CA Magazine Spring 2017

spring 2017 2016

C O N C O R D ACA D E M Y M AG A Z I N E

CA FARMERS q BACK TO THE LAND, AND THE LAB

Editor

Editorial Board

Contact us:

Heidi Koelz Associate Director of Communications

Ben Carmichael ’01 Director of Marketing and Communications

Design

John Drew P’15, ’19 Assistant Head and Academic Dean

Concord Academy Magazine 166 Main Street Concord, MA 01742 (978) 402-2200 magazine@concordacademy.org

Irene Chu ’76, P’20

Letters to the Editor Do you have thoughts on this issue?

We’d like to hear your suggestions and responses. Please write to us at magazine@concordacademy.org.

Alice Roebuck Director of Advancement and Engagement Hilary Rouse Director of Engagement Billie Julier Wyeth ’76 Director of Development: Stewardship and Donor Programs

© 2017 Concord Academy

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.

spring 2017

Contents

2 Message from the Head of School 3 Campus News 8 Faculty 12 Arts 14 Athletics 16 Creative Types 18 Alumnae/i Profiles ► Sarah Russell ‘87 ► Timothy Bergreen ‘82 ► Emma Quinn ‘09

23 Alumnae/i Association F EATURES 24 Back to the Land, and the Lab CA alumnae/i are embracing local farming in ways both traditional and high-tech

Ben Carmichael ’01

30 Spring Session

A complete change of pace on campus gives teachers four days to explore new approaches to pedagogy, and students a chance to have a lot of fun stepping outside their comfort zones

36 Centennial Campaign ON THE COVER: Swiss chard seedlings grow under carefully calibrated conditions in a student-designed light tower in CA Labs.

Photo by Ben Carmichael ’01

40 In Memoriam 41 Class Notes

Message from the Head of School

Kristie Gillooly

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N FEBRUARY, that shortest and often most dreary month of the school year, I had the pleasure of witnessing what I can describe only as joy in motion. The winter dance performance, a series of student-created and -performed dances, put me in mind of something I read some years ago, a description of a new dance company whose young performers “danced like stars, because they had been told they were stars.”

It was nothing short of breathtaking.

This is something one can see every day at this school— moments where students revel in their abilities because they have been given the freedom to do so. It is one of the things I love about CA.

As I write, we are preparing to take the junior class away from campus for 24 hours to engage in conversations and activities about leadership. We invite these rising seniors to reflect upon their own experiences with leadership, to think about the tone they wish to set, and to imagine the legacy they want to leave for the underclassmen, in particular those students who are new to CA. The premise for the retreat is simple: If one wants to do something—anything— effectively, one must prepare and practice. For these 24 hours, we offer the students, both individually and collectively, the opportunity to practice listening, collaborating, and developing consensus—and thereby, to grow together.

While we ask the juniors to think about particular roles or elected positions that they may want to run for, we are also careful not to define “leadership” too narrowly. We want them to understand that in order for anything to work, many different skills are required: listening, thinking, synthesizing, venturing, doing, making. Everyone has a role; everyone can make a contribution.

A recent column by Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, in the New York Times lamented the emphasis in college admissions

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on “building tomorrow’s leaders” in a way that focuses on those who stand behind microphones or garner headlines, as though they alone are responsible for making communities work, for making a difference in the world. Nothing could be less true. As teachers, we know that a good class and a healthy learning environment require all types of students with all sorts of skills in order for the whole to truly be more than the sum of its parts. This has been true in every classroom I know, and it is certainly true here at CA.

And so it will be with the junior leadership retreat. On what is certain to be a cold, rainy Friday and Saturday in late March, we will present them with an opportunity—the freedom to imagine and the responsibility to own their leadership. Despite the weather, it is an experience I relish every time, not because the outcome is assured, but rather because the outcome is most assuredly not the point at all.

What I know is this: When given the opportunity, students will make the future theirs, and in so doing, they will give us all reason to believe that, as on that evening of dance in February, every one of us is a star.

Rick Hardy Head of School Dresden Endowed Chair

ONE OF m highli any gh ary E ts from th phem e eral P o chore performa rt nc ograp hed b e, Conc ord A y the cade Danc e Com my pany

Ben Carmichael ’01

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campus news Speakers Visit Campus BREAKING INTO SONG It’s not often that speakers in the Chapel spontaneously break into song — but it’s also not often that professional opera singers visit, either. In March, baritone Colin Levin ’03 treated the CA community to stories about his journey from Concord to opera stages around the globe, and sang the pieces that marked significant milestones in his career. Now on the faculty of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Levin framed his story as one started by chance — he discovered his voice at a summer camp — but continued through perseverance.

LEADING THE SYSTEM TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM According to Olivia Sabine ’97, change can come in many ways. “It can come through being a community organizer, it can come from marching in the street, and it can come from building and running great companies,” Sabine told the CA community during a February assembly focused on entrepreneurship. An executive vice president at Bain Capital, Sabine pointed to the tremendous power and influence of the business world, and urged CA students to “seek seats at the table.”

From left to right: Colin Levin ‘03, Olivia Sabine ‘97, Rosa Clemente, Philippe von Borries ‘97, and Justin Stefano ‘98. Visit www.concordacademy.org for full stories.

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AFRO-LATINA SCHOLAR ON THE ELECTION President Donald Trump’s electoral victory came as a surprise to many, including CA students who had either just voted for the first time or were not yet old enough to vote. But Rosa Clemente, an Afro-Latina scholar, activist, and a 2008 vice-presidential candidate, said she saw it coming. In a fiery address to CA students just a week after the election, Clemente expressed anger at the election’s outcome and concern for the potential impact on racial minorities — and urged students to take up the mantle of activism.

MAKING MEDIA, ESPECIALLY FOR WOMEN The evolution of Refinery29 from an entirely different paper-napkin idea to an industry shaper wasn’t something that Philippe von Borries ’97 and Justin Stefano ’98 could have predicted, they said in their Davidson Lecture in April. But the values they embraced at CA — individuality, empathy, creativity, and a learning mind­ set — let them realize their vision of helping others express their infinite potential. Now they run the world’s largest media company focused on women, and their projects are changing how we all engage with the world.

CA Senior Pens Feature for The Washington Post

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Crucolo Day Parade

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he Concord Academy Dancers added some cheer to the seventh annual Crucolo Day parade along historic Main and Walden streets in December. Since 2010, the Concord Cheese Shop has organized this festive fanfare surrounding the arrival of a 400-pound wheel of artisanal Crucolo cheese from a mountain village in northern Italy. Drawing locals, visitors, and CA students and faculty, the celebration has become a Concord tradition that bridges the Old World and the New. There’s nothing quite like a cheese parade for bringing a town together.

ast summer Shannon Sun ’17, a senior who aspires to a career in journalism, was studying at the Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute when she decided to pitch a story to the Washington Post. Fastforward a few months, and Shannon was traveling to Washington and writing about the School for Ethics and Global Leadership for a feature that came out this spring.

“It was a very humbling and eye-opening experience,” she said. “My editor was very professional and had high expectations, and I learned so much from working with her.… Also, I’m starting to understand that when our sources avoid a topic, we should only dig deeper — that’s when we know that we’re onto an interesting story.”

She’s come to understand the power of journalism, she says. “It’s such a powerful experience when another person shares with you a very private, cherished piece of memory and trusts that you will present it to others with care. There’s so much faith and kindness involved, which makes each of these interactions humane and uplifting.”

Red in Solidarity

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n International Women’s Day, March 8, members of the CA community wore red in support of the “Day Without a Woman” demonstrations spearheaded by the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington. The national strike called for women to wear red, take a day off from labor both paid and unpaid,

and forgo shopping for the day; on campus, the student groups Community Action Reps, WOCA (Women of Color Alliance), and Women’s Org collaborated to raise awareness of women’s economic power and the injustices women and gender-nonconforming people continue to face. They encouraged students to call out decision-makers in

the workplace and in government to extend equal pay and adequate paid family leave for women, and also to think critically about the roles of women, especially women of color, queer and trans women, and women with disabilities, within the CA community.

Proceeds from the sales of red cupcakes supported Planned Parenthood.

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campus news

Honoring MLK’s Legacy

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Amadou Diallo

n January 16, the CA community gathered to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. with a day of education focused on social justice, identity, activism, and race. A key piece of the program was the film I’m Not Racist … Am I?, which follows 12 New York City high school students as they have a series of conversations about race.

After showing the film, producer André Robert Lee asked the community to call out words that summed up how they felt; responses included “heard,” “guilty,” “enlightened,” and “confused.” Lee urged each community member to lean in and stick with the film, engaging emotionally, intellectually, and physically. Students rose to this challenge, both in small-group discussions about the film and in later workshops such as “Queer Representation in the Media,” “Don’t Touch My Hair,” “Environmental Justice,” “Inherited Identities,” and “Understanding Intellectual Disabilities.”

Filmmaker André Robert Lee was on hand to lead a discussion about the film.

Mass. Attorney General Maura Healey Will Be CA’s 2017 Commencement Speaker

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t is with great excitement that CA will welcome Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey as the 2017 Commencement speaker.

As attorney general, Healey has consistently worked for the common good, particularly in the area of civil rights, tackling issues such as the heroin and prescription drug abuse epidemic, escalating health care costs, workers’ rights, and student loan costs, and leading the state’s successful challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, to cite only a few. Beyond her many accomplishments, Healey represents, for this senior class, a powerful voice for moral leadership at a time when such voices are needed most.

Winterfest

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n February 4, CA’s student council squared off against the winter doldrums and helped a good cause, too. The annual tradition of Winterfest — a festival of food, activities, raffles, and silent auctions — netted $15,000 for financial aid. With magic shows, a talent show, and more than 100 prizes on offer, the studentled event gave a big boost to community spirits, too.

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CA Announces Recipient of Joan Shaw Herman Award for Distinguished Service

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yn Burr Brignoli ’62 will receive this year’s Joan Shaw Herman award, Concord Academy’s only award, in recognition of her sustained personal efforts on behalf of education for girls in a predominantly Muslim region of Ghana. She will be honored at this year’s reunion ceremony on Saturday, June 10. All are welcome to attend.

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ore than 40 alumnae/i from the classes of 2006 and 2011 returned to campus in October to see just how much Concord Academy has changed — and stayed the same — since their graduations.

To show changes to the main campus, Director of Operations

Don Kingman led the group on a top-to-bottom tour of the new CA Labs science building, complete with a visit to the roof and a sample lesson from science instructor John Pickle’s new class on remote sensing.

Pickle’s excitement about this real-world science was

contagious, and soon alumnae/i were catching up about college, graduate school, and career plans while also having fun testing polarized lenses and examining the changing colors of glass “sunset eggs.” To see changes farther afield, many alumnae/i made their first

trip to the Moriarty Athletic Campus to watch CA win the Chandler Bowl cup. And for a chance to catch up on changes in their own lives, a crowd of young alumnae/i headed to the Carrie Nation cocktail club in Boston that evening for more merriment.

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Photos by Kristie Gillooly

FALL 2016 REUNION

faculty

Sally Zimmerli CA’s New Dean of Students A member of the Concord Academy community since the fall of 2000, Acting Director of Student Life Sally Zimmerli will soon become the next dean of students.

Zimmerli began her CA career as a history teacher, house parent, and basketball coach, and has also served as the school’s first director of residential life and as part of the Academic Support Center. She lives on campus with her husband, Tim Seston, sons Charlie, 12, Luke, 8, and Owen, 8, and dog Casey, 2. In an interview with the magazine, she reflected on her years at CA, her excitement about her new role, and her style of leadership.

What led you to be interested in this position?

I was asked to step in as acting director of student life, and found I really enjoyed it.

A lot of the job is to get to know all students in a deep way, and to impact student culture pretty powerfully. One of the things I realized I felt comfortable doing was working with students to initiate the kinds of changes they wanted. Empowering students to take control of the school in positive ways was something I found I was effective at and enjoyed — and I was feeling ready for a new challenge.

What’s the most exciting aspect of the new role?

I’m excited to think more broadly with student leaders about their dreams for CA. What’s the school they want to create and to leave as their legacy?

What changes do you foresee in the next few years?

We have so many great things happening in the next couple of years with the renovations to student houses. I’m excited to see how those play into creating a more vibrant life for both day and boarding students. I think they will add a lot to community life.

What do you think will be the biggest challenges?

The unknown. (She laughs.) There are so many things that come up each day, and some you just can’t anticipate. But there’s such a strong team, so I’m not ever doing anything alone. One challenge is the need to constantly teach, and foster, and reteach some of our deepest beliefs. Common trust isn’t something everyone believes, or thinks can work, and it doesn’t work if you have even one person who messes with it. We always have to work with students on how to create the environment they want.

What’s your favorite student life tradition?

It’s hard to choose just one, but the junior leadership retreat (an overnight at a conference center, see page 2) is one of my favorites. It brings rising leaders together to understand that they’re going to have some power, and that with power comes the responsibility to do good.

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F A C U LT Y R E T I R E M E N T

Cammy Thomas English Department

AFTER 14 YEARS on the English faculty at Concord Academy, Cammy Thomas is retiring. Faculty sponsor of the Poetry Club and a supporter of campus arts, Thomas has struck an impressive balance between teaching and writing, publishing two books of poems while at CA. “As a practicing writer, teaching part-time has been a great gift,” she says. “It enabled me to be very committed to writing as well as very committed to teaching.”

Before she arrived at CA in 2003 after teaching at several colleges and universities, she had never planned to work in a high school. From her first visit, the students’ enthusiasm and analytical skills won her over, as did the opportunity to play a different classroom role. “In college, you teach the subject. In high school, you teach the person,” she says.

Thomas says she’ll miss the intellectual excitement of discussing something she loves with a room of smart and motivated students. She’ll also miss her wonderfully supportive colleagues, both inside the English Department and out, including her longtime academic collaboration with Laurence Vanleynseele.

Fellow English teacher Abby Laber praises Thomas’ endless curiosity and openness to new experiences.

“She has studied Italian for Dante and Greek for Homer, and along with Laurence has invented one beautiful course after another,” Laber says. “In her signature course, The Hidden Luminous, Cammy strikes an inimitable balance between analysis and creativity, between head and heart—as Cammy herself does with her wisdom, honesty, and ability to see humor and possibility in even the dark moments. Cammy is at the heart of the department—is, sort of, its heart—and she is irreplaceable.”

After more than 40 years of teaching, Thomas is looking forward to the first six months of retirement as a time to engage in “completely meaningless” activities while considering what will come next—her future plans include social activism, travel, and, of course, writing.

Her parting advice to students: “Try to do something you love. Take time to have fun. Speak up when something is bothering you. Stay open to new ideas, even ideas you disagree with.”

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by Heidi Koelz

faculty

A Fortuitous Path to CA’s Campus Meet English Teacher Sabrina Sadique

by Elise Hoblitzelle

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THE STORY of Sabrina Sadique’s journey from attending a high school in Bangladesh to becoming an English teacher here at CA is one marked by curiosity, fortuitous turns, and persistence.

At age 8, Sadique was already a voracious and precocious reader. She taught herself the language by reading such books as Wuthering Heights and supplementing her studies with an outdated Bengali-English/English-Bengali dictionary.

That practice left some humorous holes in her understanding of English: After years of being baffled by the yellow “slicker” she read about in Sidney Sheldon’s 1970 novel The Naked Face, she finally heard someone use the term on a rainy New Haven day much later, when she was in college.

She was amused to learn what a mundane thing it was.

When Sadique decided to apply to universities in the United States, she began the process with an old Barron’s College Guide at the British Council in Dhaka. She selected the first 20 schools on the list, requested admission pack-ets via mail, and applied to those colleges whose forms managed to find their way to her home in Bangladesh. The biggest hurdle she faced was not gaining admission, but rather convincing her father that she should go. Her solution: a hunger strike. It was successful. She enrolled at Yale, got on a plane, and has, happily, never had to resort to such measures again.

As a freshman, she landed by chance in a senior-level English seminar (Images of the Orient: from Romanticism to Urdu Poetry), taught by Pakistani-Welsh professor Sara Suleri Goodyear. Though Sadique had enrolled as a chemistry major, it was Goodyear’s course that would prove lifealtering. “I couldn’t shake her lectures from the soul of my being,” Sadique explained. “I saw in her someone I could become. She changed my life twice.”

The first time was midway through her junior year, when Sadique switched majors from chemistry to English, and opted to write a double thesis — one critical, one creative.

The second came a year later, when she decided to apply to doctoral programs in English, in part to allow her to stay in the United States while awaiting her green card. Goodyear went in person to the dean’s office in Davenport College at Yale to submit a letter of recommendation for her protégée, helping confirm Sadique’s decision and assisting her admission to a graduate program at Harvard as well.

While finishing her doctorate in English at Harvard, Sadique came to CA at the beginning of this school year. She says finding this community was also “sheer chance.”

Fellow doctoral candidates were speaking about exciting positions at local independent schools, and a former senior thesis advisee from Harvard who was working at a placement agency offered to help send out Sadique’s résumé.

After teaching her first demo class at CA, however, it was the students who got her excited about the job. “I fell in love with the students,” she says. “They asked such amazing questions. The freshmen here are like my freshman students at Harvard — their curiosity is amazing. The more you give, the more they sponge up.”

Now she also finds inspiration in dedicated colleagues, and she loves being part of the CA community, where, in her words, “the nerds are cool, just like at my old school.”

Cole + Kiera

RICHARD COLTON, co-director of Concord Academy’s Dance Program, has gone back to his dance roots while also spreading those roots abroad. A member of the Twyla Tharp Dance company from 1977 to 1989, Colton is now staging Tharp’s works around the globe, including pieces in which he was an original cast member.

“It’s a fantastic experience,” says Colton, who brought Tharp’s ballets to France in 2015 and will bring them to the Royal Ballet of London this fall. And

it’s an experience all the more poignant because some of the pieces he is now staging, including Nine Sinatra Songs and In the Upper Room, are ones he premiered as a dancer. “There is so much history, and then the added layer of what the work means now, decades later,” Colton says. “Finding that is a matter of discovery with the dancers in the room.

So it’s exhausting and exhilarating, living in the past and present simultaneously.”

Colton is also actively engaged in the future of dance through his role at CA, and says his ongoing relationships with professional dance companies abroad and at home enhance his teaching. “Staging Tharp’s work forces me to dig into my physical memory of Tharp’s movement vocabulary, and that vocabulary, some of the greatest movement phrases in contemporary dance,

becomes available to me as a teaching tool,” he says.

While Colton has yet to stage a complete Tharp work at CA, he calls the choreographer a constant source of inspiration and influence in his work with CA’s young dancers. Tharp’s style, he explains, “influences everything we do. Her phrases are in the fabric of our classes and choreographic endeavors.”

In addition to the upcoming performances in London, Colton has staged Tharp ballets with the American Ballet Theatre, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Royal Ballet of Birmingham (England), the National Choreographic Centre/Ballet de Lorraine (France), the Louisville Ballet, and the Alabama Ballet.

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A Dancer Returns to His Beginnings, This Time as Director

arts

The Performing Arts Department presented Antigone in November, complete with Greek chorus, followed by the musical comedy The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in February.

Student talents were on display in music and dance performances, and the fall student art show.

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Photos by Ben Carmichael ’01

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athletics

Sue Johnson

IN MARCH, the girls’ varsity squash team achieved a stunning victory in the Class C NEPSAC tournament, held at the Pomfret School. Despite formidable competition from across the region, all seven CA players finished in the top five of their flight to capture the championship trophy. “The tournament was remarkable in that all seven of our players had to maintain an incredibly high level of play over a grueling two days of squash,” said coach Charlotte Whitmore. “Our final three matches were very close, and it took extreme mental toughness for our girls to pull off those wins.”

Maren Taylor ’17, the team’s cocaptain, said, “I could not be more proud of this team. We would not have won the NEPSAC championship without all seven girls putting their all into every match and fighting the hard fight. It was a truly amazing thing to be a part of and such an incredible way to end my last season on this team.” This is the first NEPSAC championship for the squash program, and the fourth in CA’s history. A championship banner will be raised to the rafters of the gym this spring to honor the team’s achievements.

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Photos by Ben Carmichael ’01

GIRLS’ VARSITY SQUASH NEPSAC CHAMPI NS

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Have you published a book or released a film or CD in the last year? Please contact martha_kennedy@concordacademy.org and consider donating a copy to the J. Josephine Tucker Library’s collection of alumnae/i authors.

creativetypes

by Library Director Martha Kennedy

IN THE NEXT

ISSUE: ---------------------Philip McFarland Mary Arnold Bachman ’56, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann ’63 Marilyn Byfield Paul ’70 Susan Hinkle Murray ’73 Julia Glass ‘74 D. Fairchild Ruggles ’75 David Michaelis ’75 Kate Elwood ’80 Peter Barrett ’86

of the Lotus-Born’s daily life provided a reflection of his religiosity and contributed to the understanding and practice of Buddhism across the Himalayas.

Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai ’99 Northern Character: CollegeEducated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era Fordham University Press, 2016

Daniel A. Hirshberg ’94 Remembering the Lotus-Born: Padmasambhava in the History of Tibet’s Golden Age Wisdom Publications, 2016

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Tibetans consider Padmasambhava as the being essential to their conversion to Buddhism, and subsequently, their historical and cultural identity. As Hirshberg delves into the legend and life of this influential eighthcentury Indian Buddhist master, he relies upon the guidance of Nyangrel, a 12th-century Tibetan whose biography of Padmasambhava illuminated the guru’s mythos and who is himself an instrumental figure in Tibet’s Buddhist tradition. Scrutiny

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Duty, honor, and integrity: Each is a critical element in the formation of character and the reasoning behind the selection of college men to serve as officers in the American Civil War. Union

Army generals turned to these New Brahmins who, despite their lack of military education, possessed the qualities required of field lieutenants and captains. Though many were ill-prepared for the realities of war, others, such as Joshua Chamberlain, Wilder Dwight, and Robert Shaw Gould, rose to prominence as battle-ready commanders who incrementally strengthened the Union cause and were instrumental in its ultimate victory.

Professor Wongsrichanalai recently co-edited So Conceived and So Dedicated: Intellectual Life in the Civil War-Era North with Lorien Foote (Fordham University Press, 2015).

Christie Wilcox ’03 Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016 Wilcox is among those who make it their mission to unravel the mysteries of complex and confounding organisms capable of discharging venom. Whether conveyed by fang, spur, stinger,

or tentacle, the potent chemical cocktails possessed by these divergent species result in envenomation through highly evolved delivery systems.

Investigation, collection, and examination of specimens ranging from lowly worms and insects to intimidating reptiles and the puzzling male platypus require acts of derring-do by scientists in search of how these creatures hold the key for understanding certain disease and autoimmune therapies.

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FILMS

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CDS

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M U LT I M E D I A

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BOOKS

ACTION! Cast and Crew of Student Feature Film at Work during Spring Session Catch more of the Magnetic Fields, whose music will be the featured soundtrack for Such a Thing as Love, CA Feature Film’s yearlong project based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. This collaboration brings filmmakers, actors, and singers together in a musical adaptation penned by Jared Green ’88.

Larry Goldings ’86 The Larry Goldings Trio: The Zombie Room

Claudia Gonson ’86 Sam Davol ’88 The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir You gotta love a band that crafts ditties like “Why I Am Not a Teenager” and “A Cat Called Dionysus.” This much-anticipated two-disc 2017 release is hitting the indie airways and grabbed the attention of NPR.

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The latest from the keyboardist extraordinaire and his longtime collaborators Peter Bernstein, guitar, and Bill Stewart, drums.

Goldings is currently touring with John Mayer.

alumnae/i profiles

ALUM NAE I PRO FILES

by Nancy Shohet West ’84

T H I S

I S S U E

► Sarah Russell Class of 1987 ► Timothy Bergreen Class of 1982 ► Emma Quinn Class of 2009

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Sarah Russell Class of 1987

A CHAMPION THEN AND NOW Finding Joy in the Long Haul

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ARNING PLAUDITS for her

athletic prowess is nothing new to Sarah Russell ’87. During her four years at Concord Academy, she excelled at soccer and also proved herself a worthy competitor in ice hockey, lacrosse, and tennis. At Bowdoin College, joining her sister Jennifer Russell Mahoney ’85 on the soccer team, she continued to be a star, named best female athlete in the class and First-Team All-American, the top award granted by the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC); Jennifer had won the same award two years earlier.

In 2007, the two Russells were inducted into Bowdoin’s Athletic Hall of Honor.

Russell found competitive teams and other sports opportunities throughout her 20s. Then she and her husband settled in Cumberland, Maine, to raise their four children, all born between 2003 and 2009.

“I spent the better part of a decade having babies,” Russell says. “It was an endless cycle of getting fit, getting pregnant, giving birth, and trying to get fit again. Once I was done having kids, I dove back into physical fitness as a way to make time for myself and to see what I was still capable of athletically.”

That was when she discovered triathlons and began training with a community of athletes in their 30s and 40s who were competing at the masters level. Despite her decades-long history of success in competitive sports, Russell was still somewhat surprised after a few months of training to win her first official event, the Polar Bear Triathlon, hosted by her alma mater, Bowdoin.

The surprise was short-lived, however. “It turned out I pulled a Rosie,” she recalls, referring to runner Rosie Ruiz, famous for bypassing large stretches of the Boston Marathon course in order to come in first place. After initially declaring Russell the winner, race officials reviewed the results and noticed that she had mistakenly run just one lap where two were required.

Following that first, erroneous win, Russell focused on training more consistently over the next few years. She hired a coach and grew from a novice sprint-distance triathlete to a world-class podium finisher for the full Ironman (a 3.8-km swim, a 180-km bike ride, and a full marathon-length run).

With four young children and a parttime job with a communications company, training meant arising every day at 5 a.m. to fit in a 90-minute workout before her family awoke. She’d take time while at the office for a lunchtime run three or four days a week and do longer bike rides on weekends. “I think it’s really important to find a passion,” she says. “It’s part of life/ work balance. Life is busy with family and jobs and obligations, but you have to find a safe and sacred place to focus on yourself as well, to keep everything else from becoming overwhelming.”

In 2015, Russell and her husband pursued another long-standing passion: the mutual wish to live overseas with their children. Their move to Barcelona came at the height of Russell’s triathlon success; just two weeks after arriving in Spain, she flew to Mont-Tremblant in Canada to compete

‘I think it’s really important to find a passion. It’s part of life/work balance.’

in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship, scoring first place in her age group. The following year she earned second place at the same event in Austria, followed by a thirdplace finish at her first full-length Ironman in Zurich.

The family moved back to Maine in early 2017, and the same coach who helped Russell grow as a triathlete hired her to work for his company, The Sustainable Athlete. Along with coaching runners and triathletes both locally and online, she now teaches strength training classes to individuals and as part of companies’ wellness programs.

She’s also training in tandem with her sister Jennifer, also a world-class triathlete, for yet another full Ironman, this one scheduled for July in Austria. Preparing for a triathlon with her sister reminds her of the pleasure playing soccer together, first at CA and then at Bowdoin, brought them, and of why she loves to train and coach.

“The focus at The Sustainable Athlete is not to win races but to find the joy in the process, to see exercise as an opportunity for accomplishment,” she says. “At CA, even as an athlete myself, I was aware that no one was defined by sports. We were all encouraged to consider our choices and try out different possibilities. I think I’ve taken those values with me into adulthood, and it has enabled me to explore a lot of different options.”

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Sarah Russell ‘87

Timothy Bergreen Class of 1982

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT ON BEHALF OF U. S. INTELLIGENCE

‘I hope there are CA students and young alumnae/i considering a career in government service.

We need talented people.’

Timothy Bergreen ’82

A passion for foreign policy leads to a role as watchdog over national security programs

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S A JUNIOR new to Concord Academy, Timothy Bergreen ’82 made his mark quickly by creating the Democracy Door, a door at the entrance to CA’s main classroom building on which he posted daily articles and bulletins about politics and breaking news.

Politics, and more specifically foreign policy, has always been Bergreen’s passion, one that he has pursued with single-minded focus since he was a teenager.

“I was incredibly political from grade school on,” he recalls. “I was super-political during my years at CA. I always knew it was where I was going to end up professionally.”

At Vassar, Bergreen majored in political science, then spent five years as a congressional aide before entering Stanford Law School. “In hindsight, part of me thinks I could have used those three years to earn a Ph.D. instead, but a J.D. is still a great degree to have,” he says. “It teaches you how to think, how to organize, how to marshal an argument.” And he used his time at Stanford to earn a master’s degree in political science while in law school.

A couple of years practicing law cemented his belief that it wasn’t the right career track for him. “I returned to Washington to get a job at the State Department,” he says. “Soon I had a position on the policy planning staff, which lasted through the latter part of the Clinton administration.

It was ideal for a generalist like me in the functional area of international relations.”

When the incoming Bush administration sent him packing, Bergreen found his way to the office of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), 20

for whom he eventually served for over a decade as chief of staff.

His tenure with Schiff led Bergreen to his current position as minority deputy staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which he has held since 2015. The committee was formed in the mid-1970s in response to the Church Committee hearings, which investigated intelligence abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the reformist spirit of the post-Watergate era, the premise, Bergreen says, was that the intelligence community wouldn’t be required to expose everything they knew to all of Congress, but would Bergreen (third from right) with his family in Etosha National Park in Namibia

be required to be transparent to this new committee.

Currently, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence oversees 17 different entities in the U.S. intelligence community, with the NSA being the largest. “We monitor their programs, set their budgets, and track their classified information,” Bergreen says. “In very general terms, our purpose is to gain a better understanding of what it is the American tax dollar is being spent on when it comes to intelligence and also to ensure that everything we’re doing is not only giving us the benefit it’s supposed to, but complies with the laws and direction that Congress has set forth.”

Emma Quinn Class of 2009

A NAVAL OFFICER ON OKINAWA A dispatch on military matters

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OR MANY young people, going off to college means enjoying liberties and freedoms far beyond those they knew in high school. But for Emma Quinn ’09, it was just the opposite. As a day student commuting to CA by train from her family’s home in downtown Boston, she was accustomed to having a lot of free rein. So when she arrived as a plebe at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and discovered that among many other tightly enforced rules, freshmen were allowed off campus only 12 hours a week, “I chafed a bit,” she admits.

That was only one part of what made the transition from liberal Concord Academy to the ultra-regimented academy challenging. But Quinn soon saw that there were advantages to the strict regulations. “Being stuck on campus for so much of the time fosters very strong bonds among classmates very quickly,” she says. “We had an immediate sense of camaraderie and shared adversity.

Those were perhaps my biggest takeaways from the Naval Academy.”

Quinn chose the Naval Academy with no small measure of uncertainty after considering many more typical liberal arts options. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do in college,” she recalls. “But there were 21

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Events in the news, such as the Edward Snowden story and the controversy over Russia’s involvement in the U.S. presidential elections, have increased the public’s ongoing interest in intelligence.

But coupled with that fascination, from Bergreen’s perspective, is skepticism over whether the intelligence community is violating U.S. citizens’ civil rights and privacy and whether it is furthering our national interests.

“When people ask me what I’ve learned in my first two years in this job, I tell them three things,” he says. “One, the NSA is not at all interested in your personal emails. Two, if people knew the full extent of the efforts that the intelligence community is making to keep the country safe, they would sleep better at night. And three, on the other hand, if they knew the full extent of people who want to do us harm, they’d sleep worse.”

As far as the current political climate, Bergreen admits he is often dumbstruck by what he sees from the new presidential administration. “I think one can say, without being hyperbolic, for the first time at least since the 1930s, American democracy is in real danger,” he says.

And yet as grim as the outlook often seems to him as an intelligence insider and foreign policy expert, Bergreen maintains a sense of hope. “I’m a staunch Democrat, and not happy about Trump in any way, shape, or form, but I feel blessed because at least I get to go and fight back every day,” he says. “If I didn’t feel I was making a difference, I’d go to the private sector and earn a lot more money.”

He hopes also that there are young people with the same passion for foreign policy he fostered as a young man. “I hope there are CA students and young alumni who right now are considering a career in government service,” he says. “We need talented people. Our country’s problems are bigger than they’ve ever been. The public confidence and trust in government have eroded. But that’s what people like CA graduates thrive on. There’s that expression, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ I think it’s meant to be a positive statement. Good or bad, these are interesting times, all right.”

‘It is always going to be important to have people who think critically and are willing to work hard to do what is right.’

Emma Quinn ’09

Quinn (right) with Amara Frumkin ‘09 and CA’s director of college counseling, Peter Jennings, in May 2013 on the occasion of Quinn’s commissioning in Annapolis, Md.

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a few aspects to the Naval Academy that really appealed to me. One was the focus on leadership. Another was the guarantee that I’d graduate with a job. Also, because it’s free tuition, I could start establishing some financial independence very early in adulthood. I didn’t love it off the bat, but I quickly came to appreciate what I was learning there. So I decided to stay and then do my five years of military service.”

Her commitment to the academy afforded Quinn another opportunity as well: the chance to go to graduate school immediately after college. She completed a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Then, like all Marine Corps officers, she underwent special training in basic infantry tactics. “I spent the better part of a year learning skills like martial arts, land navigation during the day and night, using a machine gun, calling for artillery fire, convoy operations, and urban combat,” Quinn says. “Very few officers utilize those skills on a daily basis, but we’re all responsible for knowing them and making sure that our Marines have a basic understanding too.” Upon completion of that program, she was deployed to Okinawa, Japan, where she has been stationed since July 2016.

Though Quinn was aware of a history of longstanding tensions between U.S. 22

servicemen and women and locals on Okinawa, she has never encountered problems.

“It’s fascinating to be in a foreign country as a U.S. service member,” she says. “This is a beautiful island nicknamed ‘the Hawaii of Japan.’ I’ve enjoyed exploring the island and traveling farther afield as well. In my first year here I’ve traveled just for fun to Osaka, Singapore, Tokyo, and Kyoto.” Having studied French at CA and Arabic in college, Quinn is now working hard to learn Japanese along with Farsi.

As a Marine Corps officer, Quinn oversees training. “I have to be sure that the Marines in my care are ready to deploy any time we need to,” she explains. “Sometimes, living on this beautiful semitropical island, that seems like a very remote possibility.

But then you look at the headlines and are reminded that we’re stationed here in the Pacific for a reason.”

Though from day to day her job can sometimes seem like any other administrative office function, Quinn never loses sight of the bigger picture. “The military is critical as a nonpartisan tool in our foreign policy,” she says. “Even if I don’t personally agree with some of the policies that get enacted or some of the things that happen, this is important work. It is always going to be important to have people who think critically and are willing to work hard to do what is right.”

Quinn expects to be stationed on Okinawa for two or three years total. “I definitely think I’ll enjoy that time, but after that I hope to return to the East Coast,” she says. “I want to spend my career in foreign policy, which may or may not mean being in the military. Going back to teach at the Naval Academy is one very appealing potential career direction for me as well.”

Quinn says she also thinks about what it might be like to share her experiences with current CA students. “In pockets of the Northeast, some people aren’t that exposed to what the military does,” she says. “When I was a senior at CA applying to the Naval Academy, a couple of my peers asked me if after that I would go on to college.” Not understanding what the Naval Academy does is one thing, Quinn said, but all Americans should have a decent understanding of the military itself.

“As voters, we all have a degree of control over the military,” she says. “All U.S. citizens should have a baseline knowledge of how their military works: the different branches, the difference between an officer and an enlisted member, what each service does, what the different responsibilities are. I like talking about my work with my old CA friends. What I do is a little harder for people to understand than some career tracks. But it’s worth my time to explain it to them.”

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y A L U M N A E / I A S S O C I AT I O N

Why CA Matters Now

by Lauren Bruck Simon ’85 Alumnae/i Association president

‘I’ve been happy to see that CA continues to provide the time, space, and resources for students to confront issues that matter to them. The campus remains a place

of political awakening and civic involvement,

as would be expected from a school whose only award, the Joan Shaw Herman Award, celebrates “distinguished service.”’

CA’S STUDENTS and faculty have always faced social and political topics head on.

Each of us can surely recall the political concerns that permeated CA’s campus during our own student days. Since its founding in 1922, the school’s culture has been influenced by the Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and civil rights battles on several different fronts. Today is no exception.

Early this academic year, just after the November election, students expressed their wish for a deeper understanding of how our government works. The school responded with non-partisan discussions and mini-courses on the democratic process, Constitutional checks and balances, responsible citizenship, gender equality, climate change, and other student concerns.

Later, with a group of other alumnae/i, I attended a conversation with students about women in the workplace. As expected, the students were articulate and informed, but they were also poised, unafraid to tackle difficult subjects, and dedicated to understanding the depth of the matter. It blew us away.

Then, as part of a daylong series of events celebrating Martin Luther King Day in January, the entire CA community watched the documentary film I’m Not Racist… Am I? As I participated in the film viewing and discussion, I was awed by the willingness to speak up. People trusted each other enough to share their raw, honest thoughts, fears, questions, and concerns about racism and responsibility. The candor and vulnerability I

witnessed, as people strived to understand and advance the dialogue, were powerful and refreshing.

After that day’s discussion ended, students asked that it be allowed to continue beyond MLK Day. CA’s administration and faculty are working together to make that happen, by designating spaces and opening up opportunities for the community to gather around these issues.

In all these cases, I was impressed that CA encourages its students to consider all points of view. By understanding perspectives different from their own, students are able to test their views against those of others and see how strongly they hold up. It’s a great way to learn and grow.

I’ve been happy to see that CA continues to provide the time, space, and resources for students to confront issues that matter to them. The campus remains a place of political awakening and civic involvement, as would be expected from a school whose only award, the Joan Shaw Herman Award, celebrates “distinguished service.”

In a nation painfully divided, I am reassured by the students I’ve seen interacting so meaningfully this year on CA’s campus. With their positive energy, their willingness to engage in difficult dialogue, and their desire to repair the world, they offer hope that our country will find its center once again.

CATalks • CAService • CANetworking • CAGives • CAReunion

‘There are always new ways of trying things.’

Liza Bemis ’99

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Bemis in the doorway of a greenhouse on Hutchins Farm in Concord, Mass.

Photos by Ben Carmichael ’01

M R A ERS F A C

BACK TO THE LAND, AND THE LAB

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n a frigid January afternoon, Liza Bemis ’99 is busy with the winter work of Hutchins Farm, an organic vegetable farm just outside of Concord center. As marketing manager, Bemis wears many hats — she runs a summer farm stand and manages apprentices — and while the cold months are quieter, the work does not stop. She and the farm’s small, yearround crew are pruning the bare-limbed apple trees, arranging for tractor repairs, and paying the bills. “It’s really hard work,” says Bemis, whose father and uncle opened the original farm stand in 1974. “And it’s surprisingly precise work, too.”

The scientific precision, Bemis says, is part of the appeal. She is among a burgeoning crop of CA alumnae/i who are embracing the challenge of farming for reasons that are political and aesthetic, but also intellectual.

While they love working outside and producing highquality food, they say much of the excitement of the work is the science: looking for ways to extend the growing season and improve their products; researching

new methods to sustain the environment; and working with others to help New England grow more of the food its residents consume.

A graduate of CA and Wellesley College, Bemis did not expect to join the family farm. But after a few years working in offices, the chance to work outside lured her back — and the intellectual challenge of the job has kept her there.

On a tour of the farm, Bemis walks up and down the rows of farmland, all the pale yellow-green of a snowless winter. She points out the house where her grandmother was born and the Concord River snaking its way beyond the blueberry bushes. Her eyes light up when she talks about the blueberries, whose rockstar-like popularity requires the farm to limit how many a single customer can buy. This year, Bemis says, the farmers tried a new way of controlling the moth population that can damage the blueberries, which allowed them to protect more of the fruit. “There are always new ways of trying things,” she says. “That is what makes this so challenging and also such an interesting job to be in.”

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— by Alison Lobron —

It’s a challenge that has inspired many of the young people who work on the farm each summer. Sophie Drew ’15, a sophomore at Haverford College, says her summers doing field work at Hutchins Farm helped shape her academic pursuits and complemented her studies at Concord Academy. She learned about the intricacies of farming as well as how many other areas of life and academic research it affects. Before Hutchins, “I hadn’t thought of farming as a scientific or anthropological area of research,” says Drew, who plans to major in biology and anthropology.

For Hannah Hobbs Wolbach ’97, the chance to learn and to experiment is key to her satisfaction as a farmer.

She and her husband, Ben Wolbach ’93, grow certified organic vegetables, herbs, and flowers at Skinny Dip Farm in Westport, Mass. Hannah became interested in farming somewhat unexpectedly, during a semester at the Mountain School in Vershire, Vt. “I

went for the backpacking and the skiing and the environmentalism, but I got interested in the farming when I was there,” she says.

She grew up in Belmont, Mass., and never considered farming as a possible career. “People think of farmers as very simple, and not welleducated, but that’s just not true,” she says. “It’s a career where you can keep learning and experimenting forever.”

Right now, she and Ben, who have two young daughters, are working to increase their winter vegetable production. They recently built three new greenhouses and are selling salad greens all year long. “We’ve been reading books, attending lectures, talking to other farmers, and experimenting,” she says, “and our winter crops are now much more productive than they were two or three years ago.”

Scientific challenge takes different forms for different farmers. At Reber Rock Farm in Essex, N.Y., near Lake

A number of CA alumnae/i are embracing the challenge of farming for reasons that are political and aesthetic, but also intellectual.

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Champlain, Nathan Henderson ’01, his wife, Racey, and their two business partners use draft horses to power most of the work of their 120-farm.

The farm produces meat and a diverse mix of other products, ranging from vegetables and grains to maple syrup and shiitake mushrooms.

Henderson, who started his career as a geologist, was compelled by the challenge of land stewardship — how to be lightest on the land while producing as much as you can. It’s why Reber Rock Farm relies heavily on draft horse power, with some diesel power as well.

“We produce beef and make all the hay that our animals eat using primarily the draft horses, so the carbon footprint of one of our beef products is very, very small,” says Henderson.

Some alumnae/i have found outlets for their scientific interest in farming without necessarily living on a working farm. Johanna Rosen ’97 recently bought a parcel of land in Montague, Mass., where she hopes to start a small

farm, but her primary professional life involves food policy. As part of a team at Food Solutions New England, Rosen hopes to increase the amount of food produced in New England from 10 percent of what is consumed in the region to 50 percent by 2060. It’s an ambitious goal, given how little land in the region is undeveloped — and how expensive most of it is. “It’s really important to protect the farmland we have and think about how to make it affordable for farmers to get onto that land,” says Rosen. She says that unfortunately, “local food” has become something of an elite term. Her team, which is supported by the University of New Hampshire, is looking to make locally produced food both more widespread and more accessible while still paying farmers a fair share for their work.

As CEO of FreshBox Farms in Millis, Mass., Sonia Lo ’84 is also interested in local food and using new technologies to create it. FreshBox has pioneered the use

Hutchins Farm at the outset of spring, when planting is just beginning as the land gets ready to return to life

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At Fresh Box Farms, where Sonia Lo ‘84 is CEO, CA students got a taste of hydroponic farming.

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of high-density, high-yield, pesticide- and GMO-free vertical hydroponic farming in indoor enclosures. Hydroponics is a method of agriculture that uses nutrients in water, rather than soil, to grow plants.

Lo’s company plants heirloom seeds to support biodiversity, regulates nutrients by parts per million, and refines LED lighting to match the exact spectrum of light plants need to thrive. That means she can grow more greens using less water — roughly 2,000 times less water than conventional agriculture — and faster, too. FreshBox can grow a head of lettuce in about five days; in a field, most heads need two to three months to develop fully. And because the plants grow indoors (and up, rather than out), she can produce fresh greens during the winter on a smaller footprint, an ideal way to expand access to local produce for urban and suburban communities.

Lo, who has a background in finance and as a professional chef, says she loves her work because the technology of indoor growing is always changing, and because of what the new technologies mean for the way we eat.

“The real revolution afforded by indoor growing is localization,” she says. “You

can grow within 50 miles of the point of consumption. That’s how people used to eat. Stuff wasn’t flown in; you ate what you had, and if you didn’t have it, you didn’t eat it.”

Lo describes herself, in a low-key way, as a “box farmer,” but her work offers a blend of scientific innovation and entrepreneurial skill that proved inspiring to Miranda Brown ’17, a CA senior who interned with Lo last summer. As an intern, Brown measured and worked on harvesting greens, and she was fascinated by the growing model. She started wondering whether Concord Academy, with its bountiful salad bar, could grow its own produce hydroponically. She, CA science teacher John Pickle, and other students researched and created a light tower, then bought a growing light from a hydroponics company. She planted seeds and then, every two weeks, she would harvest lettuce and Swiss chard.

Early in the spring semester, the whole CA community enjoyed the fruits — or, rather, vegetables — of Brown’s labor. A bowl of hydroponically grown lettuce stood at one end of the salad bar. Students and faculty

sampled the greens and read about Brown’s project, which was part of an independent study.

Brown says she enjoyed the scientific aspect of the project, but overall, her greatest satisfaction came from the sense of having grown food for her own community. “Wow, I’m actually growing food for the Stu-Fac!” she says with a laugh. A day student from Needham, Mass., Brown hopes to study urban agriculture at Barnard College in the fall.

That connection between knowledge and product — the sense of using one’s intelligence and experience to provide for oneself and one’s community — is key for many CA alumnae/i farmers, whether on land or in boxes, and whether at the dawn, high noon, or twilight of their careers.

Anne Lazor ’71 turned to farming as part of the Back-to-the-Land movement of the 1970s. “In 1976–77 we found a beautiful piece of land in Westfield, on a high plateau close to the Green Mountains. We worked jobs and built a house with a little help from a local carpenter,” she remembers. “I look

back on this time with awe, that we had so much energy and got through it all.”

Now, as she and her husband are handing the reins of farm management to their daughter and son-in-law, Lazor sees her career as one filled with challenges and rewards at the personal and intellectual level. “I always say: It was our form of graduate school.”

Senior Miranda Brown grew hydroponic lettuce and Swiss chard in John Pickle’s classroom in CA Labs for a departmental study.

Early in the spring semester, the whole CA community enjoyed the fruits—or rather vegetables— of Brown’s Labor.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Learn more about the plants Miranda Brown ‘17 grew at CA and her research into the food system at www.concordacademy.org/brownhydroponics

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Spring Session topics included 1) experiencing intersectionality; 2) fabulous desserts; 3) DIY; 4) the games bridge and go; 5) game design; 6) craftivism: knitting and social justice; 7) visual perception; 8) animal rescue; 9) feature film production; and 10) bread baking.

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What happens when faculty and students get to tackle ungraded subjects for two whole days? Collaboration, curiosity, and new approaches to teaching.

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SPRING SESSION “GO LIGHT , go light,” painting instructor Jonathan Smith advises a group of six students.

“You can always add more, but you can’t take it away.”

Smith has offered this advice many times during his 28 years at Concord Academy, but on this mild March morning, he is not in a studio art class and he is not talking about paint.

Instead, he is in the brightly lit kitchen of his West Concord home, and the material at hand is flour.

As part of a four-day program called Spring Session, now in its second year, Smith and history instructor Stephanie Manzella are teaching artisanal baking—and learning about their own teaching as well. The learning comes during moments like Smith’s parallel between watercolor and flour, as well as in the act of collaboration and the need to plan using a different timetable. “It’s nice to have a complete change of pace,” says Smith.

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BY ALISON LOBRON

Giving teachers four days to explore new approaches to pedagogy was the impetus for Spring Session, says Kim Frederick, program coordinator and history instructor.

“It’s experiential professional development,” says Frederick. “The hope is that teachers will be able to reflect on their everyday pedagogy with fresh eyes, much as one sees

The week is a chance to model “sandbox thinking”: the kind of joyful experimentation young children engage in on the playground.

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and appreciates one’s own country anew after time abroad.”

Some teachers use the week as a chance to incorporate hands-on activities into their work with students. Sally Zimmerli, acting director of student life, is part of a team of teachers who revived the famous Stuff course once offered to graduating seniors by Headmistress Elizabeth B. Hall. For Zimmerli’s portion of the class, 32

she teaches students to change a tire and jump-start a car.

“I wanted them to be empowered to help themselves in a pinch,” says Zimmerli.

Her group meets in a parking lot, uses student vehicles—and manuals—as their course materials, and talks a lot about what to do when something goes wrong on the road. While the goals are automotive and practical, Zimmerli says she also aims to teach good habits of mind that are useful off the road as well. “The idea of stepping back and assessing all possible solutions to a problem” is something Zimmerli hopes students will take into their classes and their personal lives.

Other instructors see the week as a chance to model what Latin instructor Liz Penland ’89 calls “sandbox thinking”: the kind of joyful experimentation young children engage in on the playground, when they are not self-conscious about the final product. She is part of a group teaching Craftivism 101: Knitting and Social Justice. On the first morning of the program, students are spread out in the Upper Stu-Fac, and Penland is teaching a member of the senior class to knit a hat. Slowly, the student unwinds the purple yarn as Penland shows her first one stitch, then another. So far, the creation looks

COURSE DESCRIP TION

Immigration and Culinary Innovation This course will explore how immigrants have transformed the culinary repertoires of their new homes, and how their cuisines have been transformed by the experience of migration. We will focus on the culinary innovations of the Chinese diaspora, reading about food cultures, talking to people about their experiences transplanting their culinary traditions to their new homes, and trying our hand at recreating the dishes and recipes of China using ingredients available in the United States.

COURSE DESCRIP TION

Take Apart a Car and Don’t Put it Back Together What makes a car go? Find out piece by piece! We purchased a complete and running automobile (2014 smart fortwo) from a salvage auction (it is a “total loss” from a collision, though it remains drivable). The mission: Take it apart, see how it works, and stack up the parts for reuse. Unbuild, deconstruct, conserve, and recycle. Turn bolts, cut steel, and unravel the endless insides of a modern car. You don’t have to have any experience, just curiosity and a desire to get your hands dirty while learning how to use mechanical tools.

framework. In the course Game Design, students huddle around tables in the basement of the Math and Arts Center. Led

by Shawn Bartok, a math instructor, and Laura Twichell ’01, an English instructor and assistant dean for community and equity, four teams are playing and reviewing board games. After each game they play, they record impressions of what they like and don’t like on sticky notes; later in the day, they will use these impressions to design their own games.

Bartok says the class offers him a chance to teach something he enjoys but also to work with, and learn from, a colleague in the humanities. “Collaborating with Laura is helping me think about different ways to deliver material in my regular math classes,” he says. In particular, he says, it’s helping him to think about how to engage students in a number of different activities simultaneously.

Science instructor Susan Flink also says collaboration is her focus—and in her case, that means modeling the value of collaboration and experimentation for her students. She and fellow science instructor Amy Kumpel are teaching a course called Design Thinking, in which students engage in a series of cooperative challenges, like building towers from uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows. “The challenges helped 33

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nothing like a hat, but both teacher and student seem relaxed about it.

They keep unwinding the yarn.

Meanwhile, out on the tennis courts, there is a bigger, messier example of sandbox thinking. Science instructor Max Hall and librarian Martha Kennedy are standing back as students try to pry the roof off a tiny Smart car. Hall, who dreamed up the class Take Apart a Car and Don’t Put It Back Together, grins with satisfaction as shiny black paint chips fly into the air.

“Aren’t you glad you all are wearing those safety goggles?” he shouts.

Both Penland and Hall say the format of spring session—two whole days devoted to one ungraded subject—allows them to let student curiosity drive at least part of what happens during the course. “It’s deliciously unplanned,” Hall says. “Outline only. The rest is according to whim, theirs and mine.” On the first day of Hall’s course, students expressed curiosity about how airbags work. So, after getting the goahead from the physical plant staff, the class deployed the Smart’s airbags on the back of the tennis courts—and they found out.

For many faculty members, the big draw of Spring Session is the chance to collaborate across disciplines in a way that is difficult to do within the school’s usual

COURSE DESCRIP TION

Introduction to Game Theory C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E S P R I N G 2 0 17

Game theory is a mathematical way of studying conflicts and cooperation.

While the only math we’ll use is arithmetic, we will analyze a variety of strategic “games,” including dominance behavior among animals, nuclear disarmament, voting, and business cartels such as OPEC. We will operate in a classroom environment, with a variety of activities and instruction, and perhaps even watch a hit movie about a Nobel Prize-winning game theorist and his battle with schizophrenia.

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me think about my own teaching,” says Flink, and how to encourage students in her regular classes to collaborate and experiment.

Spring Session also allows teachers to fine-tune aspects of their pedagogy or testdrive new ideas. Veteran math instructor Howie Bloom, who is teaching students to play bridge, says Spring Session helps him try out a “less teacher-centered” approach than he normally brings to the classroom.

And English instructor Sabrina Sadique says it’s helping her think about the way she approaches the teaching of poetry. “Usually, when we close-read a poem, we deconstruct it line by line,” she says. “I wanted to deactivate the part of the brain that goes immediately to interpretation.” In Mindfulness Meditation, Poetry and Perception, Sadique works with Elise Hoblitzelle, health and wellness instructor. Drawing on the meditation techniques students have already learned with Hoblitzelle, Sadique asks them to just listen to two poems several times, then to draw what they heard, then to say the poems aloud to each other. Then she has them write, and write again. In time, she says, they reach the specificity that could enable them to write a critical essay, but they retain a sense of the poem’s whole.

With courses spread across two days rather than 80-minute periods, Spring

Session brings a very different feel to the campus. The bell doesn’t ring, and the halls are quieter. At any given time, about a third of the student body is elsewhere—at the Museum of Fine Arts; meeting with scientists in Boston; walking to Carlisle and back; learning about climate change on a ski mountain. But whether off campus or on, faculty and students alike experience what it is like to have two days devoted to a single subject and with a single group of fellow learners.

Students overall say they enjoy the change of pace, the mixed-age classes, and the ungraded format of the week. Daniel Reden ’20 is part of The Art of Smoke, a class in which students dig a pit in the back of Lee House, smoke meat, and learn about a range of culinary traditions. For Reden, the big draw of the week is the hands-on format. “You get to get out here and do the dirty work,” he says. And senior Jess Pine ’17, a member of the craftivism course, welcomes the lack of grades. “I feel like I can try, and fail, without worrying about the grade,” she says. “And it’s cool to do different things and be with students from different classes.”

The idea of the whole school engaging in an alternative kind of learning did not begin with Spring Session. In the past, Concord Academy has had traditions

Two-day courses get students involved in new activities, from art making and film production to engagement with the history of Concord, Mass.

Max Hall like A Day of Action, during which the whole school did community service, and Museum Day, in which everyone went to museums, and the school continues to offer a special daylong program in lieu of regular classes each Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But Spring Session is uniquely focused on the idea of letting teachers test new approaches to material or new courses in a short-term, low-stakes way.

Program coordinator Frederick says her hope is not that the program becomes an annual tradition, but that it begins a broader conversation about the strengths and limitations of the school’s current schedule and department configurations, simply by allowing faculty to imagine other models.

Right now, she says, faculty members are so accustomed to the existing framework that it is easy to forget other approaches are possible. “It’s like when

Note: As part of a Spring Session course on journalism, Ashley Kim ’19 and David Korn ’19 contributed reporting to this piece.

COURSE DESCRIP TION

Living History Students will learn about the Wayside, a local landmark in the Minuteman National Part, through a private tour of the house and an opportunity to talk with the rangers responsible for it. This will be the introduction to a two-week course in June, where students will take on the project of becoming living history tour guides. They will research and write a tour from the perspective of one of the children who lived in the Wayside — among them, the Alcott and Hawthorne children — and have the chance to give the tour this summer at the house.

Watch Spring Session video at www.concordacademy.org/springsession17

W W W . C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y . O R G S P R I N G 2 0 17

‘It’s deliciously unplanned.

Outline only. The rest is according to whim, theirs and mine.’

you have a small infant, you think, ‘Whatever I do has to happen before naptime,’” says Frederick. “Parents with a 12-year-old would never think that way because they don’t have those constraints. So this is an experiment: What would you think about if we eliminated our usual time constraints?”

And, she adds, “Are the things we make possible this week important enough that we want to incorporate them into our regular practices?”

CAMPAIGN PRIORITY: CA LABS

CA LABS IN ACTION: CONNECTING Photos by Eric Roth

â—€ From science

labs to tinkering spaces and new favorite spots to work and chat with friends, CA Labs has brought much light and many opportunities for collaboration to campus.

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Ben Carmichael ’01 Ben Carmichael ’01

place, particularly for members of the sophomore class.

“It’s such a nice, sunny spot,” says Syd Culbert ’19 as she relaxes with friends after lunch. Elliot White ’19 agrees. “During exams, we were all over the floor here,” she says with a laugh.

In addition to providing Once referred to as the new new hangout spots for stu“science wing,” CA Labs has, dents, the building has also in its first year, become a created connections among place that connects students the academic disciplines and and disciplines to each other the faculty. One classroom is and connects CA to the home to English, trigonomwider world. As students etry, Latin, and advanced move from class to class physics. English teacher Nick through the wide hallways, Hiebert, who taught the elecmany stop at the huge white- tive Thoreau and Kindreds in boards on the walls to draw the Labs last fall, remembers pictures and write notes of the day his students oversupport. (On a recent afterheard a conversation about noon, hand-drawn hearts uncertainty in a physics class covered one end of the next door. “This led us into a board; stick figures made by cool discussion about where a faculty member’s young questions of uncertainty child decorated the other.) A arise in Thoreau’s writing, cozy nook with tall windows and how physicists and overlooking the Quad has writers might be interested become a popular gathering in similar questions in their

approaches to understanding the world,” says Hiebert.

The building’s design, with its flexible classroom spaces, fosters that sort of creative thinking on campus and forges connections with the wider world. In December, the Labs’ rooftop weather station began transmitting data to the online forecasting hub Weather Underground, so day students can now check campus weather on their phones before they head to the train. Although New England weather is famously unpredictable, the forecast for CA Labs so far holds steady: creative and lively, with a chance of inspirational.

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W W W . C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y . O R G S P R I N G 2 0 17

DISCIPLINES, STUDENTS, AND THE WIDER WORLD

CAMPAIGN PRIORITY: BOUNDLESS CAMPUS

A WORLD OF LEARNING FOR SOME students it’s visiting a meteorological observatory

to study climate change. For others it’s conducting field work in a vibrant urban neighborhood that’s defying gentrification.

Or laying eyes on artwork in Boston’s world-class museums.

Or tending to animals at a local farm. The experiences that get CA classes out into the world also bring the world into the classroom—there’s no better way to understand the real-life implications of research than in real life.

The benefits of CA’s Boundless Campus extend well beyond Main Street, as lasting relationships with institutional partners have shown. Here’s what one longtime mentor in the InSPIRE summer science internship program said after working with John Koury ’16, who was awarded a prestigious research position at Northeastern University this year.

John came to me with his supervisor at Northeastern and we are starting a new research collaboration. So this relationship with Concord Academy is also impacting my own professional success too! … Let’s keep this positive relationship rolling!

Nobuhiko Hata, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

Support for the Centennial Campaign’s Boundless Campus endowment helps foster and sustain such collaborations within the local community, which means CA can make a bigger difference in the lives of its students — and thereby better prepare them to make a difference in the world.

“

CAMPAIGN PRIORITY: CA HOUSES C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E S P R I N G 2 0 17

AT HOME ON CAMPUS IMAGINE common rooms that connect

Concord Academy’s houses and open onto campus, anchoring both boarding and day students in community life and giving structure to a new Life Skills curriculum. Investing in CA’s distinctive approach to boarding life and improving housing will bring more

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faculty to campus, better integrate the houses with the whole school, and inspire the entire living and learning community.

Look for details in future issues about CA’s plans to invest in residential life for the benefit of the whole school.

CA has so much more momentum than it would have if it weren’t a boarding school. The campus doesn’t revert to being just a bunch of buildings when classes aren’t in session. It remains a home, and day students and faculty feel welcome here all the time.”

Ayres Stiles-Hall house faculty, English teacher, Community and Equity team member

$

58,558

CAMPAIGN PRIORITY: FINANCIAL AID

Boarding Tuition

$

ENRICHING THIS COMMUNITY

47,160 Day Tuition

1 in 4

A COMMITMENT to increasing financial aid is an underpinning of the Centennial Campaign. Providing financial aid to students who would otherwise be unable to attend Concord Academy isn’t about being generous. It’s about increasing the diversity and strength of the entire community­—and that’s fundamental to CA’s mission. It’s simply not possible to foster respect for others and a genuine exchange of ideas without embracing and enhancing the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and talents represented on campus.

The school’s significant commitment to financial aid is only partially, and modestly, endowed. Concord Academy is seeking philanthropic partners to ensure that it can continue to fulfill this mission-critical promise. The first phase of the Centennial Campaign laid an encouraging foundation on which the CA community now needs to build.

STUDENTS receive financial aid

$

25.5

Experiential Equity

What’s distinctive about how Concord Academy awards financial aid? CA focuses on ensuring experiential equity by meeting 100 percent of each family’s calculated need. The Student Activities budget covers virtually all expenses beyond tuition, from the cost of computers and school supplies to sports equipment, weekend activities, music lessons, service trips, and even health insurance, so that all students participate equitably in CA’s remarkable living and learning community.

And all leave prepared to shape the world for the better.

MILLION Operating Budget FY17

12%

ANNUAL FUND

76%

TUITION AND FEES

12%

ENDOWMENT DRAW

$

4.1 million FINANCIAL AID budget

37,420

average financial aid package

Cole + Kiera

$

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IN MEMORIAM

b Abraham Bers husband of Anita Burrage Bers ’55

Cecil Forbes father of Dean Forbes ’83

John Blanz father of Madeleine Blanz-Mayo 86

Andrew Hansen ’80

Prentice Bloedel father of Carla Bloedel Clark ’68 and Ellen Bloedel ’71 Anne Pearsall Brayton ’69 Evans Cheeseman grandfather of Sarah Cheeseman Barthel ’97 Lucia Cabot Cipolla ’44 mother of Lucia Cipolla Hayman ’82 Douglas Cook son of Helen Locke Cook ’56, grandson of the late Mary Trumbull Locke ’35, nephew of Miriam Locke ’64, great-nephew of the late Sally Locke Ffolliott ’26, the late Helen Locke Driscoll ’28, the late Susan Locke Smith ’30, the late Joan Trumbull ’40, and the late Faith Trumbull Reed ’47 Elizabeth Enders Costikyan ’47 Thomas Curtin husband of Susan Harris Curtin ’56 and brother-in-law of the late Judith Harris Watriss ’58 Kristina Dodson mother of Kylie Dodson ’96 Robert Dresser husband of Deborah Metcalf Dresser ’61 C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E S P R I N G 2 0 17

George Edmonds grandfather of Eva Edmonds ’11 and Nat Edmonds ’20 Sylvia Erhart mother of Margaret Erhart ’70 and Stephen Erhart ’79

Mary Lu Hildreth ’69 cousin of Ellen-Alisa Saxl ’67 Caroline Hoppin mother of Andrew Hoppin ’89, grandmother of John Murchison ’12 Susanna Horton ’65 Lawrence Howe father of Eliza Howe Earle ’67 Bertha Kelner mother of Stow Kelner ’75 Nancy DeVeau Lamson ’46 sister of the late Phyllis DeVeau Francklyn ’47 Mary MacLeod Loomis mother of Mary Paul Loomis ’66, Lucy Loomis ’74, and the late Gordon Loomis ’76 Mary Monks Lukens ’54 sister of Olga Monks Kimball ’55 and Ann Monks Barry ’57, cousin of Tatiana Fischer ’63 Joseph Mathew ’92 Bruce Mazlish husband of Neva Rockefeller Goodwin ’62, stepfather of Miranda Kaiser ’89, and cousin-in-law of Alida Rockefeller Messinger ’67 Josephine McFadden sister of Lucy-Ann McFadden ’70 Edith Swanson Middleton former faculty Matthew James Newton Tivy brother of Catharyn Tivy ’76 David Nollett grandfather of Miles Damon ’18

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Joseph Petrone husband of Augusta Henderson Petrone ’54, brother-in-law of Victoria Henderson Osborne ’45 and Mary Henderson Perdue ’59

Donald Read husband of Jean Beasley Read ’50 David Rockefeller father of Neva Rockefeller Goodwin ’62, grandfather of Miranda Kaiser ’89, and uncle of Alida Rockefeller Messinger ’67 Townsend Scudder husband of Mary Bordman Scudder ’46 Gerald Siesfeld grandfather of Claire Siesfeld ’08 Helen Reynolds Smith ’36 sister of the late Marcia Reynolds MacLane ’41, sister-in-law of the late Mary Smith Hanes ’35, the late Ellen Doe Reynolds ’45, and the late Shirley Foote Smith ’36 Helen Spaulding mother of Alexander Spaulding ’74 Dana Swain son of Annette Weld Swain ’56 Harold Thorne husband of Evelyn McKinstry Thorne ’44 and brother-in-law of Ann McKinstry Micou ’48 Lawrence Askew Warner father of Stuart Warner ’77 William Weaver husband of Judith Sargent Weaver ’54, brother-in-law of Diane Sargent ’48 and Joyce Sargent Stevens ’54 Ethel Borden Wood ’47 sister of Anna Borden Sides ’44 and the late Martha Borden Moss ’46, stepsister of the late Joan Merrick Neider ’43

Black Lives Matter sign facing the Quad.

A self-portrait by Tina Shan ‘14.

MY DESK

My bookshelf.

It’s an eclectic mix.

R ICK HAR DY Head of School

CA’s faculty/staff and the trustees have all been reading Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahisi Coates.

This pencil holder was a thank-you gift from a former colleague and friend, whom I mentored.

The giraffe was a gift from Ted Allen, my late friend, colleague, and mentee, as a reminder to keep my head well above any danger.

I make my daily lists on these cards.

I don’t often listen to music while I work, despite what these headphones might imply. Actually, they’re for dictation. I’m a fan of Dragon Naturally Speaking.

Hard hat, from frequent tours during the construction of CA Labs.

My business cards, in Mandarin on one side. They were translated by an alum, who gave me my Chinese name.

This box was a gift from the Korean Parents Association.

This coffee from Sally Ann’s is a daily occurrence.

This ornament says “Superman works here.” My daughter gave it to me.

This apple was given to me by a former student, who said it should be on my desk forever to remind me that I was a teacher.

John Moriarty P’02, ’05, ’07 gave me this handcrafted desk.

When I first arrived at CA, I mentioned to him that the desk that was here wasn’t my style and that all I needed was a farmhouse table. This showed up within a week.

Kristie Gillooly

CA INSPIRES

Confidence

What will your gift inspire?

Support CA with a gift to the 2016–17 Annual Fund. www.concordacademy.org/give

EVENT DATES June 1–2 Baccalaureate and Commencement June 9–11 Reunion Weekend October 12–14 Family Weekend Classes ending in 3 and 8, stay tuned for more information about your reunion in June 2018!

Contact the Advancement & Engagement Office at (978) 402-2248 or advancement@concordacademy.org

CATalks • CAService • CANetworking • CAGives • CAReunion

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