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COMMUNITY VOICES
Hilltop
NEWS FROM CAMPUS
COMMUNITY VOICES Alexis Liston ’03
The Dean of Community wants everyone to know they belong.
As dean of community and belonging, Alexis Liston ’03 is tuned into the needs of students and works to ensure that all students find a true sense of belonging on the Kimball Union campus. As part of the Student Life Office, Liston and her colleagues are focused on the health, wellness, and social-emotional needs of the students so that they feel well prepared for all facets of life. After graduating from KUA in 2003, Liston attended Mount Holyoke College and worked at independent schools and Dartmouth College before returning to her home on The Hilltop.
What is the goal of KUA’s student life programming?
Liston: We try to strike a healthy balance between having room to try things and having room to fail and learn from those experiences. At the same time, we want to have a healthy safety net and provide information before students enter situations where they’re not equipped to make decisions. Students’ frontal lobes still have a way to go before they’re fully cooked. They need to understand the consequences that come from decisions, so we practice them and talk through them so they’re not so challenging for a young person.
Why is high school such a critical time in someone’s life?
Liston: I don’t know of any other time in a human life when people are working so closely with other people who span a broad range on the path of development. Developmentally, a ninth-grader is going to have different needs than a 12th grader, so we are intentional about what programming they receive and when they receive it. We work through critical topics such as health and wellness, time management, healthy relationships, and relationships with substances.
Why is belonging such a key part of the KUA experience?
Liston: Students at this stage are also working a lot on identity development. It’s an important time to work with them on this process—who you are, who you want to be, or who you think you should be. We have such an amazingly supportive community that wants to push issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging forward, from alumni to faculty to parents. Our goal is to provide spaces for all of our community members to truly feel like they belong. It goes beyond a slogan or phrase.
Students have a lot going on. How do you deliver so much content?
Liston: We provide all this information in a lot of different ways. Advising provides a space where you have a trusted adult and a group of peers for open, honest conversations. At All School Meeting students hear from outside speakers and experts. And our Choices program is particularly important for our ninth-grade class. It helps them as they transition from wherever they are in the world to high school.
You’re an alumna, what brought you back to the community?
Liston: We have 17 alumni working for the school in various capacities from a range of class years. This is a testament to where we were, who we are, and where we’re headed. I didn’t realize how hard this job is, but all the values and beliefs were instilled in me as a young person and being able to give that back to people is so special.
As a student, I had incredibly close relationships with a number of adults on campus. It was nice to have adults in my life, in addition to my parents, who could provide different perspectives and supports. One of the best parts of my job is having those relationships with students. I love connecting with young people, to hear them and what’s exciting in their world, and what’s bringing them down. Sometimes I offer advice and sometimes I just listen. That’s one of the most important parts of KUA. K
ALEXIS LISTON ’03
Dean of Community and Belonging Gosselin Learning Center Specialist Head Dorm Parent, Bryant Hall
New mission statement captures the essential elements of the KUA experience.
NEW MISSION STATEMENT
When May arrived, and Meriden felt the warmth of spring, it would have been understandable if Kimball Union faculty needed to retreat from life on The Hilltop. The year came to a close after an uninterrupted, 20-week stretch during which tremendous energy was poured into giving students the best possible experience in the face of a global pandemic.
Instead, a team of 13 faculty and two students pledged to work throughout the summer to create a new mission statement, one that felt distinctly KUA and would guide the Academy into the future:
“Our mission is to create a deep sense of belonging for every member of our community. Through intentionally designed experiences and challenges, our students develop the knowledge, voice, and character to live with purpose and integrity.”
Here, three committee members—Head of School Tyler Lewis, Science Teacher Elysia Burroughs, and English Teacher and College Advisor John Kluge ’66—share how they arrived at the new mission statement.
Why did you feel it was appropriate to revisit the mission statement?
LEWIS: It has served us well and there was nothing inaccurate, but it fell short of fully capturing all that we’re doing. When I was interviewing for my job, I can remember what faculty really wanted to tell me about, and that was their relationship with kids and the depth of those relationships. That wasn’t addressed in our mission statement, and to me that was an indication that we weren’t articulating who we are. KLUGE: Revisiting our mission is a requirement of the re-accreditation process, which we undertook this year. At the same time, we all concluded that while the previous mission statement served us well for 20 years, times are changing and kids are changing. I was deeply in love with a couple words in that mission statement, but I decided it was time to let it go. It’s fascinating to read old mission statements. I went back and read one from 1981 and it didn’t make sense. We have changed for the better. BURROUGHS: I didn’t feel it told our story and represented us authentically. When we introduced the new mission statement in a faculty meeting, no one took issue. I think a lot of people felt energized. I know I did. I am excited to work under a mission with a guiding philosophy that fits us. Lewis: We had the same experience with the Board of Trustees. They didn’t want to change anything from the committee’s work.
How did you undertake such an important task?
LEWIS: We had a robust committee that volunteered to be part of this. Early on we were reviewing our mission and were playing with different words, but we quickly decided this would not be revision process. We chose not to focus on editing and critiquing the good work done before us. We just started from scratch by asking, “What is a mission statement? What questions should it answer?” It was the right way to move forward. BURROUGHS: We began with a framing exercise that really asked three essential questions we needed the mission to answer: What is the environment that we create? What do we do in that environment? What is the lifelong impact on a person who experiences KUA?
LEWIS: We also tapped into work from a committee charged with defining KUA Design, our approach to learning. They observed that growth comes from being engaged, being connected, and feeling empowered, and we wanted our mission to reflect that growth period in students’ lives. I feel we’ve crafted something that has in it the tools we apply to all our interactions in a student’s development.
How are you bringing the new mission statement to life?
KLUGE: I think we need to figure out ways to make it very present and put it in places where people see it. It’s easy to say you have a nice mission statement and then not think about. We don’t want to go there. LEWIS: Yes, our new mission really drives us toward knowing that human connection is at the core of who we are. It’s on that foundation that we do everything else. We’re going to hold everything up to our mission. I feel we’ve crafted something that has in it the tools we apply to all aspects of the KUA experience.
JOHN KLUGE ’66
English Teacher College Advisor Mission Statement Committee
BURROUGHS: I’ve used parts of the mission in talking with my classes this year. I tend to stress the importance of belonging in developing a safe, cohesive environment. I also talk about who we’re becoming—everyone here is growing, and it’s okay to take a chance and stumble because it’s part of the building of skills that you need to persevere.
The mission cites specific characteristics—knowledge, voice, and character. How did you land on those?
LEWIS: I was proud of our committee members for pushing us toward increased specificity. It’s hard to say with specificity the characteristics we see in our students and alumni. We really debated those three words—knowledge, voice, and character—and questioned their place in the mission. They speak to the essential elements of a human being that you hope your experience will embed within them. This is what we hope will be embedded in you as a person because of the KUA experience. KLUGE: Especially as an English teacher, I like the fact that it has “voice” in there. Voice is more than the ability to articulate an idea. It also suggests a certain self-confidence and where you fit in the world and what your ideals are. BURROUGHS: Voice is also standing up for others and values we believe in. That ties directly into character. It’s all part of an amazing community we have. It’s courageous to talk about character. It’s one of the goals we have—to build character—not only in terms of toughness, but also in understanding and compassion and concern.
What’s next?
LEWIS: We just wrapped up our New England Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation visit in November, and that really affirmed what we’re doing and the remarkable engagement of our students, faculty, and staff. The recommendations from the accreditation committee, and from numerous surveys and focus groups leading up to its visit, will inform a strategic plan that’s in the process of being drafted. That feels good and gives us momentum. All of it will be held up against, and even built upon, our mission statement so we know that the work we do is appropriate and meaningful to Kimball Union. K
RETURN TO
RECOMPOSE FOUNDER KATRINA SPADE ’95 TAKES A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH TO DEATH CARE.
TO THE EARTH
fter more than a decade of research and refinements—not to mention a successful campaign to change state law—Recompose founder and CEO A Katrina Spade ’95 has developed the first human composting option for death care. “What if we had a choice that helps the planet rather than harms it?” she says. “To know that the last gesture you’ll make will be gentle and beneficial just feels like the right thing to do.” Her Seattle-based company began “TO KNOW THAT transforming bodies to soil in December 2020, after Washington became the
THE LAST first region in the world to legalize the practice, more formally known as GESTURE YOU’LL “natural organic reduction.” Colorado
MAKE WILL BE and Oregon followed suit last spring with laws legalizing human composting,
GENTLE AND and bills are in the works in New York and California. BENEFICIAL JUST It’s a sustainability movement that has its roots in Spade’s upbringing. She FEELS LIKE THE grew up in Plainfield, New Hampshire,
RIGHT THING where her mother was a physician assistant, her father was a doctor, and death TO DO.” and dying were a natural process. At KUA she pursued a range of interests, D including theater and sports, and then studied anthropology at Haverford Col—KATRINA SPADE ’95 lege and architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “I was totally encouraged to do a number of different activities at KUA and that translated to the practice of architecture, which is about understanding very different fields and disciplines but also knowing when you are not an expert and asking for that expert to come help you,” says Spade. “As an entrepreneur, I find Recompose is very much about knowing a little bit about everything and then saying, ‘Okay we need a biologist. We need a legal expert. Who can help me with finding the right type of investors?’” Spade started thinking about funerary alternatives in 2011, while playing in the backyard with her young son. “It was during that time where it seemed he was growing up so fast,” she says. “Someday he’ll be 40…oh wow—I’ll be over 70 then! That realization inspired me to start thinking about my mortality.” Later that fall, as she pursued her master’s in architecture, Spade considered the environmental impact and logistics of conventional burial and cremation as part of a design project. “I like green burial, but I want to live in a city,” she recalls thinking. “How could you bring nature to urban death care?”
She built a compost heating system to demonstrate the power of microbes in what could be considered an early prototype and completed her thesis, “Of Dirt and Decomposition: Proposing a Place for the Urban Dead.” After graduation, Spade founded the nonprofit Urban Death Project to bring together experts to develop an initial human composting system. Other mileposts followed: feasibility studies with forensic anthropologists and soil scientists; a push to change state law and make natural organic reduction a legal means of disposing of human remains; and a capital campaign to raise $6.75 million to get Recompose going.
In its first full year of operation, Recompose transformed 100 bodies, at a cost of $5,500 per person. Spade has incorporated ritual as an essential component in the process. “With cremation, it’s easier to skip over any sort of ceremony when someone dies because it has evolved into more of direct disposition: ‘Don’t make a fuss, just cremate me,’” says Spade. “I think the moment when someone dies is a great time to make a little fuss and do something.
ENVIRONMENTAL BURIAL
That placement is the first step in the natural organic reduction process. The body is laid into an 8-by-4-foot reusable steel cylinder containing a bed of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw.
“At Recompose we think about ritual as a physical action that marks a moment that is important,” says Spade. “So that action for us is to place the body inside a ‘vessel,’ where the transformation into soil occurs. That transformation is nature at its best: You get to cease to be human and become soil.” Although the pandemic meant that families could not physically attend that laying in of a body, Spade found 90 percent of relatives eager to attend services via Zoom. “We learned that we can have a beautiful service for someone virtually. Having families watch our staff place plant material on the person’s body and then place the body in the vessel—that’s a very powerful moment.”
That placement is the first step in the natural organic reduction process. The body is laid into an 8-by-4-foot reusable steel cylinder containing a bed of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. The vessel enables staff to monitor the amounts of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and moisture and temperature—sensors take readings every 10 minutes—to create an ideal environment for the microbes and bacteria necessary for decomposition. “This is a very controlled process, completely driven by microbes,” Spade says. “It’s fueled by plant material and monitored in a very rigorous way.”
After 30 days, all the organic material has been broken down into soil, which is moved to a curing bin for several more weeks to aerate. Then, the soil is screened to remove any nonorganic materials, such as pacemakers or metal fillings. The state also requires Recompose and a third party to test for pathogens and heavy metals in the resulting soil.
“When we compost someone, we create a cubic foot of soil,” she says. It’s soft compost “genuinely good for your garden,” says Spade. Families have the option of donating the soil to restoration projects with a conservation partner—currently Bells Mountain, a 700-acre land trust in southern Washington—or collecting it for their own use. “You rejoin the natural cycle,” says Spade, “which is incredibly beautiful.”
Looking ahead, Spade plans to open a larger location in Seattle this spring and then in Denver in the fall. “I’m excited because families will be able to visit their person, it’s meant for people to gather in.” K
Connect
1888: Kimball Union Academy 75th anniversary celebration taken on the steps of the original Congregational church. The current structure was built in 1897.
NEWS FROM ALUMNI
INSIDE
36 ALUMNI SPOTLIGHTS 40 CLASS NOTES 46 FALL 2018 OBITUARY 35 49 LAST WORD
