was those talks about revolutions and life that had stayed with her throughout her own life. “These things

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

“Education is meant to change the world; it is not

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

stuck with us—questions, ideas, ways of thinking. She created a space we could see into and enter for a moment, to glimpse a better way to meet the world,” said Faust. “She seemed superbly competent, engaged not just with the actualities of life but with the mysteries of the cosmos—like Socrates and General Patton rolled into one. What a role model—magnificent and magnified.” As a student at the time, Faust said, she both feared and admired Mrs. Hall, but, above all, she hoped to be noticed by her. Mrs. Hall did, in fact, notice the independent student from Virginia one day. But not the way Faust had hoped. “Mrs. Hall took me aside in the coatroom one evening before dinner and told me I might make something of myself, but that I had better get my act together. Though those were certainly not her precise words, it was definitely her meaning. I must have done something that did not entirely please her. I don’t remember what. She didn’t chastise me for what I had done—but rather for what I had not yet done and what she thought I might do,” said Faust. “I have never forgotten her words to me. The impact of that moment on my life was enormous, not even so much because of what she said but because she noticed me.” Faust also remarked that at the time there was only one real school rule: “Do the right thing.” She said the values and sense of purpose she learned at Concord Academy hold true for the students of today: “whenever current students describe their experience of the school and its values . . . in the weekly chapels of senior students, in your dance and music and art-making, in your academic exploration, in the athletic contests that inspire and unite you.” Faust then urged Concord Academy’s current students, faculty, staff, and administration to remain true to their “commitment to education’s largest purpose.” And never forget to “keep talking about revolution on Fridays, and on Wednesdays be sure to talk about life.”

“Mrs. Hall took me aside in the coat room one evening before dinner and told me I might make something of myself, but that I had better get my act together.”

New Trustees Join CA Board

In April 2012, the Concord Academy Board of Trustees elected four new members to three-year terms and two ex-officio members to two-year terms:

Debra Alvarez P’10, ’14 Chelmsford, Massachusetts

experience in construction and engineering to the Board of Trustees. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a BS in civil and environmental engineering and obtained a Master of Engineering degree in civil and environmental engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Derrick has geotechnical design experience in the United States and construction experience in Hong Kong. Derrick joined Chun Wo Development Holdings in 2001 and has been Deputy Chairman of Chun Wo Development since April 2009. He lives in Hong Kong with his wife, Etta, and son, Darius. Derrick’s sister, Angela, graduated from CA in 1995.

Joanne R. Casper P’11 Weston, MA Joanne Casper has held numerous volunteer positions at CA, including serving as a volunteer tour guide for CA’s Admissions Ofﬁce for four years. Joanne was also an active volunteer for the 2011 Senior Parent Gift, and

Jill Conway Mehl ’85 New York, NY A member of the Class of 1985, Jill Conway Mehl has remained active as a volunteer for CA. Jill is a former fourthgrade teacher at the Rodeph Sholom School in New York, New York. She received her undergraduate degree from Boston University and her Master of Education degree from Lesley University. As an educator, Jill brings her understanding of and enthusiasm for education to her role as a member of CA’s board, as well as her desire to support the school’s faculty. Jill is married to entrepreneur Marc E. Mehl. The couple live in New York City with their children, Sarah and Adam.

Derrick Yat Bond Pang ’93 Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China Derrick Yat Bond Pang brings an international perspective and extensive

Kevin Parke P’12, ’15 Concord, Massachusetts Kevin Parke brings extensive experience as a volunteer and board member to the CA Board of Trustees. He has been the annual fund chair for Concord Academy for the past two years and also co-chaired the 2012 Senior Parent Gift. Kevin is chairman of the board at the Fenn School. He is a past trustee of the Park Street School and Park Street Kids, Inc.. He is a board member of Boston Trinity Academy. He also served nine years on the Investment Subcommittee of Lehigh University. Currently, he is a member of the Capital Structure Subcommittee of Lehigh University. Kevin has an undergraduate degree from Lehigh University and an MBA from Harvard University. He is the

former President and CIO of MFS Investment Management. Kevin lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with his wife, Leila, and four sons. Oliver Parke ’12 graduated from CA this past June and Tyler Parke ’15 is a current CA student. Leila Parke is a tour guide for CA and cochairs the Harvest Appreciation Program for Faculty.

José Ivan Román ’98 Watertown, MA José Ivan Román is president of the Concord Academy Alumnae/i Association. He is the assistant director for admissions at Boston College Law School. José Ivan was previously the assistant director of undergraduate admissions for Yale University. He brings to the board his expertise in education and his enthusiasm for volunteer service. As a volunteer for Concord Academy, has served as cochair of Alumnae/i Community & Equity since 2010. José Ivan has also participated in the Admissions Diversity Dinner and MLK Day events on campus. José Ivan is a graduate of Wesleyan University. He is currently working toward a graduate degree in higher education administration at Boston College. He lives in Watertown with his ﬁancée, Kate Knox.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

Debra Alvarez is president of CA Parents. She is an advocate for education and community development. Debra brings her volunteer experience to the Board, having founded the Chelmsford Mothers’ Club (CMC) to provide new mothers and caregivers with education in parenting and child development within a warm supportive network. To date, CMC has benefited thousands of young families. In CA Parents, Debra has held the office of vice-president of campus services, vice-president of special events, chair of the Benefit for Financial Aid, and member of committees for the Parent Annual Fund, Senior Parent Gifts Program, and Parent-to-Parent Outreach Program. She volunteers her time performing dental sealant procedures on children of low-income families and growing vegetables at the community garden, and is a member of the executive board of the Parents Independent School Network. Debra resides in Chelmsford, Massachusetts with her husband Juan, and her two sons, Christopher ’10 and Nicholas ’14.

is supportive about the need for financial aid and access to institutions. In 2011 and 2012, at CA’s Benefit for Financial Aid, Joanne spoke passionately about the importance of financial aid. She has served on the board at other non-profit institutions, including Meadowbrook School and Weston Affordable Housing Foundation. Joanne has an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her youngest child is a 2011 CA graduate; her mother-in-law is Nancy Billings Bursaw ’49. She lives in Weston, Massachusetts with her husband Wendell B. Colson.

ALUM NAE I PRO FILES

Catherine Smith Class of 1971

The Job Creator

BYNANCYSHOHETWEST’84 nancyshohetwest.com

T H I S

I S S U E

• Catherine Smith Class of 1971

• Lasell Jaretzki Bartlett Class of 1966

• Philippe von Borries Class of 1997 Justin Stefano Class of 1998

• Kate Hammond Class of 1988

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

s a new college graduate, Catherine Smith ’71 was firmly committed to working in the nonprofit or public sectors. Today, that’s just what she does, both as commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development and as vice-chair of the national board of directors with Outward Bound. It just took her about thirty years to make her way along a circuitous but highly successful route through corporate America to return to those earlier goals. After graduating from Hampshire College, Smith went to work on grass roots organizing and lobbying on behalf of land protection, focusing primarily on protecting acreage in Alaska. “After four years of that work, I realized I had no concept of what the other side of the equation was,” she said. “What was our opponents’ rationale for fighting against our ideal? I went to business school to gain some perspective on what the private sector was thinking. I expected to go right back to the field of environmental efforts in the nonprofit sector once I had completed the management program at Yale.” But once she’d earned her master’s at Yale, she decided to augment her understanding of the corporate side of land use by working in the real estate field. That led to a job at Aetna—and she stayed with the company for more than twenty-five years. “Aetna was a fantastic employer,” she said. “As soon as the learning curve in one role started flattening out, they’d offer me a new and interesting challenge in some other role. During my time there, I worked in the real estate department, the chairman’s office for corporate planning, the health business, investor relations, and financial services.” After Aetna was acquired by the Dutch company ING, Smith served in leadership positions including chief operating officer for ING U.S. Financial Services; president of Health, Education and Government Distribution; and CEO of the U.S. insurance businesses and the U.S. Retirement Services, one of the largest defined contribution plan managers in the country. Her work was so fulfilling that it was years before she reconsidered her earlier commitment to the public sector. But opportunity knocked when newly elected Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy hired as his chief of staff a favorite former colleague of Smith’s, Tim Bannon. “I reasoned that a governor who would pick such a good person for chief of staff must be pretty smart,” Smith recalled. “So I called Tim and asked whether I could talk to him about possible opportunities with the administration.”

Photo courtesy of The Stamford Advocate and Matt Vinci

things are truly at a stalemate, it’s exciting to be part of a state government where positive change is occurring.” Smith also serves as vice-chair of the national board of directors for Outward Bound, an organization that encompasses both her environmental interests and her belief in teambuilding. “I’ve never felt that I was personally discriminated against because I was a woman,” Smith reﬂected. “But there’s no doubt there are not enough women in senior roles of organizations and on boards of companies. I try to give the edge when possible to women and people of color. A lot of us women who have had these opportunities in senior management need to make that extra effort. There are very enlightened men and enlightened corporations in the business world, but there is absolutely still work to be done.”

“We’ve already created 22,000 new jobs and balanced our state budget.”

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

In April 2011, Smith ofﬁcially took on the role of commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development, the lead state agency responsible for attracting and retaining businesses and jobs, revitalizing neighborhoods and communities, expanding affordable housing opportunities, and fostering appropriate development in Connecticut’s towns and cities. “My mission is to create more jobs and help get the economy back on its feet,” Smith said. “I’m surrounded by high-energy people who listen to my ideas. We’ve been able to make a lot of difference and effect a lot of change. When contemplating taking this job, I worried that my efforts would be stymied by bureaucratic situations and red tape, but that hasn’t been the case at all. We’ve already created 22,000 new jobs and balanced our state budget. Especially given what’s happening at the national level, where

Photo courtesy of Nicole Perry

Lasell Jaretzki Bartlett Class of 1966

The Ride of her Life

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

hen she was recovering from breast cancer sixteen years ago, Lasell Jaretzki Bartlett ’66 discovered something she had known intuitively ever since childhood: being around horses is therapeutically beneficial. At the time, interest in the idea of incorporating horsemanship into physical rehabilitation regimens was growing in the field of physical therapy. But as a licensed clinical social worker, Bartlett was as interested in the mental and emotional benefits to be gained from the presence of animals as the physical benefits. For years, she mulled it over. Sustaining the energy and motivation required to be a successful social worker is challenging enough; developing a program that included horsemanship would be a lot of work, as she was well aware. But more than a decade later, Bartlett is finally seeing this long-held dream come to fruition, combining her mental health and therapeutic riding professions at High Horses in Norwich, Vermont, a professional organization dedicated to improving the well-being of people with a wide variety of special needs. “Working with riders at High Horses has been an ideal way to combine my interest in horses with my passion for helping people who have mental health issues,” she said. “Therapeutic riding can be effective for any disabilities or challenges at all.” Bartlett, who started riding when she was seven years old, worked together with the executive director of High Horses to develop a mental health program. Recently she has been particularly successful in collaboration with a local agency geared toward female victims of sexual and domestic violence. “It’s a collaborative support group,” Bartlett explained. “Each week, we start by having all the participants check in, just talk about themselves and how the week has gone for them. Then we spend time with the horses. We ask the women to observe and discuss horse behavior, and then they make their own choices about how much contact they want. They are welcome to approach the animals, touch them, groom them, lead them around the riding ring, or actually ride them. The emphasis is on choice; each person finds her own comfort level with the horses.” For example, Bartlett said, some participants may find it therapeutic to walk around the ring with a horse but not actually to ride it. “We have well-trained horses with calm temperaments and volunteers specially trained to lead horses or walk alongside them, helping support the group 36

“There is a built-in kind of peace that can come with being close to horses.”

members. Then the women say goodbye to the horses and gather together to talk about what they learned and experienced during the session.” To Bartlett, the connection between mental health and contact with horses comes naturally. “In my early teen years, having a horse meant having a mental health partner in my life. Now, as a licensed mental health professional, I understand that in order to be mentally healthy, there’s a need for strength and balance and confidence and competence: physically, emotionally, and intellectually. If a person can gain confidence and strength and balance while riding a horse, it will automatically transfer to other areas of their lives.” Moreover, said Bartlett, the benefits her clients experience extend beyond the sessions at the farm. “On the one hand, they can come have a great time for an hour and feel like it’s a successful approach, but if they’re not also doing something to bring that feeling of success to the rest of their lives, I feel like I’ve failed.” The bottom line, said Bartlett, is that feeling comfortable around horses can translate into feeling comfortable in other aspects of life. “Horses are scary for a lot of people,” she said. “That’s a good thing; we should be a little scared of horses. They’re quick and big and heavy. But managing fear is one aspect of moving into functioning after being traumatized. There is a built-in kind of peace that can come with being close to horses. What we’re doing in this program is simply making some meaning out of what we already know intuitively about these animals.”

Justin Stefano Class of 1998

Communicating Fashion

ike countless entrepreneurial ideas before it, the concept began with two friends at a bar, talking out their vision and scribbling on a cocktail napkin. Today, the result of that discussion is Refinery29, which co-founders Philippe von Borries ’97 and Justin Stefano ’98 describe on the company’s website as “the cornerstone of fashion, beauty, and shopping for a new generation . . . Refinery29 offers the only 360-degree source for shopping, exclusive deals, trends, beauty news, local hot-spots, and at-home sneak-peeks of fashion’s finest.” Both men concede that fashion is certainly not something either of them was known for back in their CA years, when Stefano’s greatest interests were literature, humanities, and the arts and von Borries set his sights on a future in international affairs. They’d been friends since von Borries was a junior and Stefano a sophomore, though the idea that they would someday be business partners wasn’t on the radar of either one. Landing in New York City in their early post-college years, the two circulated in the same large group of CA alumnae/i. Stefano worked for the city investigating allegations against the NYPD and prepared to apply to law school; von Borries wrote for an international affairs publication called the Globalist. But plans changed in 2005 when their interests converged on the emerging world of online media and what they identified as a gap that they believed they could fill. “At that time, the only significant resource in terms of online local discovery was Citysearch,” said Stefano. “And in our opinion, Citysearch was not a great resource because it was not wellcurated. We wanted to create a site that would

promote a sensibility that really didn’t exist on line at that time: curating information on stores, products, restaurants, and bars that were truly unique and being run by really creative types of people.” Despite the plan to cover food, shopping, the arts and more, the two quickly realized that the fashion world was where their most substantial readership—and advertising revenue—lay. Indeed, the number of readers on their site multiplied rapidly—from 200 site visitors on the day they launched in late 2005 to around 250,000 on a typical day. “It just worked out for us that New York influencers in the world of fashion became obsessed with using Refinery29 to find the latest and greatest trends,” said von Borries. “What made us succeed was that we launched to the right one thousand eyes. We had the people we needed on our site, and they were checking it every day and becoming hooked.” Today, according to the men, their site attracts more viewers than any of the major style magazines. And yet they maintain that the core of their concept isn’t really style but media. “It’s about the way people are communicating, the way information is being scaled and shared, the way journalism has changed,” said Stefano. He refers to traditional print magazines as vertical in structure: writers create content,

editors curate it, and then readers consume it, in a one-way line. Reﬁnery29.com, on the other hand, is interactive, a perpetually ongoing conversation with many voices adding their insights and opinions. Moreover, rather than viewing a dress, putting down the magazine, and going out to buy it, a reader can simply purchase it by touching the image. Von Borries points out that even if fashion wasn’t a big part of their earlier years, the emphasis on creativity and art certainly has its genesis in their CA experience. “Like at CA, our original mission with Reﬁnery29 was to emphasize and celebrate individuality,” said von Borries. “We celebrate the artisanal quality of the things we promote.” Though the upper East Side and the runways of Paris may be a long way from Concord Center, von Borries sees additional parallels between the priorities of CA and what the two men do now. “I grew up in Germany,” he said. “There wasn’t anything like the general assembly model of a CA chapel talk. We’ve grown and run this company as a shared culture and with a shared spirit, similar to what we found at CA. People get together on our site to share their own stories and their successes.” You can see more of von Borries and Stefano's work at Refinery29.com

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

Philippe von Borries Class of 1997

Kate Hammond Class of 1988

Protecting America’s Heritage

ate Hammond’s exposure to the National Park Service (NPS) dates back to her childhood. Both at her Lincoln home and at Concord Academy, she was a stone’s throw from the historical landmarks of Minute Man National Historical Park. School vacations throughout her childhood were marked by family trips to national parks, from the Everglades to Olympic. And in college she spent summer breaks working at parks, covering the geographical spectrum from Denali National Park in Alaska one year to Walden Pond another, where she worked side-by-side with fellow park interpreter Bill Bailey, CA history teacher emeritus.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

Since March, Hammond has served as superintendent of Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania. It is her second superintendent assignment; previously she held the same title at Little Bighorn in Montana. “After college, I served in the Peace Corps and was stationed in Argentina working for their park service,” Hammond said. “I knew even then that I wanted a career in natural resource conservation and public land management.” Following stints at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico and Amistad National Recreation Area on the Texas-Mexico border, Hammond moved to Denver to work as an NPS planner. “I traveled all over the country helping parks work on their management plans or on their interpretive plans. One week I might be at Gates of the Arctic in Alaska working with the native communities on how to tell their stories; the next week I’d be in the Everglades in Florida.” Hammond furthered her comprehension of public land management by earning a graduate degree at the Yale School of Forestry. After several years managing major construction projects at parks, she was selected for a two-year fellowship on Capitol Hill working for the House of Representatives on the Natural Resources Committee, which oversees national parks, national forests, and public lands. And then it was back out to the field—to Montana, specifically, where she oversaw the battlefield that was the site of Custer’s Last Stand. “Being a superintendent of a national park is a wonderful job because of the variety,” she said. “We have facilities to run, staff to manage, a budget to oversee, and also the question of how to educate the public on why this particular site is so important, whether it’s primarily for historical or environmental reasons.” At Little Bighorn, Hammond had to manage two groups with very different views of historical events. “The Little Bighorn Battlefield sits in the middle of the Crow Indian Reservation. A lot of the focus there was on engaging the seventeen different Native American tribes who were all involved in the battle with General Custer,” said Hammond, “and then there were the ‘Custer buffs’ who had a vested interest in how we presented the story. The challenge is making sure you provide a balanced account that addresses as many perspectives as possible.” With two young children, Hammond and her husband wished to move closer to their families—Hammond’s parents are still in Lincoln and her husband’s parents live in New York State—which is how she ended up at Valley Forge. “This is a nationally significant site because it was the setting for George Washington’s encampment during the Revolutionary War,” she said, “but its primary use these days is recreational. A park like Denali or Yellowstone is a once in a lifetime destination; this is a park that people use for running and biking and walking their dog. How do we combine an enjoyable recreational experience with an appreciation for the site’s historical significance?” One of the challenges facing the National Park Service today, said Hammond, is relevancy. “We need to continue to tell the stories of these amazing places in ways that today’s audiences find engaging. That means drawing upon our traditional methods such as visitor center exhibits and ranger talks, but also incorporating new media and social media,” she said. “America’s demographics are changing—as they have for centuries—and if national parks want to be relevant in the future, our visitors and our staff need to reflect that change. When most people think of national parks, they picture the huge expanses of land out West: Denali, Yosemite, Yellowstone. They forget that historic sites such as Martin Luther King’s birthplace, Alcatraz, and the White House are also national parks that are critical to this nation’s identity.”

inâ&#x20AC;˘noâ&#x20AC;˘vate: Meet some Concord Academy alumnae/i who, in their own way, exemplify what it means to be a contemporary American innovator.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

to do something in a new way

I N N O VAT I O N

Google’s Mr. Fix-It Ben Sloss ’87

en Sloss ’87 started creating simple computer programs when he was just seven years old. “It was fairly clear from an early age that I would work with computers when I got older. I love that with computers you have these immensely difficult and interesting problems, and I have always wanted to solve them,” says Sloss. A native New Englander, Sloss joined CA with the Class of 1987, but he ended up graduating a year early because he had taken all available math and science courses offered at the time — and aced them. “At CA I could push myself really hard academically and intellectually and measure up to what I was trying to accomplish,” says Sloss. At the time, a typical CA workload involved taking five major courses. Sloss, however, was anything but typical, in that he signed up for six majors and six minors. “I was able to do it, and no one put an administrative barrier in my way. It was an environment where I was able to push my own limits and got reinforcement for doing so. I have always appreciated that,” says Sloss. He went on to major in computer science at Stanford University. While an

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

“

If Google ever stops working, it’s my fault.”

undergraduate, Sloss took a part-time programming job with computer giant Oracle — he was all of seventeen years old. Oracle seemed like a natural landing spot after graduation, too. Sloss jumped into a series of programming jobs and then started managing teams of programmers. “It became interesting to me to organize

groups of programmers and not just crunch all the data myself,” says Sloss. In 2003, at the urging of his friends, he interviewed at the search engine behemoth Google. It turned out to be a perfect fit. These days, Sloss is an executive at Google where he runs all the company’s services, builds and runs its networks and data centers, and is responsible for all its server computers. In other words, says Sloss half-jokingly, “If Google ever stops working, it’s my fault.” Of course, it’s more complicated than that. It’s Sloss’ job to make sure that all those servers and all that technology run smoothly. “Our job is to build systems in the first place that tolerate a degree of failure. It’s also to make sure that when things break — and they do — our users never notice.” And they rarely do. According to the Google Apps Status Dashboard, Gmail is fully operational for its users more than 99.9 percent of the time. Working for a cutting-edge tech company like Google, Sloss has spent a lot of time over the past few years thinking about the intersection of technology and innovation. “When we talk about technology, we are usually talking about things that have been invented or created in the past five to thirty years that will solve problems or deliver services,” says Sloss. “Whereas innovation is the process of creating new tools that did not previously exist.” Tools like Google’s self-driving car (see p. 46) or Google’s Goggles — a pair of Internet-connected glasses. “Clearly we at Google are using technology — the Internet, computers — to deliver our services. But we are also innovating in the technologies that we use to deliver something that is new and stateof-the-art,” says Sloss. “The discovery of things that were previously impossible, such as wearing a pair of glasses that will show you your text messages, is really exciting and really fun.” He also hastens to point out that his work and those of others at Google is not just exciting and fun but, in his opinion, something much more. “The service we are providing has immense value to our users,” says Sloss. “We have assembled hundreds of billions of documents and organized them in such a way that anyone can ask a question and get an answer in a quarter of a second . . . We are doing technology work in a way that has never been done before in human history. There are exciting opportunities to learn and try new things.”

Katzman. “Education is clearly and unambiguously good for the world, and I wanted to bring technology into that space.” So, Katzman decided the time was right to try something new — something that might have lasting impact. He joined the Minerva Project as its chief product officer. Katzman explains the company this way: “We are going to be a top-tier, degreegranting, four-year university.” Students will be able to enroll in courses and take them online in real time. The company just received $25 million in seed money.

“

Education is clearly and unambiguously good for the world, and I wanted to bring technology to that space.” followed that up by founding Xoopit — an email-focused sharing platform that allows users easily to organize their personal files, photos, and videos. When Yahoo! acquired Xoopit, Katzman ended up staying with the online news site for three years. During that time, Katzman began to think about technology and its role in society. “I became interested in the possible link between technology and the field most important to the world — education,” says

There are other institutions currently posting lectures online — including Harvard and MIT, to name just two — but only enrolled students in these highly regarded brick-and-mortar institutions are granted degrees. In addition, the lectures are oneway videos; interested students are able to watch, but they can’t ask questions or interact with the professor. Katzman’s Minerva Project will take a different approach.

Rethinking Education Jonathan Katzman ’91

“We want to combine the best of online courses but still allow students to get instruction in an intimate way. We want to re-create smaller classes and seminars through, for example, Apple Facetime,” says Katzman. So, students would be able to see each other and chat with a teacher or other students via Webcams. Katzman acknowledges that in some cases, students will have to take lab courses with “external partners.” According to Katzman, the Minerva Project will set a high bar for admission. “Our goal is to take the best students. We care only about academic merit; we don’t care about fielding a football team,” adds Katzman. In part, it was the demand for admissions to some of the best colleges that sparked this idea. “The demand for that level of education is skyrocketing, but the supply isn’t there, because there just aren’t enough spaces, even for qualified applicants, to satisfy the demand,” says Katzman. At Harvard University, according to Katzman, 80 percent of the applicants are fully qualified, but the admit rate is in the neighborhood of 6 percent. By untethering education from a physical space, the Minerva Project can take as many students as it wants. And students aren’t forced to spend all four years on one campus. “You might spend a freshman year in New York City, and then your sophomore year in Singapore,” explains Katzman. As for faculty, the Minerva Project will establish the Minerva Prize to recognize the most impactful teachers in higher education and have them curate a seminar on a topic of their choosing. They will hire recent doctoral students and other qualified faculty to lead those seminars. That brick-and-mortar universities will likely dominate the market for the foreseeable future doesn’t trouble Katzman. He prefers to think of other universities as “partners” rather than competitors. Importantly, the price tag for tuition if all goes according to plan is currently pegged at “less than half [that] of private higher education institutions.” His recent immersion into the world of education has Katzman thinking about his own experiences in the classroom, first at CA and then at Harvard. He remembers taking computer science with Bill Adams which at the time was only offered in alternate years. “Three of us had to lobby CA to keep the class going every year,” says Katzman. The most important skill he acquired, however, was “learning how to learn.” It’s a skill he now hopes to pass along to others.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

n Roman mythology Minerva is the goddess of wisdom. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jonathan Katzman ’91 hopes his latest venture — the Minerva Project — lives up to its namesake. Katzman has launched or been a part of several successful start-ups over the past fifteen years. In 1995, he started his career at Vermeer Technologies. After Microsoft acquired the company, Katzman stayed on four years. The executive who purchased Vermeer recruited him to become entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm. He left there to join Tellme Networks. He

I N N O VAT I O N

“

Bridges are very structurally honest. When I look at a bridge, I can tell how they are standing up by just pointing out a few main elements.”

s a child, Courtney Clark ’99 loved the book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. The sweet story about a small lighthouse in New York City that sits in the shadow of a gray bridge is a children’s classic. “I think my mother read that to me too many times as a child,” jokes Clark, who

Building Bridges Courtney Clark ’99

is now a project engineer at Weidlinger Associates in New York. She specializes in, what else? The rehabilitation of old bridges and the design of new ones. Clark’s mother, Sharon Lloyd Clark, was the associate head of school and principal at Concord Academy in the mid-90s. “CA was a very unique experience for me,” laughs Clark, who nonetheless remembers the school as a “good fit.” In high school, Clark was interested in science and math. “Brian Racine’s physics class got me started in engineering. Bridge design really all comes down to a physics problem, you know, the sum of the forces,” says Clark. In addition, it allows Clark to combine her love of architecture with her strengths in math and science. She graduated from CA in 1999 and headed to Princeton where, through an adviser, she became interested in structural engineering as art. In 2003, while at Princeton, Clark realized just how integral computer programming is to bridge design. While working on “The Art of Structural Design,” an exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum, Clark used Pro/Engineer to fabricate three-dimensional models of two famous bridge designs. She then programmed an automated milling machine (CNC) using the codes from Pro/Engineer and the results were the creation of individual milled bridge pieces that could be then fashioned into a model. After Princeton, where she graduated summa cum laude and received a BSE in Structural Engineering, Clark went to Cornell and graduated with a master’s in

structural engineering in 2004. She has been with Weidlinger Associates for eight years. “Bridges are very structurally honest. When I look at a bridge, I can tell how they are standing up by just pointing out a few main elements,” says Clark. One of the most innovative projects Clark has worked on is the Nanhe River Landscape Bridge in Xinjin, China. With its unique double helix design, the bridge is beautiful as well as functional. An architectural firm came up with the design and it was Clark’s job to make sure the bridge was structurally sound. The bridge is formed by simple steel box girders and held up by five twinned steel supports. The steel is curved to mimic the waves of the river. “A lot of engineering involves the use of technology and a lot of computer work,” says Clark. “I use computer-aided drafting programs (CAD) to draw, and structural analysis programs to input an enormous amount of data to analyze and assess the loads and forces on the structure.” Right now a design like the Nanhe River Landscape Bridge is cutting edge as far as pedestrian bridges go, but it could mark the wave of the future. “I attended a lecture recently about using parametric modeling to generate bridges with these sorts of unique forms with repetitive elements,” says Clark. Despite working on some state-of-theart projects, Clark spends most of her days occupied with the rehabilitation and replacement of old bridges in New York City. In other words, she has come full circle back to the “great gray bridge” from that long-ago childhood book. Clark’s past projects have included Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the BQE, and the Triboro Bridge. These days she is juggling several projects including the replacement of the deck of Throgs Neck Bridge in New York City. As for the difference in working on old bridges versus creating new ones, Clark will only say, “They are very different challenges.” But there is one thing both old and the new bridges do have in common. “There is a reason for everything. Every curve, every support, it’s all there for a reason. I find that incredible,” says Clark.

The Inventor Henry Thorne ’77

CA How do you come up with your ideas?

CA Do you think it takes a particular way of thinking to be an inventor?

HT Absolutely. There is nothing more fun for me than dreaming up some new contraption that’s going to change the world.

HT Yes, I think you need to be pretty visual. I can build detailed 3D models in my head. It helps me throw out six million lousy

“

There is nothing more fun for me than dreaming up some new contraption that’s going to change the world.” ideas before I get to the good one. If I actually had to commit them all to CAD (computer-aided design) and build them all to find out how bad they were, it would take me forever, and I would never get to the good ones. So, being able to visualize my idea in advance is crucial. CA Tell me how your career evolved? HT I went to Carnegie-Mellon University because I loved building things and they had a great engineering program. I took my early training at the Robotics Institute there. I came back to Pittsburgh to start Aethon — a mobile robot company. One of my inventions, the Tug, is a robot capable of automatically delivering supplies in hospitals. After that success, I joined forces with businessman Rob Daley. We formed the brand 4Moms together under his marketing and business leadership. Rob figures out what we should make and how to sell it, and I’m the guy who figures out how to make it.

HT When you really, really understand the problem, really have your head wrapped around it, the solution will come to you. That’s a lot harder than it sounds, because typically the problem you’re trying to solve has a whole lot of constraints around it, so really wrapping your head around all of them can be quite a challenge. CA Do you consider yourself an inventor?

CA Your latest inventions all have one thing in common — they use technology to reinvent existing devices. Is the use of technology that much of a game-changer with everyday devices? HT The relentless march of technology reaches into all aspects of our lives. We find manual windows and manual garage doors to be clumsy now, whereas twenty years ago powered windows were novel. Rob saw a mom down on the ground trying to latch up a folded stroller, and the light just went off; power-folding is now cheap enough to do that. We can save all these moms that headache, and, now, I guarantee the industry will start moving in that direction. The Origami launched in the U.S. earlier this year, and in the third quarter we’re launching it in six other countries, including Spain, Russia, and China. Our latest product, the Breeze, is a onetouch play yard (portable crib). I have no doubt that the entire play yard industry will change as a result of that innovation. The old-style just won’t be enough anymore. CA What do you remember about being a student at CA? HT There was a wonderful feeling of community and camaraderie among not only the students but teachers as well. I attribute that to the intelligent leadership that was really committed to helping us grow up no matter how much of a challenge we were posing in doing so.

Henry Thorne’s company 4Moms recently received $20 million in funding to develop additional products.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

enry Thorne ’77 is the brains behind devices as varied as a mobile robot that delivers hospital supplies to an automated folding infant stroller. He’s been called a “serial entrepreneur,” but he prefers the term inventor. Thorne’s company 4Moms is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In an email exchange, Thorne explained how he arrives at some of his ideas and the process by which the models he envisions in his head ultimately make it to market.

I N N O VAT I O N

n the second floor of the maintenance barn, up a back staircase, in a series of unassuming offices, remarkable things are happening at Concord Academy. This is the home of Information Technology Services, which, at CA, is much more than a “break-fix” shop. Right now, CA’s I.T. Services is engaged in a project that could prove transformative for the school. “As we headed into summer 2011, it was clear that we were in a place where faculty appetite, administrative support, the school’s I.T. infrastructure, and the universe of available tools were aligning to position the school for a change in the way that teaching and learning could leverage technology,” says Director of I.T. Services Bob Koskovich. It was unlikely, however, that the iPadin-every-hand plan adopted by many educational institutions would work at CA. “We knew that to effect change in a way that is authentic to CA, we couldn’t develop a restrictive model,” says Koskovich. “Instead we needed a focus on consultation — working with each teacher to find the best tools and approach for the

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

particular needs of each classroom.” Instructional Solutions Architect Iván Nieves set to the task of listening to faculty and learning about their aspirations and, even, some of their frustrations. One consistent theme kept cropping up. Can we make the teaching process a two-way street? Is there a way to encourage students to become creators of content and managers of information? As the year progressed, the I.T. Services team designed a solution that has become known as the “TechnologyEnabled Learning Environment” (TELE). The idea was to give teachers and students a wide range of tools that they could use in the creation, collection, organization, and sharing of information. A key requirement of this new approach was to provide a tool for teachers and students to gather and organize information from many sources, both individually and collaboratively. Nieves soon hit on the answer: “Evernote kept coming up.” According to its website, Evernote is a web-based landing pad that makes it easy to capture, sort, and find things again.

When you sign up for an Evernote account, that button can be installed on your computer, smartphone, and any other mobile device you want. With one click you can add a website or a photo to a notebook that acts like a large filing cabinet. You can sort or ‘tag’ these items to make them easy to find. You can also share your filing cabinet with others or keep it to yourself. Of course, as with any new technology, one has to learn how to use it and then figure out how to incorporate it into one’s learning system. “This is challenging work,” says Nieves. As many educators see it, the learning environment at CA and at every school is changing. There is classroom time, which might be two to three hours a week, but then there are those extra hours outside of class when learning doesn’t — and shouldn’t — stop. Academic Dean and science teacher John Drew has already used Evernote in his classroom. “We shared one hundred and twenty items in a notebook that was available to everybody,” says Drew who co-teaches the Boston Class with History teacher Kim Frederick. The shared items included an original land map of Boston superimposed over a current map, links to websites, and photographs of field trips. Students could add their own material to a notebook right from their smartphones. “For the first time, kids would come into the classroom and say “I checked that link that you posted” . . . it allowed me to suddenly see students interacting with teaching with fresh eyes,” says Drew. And that was a revelation for Drew, who has seen his students’ relationship with information change in just a few years. “Twenty-five years ago my role was to pick out relevant information and ‘take it to them’ and they would sit and take notes. Students were in the position of being passive receivers of data,” says Drew. Now students have access to all the same information their teachers do and often much more. A simple Google search on any topic can yield millions of hits. This flood of information can create a kind of “paralysis,” says Drew, who believes Evernote is a system that could offer students a way to better manage the flow of information. “It allows me to imagine this notion of students as curator of the information in their lives.” Yet, despite the potential for technology to bring added value to the CA classroom, it will always be the teaching — not the tools — that is at the core of a CA education.

“I Photos by Tim Morse

A New Kind of Shop Class

3D printer

magine a hot-glue gun. Now instead of a stick of glue imagine a spool of wire,” says Instructional Solutions Architect Iván Nieves. And so begins my primer on 3D printers. Nieves goes on to ask me to visualize a robot holding two hot-glue guns that shoot layer upon layer of wire until it forms a 3D shape. I struggle with the image until I see the printer itself, a small box of a machine about two-feet square nestled on a table in a corner office. 3D printers have been used for years by architecture firms, engineering companies, and really any business that needs to produce rapid prototypes. Recent changes in technology have reduced the cost of these machines to make the price tag accessible to a school the size of CA. For several years now, a handful of teachers at CA have been following

the progress of 3D technology, and they recently they made their pitch to Bob Koskovich, Iván Nieves, and the crew in I.T. “The requests were there and impassioned,” says Nieves. So, this past summer, Concord Academy invested in its own 3D printer. “It will definitely be an important experiential learning tool going forward.” For now, the likely applications are geometry or architecture students building 3D creations from their own designs. Or perhaps history students could re-create smallscale ancient buildings they have been studying. The possibilities are endless. Whatever the use, it’s clear there is a new kind of twenty-first century shop class in the works. As Nieves puts it, “People are now empowered to become the creators of the artifacts around them.”

CA chameleon created by a 3D printer Design: Ivan Nieves

concordacademy.org 2.0

CA: Why did CA need an updated website? CN: The old site was a bit out of date. It was very cumbersome to use and to maintain. It served us well for a number of years, but technology has changed so much in such a short time that we needed to keep up. CA: Who visits CA’s website? CN: We serve multiple constituencies. First and foremost, our website is where prospective students and their families go to get all their information about CA. They are a very important group for us. We have a very important and passionate alumnae/i community. Then we have current students and their parents, faculty and staff — they all use

our website on a daily basis to check calendars, schedules, and other things. CA: How did you decide on the look of the new site? CN: We knew we wanted the homepage to showcase more of our strengths in one place. We wanted it to be more visual, brighter, and more appealing. On the landing page there is a photo of a student reading Anna Karenina that I just love. Even though there is less text, I think the new site does a better job of telling the CA story. CA: What are some of the features of the new site? CN: On the landing page, you will have one log-in, so it will be much easier for our alumnae/i and students to use. The site also has a lot of interactivity. You can click on the photo of a dancer and it will take you to the performing arts department, or if you hover over some of the black and white photographs they change to color. The page actually responds to you, so that’s very exciting.

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

In May, 2012 Concord Academy began a months-long website redesign process. Now concordacademy.org has a brand new look and utilizes some cutting-edge technology. Associate Director of Communications Carly Nartowicz talked to CA Magazine about the project.

I N N O VAT I O N

Working on the Car of the Future Cam Crary ’03

am Crary ’03 is in the driver’s seat at Google — literally. Crary runs a team of people deployed across the country to test the fleet of self-driving cars, powered by experimental software at Google. “This is a new thing for Google,” says Crary. “We are developing a new system that operates in the real world rather than a system that operates on a browser.” Over a dozen cars are now on the road being tested. Each car has a prebuilt digital map on-board, which is guided by a roof-mounted Velodyne 64-beam laser range finder. The car also has front and rear radar systems, a camera that can track traffic lights, and an internal GPS system. This combination of hardware and

CABBS Creator Jeff Green ’97

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

software allows the car to determine where it is in the world — and where it should go. According to Crary, Google is testing two different self-driving car models right now: an “advanced driver assist,” where an actual driver does most of the work getting onto a highway and then relinquishes control to the self-driving car, and a model that would allow a self-driving car to go all the way from point A to point B without any human input. Crary is an evangelist when it comes to the idea that cutting-edge technology can improve our lives. “We are solving real humanitarianlevel problems with really smart technology . . . this is the place to make a difference in the world,” says Crary, referring to Silicon Valley.

uick, what is CABBS? If you attended CA in the 90s or 00s, you likely know that the acronym CABBS stands for Concord Academy Bulletin Board System. It is the online system used by students and faculty to post items about school events and club activities. It also holds the school calendar and gives students and faculty the ability to chat and send email to each other or anyone with an Concord Academy email address. What you may not know is that the driving force in bringing CABBS to CA was a student, Jeff Green ’97. “When I came to CA in ’94, there was no schoolwide email system or Internet access. The first Web browser, Mosaic, had been released only the year before, and only a few people in the CA community

The self-driving cars, for instance, could be used by the disabled or the aged to allow them greater independence. Or, says Crary, a self-driving car might be just the thing to solve the national crisis of drunk and distracted driving. Crary says the self-driving cars have currently logged 300,000 testing miles on the road, the vast majority of which have taken place in the San Francisco Bay area. While a car that drives itself

had ever used email, through services like AOL or Prodigy,” recalled Green. “In fact, in the first year when CABBS was started, we had to collect Internet email messages and send them out in batches a few times a day. They were often delivered a few hours after they were sent. Looking back, it seems like the Dark Ages,” he joked. Green, a student with a passion for technology, saw a need in the CA community to communicate more easily, and decided to lobby and convince the administration to let him start the system for a minimal investment. After presenting a threepage proposal to the assistant head of school and hearing some tentative interest, he fired up a used Macintosh II and got to work. The result was CABBS. “At that time, each user

may seem “Jetson-esque,” it’s closer to reality than one might think. State officials in Nevada have already passed regulations that would allow autonomous vehicle operation on city streets — albeit under special conditions. And the Golden State isn’t far behind. California’s state legislature recently passed by unanimous vote a bill that could allow operation of the self-driving vehicles by 2013.

had to have special software installed on his or her computer to be able to connect to CABBS. We eventually had a bank of four modems so people could connect from home, but it was incredibly slow by today’s standards,” says Green, who as a student even had his own “office,” which doubled as the server room. Green himself conducted training sessions for the faculty and had a table during orientation to get students to sign up and try it out. In the beginning, CABBS was entirely a student-run effort, so Green enlisted his friend Cort Stratton ’97 to help administer CABBS. “In the early days, the system would crash pretty frequently, and many of our free periods were spent troubleshooting,” recalls Green. “It really generated a lot

of interest, and by the time I graduated from CA, pretty much everyone was using it regularly,” says Green. And they still are. CABBS remains the primary system by which faculty and students communicate with one another, at least electronically. “I think that’s a big part of why CA is so great. They allowed me to run with this project when I was only a teenager,” says Green. After graduating from Trinity College, in Hartford, Green worked on a technology start-up in Cambridge for a few years before moving to New York City to work as vice president of technology strategy at Smith Barney. Currently he is working on a start-up in NYC called LearnVest.com, which is focused on helping women to create and track a personal financial plan.

José Ivan Román President, Concord Academy Alumnae/i Association

age with g n e o t t n a w you w o h w o n k e Let m nity: u m m o ect you c A C will conn the London in d n a you on ntry ✈ ☞

ate cou also upd cross the and will s e Events a g a ll nae/i of a with alum pus; s on cam /i has initiative alumnae roups of g ic if c e ed at sp nue; ming aim will conti Program ssful and e c c u s ier to been very ke it eas e will ma it s b e w ol; to CA’s the scho changes nd with a r Exciting e th o h e with eac ity to giv connect opportun e th s u g offer er roles ation bein the educ of volunte in ty t e s ri e a v v A and in e school back to th dents. tu day’s s to d re e off

☀

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

ALUMNAE I ASSOCIATION UPDATE

s we enter our 90th year as a school, alumnae/i have a unique perspective on the history of Concord Academy. Have you reﬂected on your personal journey? Upon reaching my own milestones, I often take moments to look back. And while I am proud of my individual efforts, I am most grateful for the help that I received along the way. In particular, the Concord Academy community embraced me during one of the most formative periods in my life. Teachers, classmates, and advisors encouraged us to seek challenges, explore unique talents, and develop an appreciation for service in the context of a community where we learned how to value common trust. Since returning to Massachusetts, I have visited the CA campus frequently; the place maintains its air of creativity and embrace of individuality. Interacting with current students has been most gratifying. Their character and anecdotes reﬂect a remarkable consistency across generations at CA. Many students have expressed to me their appreciation for the alumnae/i presence on campus. The energy, optimism, and potential for success that I see in today’s CA students reinforces my commitment to volunteering. I also have enjoyed learning about the personal and professional achievements of fellow alumnae/i with whom I have worked on committees. We are a talented community. We are a generous community. I hope that we continue to support each other. I am committed to serving you.

FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD AND THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

Leadership Report of Giving

e are honored and proud to share with you the annual Report of Giving, celebrating everyone in the Concord Academy community—alumnae/i, faculty, parents, friends, staff, and students—who support lifelong learning, creative thinking, and making a difference at CA and throughout the global community. Your generosity brought our total giving in 2011–12 to $6.95 million, with gifts to our annual giving program reaching a record total of $2.62 million. We are grateful to all 2,254 donors who over the past year have made a difference for Concord Academy. You provided a foundation for our work, as CA students explored a range of demanding academic pursuits, developed physical discipline in athletics and dance, volunteered locally and nationally through community service trips, and applied creative approaches to solving problems across disciplines. One highlight was a Silicon Valley trip,

where industry leaders and entrepreneurs including alumnae/i and a CA parent hosted several of our students on a tour of eight companies that featured Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Care2.com. Concord Academy’s students and alumnae/i continue to share their love of learning, their talents, and their skills to beneﬁt their individual communities. We look forward to celebrating our 90th year with all of you, and we appreciate your support and conﬁdence in CA. Thank you for continuing to support the mission of Concord Academy.

Rick Hardy Head of School

John Moriarty President, Board of Trustees

10-Year Annual Giving Growth $3,000,000 $2,500,000 $2,000,000 C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

$1,500,000 $1,000,000 $500,000 $0 FY02–03 FY03–04 FY04–05 FY05–06 FY06–07 FY07–08 FY08–09 FY09–10 FY10–11

FY11–12

Academy in 2011–12; the full Report of Giving is available on our website at concordacademy.org/ROG12. By recognizing all of our donors online rather than in print, we hope to preserve resources in a responsible way while paying tribute to the many individuals who generously show their support for our school and its mission. If you do not want your name to appear in the online Report of Giving, please contact Ben Bailey ’91 at ben_bailey@concordacademy.org, or at (978) 402-2246.

LEADERSHIP DONOR S With tremendous gratitude, Concord Academy thanks the following donors who have made leadership gifts or pledges to many of CA’s programs and funds during the 2011–12 fiscal year (July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012).

Founders’ Circle ($50,000+) Anonymous (4) Elizabeth Ballantine ’66, Trustee Bruce Beal ’88 Marcie & Forrest Berkley p’12 Lisa & Thomas Blumenthal p’11, ’15 Charlene & Jeffrey Briggs ’80, p’12, ’13 Frances Savoia Brown, Trustee, p’04, ’14 Ann & George Colony p’13 Joanne Casper & Wendell Colson p’11 Lori Colella Deninger & Paul Deninger p’13 Ann & Graham Gund p’08 Robert Harman, past faculty § Vicky Huber ’75 & Tony Brooke, Trustee, p’07, ’09, ’13 Ann & John Jacobs p’12 Jennifer Johnson ’59, gp’01, ’08 Althea S. Kaemmer, Trustee, & J. David Kaemmer p’09, ’12 Joan & Enis Konuk p’12 Richard Lumpkin Mary Ann & Peter H. Mattoon, Trustee, p’13 Amelia Lloyd McCarthy ’89, Trustee Kim Williams, Trustee & Trevor Miller p’08,’14 Carol C. Moriarty & John J. Moriarty, Trustee, p’02, ’05, ’07 Alison & Bob Murchison p’12 Anna Winter Rasmussen & Neil E. Rasmussen, Trustee, p’10, ’15

John S. & Cynthia L. Reed Foundation Fay Lampert Shutzer ’65, Trustee Thanawat Trivisvavet ’97 Lisa McGovern & Jonathan Wallace p’08 Jane & James Wilson p’11

Chapel Circle ($25,000–49,999) Robert Biggar ’87 Molly & Jeffrey L. Eberle, Trustee, p’99, ’04 Keith Gelb ’88 Patricia & Carl Geyer p’12 Kathleen & John Green, Jr. p’91 Lucinda Jewell ’76 Kathy Knight & Paul S. Barth, Trustee, p’06, ’10 Lucy-Ann McFadden ’70 Jennifer Pline & Hans Oettgen p’13 Derrick Pang ’93 Jane & Neil Pappalardo gp’12 Carolyn & Eric Stein p’11, ’14 Martha Taft ’65 Nancy Parssinen Vespoli ’73 Susan & Richard Walters p’11 Catherine & Chris Welles p’14

Faculty Recognition Circle ($10,000–24,999) Anonymous (7) The Aloian Family Kathleen Fisk Ames ’65, Life Trustee & Charles Ames p’95 Glendy Chiu & Chi Yan Au p’13 Holladay Rust Bank ’72 Jean & Henry Becton, Jr. p’96, ’02 Steven Bercu p’10, ’11, ’15 Peter Blacklow ’87 Elizabeth Mallinckrodt Bryden ’64 Jennifer Burleigh ’85

BY THE NUMBERS Of the 2,254 donors in 2011–12 there are 1,102 loyal members of the Main Street Circle, those donors who have contributed to the Annual Fund for five consecutive years and recent graduates who have given every year since graduation from CA. Over 200 current parents and over 200 alumnae/i volunteered for Concord Academy in 2011–12. Over 700 alumnae/i attended a Concord Academy event in seven U.S. cities and five countries in 2011–12.

Amy Cammann Cholnoky ’73, Trustee Rosemary Baldwin Cofﬁn ’40 § Juliette Wang Coombs ’82 Theresa & Charles Delaney p’13 Carl Douglas ’84 Eliza Howe Earle ’67 Clare Warburton & Michael Hamer p’12 Kevin Hart Gale Hurd ’61 René Kan ’82 Susan Kidder ’66 Holly Moon & Steve Kim p’11 Lori & Eric Lander p’06, ’09, ’13 Lorna Borenstein & David Lawee p’13 Theresa & John Levinson p’12 Myung Su Yoo & Heung Sig Lim p’13 Han-Ting Lin & Ju-Wen Lin p’12 Joyce Linde gp’14 Nancy Traversy & Martin Lueck p’11, ’13, ’15 Mary ’78 & Vikram Malhotra p’10 Stephanie Starr McCormick-Goodhart ’80 & Leander McCormick-Goodhart p’08, ’12 Jill Conway Mehl ’85 Susan & Thomas Miller p’08, ’12 Judith Bourne Newbold ’55, p’78 Betty & Stephen Newton p’11 Erin & Brian Pastuszenski p’10 Amy & Jonathan Poorvu p’14 Carmin Reiss & Eric Green p’07, ’11

Etta & Mark Rosen p’97, ’06 Nina Urban Sawczuk ’80 & Adrian Sawczuk p’11 Katharine Rea Schmitt ’62, Trustee & Thomas Schmitt p’88 Susan & Kurt Schwartz p’12 Fred Seibold gp ’12 Benjamin Sloss ’87 Diana Dennison Smith ’64 Kate & Ben Taylor p’09 Andrea Sussman & Andrew Troop p’09, ’13 Linden Havemeyer Wise ’70, Life Trustee

Main Gate Circle ($5,000-9,999) Anonymous (5) Lawson Prince Allen ’62 Barbara & Robert Allio p’82 Dana Zadorozny & James Baldwin p’12 Mary Shaw Beard ’50 Hallam Chow ’87 Irene Chu ’76 Teresa Yeung & Willie Chung p’14 Jennifer Krier & Rob Cosinuke p’12 Carolyn Smith Davies ’55 Stephen Erhart ’79 Joan Bell & Max Follettie p’11 Dean Forbes ’83 Julie Faber & John Goldberg p’11, ’14

Elizabeth (Betsy) Green ’91 and Kathy Green P’91 Kathy: “My daughter Betsy entered Concord Academy as a junior, and from her first day we could tell CA was the perfect school for her. The intellectual bonds with teachers, the friendships based on shared passions, the chance to be appreciated for who she was — she never took these things for granted. Years later, she still raves about her CA teachers, who remain among the best she’s ever had.” Betsy: “My time at CA, while short, had a profound impact on me. How many high school students get the opportunity to take specialized classes such as Russian Literature and Global Perspectives? Suddenly school was less about completing basic requirements and more about the pursuit of knowledge.” Kathy: “I feel that a child’s secondary school experience is as important as — if not more important than — his or her college years. For that reason, I have

always supported CA’s Annual Fund. But I knew I wanted to contribute on a larger scale, and a planned gift was the perfect way to do that.” Betsy: “My parents instilled the importance of charitable giving very early, and I have always admired how they generously supported the causes and organizations that mean the most to them. I am following their lead by making my own planned gift to CA.” Kathy: “Nothing could have made me feel more positive about my gift than Betsy’s decision to make one of her own.” Concord Academy is grateful to Kathy and Betsy Green and to others who have chosen to support CA through planned giving. For information about making a planned gift, please contact Brendan Shepard at (978) 402-2258.

§ Deceased 49

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G F A L L 2 0 1 2

HIS REPORT is a partial listing of donors to Concord

Barbara Cockrill & Christopher Gootkind p’13 Laila Haddad ’81 & John McGee p’12 Adele Gagne & Richard G. Hardy Mary Leigh Morse Houston ’47, p’74 Jen Chi Chang & Ching-Tai Huang p’11 Elizabeth Hubbard ’82 Lee Ann Barto & William Hubbard p’12 Anne & James Hutchinson p’13 Brooke & David James p’03, ’06, ’12 J. Brown Johnson ’70 Teresa Myers & Mark Jrolf p’15 Sun Young Woo & Myeong Chul Kim p’15 In Woo Nam & Bong Taek Kong p’10, ’12 Yunhee & Byeong Cheol Lee p’12 Barbara & Thomas Leggat p’84, ’85, ’91 Sandra & Carl Lehner p’08, ’11 Babette & Peter Loring p’96, ’98, ’01 Elizabeth Kahn Mallon ’87 Eleanor Bingham Miller ’64 Lisa Fitzgibbons & Christopher Mines p’14 Lauren Norton ’77 Susan Packard Orr ’64 Karen & Jeffrey Packman p’14 Jill & Thomas Pappas p’10, ’13 Cynthia Phelps ’64 Richard Phelps gp’12 Linda & Marc Robidas p’12, ’15 Thomas Shapiro p’04, ’07, ’13 Ann & Douglas Sharpe P ’14 Jorge Solares-Parkhurst ’94, Trustee Elsie Hull & James Sprague p’14 Jung-Ho & Yun Sook Suh p’05 Ann Hemingway Tarlton ’62, p’86 Girija & Sanjeev Verma p’13 Stuart Warner ’77 Kathleen Harris & Terrence Warzecha p’15 Susan Lapides & Peter Wilson p’12, ’15 Jody & Royce Yudkoff p’14 He Ying and Chang Yong Zheng p’14 Debra and Armand Zildjian p’15

50TH REUNION CLASS GIVING The Class of 1962 gave $106,879 with 84 percent participation, a recordbreaking giving year for a 50th-reunion class at Concord Academy. Thanks to the many volunteers who helped inspire this generous support of the school.

1922 Circle ($1,922–4,999) Anonymous (3) Sunredi Admadjaja ’90 HaeYoung Park & SeungHwan Baeck p’13 Linda J. L. Becker p’89, ’91 Deborah Schrag & Yochai Benkler p’15 Patricia Wolcott Berger ’47 Susan & Walter Birge III p’88 Sarah & Edward Black p’14 Betsy Blume ’82 Victoria Blewer & Chris Bohjalian p’11 Elizabeth Brown ’70 & Nick Bothfeld p’08 Linda Mason & Roger Brown p’07, ’14 Janesse & Richard Bruce p’06, ’11 Cynthia Arnold Bruckermann ’72 Christopher Bryant p’12 Emma & Gary Campbell p’13 Jennifer Caskey ’67

Jennifer Pline and Hans Oettgen P’13, ’15

“I

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

t’s been great to watch our kids thrive in the challenging academic environment at CA, where they have developed close relationships with faculty and staff and have received individualized attention during all phases of their tenure. At CA, kids can be accepted for who they really are. Hannah and Karly have a diverse and talented group of friends from all over the world — people they would never have met elsewhere. We feel fortunate that our children have been able to attend a school of this caliber and that they are succeeding both academically and socially. In giving to the Annual Fund, we are supporting all that goes into creating such an incredible environment, and we are also helping to extend the possibility of a CA education to a broader community. We find giving to CA really rewarding and know that our contributions really make a difference. We feel fortunate to be part of the CA community.”

2012 Senior Parent Gift

ochairs of the 2012 Senior Parent Giving Program were Ann and John Jacobs, parents of Will Jacobs ’12, and Leila and Kevin Parke, parents of Oliver Parke ’12 and Tyler Parke ’15. Here, the co-chairs present the 2012 Senior Parent Gift to Head of School Rick Hardy (above middle). The $765,000 gift represents 92 percent participation by senior parents, as well as many grandparents, a testament to the leadership and outreach of the Senior Parent Giving Program Committee. The Senior Parent Gift tradition provides a legacy gift, usually dedicated to a special project, from families of graduating seniors. The 2012 Senior Parent Gift supports the development of CA’s new Moriarty Athletic Campus.

Patricia O’Hagan & Alex Chatﬁeld p’14 Sarah & Evans Cheeseman, Jr. p’97 Won Chul Cho & Ok Ju Jung p’14 Eun Ju & Jae Sub Chung p’12 Charles Collier ’85 Rebecca Wade Comstock ’82 B. J. Daniel p’12 Alexander Dichter ’85 Gabrielle & David Dockterman p’09 Lisa Eckstein ’93 Mark Engerman Lucy Rand Everts ’41 Christine Fairchild ’75 Mary Wixted & David Farnsworth p’15 Charles Feininger ’84 Marion Freeman ’69, Life Trustee & Corson Ellis Pam Nelson & Peter Fritschel p’14 Lisa Frusztajer ’80, Trustee & Larry Tye p’10 Nina Frusztajer ’82 Nancy Gillespie ’75 Alison Gilligan ’79 David Goldberg ’88 Timothy Gollin ’77 Elizabeth Green ’91 Qunying Gu & Wei Ju p’14 Denise & Eric Haartz p’14 Catherine & Mark Haigney p’13

Ellen Smith Harde ’62 & Dudley Harde p’86 Joy Peterson Heyrman ’77 Alice Hill ’77 Lexi & Benjamin Hoffman p’14 Kerry & Paul Hoffman p’14 Sarah Faulkner Hugenberger ’94 Pon & Daniel Hunter p’14 Sandra Willett Jackson ’61, Trustee Marian & William Jacobs gp’12 Rosemarie & Steve Johnson p’13 Holly & John Kania p’12 Rebecca Kellogg ’71 & Kevin Dennis p’03, ’08 Dona & Michael Kemp p’94, ’97 Seon Hwa Woo & Chang Geun Kim p’14 Sallie Cross Kingham ’61 Kathryn Klickstein & Jamie Klickstein ’86 p’15 Stephanie & Joel Kozol gp’15 Sarah-Ann & Werner Kramarsky p’79, ’85 Charlotte Quesada Krugh ’95 Sabrina Tin & Winston Lau p’15 Joan Corbin Lawson ’49, p’80 Sarah & Ken Lazarus p’15 Kyunghee & Joonhee Lee p’15 Helen Whiting Livingston ’41, p’78 Marian Lindberg ’72, p’14 Brenda & Sergio Londono p’12

Janet Lovejoy ’50 Rose Lynch ’67 Kim & Stephen Maire p’06 Phebe Miller ’67 Margaret McKenna & Steven Mirin p’06, ’11 Simone Feinhandler Mordas ’82 Deborah Greenman & Humphrey Morris p’06, ’11 Caren Ponty & Ira Moskowitz p’11, ’14 Wanfang & Russ Murray p’06, ’13 Elizabeth Haight O’Connell ’72 Marion Odence-Ford ’82 Vimon & Verapon Pathawinthranond p’12 Evgenia Peretz ’87 Lisa Botticelli & Raymond Pohl p’08, ’14 Mary Poole ’59 Ann Wilson Porteus ’59 Henriette Lazaridis Power ’78 Wendy Powers ’74 Katrina Pugh ’83 Margaret Ramsey & John McCluskey p’09 Robin & Howard Reisman p’05 Jie & Emmanuel Roche p’14 Susan & Stephen Ruscak p’11 Susan & Beau Ryan p’15 Sharon & J. Hoyle Rymer p’15 Olivia Howard Sabine ’97 Charlotte & Karim Sahyoun p’12, ’15 Susan Cunio Salem & James Salem p’14 Denise Rueppel Santomero ’77 Philip Schwartz ’80

Barksdale English ’91

“I

cannot imagine the man I would be today if CA had not been there for me twenty years ago. CA helped me recognize what would become the fundamental principles of my life — curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity — and gave me the tools and space to start developing them. I want to make sure that Concord will always be able to give these opportunities to future generations of teenagers, and I want the school to know how important my three years there are to me,

Lee Shane ’85 Nancy Megowen Shane ’51, p’85 Haeyoung Kim & Dong-Joon Shin p’14 Theresa Huang & Jacky Shum p’14 Lauren Bruck Simon ’85 Jill Soffer ’77 Nancy Soulette ’63 J. Cullen Stanley ’80 Monica Wulff Steinert ’57 & Alan Steinert gp’10, ’13 Judi Seldin & Ron Stoloff p’15 Lynne & Douglas Stotz p’15 Marie & Dan Strelow p’13 Nancy & Charles Styron p’13 Mei-Li Wang & Liang-Chih Su p’14 Ann Fritts Syring ’64 Marta & Geoffrey Taylor p’13 Shari Kreisberg-Therrien & Kurt Therrien p’12 Ethan Thurow ’94 Rebecca Trafton ’71 Carol Kazmer & Barry Trimmer p’13, ’15 Andrea & Glen Urban p’86, ’89 Edith Van Slyck ’57 Mary Wadleigh ’64, p’97 Jane Waldfogel ’72 Sidney Walker p’63, ’65, gp’97 Anne Brewster & Frederick Weyerhaeuser p’15 Janet & John Winkelman p’11, ’13

how invaluable that experience is to me. One of the best ways that I can show my gratitude is to give a personally meaningful gift every year. My gift doesn’t have to be a lot of money for it to be valuable to the school. I know from my experience in the nonprofit world how alumnae/i support shows that CA is a place worth investing in and sends a powerful message to those whose financial and leadership contributions have a significant impact on the school’s future. Concord Academy is a great investment because its alumnae/i continue to have an important impact on the world. Our annual contributions are a key factor in CA’s success. I encourage you to continue or start investing in CA’s ability to guide and develop teenagers into strong, beneficent adults.”

Corey Hoffstein ’05

“C

oncord Academy gave me an appreciation and enjoyment for studies in disciplines such as philosophy and literature that weren’t part of my undergraduate and graduate engineering requirements. As my professional focus has narrowed, drawing from my CA experiences has been a huge benefit, often giving me different ‘mental models’ of the world to come up with creative, outside-the-box ideas. The range of offerings and the quality of my experience at Concord were directly due to the existence of the Annual Fund and the generous giving of previous generations. Through my own giving, I can help make the school more accessible and affordable for future students, and contribute to ongoing operations of the school. Younger alumnae/i may not recognize that their donations can make much of a difference, but even a few dollars can have an impact in aggregate. CA is counting on us to give in an amount that is meaningful, even if it doesn’t seem large. And online giving through the Website is convenient and easy — no checkbooks or stamps required.”

SENIOR CLASS GIVING SETS NEW RECORD The Class of 2012 set a Concord Academy record with 98 percent participation for the Annual Fund, surpassing the previous record of 96 percent, set by the Class of 2007. We are grateful to the class giving committee for their hard work and enthusiasm, and we thank Concord Academy’s newest alumnae/i for their generous support.

Senior Steps Circle For young alumnae/i (1997– 2011), the Senior Steps Circle was established to distinguish emerging leadership donors to the school. Anonymous (4) Christopher Alvarez ’10 Charles Carey ’04 Russell Cohen ’09 Cameron Crary ’03 Alexis Deane ’03 Timothy Douglas ’07 Michael Firestone ’01 Jeffrey Green ’97 Corey Hoffstein ’05

Hannah Kaemmer ’09 Sarah Bertozzi Kessler ’02 Scarlett Kim ’11 Xiaoran Li ’02 Malini Malhotra ’10 Anne Mancini ’01 Susan Martin ’03 Tiffany Mok ’04 John Moriarty ’07 Jeremy Owades ’10

Jeremiah Parker ’99 Alexander Rosen ’04 Olivia Howard Sabine ’97 Charles Smith ’03 Charles Stolper ’07 Kelsey Stratton ’99 Vanessa Tillman-Brown ’98 Thanawat Trivisvavet ’97 Jenna Troop ’09

Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this report. If you find an error, we apologize and ask that you call the Advancement Office with corrections at (978) 402-2240.

IN MEMORIAM

W. Scott Van Alstyne Jr., father of Gretchen Van Alstyne ’72 and Hunter Van Alstyne ’76 William F. Brace, father of Nathaniel Brace ’79 and Sarah Brace ’81 William W. Burns, father of Monique Burns ’73 Alice Hutchins Clark ’34, sister of the late Charlotte Hutchins Bemis ’36, aunt of Marjorie Bemis ’62, Eleanor Bemis ’66, and Alice Bemis Bueti ’73 Marie Gooding Eaton ’40, sister of Eleanor Gooding Hallowell ’42, sister-in-law of the late Isabella Eaton Webb ’31 and Margaret Eaton Gibson ’33, and grandmother of Julia Eaton ’11 Roger Fisher, father of Peter Fisher ’74 Clarence R. Foulkes, grandmother of Creighton Foulkes ’13 Marjorie Byers Gay ’57, sister of Corrine Byers Sucsy ’52 Arnold Golodetz, father of Deborah Golodetz New ’84 and Alisa Golodetz Darmstadt ’86, and grandfather of Sarah New ’11 and Elinor New ’14 Phyllis Ponty Haas, grandmother of Alexander Moskowitz ’11 and Hunter Moskowitz ’14 Ellen Vaughan Howe, mother of Eliza Howe Earle ’67, aunt of Sally Vaughan Eagle ’62, Cecily Vaughan ’64, and great-aunt of Everett Wallace ’07 Olga Craven Huchingson ’55, sister of Caroline Craven Nielsen ’59 Shirley M. Kane, mother of Jacqueline Kane ’83 Samantha Malenchak ’08 Samuel R. Payson, husband of Laura Richardson Payson ’47 and brother-in-law of Lucy Richardson Rand ’40 Cynthia Lea Phelps ’64, sister of Nina Phelps Gorney ’66 Darren S. Nelson, mother of Derek Nelson ’76 Ann Gardner New ’51 Former State Senator George S. Pillsbury, father of Sarah Pillsbury ’69 and Katharine Pillsbury ’74 Katharine Tully ’86 Helen Peirson Richardson ’47 Karen P. Van Houten ’82 C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 1 2

Penelope Warﬁeld ’64 William Wainwright, father of Kristen Wainwright ’68 Richard Wiggin, husband of Alice Bemis Wiggin ’53, brother-in-law of Ann Bemis Day ’48, the late Margaret Bemis Case ’49, and Faith Bemis Field ’57 Grant M. Wilson, brother of Kathryn Wilson DeFord ’56 Tatiana Zadow ’84, sister of Aram Zadow ’87

We asked donors a simple question: Why do you give to Concord Academy’s Annual Fund each year?

esponses from alumnae/i, parents, faculty, staff, and friends were personal and heartfelt. They described why they give, the way it makes them feel, and their ongoing commitment to Concord Academy. * For 90 years, alumnae/i, parents, and friends have invested in an educational experience that nurtures creative, compassionate thinkers who embrace their communities and are inspired to bring change to the world. As an Annual Fund donor, you are a partner in creating an environment where lifelong learning ﬂourishes. Thank you for your support and the powerful impact you have on the Concord Academy community.

To make your gift to the 2012–13 Annual Fund, please visit concordacademy.org/give For more information, please contact Director of Annual Giving Ben Bailey ’91 at ben_bailey@concordacademy.org or call (978) 402-2246. *The illustration shows actual donor responses; font size indicates how often the word was used. Illustration by Michael Antonitis ‘13.

Non-Profit U.S. Postage PAID Hanover, NH Permit No. 8 Concord Academy 166 Main Street Concord, MA 01742

Address service requested

Campus Events January 22

MLK Day celebrated at CA February 22– 23

Winter Mainstage Musical Production Much Ado About Nothing April 3, 5, 7, 8

Admission Revisit Days May 31

Commencement For a more complete list of school-related events, please see concordacademy.org

Alumnae/i Events

For more details and to register for events, please call Billie Julier Wyeth ’76 at (978) 402-2232 or see

Tuesday, November 20

Thursday, December 6

Wednesday, March 13

London Reception Conversation Room The Royal Institution of Great Britain 21 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BS 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

New York Area Alumnae/i Holiday Reception with Rick Hardy Reﬁnery29 30 Cooper Square, New York, NY 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

San Francisco Reception with Rick Hardy Clubhouse at the Presidio Golf Course 300 Finley Road @ Arguello Gate 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

concordacademy.org/alumnaei/events

Sunday, April 28 Wednesday, December 5

Thursday, December 27

Boston Area Alumnae/i Holiday Reception with Rick Hardy Eastern Standard 528 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Concord Academy Young Alumnae/i (CAYAC) Winter Party Flat Top Johnny’s 1 Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA 8:00 – 11:00 p.m. Sunday, January 13

Alumnae/i and Student of Color Gathering Location TBD 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Southern Maine dinner with Rick Hardy Sea Glass Bistro 305 US Route One, Yarmouth, ME 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Reunion Weekend

Friday, June 14 – Sunday, June 16

Parents of alumnae/i: If this magazine is addressed to a son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email magazine@concordacademy.org with his or her current address. Thank you.