Spring 2012, "Game Changers" by Lakeside School

MADE YOU LOOK

TOM REESE

Giving voice: Lakeside Chinese-language students hold up images of the Chinese citizens whose words they translated as part of the Fairytale Project. In this “behavioral art show,” Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei selected 1,001 Chinese citizens who’d never before left their country to travel to Documenta 12, a major visual art exhibition in Kassel, Germany, and write about their experience. The Slought Foundation in Philadelphia is sponsoring the online translation project. Because of political sensitivities, names and faces are not being shown. (More at

Editor:

After reading the article (“Reinventing Teaching,” Spring/Summer 2011), I felt compelled to share my own version of “reinventing education.” I’m in my eighth year teaching at Puget Sound Community School, an innovative independent school in downtown Seattle. We guide our middle- and high-school students in their pursuit of their passions, and help them develop personal integrity, courage, and community engagement. We don’t care a whit about test scores, and we’re passionately neutral about whether our students learn trigonometry, read Steinbeck, dissect frogs, or all or none of the above. PSCS’ whole environment empowers stu-

http://fairytaleproject.net/) Upper School Chinese teacher Adam Ross heard of the project in a blog seeking volunteer translators, and viewed it as a chance for students to put their Chinese language skills to use in real-world service work. He and fellow teacher Cheyenne Matthewson are assisting the students. Lakeside is the only high school providing translators. Says Juleh E. ’13: “It’s a lot more interesting than just a classroom assignment.” Adds André M. ’13: “These are people, not just a case study.”

dents to direct their own learning and values their choices. As a result, our self-disciplined, self-confident graduates thrive in a world that demands initiative and spark. At Lakeside, I was exposed to passionate faculty who took me seriously and inspired me to become a teacher. In my senior year Inquiry course with Anne Stephens and Jim Wichterman, I read A.S. Neill’s Summerhill, opening my eyes to the possibility of other models of education. Even something as simple as the concept of “free periods”—you choose how to spend your time!—helped me learn that when you treat young people with respect and honor, they grow into it and deliver. Nic Warmenhoven ’92

LAKESIDE

Spring/Summer 2012

WE LOVE LETTERS! Lakeside magazine welcomes letters. E-mail us at magazine@ lakesideschool. org, and please include your class year or Lakeside affiliation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

ON THE COVER

Photo illustration by Tom Reese Lakeside magazine is published twice yearly by the communications office of Lakeside School. Find past issues at www.lakesideschool. org/magazine

Hello, Lakesiders!

“Be bold and the mighty forces will come to aid you…”

Scilla Andreen ’80 first heard these words from Sir Anthony Hopkins. It was his response after she complimented him for having the courage to direct his first film. Now it’s her mantra. She told us the story when we asked for a tip on how to “think outside the box.” Our theme for this issue of the magazine is innovation, and our cover story is about alumni who are changing things up in myriad ways. Andreen, CEO of IndieFlix, a next-generation film distribution company, is one of them. While their stories are wildly different, a common theme emerged in many alums’ tips: Act strategically but fearlessly; be alert and open to unorthodox thoughts from eclectic sources. Page 18. • The same spirit of strategic courage drives Global Online Academy. Read about the inaugural year of this international consortium initiated by Lakeside that now includes 23 top schools. Page 28. • Anne Stavney ’81 scrutinized every aspect of the Middle School after taking the helm in 2006 and asked, is there a better way? We look at her legacy and see what’s ahead as alumna Elaine Christensen ’82 succeeds her. Page 8. • Innovation is Chris DeVore ’86’s breadand-butter, as a seed-stage venture capitalist. Check out his fun Personal Story on Page 57. As always, we welcome your thoughts, by phone, letter, or e-mail.

TABLE OF CONTENTS FEATURES Cover story: Alumni innovators 18

Carey Quan Gelernter

Editor, Lakeside magazine carey.gelernter@lakesideschool.org 206-440-2706; 14050 1st Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98125

■

28 8

LAKESIDE MAGAZINE EDITOR: Carey Quan Gelernter

WRITERS: Carey Quan Gelernter,

John Roach, Warren King, Amanda Darling, Trevor Klein ’03

ALUMNI NEWS: Kelly Poort,

DEPARTMENTS Inside Lakeside

Head of school’s letter 4 Board chair’s letter 5 Allen-Gates renovation 6 Speakers 7 Alumnae at Middle School helm Faculty news 12 Big History 13 Bruce Bailey ’59 retires 14 Sports 16 Distinguished Alumni Award Reunion 2012 38 Basketball 41 Class Connections 42 In Memoriam 52

ART DIRECTOR: Carol N. Leong PHOTOGRAPHERS: Tom Reese,

Daniel Sheehan, Trevor Klein ’03

Global Online Academy’s first year

Alumni News

Carol Borgmann, Leslie Schuyler, Bruce Bailey ’59

COPY EDITORS: Corinna Laughlin, Carey Quan Gelernter, Bronwyn Echols

25, 57

Planned Giving 56 Personal Story 57 From the Archives 58 Calendar 59 Contents

HEAD NOTE

by BERNIE NOE

Nurturing a spirit of innovation

TOM REESE

LAKESIDE

Spring/Summer 2012

akeside students are growing up in a very innovative era! Entrepreneurs around the world are working hard to find more efficient and more creative ways to deliver goods and services to a global marketplace. The pace of change is rapid and success goes to those with vision, courage, resilience, and a tenacious work ethic. This period of innovation is different from the past in that innovation is now global in scope. Any individual with a computer and an idea, in almost any country, has a chance of bringing an idea to market. For example, last summer I was in Myanmar, then one of the most repressive countries in the world with very limited Internet access. I found myself in a conversation with “20-somethings” who knew more about apps and computer technology than many Americans. It was clear to me that these bright, ambitious individuals, if given half a chance, would do well in the global economy. Lakeside has a rich tradition of entrepreneurial spirit and innovation. As you will read in this magazine, many of our graduates have gone on to create products and services that have made life better for people around the world. Today it is more important than ever for us both to be innovative as a school and to nurture creativity and innovation in our students. The future clearly belongs to those who are inventive and resourceful, and our students will need those attributes no matter what field they pursue. We want our students to look at every task and ask, “Is there a better way to do this?” How to nurture that spirit of innovation is not always clear. I once asked Paul Allen ’71 what Lakeside did to nurture his innovative spirit, and he said, “Well, you just got out of the way and let us experiment.” It is still true today that an important part of what we do is knowing how to “get out of the way” and let our students develop their own

approaches to problems. Lakeside students graduate with a sense of agency, the belief that they can do things in this world; this comes, at least in part, from being given the freedom to experiment, to think for themselves. We provide our students with opportunities to work collaboratively in their classes, to solve problems together, to ponder complex issues, and to become critical thinkers. For example, students in the class of Upper School chemistry teacher Hans de Grys set up their own biodiesel company. They figure out how to create a usable product and get it to market. (Upper School Director Than Healy then uses the fuel in his car—so far, so good!) In another example, our 5th graders recently worked in teams to design and market a parka that would be suitable for a climb on Mount Everest. Finally, as a school we also model innovation for our students. We started an online academy (read about how the first year unfolded, starting on Page 28), and we are “flipping” a number of our classrooms this year (students do their reading and studying at home, and class time is used for discussion and projects). Teachers are always looking for better, more creative ways to teach. We live in exciting times, as innovative ideas continue to improve life for all of us. Lakeside School has contributed its share of these innovators and we will continue to do so. Have a great summer, everyone! Stop in for a visit when you can—there is free lunch and good company! ■

BERNIE NOE

Head of School

FROM THE BOARD CHAIR

Taking the lead

his spring, I was one of many Lakesiders and 4,000 others who attended the national conference of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), which took place for the first time in Seattle. It was the perfect location for the gathering’s theme of “Innovation: Imagine, Invent, Inspire, Dream.” Several Lakeside administrators and faculty gave presentations about the innovative work at our school. I spoke as well, about the Board of Trustees’ support for creating Global Online Academy, a consortium of leading independent schools. The Board’s decision reflects our thinking on innovation: Lakeside could either lead by creating an excellent program for online learning, or we could wait until someone else developed it. The Board supported taking the lead. The experience made me think about the many ways the Board advances the school’s pursuit of innovation and excellence, and what makes this possible: our endowment. Among the programs and goals the endowment supports are: • Global Service Learning, which develops students’ awareness of different countries and cultures and inspires them to be agents of change locally and internationally (594 students in eight countries to date). • Technology, including curriculum grants to develop best practices in “blended” teaching techniques—combining online and face-to-face learning. • Financial aid, which promotes greater student diversity (28 percent of students receive aid). • Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program, or LEEP, one of the country’s first such community programs when it began in 1965 and still a national model (more than 3,000 kids served to date). Once upon a time, Lakeside’s endowment was small; tuition and fees, plus the Annual Fund, paid the bills. There was little ability to fund new, cutting-edge programs or to offer financial aid. Today Lakeside’s endowment is worth $188 million, fluctuating with market performance. It covers approximately 25 percent of the cost of educating our students. Lakeside has no debt and has been able to expand its programs dramatically thanks to the increase in endowment, while still keeping tuition in a competitive range among Pacific Northwest schools. Schools operate amidst varying conditions in the economy and enrollment, so endowments have become necessary in budgets for stability—they provide a number that schools can count on. Lakeside’s endowment, started in 1964, is the result of hundreds of gifts from

STEFANIE FELIX

many donors. That broad support is a legacy entrusted See Page 28 to the Board to use wisely to for a related fulfill the school’s mission. We story on Global have a conservative policy in Online Acadwhich we draw an average of emy’s first year. only 4 percent per year. And the average investment return has been 6 percent over the past five years, thanks to shrewd oversight from trustee Michael Larson and his firm BGI. The Lakeside endowment has many eyes trained on it—administration, Board, outside investment consultants, development team, and more—and it is a treasure we steward zealously. It is a targeted resource that enriches every Lakeside student’s experience. It takes several legs of the stool—tuition, the Annual Fund, donations from the Lakeside Parents Association, and the endowment—to support our students’ experience and keep Lakeside at the forefront of independent education. ■

CONNIE BALLMER

Chair, Board of Trustees

Head Note, Board Chair

INSIDE LAKESIDE

by Amanda Darling

At the heart of the renovated Allen-Gates Hall, the sky-lit open space is a popular spot for students and faculty.

Take a slideshow tour of the new Allen-Gates Hall: www.lakeside school.org/magazine or this QR code.

DANIEL SHEEHAN

Renovated Allen-Gates reopens

Room to learn, connect, dream

he 21st century workplace—the physical space from which innovation emerges—is undergoing a revolution. Around the world, people are rethinking their spaces to accommodate different kinds of work, promote collaboration, and inspire big-picture thinking. In a recent New York Times article, “Please, Just Give Me Some Space,” architecture critic Lawrence Cheek summed up this new way of thinking: “Buzz…is good. Private offices…are of debatable value. …Daylight, lots of it, is indispensable. Chance encounters yield creative energy.” The newly renovated Allen-Gates Hall, which reopened February 27, exemplifies several of these concepts. Approximately 4,000 square feet were added to the science and math building, including three classrooms, a chemistry lab, and a community workspace. The expansion allows Lakeside to offer more science classes, including additional sections 6

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Spring/Summer 2012

of advanced biology, advanced chemistry, and organic chemistry, as well as math and science electives—creating a capacity for innovation in the curriculum. New classrooms feature Harkness tables, which foster a participatory style of learning where students play a leadership role. At the heart of the building, two levels of open faculty offices are flooded with natural light from a large skylight. The activity in this space is the definition of “buzz”: Throughout the day, students are meeting with their teachers, using their laptops while perched on new couches and chairs tucked into corners, and working together at an impromptu meeting space that has turned out to be a popular spot for budding scientists, advisory groups, and teachers providing tutorials. The entire building was updated with new fire sprinklers, heating and ventilation units, lighting and controls, paint and carpet, and furniture. A second floor restroom and an elevator make the building more accessible, and updates to the building’s mechanical and electrical system will result in significant energy savings. At the reopening, Head of School Bernie Noe recounted some of the history of the building, which first opened in September 1987 and replaced basement-level departments in Bliss and McAllister Halls. Paul Allen ’71 and Bill Gates ’73 chose to fund it because, in Gates’

was dedicated to alumnus Kent Evans ’73. Read about his legacy in “From the Archives” on Page 58.

In 1987, Allen-Gates Hall

words, “Lakeside provided a unique environment that played a crucial role in our success in the computer industry.” The renovation and addition to AllenGates, the latest in a series of upgrades to Lakeside buildings, began in June 2011 and was finished on time and, at $4.9 million, under budget. Architects were LMN Architects of Seattle; the builder was Lease Crutcher Lewis; and Seneca Group provided management services. Funds for the project were raised by the Living Our Mission campaign, and the Lakeside School Parents Association donated $48,000 for chemistry lab equipment and materials as well as general classroom upgrades. Walking through the new space on opening day, students remarked to each other how beautiful it was. “I forgive you for making us use the portables,” said one student to a teacher. “It was worth it.” ■ Amanda Darling is communications director of Lakeside School. Reach her at Amanda.darling@lakesideschool.org or 206-440-2787.

Lakeside Lecture Series

Clarence Acox and his quartet, featuring Bernie Jacobs on flute, sax and vocals, Eric Velinde on piano, and Chuck Kistler on bass.

Acox, and all that jazz

Preeminent jazz educator and drummer Clarence Acox, with other members of his quartet, Bernie Jacobs, Eric Velinde, and Chuck Kistler, rocked the house February 15 at an assembly and at the 18th Annual Dan Ayrault Memorial Endowed Lecture. Acox gave a lesson in types of jazz and jazz history to both audiences, and a master class in the afternoon to the Upper School Jazz Band. Acox directs Garfield High School’s renowned Jazz Ensemble, co-founded and is co-artistic director of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, and is artistic director of Seattle JazzED, a nonprofit created to offer the highest level of jazz education and performance to area youth.

Moyo looks to the bottom line

Zambia-born economist and bestselling author Dambisa Moyo gave the BGI Lecture on Economics March 28, and pointed to wrongheaded incentives as the key to why the West is at risk of economic decline and African governments are being undermined. Moyo’s books include Dead Aid: Why Aid

☛Hear the lectures at lakesideschool.org or these QR codes:

Clarence Acox

FALL, WINTER SPEAKERS ON TAP

“Genius” Roland Fryer speaks Sept. 12

TOM REESE

is Not Working and How there is a Better Way for Africa and How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly and the Stark Choices Ahead. In the West, and particularly the U.S., she told students, “policymaking is basically a reflection of politicians incentivized in a particular way” namely by lobbying: “We call that bribery in my country.” A result is the rapidly growing population of the unskilled, unemployed, and disaffected that is threatening the nation’s wealth and stature. Meanwhile emerging countries like Brazil and China are creating incentives to encourage growth and reduce poverty. In Africa, she argued, Western governments’ aid has focused on short-term “Band-Aid solutions” that erode the countries’ political systems by encouraging corruption and lack of accountability. Better, she argued, is China’s approach in Africa, which, while not perfect, has invested and created jobs there. ■

Dambisa Moyo

“Solutions to Fixing Education in America—No More Excuses” will be Roland Fryer’s topic for the September 12 BGI Lecture. Fryer is a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner; a Harvard University economics professor; the creator of the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard, which focuses on bold, “real world, datadriven” solutions; and a collaborator on the bestselling book Freakonomics. He’ll present five solutions that have turned around some of the country’s lowest achieving schools, and says that, with such results, “We’re out of excuses … If we want to compete with South Korea, if we want to fundamentally change the landscape of our economy, if we want to stop holding kids accountable for the zip code that they’re born into, the time is now.”

Ex-presidential advisors to spar Oct. 3

On October 3, just five weeks before the November presidential election, two former presidential advisors will take a brief break from the circuit of news programs to talk politics for the fourth annual Belanich Family Lecture on Ethics and Politics. Dee Dee Myers, President Clinton’s White Karen Hughes, left, House press sec- and Dee Dee Myers retary, and Karen Hughes, counselor to President George W. Bush, will give their (partisan, of course) perspectives on the presidential race. Myers and Hughes will begin with brief remarks followed by a moderated question and answer session that will no doubt ignite a passionate response from the audience.

Allen-Gates, lectures

INSIDE LAKESIDE

by CAREY QUAN GELERNTER

2 alumnae at helm of middle school

Elaine Christensen ’82 named new director; Anne Stavney ’81 hands over reins of “super high-functioning” school

lumnae Elaine Christensen ’82 and Anne Stavney ’81 were only a year apart at Lakeside. Both rowed on the crew team, both first found their intellectual footing at Lakeside, and both found their way back to Lakeside as English teachers. Both took on increasing responsibilities over the years. Christensen was promoted to her latest post, as associate Upper School director and director of faculty and staff programs, four years ago. Stavney was tapped six years ago to direct the Middle School and to serve as one of Lakeside’s two assistant heads, overseeing admissions, global programs, and Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program (LEEP). Now Stavney leaves Lakeside to head The Blake School, an independent pre-K-12 of 1400 students located on three campuses in the Twin Cities (“the Lakeside of Minneapolis,” as Lakeside Head of School Bernie Noe calls it). After a national search, Christensen was chosen to become the new director of Lakeside’s Middle School this fall. We hear what Christensen sees in the months ahead, as she brings what the search committee calls her “extraordinary abilities as a school administrator” along with her deep interest in the middle school years, to her new post. And we look at the legacy that Stavney— whom Noe calls “the strongest principal the Middle School has had in 25 years”—leaves for Christensen to build upon at the Middle School.

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Spring/Summer 2012

Elaine Christensen ’82, named Lakeside’s new Middle School director.

laine Christensen

laine Christensen, then Elaine Schneider, came to Lakeside in 9th grade because her parents knew she needed more academic challenge: “I was reading cartoons at school and Jane Eyre at home.” Money was tight; her father was a community college counselor, her mother worked at a small housing non-

tom reese

profit. Lakeside awarded both Elaine and her younger brother substantial scholarships, at a time when the school had limited financial aid to give. “I came here and it changed my life. I was working harder than I’d ever worked, which was super. I experienced a safe environment to learn and take

Elaine Christensen ’82, left, was a rower on a Lakeside crew team. When she returned to teach, she revived the crew program at Lakeside.

Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives, 1981

risks. I had some amazing teachers English and run the community services who knew me well and inspired me. It program (precursor of service learning). opened my eyes to lots of different walks She subsequently became, in turn, dean of life. I learned to think critically and of students; assistant director; and assostand up for what I believed in. ciate director in 2008. “Lakeside is where I learned to She found that administration was believe in the power of a community her calling: “I like the combination of built on principles and not just rules.” vision and detail. I like systems—that’s Her Lakeside experiwhat a lot of administraences helped shape the tion is, designing and educational philosophy managing systems which she would later develop, allow teachers and stusummed up as coupling dents to focus on the “high challenge and high central purposes of a support” for students. school—teaching and From Lakeside, she learning.” went on to get an English She also likes that degree from Northwestadministration requires ern University and an MA her to work with a varifrom Middlebury Colety of Lakesiders. That’s lege’s Bread Loaf School Christensen in 1982 certainly been true in of English. (Later she’d also complete a her role of leading professional develMaster of Education in private school opment for faculty: She must inspire leadership from Columbia University.) and support teachers’ growth, and get She hadn’t intended to go into teach- buy-in for innovations in teaching. Two ing but landed a job at Peddie School, highpoints she takes pride in: a session a New Jersey boarding school. “I fell in organized around the experiences of love with teaching and school life.” multiracial students; and others with To return to the Northwest, she took Tony Wagner and Alan November, two a job at Tacoma’s Charles Wright Acad- thought leaders who greatly influenced emy as English teacher and director of Lakeside teachers with their messages student activities. In 1992 she got the advocating schoolwork that “adds value chance to return to Lakeside, to teach to the world” and technology that fur-

thers collaborative learning and global perspective. In announcing Christensen’s selection as the new Middle School director, Head of School Bernie Noe cited professional development for faculty as one of her many contributions to Lakeside. Some others: She led creation of the Upper School Judicial Committee, a linchpin of character education at Lakeside; reinvigorated the rowing program; served as lead administrator for the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools (PNAIS) evaluation of Lakeside in 2010-2012; and played a significant role in all the school’s major initiatives, from the Mission Focus to athletics to diversity. Christensen competed for the Middle School head position with “a very strong, nationwide applicant pool that included five sitting middle school principals—a stellar group,” Noe said. “At the end of the day, people believed that Elaine is the one to do this. She’ll do it differently from Anne, that’s totally fine. Our expectation is that she will be equally brilliant.” Cecile Delafield ’86, a member of the search committee, stressed that “it was not a foregone conclusion that Elaine Christensen was going to be our next Middle School director; she was not ➢ Alumnae Middle School directors

nne stavne y

Courtesy of The Blake School

Anne Stavney ’81, named new head of The Blake School. ➢ ALUMNAE

Christiansen, Stavney

given preferential treatment because she was an inside candidate. She needed to— and certainly did—demonstrate she was the best candidate for the position.” Also on the committee, Middle School history teacher Meera Patankar noted that the members greatly valued “Elaine’s depth of commitment to Lakeside’s mission.” Fellow member Tom Rona ‘72, head of the Middle School Mathematics Department, put it this way: “Elaine has a quality that no other candidate could hope to match, namely a profound understanding of Lakeside: our values, our formal and informal processes, our history, and our most profound aspirations.” And, on top of her proven administrative skills, they named personal traits: “Her confidence, humility, and mindfulness make her a great leader and mentor,” Patankar said. Patankar said the committee also appreciated Christensen’s involvement in Middle School life: She set up a Middle School sculling program and coaches 7th-grade rowers; was chair of the Middle School Arts Department for 2010-2011, during the 10

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Spring/Summer 2012

maternity leave of another faculty member; and parents two Lakesiders, a 7th grader and a 10th grader. All these experiences increasingly drew her to the Middle School. “The work done in that division is profoundly important,” Christensen says. And as she said in her application for the post: “The years between 10 and 14 are powerfully significant and serious and hilarious and frustrating and hopeful all at the same time. Students develop physically, cognitively, morally, socially, and emotionally, changing from day to day and hour to hour.” Asked about her short-term and long term goals, she says short-term they are “to immerse myself in the Middle School community, ask questions, listen, and learn.” Long-term goals will be “to hire and retain and support excellent teachers and teaching. Build on the excellent work Anne did as director. Innovate at a healthy pace. Continue to advocate for the Middle School as equal partner in the overall Lakeside educational program.”

nne Stavney ’81 was “very serious, earnest, and intense” in her Lakeside school days, she recalls. She first came in 7th grade and by the time she graduated, she was voted “most likely to do her homework” and “most likely to succeed.” At Lakeside, “I was taken seriously as a thinker and a scholar. That made a huge difference to me.” Her English teacher Judy Lightfoot was a mentor; Stavney did an independent study with her on women authors. “That developed my love of literature, and also helped me realize the power of the teacher-student relationship that could be so formative and meaningful.” She graduated Smith College, got a PhD in English from the University of Washington, and taught 19th and 20th century literature at the University of Tulsa, becoming a distinguished scholar of African American women’s literature. (Why that specialty? “There was a sense of an articulation of community that was so strong, that I could see through these novels by African American women. It just grabbed me.”) In 1999, Lightfoot recruited her to teach English at Lakeside. A year later, she was made head of the Upper School’s English department, where she was instrumental in shifting the culture of the department toward one that fosters innovation and collaboration and broadened the curriculum to include voices of women and people of color. But it’s been her years at the Middle School that she has enjoyed most. She leaves a “super high-functioning Middle School,” Noe says. Stavney began by examining everything— from curriculum down to bus forms—with an eye to what was best for middle-schoolaged students. She would always ask why things were done a certain way and whether there could be a better way, says Michael Nachbar, now director of Global Online Academy, who was Stavney’s assistant director from 2008 until last summer. She built a foundation by gathering faculty at the beginning of the 2008 school year to work together to define the social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills, attributes, knowledge, and attitudes that a graduating 8th grader should have—from“critical thinking” to “time management” to “willingness to try new things.” That became their guide for everything the Middle School did. Each year Stavney picked a different area of the Middle School to focus on: homework;

Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives

Anne Stavney ’81, second from left, rowed in a four oared boat that won the national high-school championship in 1980. As a senior the next year, she became team captain, and her eight oared boat also won nationals.

class scheduling; the science program. She instituted or revamped instrumental music, outdoors, and service learning programs. She began languages in 5th grade rather than having students wait until 6th. She got department heads to see themselves not as managers but as team leaders in the cause of better teaching and stronger curriculum. Not everyone always agreed with her decisions but those who worked closely with her say her scrupulous fairness and deep knowledge about teaching won her great respect. “I have seen seven Middle School directors come and go. With all respect to the previous seven, Anne is in another class entirely,” says Tom Rona ’72, veteran head of the Middle School Mathematics Department. He wrote a “short list of qualities

she has demonstrated” (which numbered nine), starting with “she has integrity; what she says and does is who she is” and including “she sets a course and does not give up when things get messy or difficult.” Fundamental was her advocacy for the Middle School within the larger school community. “Because we don’t have a lower school and because the Upper School is twice the size of the Middle School, it’s easy for people to perceive it as ‘tagged on’ rather than part of an overall arc of students’ growth,” Stavney says. “I’ve worked hard at changing that and have been pretty successful. There’s a popular view of middle school as a tunnel you have to endure—it’s not. It’s the pivot point between elementary and high school … if students don’t fully make

Anne Stavney ’81 as a freshman, hanging out during a free period in teacher Gray Pedersen’s off ice with her sister Kristin, a sophomore.

that pivot they aren’t ready for high school.” In her new school, Blake, Stavney will find an institution that plays something of the same role in Minneapolis that Lakeside does in Seattle. Its mission statement is similar to Lakeside’s. While the school is much larger and spans a greater age range, it is not as diverse as Lakeside, something Stavney will be charged with addressing. It also enjoys greater competition from two independent schools and a suburban school district, a challenge that Stavney relishes. At the same time, she says there’s a distinct racial north-south divide in Minneapolis and she will task Blake, which has a LEEPlike program, and herself to play a greater partnership role in addressing the needs of students who attend abysmal, de facto-segregated schools in north Minneapolis. As an alumna, Stavney will, of course, stay connected with Lakeside, but she will maintain many professional ties as well. Blake has just joined Global Online Academy (see related story on Page 28). And Stavney’s seeing to it that it joins a second Lakeside-led consortium, Peru Semester, a school abroad program slated to begin in 2013, as well as Private Schools in Public Partnership (see Page 15 for a related story.) And, asked if she could ever see coming back some day to Lakeside as head of school, Stavney answers: “Yes.” Then she adds: “If it’s the right thing for me and my family, for where the school is and for where it needs to go at that time.” ■

Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives

Alumnae Middle School directors

INSIDE LAKESIDE

Faculty news

Applause please …

Caytlyn Chilelli, Central Washington University

•Middle School Athletic Director Sandy Schneider was inducted into her alma mater University of Central Missouri’s Athletic Hall of Fame on February 28. She was named to the UCM All-Decade basketball team for 1970-80 and to the Silver Anniversary team (1970-1995). She led her team in assists and steals both seasons she played (74-75 and 75-76) and also competed in cross country and track. •The National Association of Independent Schools’ (NAIS) new book, The Inclusive School: A Selection of Writing on Diversity Issues in Independent Schools, includes an article coauthored by Athletic Director Abe Wehmiller on how schools can develop a framework for aligning their missions with their goals for diversity and inclusion. •Collectors bought a giant ceramic teapot created by

LAKESIDE

CURT DOUGHTY

•Central Washington University commissioned Middle School English teacher Ramon Esquivel’s play Luna; its Theatre Studies Department produced it in April on campus and then took it on tour this spring to schools and libraries throughout Washington. The family-friendly comedy is about the daughter of migrant farmworkers.

Upper School teachers Jodi Rockwell and Jacob Foran and donated it to the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Mass., which will house the world’s largest contemporary teapot collection. Foran also showed at four other exhibits this spring: “A Show of Heads II” at Seattle Design Center; Expo at Washington State Convention Center; SOFA NYC 2012 (Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair); and a solo show at Gallery 4Culture. •A host of Lakeside administrators, teachers, trustees, and alumni organized, moderated, and gave presentations at the NAIS’ annual conference, including Charlot te Bles sing (global education); Booth Kyle (inclusive admissions); Bryan Smith and Colleen Kyle (ethical education), Jake Clapp and Connie Ballmer (online education); Than Healy, Bernie Noe, and Bill Gates ’73 (innovation and education), Skip Kotkins ’66 (leadership), and T.J. Vas sar ’68 (Diversity Award winner). ■

Spring/Summer 2012

T.J. Vassar ’68 accepts the 2012 Diversity Leadership Award at the National Association of Independent Schools annual conference in Seattle.

T.J. Vassar ’68 wins prestigious award

T.J. Vassar ’68, Lakeside’s long-time director of diversity, was presented the prestigious Diversity Leadership Award of the National Association of Independent Schools on March 2 at the NAIS annual conference in Seattle. The award—the only one that NAIS bestows—is given to “champions of the cause of diversity, inclusivity, and social justice,” said NAIS President Patrick Bassett. “This year, with our theme of ‘innovation,’ we felt strongly that T.J. Vassar, a man of unlimited optimism, faith, creativity, and ‘can do’ spirit, was eminently deserving of the 2012 Diversity Leadership Award.” The award program noted Vassar’s work for Seattle Public Schools, including as president of the Seattle School Board, his expansion of Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program (LEEP) as its director, and his nearly 20-year tenure as Lakeside’s director of diversity. Vassar spoke of the courage it takes to make a difference—for students, teachers, the community, as well as for him.“I encouraged people to examine questions of privilege, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual preference,” he said.“These things define who we are; they evoke strong emotions. … “It took some time, but Lakeside School changed course in terms of its demographics because the head and key staff worked together to make it happen. Lakeside was the example of a white elitist school. Some still think that is true, but the facts show a multicultural student body, diverse ethnically and socioeconomically.” ■

New director of equity and instruction t press time, A Head of School Bernie Noe

announced that Christel McGuigan will be Lakeside’s new director of equity and instruction, beginning July 1. McGuigan is currently director of multicultural programs at Greenhill School in Dallas, Texas. Look for more about McGuigan in the fall issue of Lakeside magazine. ☛Read Vassar’s speech, and an earlier prof ile about him, at lakesideschool.org/ magazine, or with this QR code.

Props add fun to a simulation of Biosphere 2, an experiment in which a team lived in a closed environment. Ninth graders Jonatan C., Serena X., and Austin A. measure water as they seek to maintain ecological balance in their assigned biome of oceans and marshes.

TOM REESE

Looking at the VERY big picture Lakeside pilots Big History course as part of international project

his year Lakeside, along with six other public and independent schools across the U.S. and Australia, began piloting a 9th-grade course called Big History that has big plans to inspire high-school students around the world. The course is a collaborative effort of the Big History Project (bighistoryproject.com), which is providing cutting-edge online materials and technology to support the pioneering teachers developing lesson plans. The goal is to make the course available to high school students and lifelong learners everywhere for free by the 2013-14 school year. Bill Gates ’73 was inspired to start and fund the project after viewing Australian educator David Christian’s groundbreaking online Big History course. A quick definition of Big History: a unified

account of the history of the universe, from Big Bang to present, that uses evidence and ideas from many disciplines to create a broad context for understanding humanity. The approach is designed to develop students’ ability to think critically, synthesize complex information, and understand humans’ impact on the planet. An additional project goal is to increase the teaching of science in high schools across the country. Next September, more than 45 schools in the U.S. and Australia will join the second year of the pilot, including one public school in Puget Sound. Lakeside’s Big History team teachers are Deb Johnston, Upper School history chair, and Keith Klingler, Upper School science teacher. Johnston heard about the Big History Project at an international world history conference a year ago, and grabbed the chance for Lakeside to apply to be one of the pilot schools. Klingler volunteered to teach with her. The teachers frequently teleconference, as well as use electronic bulletin boards, to share the

best of their creative lesson plans. They’ll be lending help to next year’s new pilot schools in each of their respective areas; for Lakeside, that will be Highline School District’s Technology, Engineering & Communications High School, or TEC. University of Michigan researchers are evaluating student learning and assessing which materials and teaching strategies are most effective. Lakeside 9th graders have a choice of taking World History or Big History. Lakeside Summer School is also offering Big History. Big History involves a bigger time commitment than World History because it meets more often—four times a week like science classes, versus three times a week for other history classes. But the students say they’ve enjoyed the challenging activities, such as simulating Biosphere 2, an experiment in which a team of humans lived in a closed environment meant to mimic Earth. “It’s interesting studying the history of the universe. It’s opened my eyes to the broader picture,” says Nadia Khan ’15. “Humans are only one little part of history.” ■ Faculty news, Big History

INSIDE LAKESIDE

An alum sent Bruce Bailey the plaque as a fun nod to his many roles at Lakeside (undated photo but note Bailey’s typewriter).

Goodbye, Mr. Lakeside

hen Bruce Bailey ’59, aka “Mr. Lakeside,” retires this month after 42 years of working for Lakeside at an astonishing range of jobs—he’s had 13 different titles—he leaves a legacy that cannot be duplicated. It includes an encyclopedic memory of nearly every alum who has passed through the school’s halls. Accolades for his successes in many roles have piled up over the years—notably he won the Board of Trustees’ Distinguished Service Award in 1996, and was elected to the Washington State Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame in 2003. “His love of Lakeside extends to traditions but also the school’s innovative changes,” says Daiga Galins, director of development (a post Bailey himself held in 1972-1973 and again in 2001-2002). Back in 1971, he provided financial analysis to support the merger with St. Nicho-

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las; for the past year he’s been on the committee for the new athletic strategic plan. “Most of all, he has been the inexhaustible champion of students and alumni during their Lakeside days and far 1959 Numidian beyond,” Galins says. “To quote a colleague of his: ‘If I had a nickel for every time Bruce said of a former student, ‘Great kid! Great kid!’ I’d be a wealthy woman.’” Notes Libby Armintrout ’82, president of the Board of Trustees in 2005-2009: “Having a teacher who believes in you inspires ordinary people to extraordinary effort. Bruce had the ability to recognize unique passion and talent

in his students. Bruce believed in many people during his years at Lakeside and I feel exceptionally lucky to have been one of them.” For the last four years, as executive secretary to the Alumni Association, Bailey has continued to do what he has always done at Lakeside, but in an official capacity —he has reached out to alums from all generations to share good news about Lakeside and encourage them to stay connected—while serving on the Admissions Committee and as a coach in the boys basketball program. Says Bailey: “I retire from Lakeside with so many great memories and am so grateful to all the remarkable people whom I have known and worked with through the years in this school community. As they say, it has been a great run.” ■

Private schools, public purpose

Bruce Bailey ’59, at left, cheers on the boys basketball team at a 1989 state championship game at the Tacoma Dome.

Bruce Bailey ’59’s many roles at Lakeside

Believe it or not, this is only a partial list: Student, 1953-59: President of his class four years; eight varsity letters, basketball captain. Director of planning, 1970-1972; director of development, 1972-1973, 20012002; director of finance, 1975-1976 (drawing on his Wharton School MBA); director of alumni affairs, 1974-1988, 2008; college counselor, 1974-2009; director of athletics, 1978-1979, 1984-1985; director of college counseling, 1985-2009; director of operations, 1992-1993; Upper School director, 1994-1996, 2000-2001; executive secretary to the Alumni Board, 2008-12. And—while holding these multiple “day jobs,” he also taught economics and coached, especially boys varsity basketball (1972-1990). Honoring Bruce Bailey

An open house for alumni to honor Bruce Bailey is scheduled for May 19. Look for photos and a story in the fall Lakeside magazine.

Bruce Bailey ’59 with daughter Kathryn Bailey ’09 in 2009— on the occasion of his 50th reunion and her graduation.

Other retirement news coming: Veteran teachers Mike Brandon and Lance King and Director of Business and Operations Sylvia Pautler have just announced they will retire. Look for more on them in the fall magazine.

“What is the public purpose of your private school?” That was the theme of the two-day symposium held on the Lakeside campus in February and attended by 100 representatives of independent schools, partner organizations, and foundations from across the nation. Having a public purpose means “expanding our sense of community beyond our fences, to ensure that there is an additional set of students that is able to benefit from a school’s program,” says Latasia Lanier ’90, director of Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program (LEEP). Lanier directed the symposium, which was sponsored by a national coalition originally named Private Schools with Public Purpose, recently renamed Private Schools in Public Partnership. The coalition began about seven years ago; T.J. Vassar ’68, Lakeside’s longtime diversity director, was a founder. Members also include schools such as Hawaii’s Punahou and California’s Head-Royce and partnering organizations such as the George Lukas Educational Foundation. PSPP’s goals are to “expand the place of private schools in the national movement to level and elevate the playing field for America’s youth,” in part by providing leadership and support to schools and organizations in developing publicprivate partnerships. Such partnerships can take many forms. There are summer and year-round educational enrichment programs for public school students (LEEP is considered a national model). A number of independent schools invite public school teachers to attend in-house professional development programs. Others partner with companies and foundations. Why do independent schools need a public purpose? The coalition says it’s partly because they have much to offer.“Independent schools can be so influential,” says Lanier.“We have the mindset that students have so much potential and possibility—and there is equal potential and possibility in public schoolchildren. For independent schools that are financially stable, reaching out into the community and forming partnerships makes sense, given the financial straits of so many public schools. If you’re an independent school, you can’t ignore the education of all students.” a LEEP grad and former LEEP assistant who attended the conference, is starting a LEEP-type program where she teaches. Read more in Class Connections, Page 45.) Anne Taylor ’83,

Bruce Bailey, PSPP

SPORTS ROUNDUP

by TREVOR KLEIN ’03 and Chris Hein

PETER ADLER

Zach Wagner ‘12 celebrates Lakeside’s f irst boys WIAA 3A state championship after securing the 400-freestlye relay as the Lions’ anchor.

Lions make waves

uilding on last year’s success, the boys swimming and diving team brought a considerable amount of hardware back to a proud campus this winter. The team snapped a six-year run by Mercer Island, winning the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) 3A state championship. Lakeside’s football team set a single-season scoring record, and the girls basketball team made an appearance in the final eight of the WIAA 3A Hardwood Classic. Here’s the rundown of this year’s fall and winter seasons:

WIAA 3A state championship meet

FALL SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS

FOOTBALL | Overall record: 6-4 Kyle L. ’13 ran his way into the Lakeside record books, becoming the new single-season rushing leader on top of registering the most touchdowns scored over a one-year span. Adam H. ’14 set the single-game passing record with 256 yards against Bishop Blanchet. The 2011 squad set the Lakeside singleseason scoring record with 295 points.

CROSS-COUNTRY Metro League championship meet

Girls Metro League team champions Andrea M. ’15 (girls): 19:22.60 (1st place) Rebecca D. ’14 (girls): 19:46.09 (3rd place) Brian Masterson ’12 (boys): 16:05.40 (4th place) Paul Picciano ’12 (boys): 16:37.34 (10th place)

Metro League honors

Girls 1st Team: Natalie Fox ’13, Rebecca D. ’14, Andrea M. ’15

PETER ADLER

The Lakeside boys swimming and diving team hoists its f irst WIAA 3A crown on February 18 at King County Aquatic Center. Pictured: Zach Wagner ’12, Robbie Adler ’12, Sean Ekavithvorakul ’12, Kevin Yu ’12, Conrad Schabb ’12, Andrew Bowker ’12, Michael S. ’13, Gavin B. ’14, Kyle C. ’14, Hugh J. ’14, Blake S. ’14, Tom H. ’14, Carter J. ’15, Abrahm D. ’15.

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Boys 1st Team: Brian Masterson ‘12 Girls 2nd Team: Morgan Richmond ’12, Kathryn M. ’13, Lindsey C. ’15 Boys 2nd Team: Paul Picciano ’12 Honorable mention: Sammy M. ’13

Sea-King District 2 meet

Girls: 3rd place team finish. Boys: 5th place team finish Andrea M. ’15 (girls): 19:00.10 (2nd place) Rebecca D. ’14 (girls): 19:26.33 (5th place) Brian Masterson ’12 (boys): 16:07.37 (7th place)

Girls: 6th place team finish. Boys: 15th place team finish Andrea M. ’15 (girls): 18:53.30 (10th place) Brian Masterson ’12 (boys): 15:52.30 (15th place)

GIRLS GOLF | Overall record: 6-3 Metro championships 4th place – Libby R. ’13 (181) 25th place – Alana A. ’14 (225)

CLAYTON CHRISTY

Kaylee Best ’13 and the Lakeside girls varsity basketball team made a second straight trip to the WIAA 3A Hardwood Classic at the Tacoma Dome. BOYS GOLF | Overall record: 5-5 Metro championships

10th place – Henry Cleworth ’12 (160) 15th place – Thomas T. ’14 (164) 28th place – Clayton Brock ’12 (170)

Sea-King District 2 championships

WINTER SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS GIRLS BASKETBALL | Overall record: 20-9 2nd place finish in the Metro Mountain Division

T 22nd place – Clayton Brock ’12 (85) T 22nd place – Henry Cleworth ’12 (85) T 24th place – Thomas T. ’14 (87)

Sea-King District 2 runner-up

GIRLS SOCCER | Overall record: 4-6-5 Metro League honors (Mountain Division)

Metro League honors (Mountain Division)

All-League 1st Team: Natalie Spach ’12, Darby M. ’14 All-League 2nd Team: Laynee L. ’13, Rebecca L. ’13 All-League honorable mention: Claire A. ’13, Anna S. ’14, Olivia D. ’15, Kailee M. ’15, Kate M. ’15

VOLLEYBALL | Overall record: 3-11 Metro League honors (Mountain Division) All-League 1st Team: Kaylee B. ’13 All-League 2nd Team: Jennie G. ’13 All-League honorable mention: Nina B. ’13

WIAA 3A Hardwood Classic final eight appearance All-League 1st Team: Kaylee B. ’13 All-League 3rd Team: Danielle Estelle ’12 All-League honorable mention: Zoe W. ’13, Christina C. ’14, Sydney K. ’15

BOYS BASKETBALL | Overall record: 10-11 4th place finish in the Metro Mountain Division

Metro League honors (Mountain Division) All-League 3rd Team: Tramaine I. ’14 All-League honorable mention: Lewis Cramer ’12, Adam Harrell ’12, Daley Seaton ’12, D’Marques T. ’14

COED SWIMMING AND DIVING | Dual meet record: 7-1 Coed Metro League relay champions Coed Metro League team champions

Girls WIAA 3A state academic champions Boys Sea-King District 2 team champions Boys WIAA 3A state team champions WIAA 3A state individual champions 50 freestyle: Zach Wagner ’12 – 20.87 (All-American consideration) 100 freestyle: Zach Wagner ’12 – 45.47 (All-American automatic) 200 medley relay: Abrahm Devine ’12, Robbie Adler ’12, Kevin Yu ’12, Zach Wagner ’12 – 1:36.58 (All-American consideration) 400 freestyle relay: Henry S. ’13, Sean Ekavithvorakul ’12, Conrad Shabb ’12, Zach Wagner ’12 – 3:08.6 (All-American consideration)

COED WRESTLING | Dual meet record: 5-5 Boys WIAA 3A state academic champions WIAA Region 2: John C. ’13 – 5th place WIAA Region 1 individual champion: Aika Mitchell ’12 WIAA Mat Classic XXIV: Aika Mitchell ’12 – 3rd place) ■ Trevor Klein ’03 is digital communications specialist at Lakeside School. Reach him at 206-440-2955 or trevor.klein@lakesideschool.org. Statistics compiled by Chris Hein, assistant athletic director at Lakeside School: 206-440-2750 or chris.hein@lakesideschool.org.

Sports

Innovation is the word of the day. by CAREY QUAN GELERNTER X photo illustration by TOM REESE

o surprise, given fast-evolving technology, globalization, and the accompanying economic upheaval that’s transforming the world as we’ve known it. Whether in business, politics, or education, we hear that if we want to recapture our mojo we must “innovate our way to the future.” “Innovation is the means, equity is the end goal,” says alumnus Bill Gates ’73, the keynote speaker in March at the conference of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) in Seattle. Its theme: “innovation.” Introduced by Head of School Bernie Noe as “one of the world’s foremost innovators,” the Microsoft chairman and philanthropist promised that in 10 years, innovation in technology will dramatically transform education. The previous month saw the opening of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Visitors Center, which features an Innovation and Inspiration Gallery that touts the power of turning talent to solving the world’s problems. Only blocks away in South Lake Union, a new Center for Innovation is to open later this year at the Museum of History and Industry—a gift by that leader of “disruptive innovation,” Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. It aims to encourage young innovators by showcasing groundbreaking Northwest businesses, some headed by Lakeside alums. In his blog Noe recently highlighted a book, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, for its premise that “the future belongs to the creative group in every society” who morph traditional occupations into new jobs for themselves and others. In the stories that follow, we look at innovation both at school and in the Lakeside alumni community: • We feature some of the Lakeside alumni who are showing the way—actually many ways—to thrive in the new normal, drawing on their creativity, entrepreneurism, and out-of-the-box thinking. • We follow the first year of the Global Online Academy. It is pioneering a global partnership of leading independent schools, including Lakeside, offering quality online classes while also inspiring change on campuses. Watch a video of Bill Gates’ speech to NAIS on technology’s promise for education and read Bernie Noe’s Q&A session with Gates at lakeside.org/magazine or by scanning these QR codes.

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Are you a gamechanger, or do you know one?

hat’s the question we posed, seeking Lakeside alumni whose inventions, ideas, or actions have changed the way people work, play, or think. We all know about Lakeside’s most famous alums: Craig McCaw ’68, who revolutionized wireless communications, and Microsoft founders Bill Gates ’73 and Paul Allen ’71, who have moved into new forms of innovation—Gates as a philanthropist in global health and education, Allen as a philanthropist in brain research and with a new company, Stratolaunch Systems, that’s building the largest plane ever as a carrier to launch rockets to orbit. But our query clued us in to dozens of other alumni who are all breaking new ground in their own ways. Here are a few of their stories, along with their tips for how we can all find our inner innovator.

by John Roach ’90

Rainy Connections

Scott Larson ’89 and Fred Northup ’91 share a stubborn tenacity that got them though allnighters editing videos for Lakeside film classes and through every roadblock on their quest to make a snow globe that rains. The story of RainGlobes began when Northup’s buddy Josh James happened to complain to him that the globes at the SeaTac gift shops failed to reflect this region’s famous weather. Northup ran with the idea, devoting spare time from his entertainment company, Southdown Creative, to a prototype he built with Tupperware, toothpicks, and duct tape. “I’m a driven, creative person, but I needed someone with business sense and the startup experience,” Northup says. He bumped into his film-class pal at a picnic in 2008 and explained the concept. Larson is the founder and managing partner of Vashon Partners, an investment firm that takes raw ideas to market. He mastered the skill during a business fellowship at Columbia University and his early involvement with ➢

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theglobe.com, a late ’90s Internet star. “I said, let’s build a company around this,’” Larson recalls, who has a keen eye for finding the potential in ideas and bringing them to life. He notes that RainGlobes is much easier to explain than his other ventures, such as Holovision, which projects informational 3-D holographs akin to R2-D2 showing Luke Skywalker messages from Princess Leia. He commercialized that one and sold out of it. He became the first investor “All in RainGlobes. of the roadblocks They still needed an engineer, however, to that you hit when turn the prototype into a commercial product. you are doing something Northup met him on an airplane while flying creative are the points in the back from an emceeing gig in Boston. He happrocess where other people pened to design IV drips for medical devices, would quit.” “Explore which is exactly the type of dripping they needed Fred Northup ’91 opportunities that for RainGlobes. A RainGlobes patent was issued may not fit directly into the in fall 2011. The first batch of Seattle snow globes that mold of what you think you are rain sold out in two weeks. supposed to follow

Ahead in the Cloud Debra Dove ’91 knows all your data will soon be stored on someone else’s computers. Don’t worry; it should be safe and always available thanks to her handiwork on SQL Server 2012, Microsoft’s cloud-ready database management system. Microsoft is betting on cloud computing because it’s less expensive and more efficient for business and life. Storing data remotely allows access for everyone who needs it from any computer, at any time. Her goal is to make sure the cloud operates seamlessly. Dove first began at Microsoft as an intern 16 years ago and never looked back. One of her first jobs was to develop a way to keep databases on different computers in sync. That would later allow for data to be replicated on servers around the globe in a cloud-connected world. “If you are just solving today’s problems, you are not laying out that roadmap for your customers,” she says. Dove is principle program manager lead at Microsoft, which means she leads a team of program managers who try to figure out what the future will look like and what products to build for it. She recently helped make the Bing search engine return the results you meant to search for, not what you typed in the box. Early in her career, she led the development of SQL Server Compact, which allowed synchronization between database applications. FedEx, for example, used it to more efficiently track packages around the world and a medical company in South America synced information to gadgets that doctors could carry to remote villages and use to diagnose ailments.

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or the path you are supposed to lead down. Leave open every possible avenue.” Scott Larson ’89

“Be passionate in the area you want to excel in because being passionate and excited … enables the mind to open up and take off the blinders.” Debra Dove ’91

In today’s world of constant connectivity, Dove is focused on ensuring that even in the face of disaster your data is always available. If a flood knocks out a server on the East Coast, for example, it would be seamlessly transferred to a server in the western U.S. “To the guy who is working out of Texas running the application, he won’t even know,” Dove explains.

The Coin Jar Jens Molbak ’80 didn’t fancy himself an innovator while studying for his MBA at Stanford University. He was just tired of lugging a jar of coins every time he moved during his 20s. “I ended up with an innovative idea and going off and pursuing it,” says the inventor of the Coinstar machines that turn grubby loose change into cash. Along the way, he learned that “innovation is a skill that can be taught … there is a process, a discipline, to go through.” He’s particularly fond of psychologist and inventor Edward de Bono’s work on lateral thinking and his “nine dot” exercise to get people to think “outside the box.” (Find links to more on de Bono and the exercise at lakesidemagazine.org.) Molbak’s process started with that coin jar. Banks had long ago abandoned their change-counting services and rolling his own required writing his name and account number on a wrapper. He knew “there had to be a better way.” From idea to machines was an 11-year journey full of challenges such as separating coins from paperclips, hairballs, and dried spaghetti, then counting the change accurately. Molbak surrounded himself with a like-minded team to tackle the challenges, ultimately achieving a profitable career that provides a public service in coin recycling and benefits non-profits with easy-to-make donations. He stepped down from Coinstar in 2001, but remains on the board of ecoATM, a Coinstar investment company with a similar premise to Coinstar—recycling cell phones sitting on people’s dresser tops with a machine that buys them back for cash. He frequently compares notes with a fellow director who’s an exec at Redbox, Coinstar’s movie rental business. Plus he runs the family business, Molbak’s Garden + Home. And he teaches innovation any chance he gets—to employees, former colleagues, and at Stanford, where he taught a case study on Coinstar. “When I am asked to speak about Coinstar I almost always play de Bono’s nine dot game.”

“Hollywood is no longer the gatekeeper” “Innovation is a skill that can be taught. It is a mindset and it is an approach. It is the glasses you wear. It is the environment you’re in that allows innovation to occur.” Jens Molbak ’80

Scilla Andreen ’80 recalls her epiphany about the “broken model” of filmmaking. “I’d been showing my films at festivals, winning awards and accolades. Hollywood came knocking with their distribution offers and they just sucked.” Filmmakers typically give up rights for long periods for little or no net reward or even enough to pay back investors. “I was literally standing on a street corner in Santa Monica; I pulled out paper and pencil and said, ‘The math doesn’t add up.’” So in 2005 she and a partner started IndieFlix, an online ➢ Innovators

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marketplace for film-festival movies from around the world that lets filmmakers keep the lion’s share of the profits and rights to their work. Today IndieFlix is a free, one-stop way for filmmakers to take advantage of new media and reach the broadest online audience. Leveraging her marketing savvy and broad industry expertise—Andreen’s been a filmmaker, director, casting agent, actor, producer, Emmy-winning costume designer—they’ve built IndieFlix into one of the largest independent film aggregators, with more than 5,000 titles and growing by 400 a month. They’ve added a video streaming membership service with Pandora-type functionality and an interactive game called Film Festival in a Box. They’re mining and selling data gleaned from their library of films—from who watches what kinds of movies, to products that appear in the films. “I have become obsessed with how we can make money on our art,” she says. “Starving artist—goodbye. Not anymore.” With a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, they’ve also created a foundation to distribute worthwhile movies to underserved communities like schools in poor neighborhoods and juvenile jails. Their hit Finding Kind on mean girls and bullying was one she felt a keen personal connection to, having been taunted for being Asian American as the only child of color in her Colorado elementary school. It has found a large audience (and was shown at Lakeside Middle School last year). “The Internet has changed the playing field; technology is really catching up, it has changed the ability for independent filmmakers to get their content out in the world. You’re not off in some alien nation just because you’re not in mainstream theaters; 143 million Americans watched movies over the Internet in 2011, and that’s not cable or video on demand.” She knew she’d hit pay dirt when, introduced as CEO of IndieFix at a party, a major motion picture mogul said, “You’re the ones who are (expletive deleted) up our business model” and warned: “Never “You’re doing a great job. We will be afraid to ask for watch you, then snuff you; watch help. You can’t do it alone; your back.” But that was about it’s like raising a child—comfour years ago, she says, and now munity is huge, especially in “we’re getting too big to crush, today’s world. And be honest. we’re seen as someone they can No one wants to help someone use as a good tool to vet good who is not authentic.” content. Scilla Andreen ’80 “Hollywood is no longer the gatekeeper.”

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“Think about how you might do something better, then get out of your mind what other people have said you can and can’t do . . . You have to listen to yourself and have faith in your own solutions and really explore those.” Dr. Kris Moe ’81

“Figure out something that is causing you pain and then say, ‘Okay, what can I do to fix this?’” Drew Inglis ’09

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Scarless brain surgery Dr. Kris Moe ’81 had performed hundreds of surgeries on the face and brain when he had a ground-breaking idea about seven years ago: Why not access the brain through the eye socket? Instead of opening the skull from the top—a craniotomy—this new technique provides even greater access to the brain while reducing pain, recovery time, and scarring. “Within two days, a lot of patients are just using Tylenol for pain relief,” says Moe, chief of the University of Washington’s Division of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. With TONES, for transorbital neuroendoscopic surgery, the surgeon makes a small entry through or behind the eyelid, removes a tiny bit of bone, moves the eyeball gently aside and inserts an endoscope to illuminate and magnify the treatment area. The surgery is used to remove tumors and abscesses, repair fractures, treat severe nose bleeds, seal cerebrospinal fluid leaks, and treat compressed optic nerves. Two other U.S. medical centers and one in Germany are also now using TONES. And surgeons are considering a range of possible new indications for the technique, including treatment for aneurysms and seizures.

Politically-Active Hackers Drew Inglis ’09 and Tess Rinearson ’11 credit Lakeside computer science teacher Lauren Bricker for nurturing their passion for hacking—the discipline of developing ideas quickly. Very quickly. It’s a skill the college students are already putting to hip, practical, and politically-active use as they innovate solutions to painful experiences for everyday people. “I’m Over the course of 48 hours this January, the no better at Lakeside duo and a friend developed a widget ➢ coming up with ideas

than anybody else, I’m just really good about sharing them.” Tess Rinearson ’11

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for websites that makes calling your congressional representatives as easy as one click. It went viral during the successful protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act, a controversial bill to combat copyright infringement. “We were really happy that we could help out with that,” Rinearson said. The widget, called Grassroutes, took second place at the biannual PennApps Hackathon hosted at the University of Pennsylvania where Rinearson is a first-year student. The creative energy surrounding the competition attracts hackers from colleges along the Eastern seaboard. Grassroutes won the judges’ attention for easing the process of political action on the Internet. Inglis, a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University, already has real-world startup experience: he took the 2010-2011 school year off to work at the social networking site Intersect.com, in Seattle. Updating his resume with the experience is now easier thanks to the ResumeCracker widget (it essentially resolves the problem of trying to write a resume in a Word doc and make it look pretty). He and Rinearson developed that one at Carnegie Mellon’s TartanHacks hackathon in February.

Changing the landscape of teen mental health In the U.S., the top three killers of teens are, in order, accidental death, homicide, and suicide; in Washington state suicide is No. 2. Mental health plays a role in all three; an estimated 20-25 percent of teens suffer at some point from anxiety or depression. Yet services to address these needs are often “Sports ineffective or inadequate to meet demand, with at Lakeside taught three- to six-month waiting lists for the best prime that the ‘team’ is critical to vate programs and psychiatrists. Even families success because no one person has the with unlimited means often find themselves solution to every problem, no matter how turning to out-of-state residence programs talented they are. Being a part of a supportive or psychiatric in-patient settings. team, where everyone is welcome, all voices are

Trevor Klein ’03

heard, ideas are leveraged, and any one person Kjell Oswald ’92, co-founder, and can lead or follow at any given time, allows Ronnie Cunningham ’86, clinical you to avoid narrow thinking and achieve “Something director (formerly with Rainier Scholars), see something greater.” I learned from my Cadence Family Therapy as a way to change Ronnie Cunningham ’86 years coaching and working the landscape of adolescent mental health. Their with scientists at the Hutch and Chilnew model of more accountable, all-inclusive “onedren’s Hospital (as director of development) stop shop” family clinics calls for: treating the child as is that the answer to your question might not part of his or her family, school, and community; clinical, counhave been answered in your field or in relation seling and educational specialists who work in teams and consult to your specific query, but it has probably been about each family in a grand-rounds-type environment; trackanswered. Ask a broad-enough audience … ing treatment results and reporting data on their outcomes to and you’ll be surprised what you families seeking their services; and adding business savvy—an are able to find.” emphasis on results, marketing, efficiency, and growth—to menKjell Oswald ’92 tal health best practices. “Changing the paradigm of how mental health practitioners view their business as well as how business views mental health,” Oswald says, is key to producing a healthyenough bottom line to allow expanding services to meet the overwhelming demand.

LAKESIDE

Spring/Summer 2012

INTUITIVE SURGICAL INC.

“I had no engineering training, so it helped a lot that I had no preformed beliefs (about what was possible). That made me think a lot about what I really wanted to do... I wasn’t tethered by what might be hard to do.” Dr. Frederic Moll ’69

he’s revolutionized the O.R. ‘like the Steve jobs of the medical field’

by Warren King

or thousands of surgery patients worldwide, the pain is less. Their recoveries are shorter. And their operations are much less invasive, thanks to a pioneer from Lakeside School. Dr. Frederic Moll ’69 has been the driving force behind a revolution in the operating room—the use of robotic technology to help surgeons treat everything from prostate cancer to heart problems. “He’s a visionary... He’s like the Steve Jobs of the medical field, a real pioneer in medical technology,” says Dr. Richard Satava, a major figure in surgical technology and senior medical research advisor for the U.S. Army. Over 30 years, Moll has founded three companies that create surgical systems to give physicians easier control of their instruments through the smallest of incisions. His da Vinci Surgical System to remove cancerous prostate glands is the star of medical robotics. Operations using this technology are unlike any you’ve ever seen: The surgeon sits at a console viewing a live picture of the surgical field inside the body. Instruments are electro-mechanically controlled by hand at the console. The system allows exceptionally precise movement of the instruments, even eliminating the slightest hand tremor. The tools

Dr. Frederic Moll ’69 received the 2012 Distinguished Alumni Award, which honors Lakeside and St. Nicholas alumni who make outstanding contributions to their professions or communities. Read about the award ceremony on Page 57.

and a camera are inserted through tiny ports, eliminating the need for long incisions. “You’re able to put your hand inside the body in a virtual sense,” says Moll. Today in the U.S., about 90 percent of all operations to remove cancerous prostate glands are performed with the da Vinci system created by Intuitive Surgical, which Moll founded in Sunnyvale, Calif. in 1995. Patients treated with the system generally have less pain and bleeding than with open surgery, but receive the same cancer control. And record numbers of physicians are now performing the surgery. The da Vinci system also is used to a lesser extent in other specialties, including gynecology, gastroenterology, cardiology, otolaryngology, and general surgery. Moll got a running start in surgical innovation. After graduating from the University of Washington School of Medicine, he became enthralled with the new field of minimally-invasive surgery during his resi-

dency at Virginia Mason Medical Center. He took a leave, secured funding, and in 1984 founded Endotherapeutics Corporation in California to make instruments for laparoscopic surgery. His most successful tool was a trocar, which protects internal organs as the surgeon moves instruments into the body cavity. He worked with two more companies developing laparoscopic instruments before turning his interest to robotics. With the exceptional success of the da Vinci system, Moll left Intuitive and founded Hansen Medical in 2003 to treat heart and vascular problems. Hansen-developed systems are designed to guide instruments through blood vessels to treat irregular heart rhythms and blocked arteries in the legs. In addition to Hansen, Moll even started a small robotics company in 2002 that facilitates hair transplants. Always the innovator, Moll left Hansen last December and now is exploring new ideas for eye surgery. “I love the process of change . . . and showing that there’s a better way to do things,” he says. “You can really improve peoples’ lives.” ➢ Warren King is a freelance medical writer and the former Seattle Times medical reporter. You can reach him at mwkingsea@comcast.net. Innovators

Innovators

➢

Weekly on the Web, with millions of fans

Freddie Wong ’04’s YouTube channel freddiew reached a million subscribers in the shortest time ever when he started it in 2010, and today, with 2 million, it’s the seventh most subscribed YouTube channel of all time. Wong and a pal from film-school days turn out special-effects-laden online videos every week (“Medal of Honor Cat,” “The Golf War”). As TV host Jimmy Kimmel noted introducing the duo, that makes them “two of the world’s most popular filmmakers; their videos online have been viewed more than 400 Freddie Wong ’04’s million times; eat that, blog post about “the Steven Spielberg.” secrets of YouTube Wong first traveled success” includes the more conventional many tips that apply path: University of Southto thinking outside the box (and life). Two ern California School of headlines: “Define what Cinematic Arts; work‘successful’ means to ing as a freelance visual you. Expect to work for effects artist, film editor, it.” “If you can, go where film producer, and a video the people aren’t.” game production coorMore on freddiew.com. dinator at 20th Century Fox, and—this part’s not so conventional—for a short time a professional Guitar Hero player. But he saw the potential in a huge Internet audience and has built a fervent following via social media. He believes “the foundation for the future of digitally distributed content will be laid by webseries.” So far, so good. Recently fans donated $300,000 for them to make a feature-length action-comedy Web series Video Game High School, premiering May 3 on rocketjump.com, a hub for original Web content and webseries. Freddie’s younger brother, Jimmy ’05, an actor and musician, also has a lead role. When they take to the road, the filmmakers sometimes tweet to enlist additional actors and props (trampoline, anyone?). But home base is the L.A. warehouse workspace they all share. Jimmy, who with Freddie co-founded Overcrank Media, a media production company, is trying the conventional acting path (extra tough given still limited Hollywood roles for Asian American actors), but also has his own YouTube channel (jimmy), where he posts new music weekly, and a Web cooking show, “Feast of Fiction.” He got a huge boost a year ago from his “Asians in the Library Song,” a musical retort to the infamous video rant by a white UCLA student about Asian students. It garnered more than 4 million views and NPR was among those that singled it out among the thousand comebacks (“funny, good spirited, and turned the tables on the original rant”). Wong put it on iTunes and donated the money to charity. ■

Freddie Wong ’04 in “Milkman - World’s Worst Superhero.”

Freddie Wong ’04 in “Medal of Honor Cat.”

“My first improv coach would always challenge students to ‘think outside the pumpkin.’ That phrase has stuck with me. … It’s freeing— don’t be afraid to get out there and explore.” Jimmy Wong ’05

LAKESIDE

Spring/Summer 2012

Jimmy Wong ’05 in “Asians in the Library.”

more cool people, more cool ideas

Todd Morgan ’95

John DeForest ’82

Chris Dickinson ’90

Siva Sankrithi ’04

The Kristofersons (from left, Nancy ’69; Melissa ’74; Kris ’73; Pat, above; Betsy ’71, above; and Mona ’81) came up with the idea of a zip line to support preserving their history family farm on Camano Island. It has less environmental impact than a hiking trail and coexists with the alums’ sustainable timber and organic hay operations. Todd Morgan ’95, a urologic oncologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., created drawMD, an iPad app that allows physicians to use the gadget’s interactive interface to illustrate and describe medical conditions and treatment options. This eases communication between doctors and patients and leaves both with digital records for their files and future reference. Nancy (Kristoferson) O’Neal ’69, Betsy Kristoferson ’71, Kris Kristoferson ’73, Melissa (Kristoferson) Elliott ’74, and Mona (Kristoferson) Campbell ’81, preserved their historic Camano Island family farm by opening it up to anyone willing to fly through the trees on a zip line. In addition to the adrenaline rush, Canopy Tours Northwest teaches visitors about sustainable forestry and organic farming. The tour idea came up when the family was brainstorming about ways to share the farm

with the local community and beyond. John DeForest ’82 grew his architecture business through the recession with a creative design process that encourages active participation from clients. Homework is assigned and the classroom, aka the DeForest Architects studio, is full of bins overflowing with models, material samples, and sketch paper that clients use to shape their ideas alongside the hired professionals. The investment in his clients’ ideas, DeForest says, has led to a steady flow of innovative projects during the worst housing slump in memory. Siva Sankrithi ’04 spends his workdays teaching math and coaching chess at Lakeside. On the side, he helps his father run RIC Enterprises, a nonprofit that aims to commercialize patented renewable energy technologies that could help mitigate global climate change. One patent, for example, details a way to harvest energy from the wind over frozen surfaces with “a plurality of ski, skate, or runner supported wings or sails.” Sankrithi also has three automotive-technology patents, including one for a foldable

pickup bed for motor vehicles. Henry Albrecht ’87 and Chris Dickinson ’90 know happy and healthy employees are likely to be more engaged and productive. Healthy people are also less expensive to insure. The trick is to get workers to adopt healthy habits. Their startup, Limeade, an online-based wellness program that gets employees onboard through a mix of goal setting, peer support, and reward-based social challenges, such as the “motorless to a landmark near you” challenge where employees must track 80 miles on their own steam (run, walk, hike, bike, swim), or “pay it forward” (perform a good deed for someone else every day). Winners receive things such as an Amazon gift card or day off from work. Limeade recently reported many of its customers are getting 79 percent participation rates from their employees and have announced health savings. ■ John Roach ’90 is a Seattle-based freelance science writer. You can reach him at john@byjohnroach.com. Warren King and Carey Quan Gelernter contributed to this report; reach them at mwkingsea@comcast.net and carey.gelernter@lakesideschool.org.

Innovators

GLOBAL

Online

academy

Reaching across continents and cultures, 23 independent schools pioneer a virtual learning community by CAREY QUAN GELERNTER | photographed by TOM REESE

LAKESIDE

Spring/Summer 2012

At 11:15 a.m. in Seattle, Global Health teacher Bob Lapsley has a prearranged video chat with junior Yazan Fakhoury, who at 8:15 p.m. Jordan time is in his dorm room at Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Academy. They talk over an upcoming reading assignment and Fakhouryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s project with a New York student in which both are doing surveys for a cross-sectional study. The class is learning about the different kinds of studies that can measure illness. Global Online Academy

GLOBAL

Online

academy

Online Education

LAKESIDE

Spring/Summer 2012

you get to see that perspective from all over the world.” For these two Lakeside students, it’s all in a day’s work at Global Online Academy —although just what a “day” means, when students and teachers are coming from all over the globe and work together asynchronously, is a little more complicated. The academy is ending its first year—a year that has seen it grow from 10 founding schools to 23 on three continents, with 116 high-school aged students completing one of the first five courses offered this year: Global Health (Lakeside), Media Studies (Germantown Friends), Perspectives from the Spanish-Speaking World (Punahou), Math for Computer Scientists (The Dalton School), and Urban Studies (Catlin Gabel).

I n t e r n e t A cad e m y, the first online school in Washington state, is founded; accredited and supported by the Federal Way School District; free to K-12 state students, open to others.

Plans for next year show still more growth: 19 courses will be offered fall and spring, with 150 students already signed up (registration is not yet complete); and more schools are expected to join. The academy has just hired an academic dean: Lakeside science teacher Jake Clapp, who taught the fall online Global Health class. He joins Michael Nachbar, Lakeside’s former Middle School assistant director who was selected last summer as the academy’s director. Bernie Noe, Lakeside’s head of school, chairs its board of directors. Much has happened in a short span, since the spring 2011 conference that launched the academy as a consortium of 10 leading independent schools. A year before, the inspiration for the academy came when Lakeside leaders heard author Michael Horn speak at the 2010 conference of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) about the “disruptive innovation” of online education. Horn, a coauthor with Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, told the NAIS gathering, “This thing’s coming. Get on board early and you’ll be able to take the reins. If you don’t do it, it’ll be done to you.” Disruptive innovations create such dramatic change they transform existing industries or create new ones, and Horn said the classic signs of such disruption are occurring in the world of education. Since then, the proliferation of virtual schooling has only accelerated in K-12, college, and for lifelong learning (see timeline below). The word from NAIS: the next generation of great teaching will be a hybrid of online and face-to-face learning. Here, we take a look back at how the pioneering year has unfolded.

2001

mi lestones i n

Punahou School teacher Emily McCarren teaches an advanced Spanish course for Global Online Academy.

1996

shani U. ’13 checks the time zone map on the class Haiku page: at 10:30 a.m. Seattle time, it’s 8:30 p.m. in Jordan. She’s collaborating with a student at Jordan’s King’s Academy on a project about HIV for their online Global Health class; they have to narrate each other’s slides using VoiceThread, a digital tool that allows video, voice, and text commenting. She’s got a free period now, and this might be a good time to catch him. The time zone map comes in handy every time she’s paired with a new partner from a different city: so far, Philadelphia, Oakland, Honolulu, Albuquerque. She’s already had a text from her partner for another assignment, from Oakland’s Head-Royce School, saying he’s delayed; she texts back that she’ll be ready to Skype that evening after her basketball practice. “Skype, Google chat, it’s fantastic to be able to communicate that way,” says Ummat. “It’s how I communicate with my friends here. For our generation, it’s a very intuitive thing, it almost replaces face-toface.” Mary Zamojski ’12 wouldn’t have been able to squeeze in a seventh brick-and-mortar class, especially with college apps, so she was glad she could take Media Studies online: “I’m interested in the way the media impacts our everyday lives.” She hadn’t thought that much about the online aspect, but “I’m interested in having teachers from all over the country and working with students from all over. I like that collaborative nature of it.” She quickly appreciated what that could really mean when the first assignment was to choose a photo of 9/11 and write an essay on it: “A girl from Jordan, one of her first lines was, ‘I’m a Muslim and I’m not a terrorist.’ What struck me was that she felt the need to start off and say that, assuming we might hold these ideas of her. Chilling. It’s so cool

On April 4, MIT announces free O p e nCou r s e Wa r e , posts syllabi, course notes and videotaped lectures. Harvard, Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford soon begin posting videos of popular courses. By 2007, MIT opens a site aimed at high school students and teachers.

ROBYNN POLANSKY

Teachers from member schools spent four days on Bainbridge Island sharing plans and sharpening skills for the inaugural online academy classes and future classes. From left, Tristan Chirico, King’s Academy; Emily McCarren, Punahou School; Gary Kulak, Cranbrook Schools; Aran Glancy, The Dalton School; and Michael Nachbar, academy director.

2006

open in September with the first classes, the academy’s year really begins in June. Some of the best and most passionate teachers from top schools across the U.S. and Jordan gather for a four-day boot camp at IslandWood, an eco-retreat on Bainbridge Island (think lush forests, LEED-Gold campus, organic food, compost toilets). They include five who will teach the academy’s first five courses in fall and spring, and others aiming to teach in fall 2012. They are a mix of genders, ages, and academic disciplines—the “early adopters” at their schools, and deep thinkers about the art of teaching. There isn’t any real prototype for what they are trying to create, Nachbar says. Online education is exploding, but much is remedial, often offered by for-profit companies, and prompted by public schools’ budget crunches—since it allows for more students per class and thus fewer teach-

In April, Mic higan becomes the first state to require online learning for high school graduation. (Alabama, Florida, and Idaho have since added requirements.)

ers. “They’re about content delivery, not communities of learners,” which the independent schools pride themselves on being, Nachbar says. That’s why, at the founding conference of the academy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation encouraged the consortium to pioneer the niche of “high-quality teachers for high-achieving students”: specialized courses to supplement what the students get at their home schools, with classes capped at 18 students; flexibility for busy students’ schedules; the chance to hone “21st century” skills of online collaboration with students across the globe; and to bring some of what they learn into their brickand-mortar settings, as well. The founding schools commit, too, to exploring how they might eventually offer access to these high-quality offerings to a community beyond the member schools, including public school students. For now, Nachbar asks the teachers

In September, K h a n A c a d em y debuts a free online collection of video tutorials aimed at K-12, covering subjects from math to economics. Later incorporates progress tracking and practice exercises, and acquires significant backing from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google.

at the summer institute to think about: “What will be ‘best practices’ in online education?” During this week, they take mini-workshops on some of the latest (ever-changing) technologies—Camtasia (screen video capture software), Prezi (cloud-based presentation software), and especially their learning management system, Haiku. (Each class has its own Haiku page; Haiku’s interactive features support online class discussion, assignments, assessments, and wikiprojects; it hosts digital media content of all kinds; students can keep e-portfolios on it for entire school careers.) The teachers design home pages and initial lessons and then come together for “show and tell” to give and get feedback. They consider content organization questions: What should the visual ‘entry’ be to a course? How should they structure the flow of material so students navigate logically and easily? ➢

2009

While its virtual doors will

O n l i n e Sc h o o l fo r Gi r l s becomes the first single-gender online school and first online independent school, with four member schools. Expands later to 12, including Marlborough, Hockaday, Holton-Arms, and Miss Porter’s Schools, and charter affiliates .

☛

Global Online Academy

➢

Member schools Albuquerque Academy (Albuquerque, N.M.), The Blake School (Minneapolis, Minn.), Catlin Gabel School (Portland, Ore.), Cranbrook Schools (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.), The Dalton School (New York City), Germantown Friends School (Philadelphia, Pa.), The Greenhill School (Dallas, Texas), Head-Royce School (Oakland, Calif.), The International School of Beijing (Beijing, China), Isidore Newman School ( New Orleans, La.), Jakarta International School (Jakarta, Indonesia), Lakeside School, Latin School of Chicago (Chicago, Ill.), King’s Academy (Madaba-Manja, Jordan), Noble and Greenough School (Dedham, Mass.), Punahou School (Honolulu, Hawaii), Sidwell Friends School (Washington, D.C), The Westminster Schools (Atlanta, Ga.). *Schools added in spring in yellow; Schools added for fall in turquoise. Five additional schools have joined and their names will be made public soon; more will join by fall. For the latest list, see globalonlineacademy.org

some new Classes for 2012-13 iPhone and iPad Development (Punahou); Japanese Language through Culture (Noble and Greenough); Environmental Economics (Jakarta International); Playwriting 2.0 (Lakeside); Comparative Government Campaigns and Elections (Lakeside); French hip-hop, France’s multicultural identity in the 21st century (Lakeside); Declaring Our Humanity: Applying Philosophy to Modern Global Issues with emphasis on “different perspectives on changes taking place in the Middle East, including the recent Arab Spring” (King’s Academy, Jordan). --www.globalonlineacademy.org

Read previous stories on Global Online Academy

➢ GLOBAL ONLINE ACADEMY:

reaching across continents

As Clapp puts it, they must Meg Goldner Rabinowitz. And, “decide not only the materials, “How do you establish an enviresources, formats, but what ronment for respect and trust? you want the student experiThose things are super imporence to be like on a daily basis. tant to me, especially as issues You’re building an infrastrucaround differences arise: racial, ture.” A virtual world. cultural differences, differences They consider intellectual of opinion,” she says. “They are property questions. A teacher’s Michael Nachbar difficult to talk about in perWeb page, or even blocks of son; when you add distance and text of a lesson eventually can be technology, how does that facilitagged for a searchable content tate, or present obstacles?” library, useful in future courses With more than two decades taught by different teachers. The in the classroom, she also teaches academy and the teacher jointly the methods class in the graduate own the courses. What’s the best school of education at Univerway to give credit for the teaching sity of Pennsylvania, and trains material created? the Teach For America recruits Jake Clapp Quickly they get down to who are teaching English in the the biggest and most basic of Philadelphia School District. But questions about the nature of for teaching an online class, “we’re teaching and learning. What is using a different set of muscles.” teaching? What is a course? If They turn over questions a community of learners never about their different students meets in person, what brings it and student cultures. together as a community? How Germantown Friends is a does the online teacher help that Meg Goldner Philadelphia Quaker school Rabinowitz to happen? where weekly, mostly silent “I’m thinking a lot about “meetings” are a cornerstone of what happens in our brains when we look the culture. King’s Academy is a boardat a face, talk on the phone, and when we ing school whose students are international communicate with VoiceThread and stu- but mostly from the Middle East, some dents see a picture of me but I’m not ‘live,’” from small villages, many the children of says Karen Bradley of Head-Royce School oil company executives. The Dalton School in Oakland, Calif. What will be the differ- is so high profile in New York City that ent emotional impact? The New York Post runs a story when not Coming from schools where teachers as many graduates as usual get into the Ivy are the heart of the value of their schools, League, and its students tend to be highly they ponder how their personalities will sophisticated. translate online. Long-established teacher The teachers wonder what the challenges personas and identities come into question. may be, but are eager to take advantage of As “a well-loved classroom teacher who the pluses in the mix. has a great connection to students” she All agree that this new environment worries how her wry sense of humor, such gives students a chance to broaden what an asset in classroom, will translate online, they can do. Traditional assignments will confides Germantown Friends teacher, be there: reading, writing, quizzes, discus-

2 011

at lakesideschool.org/magazine

National A ssociat ion of Independen t S chools (NAIS) reports that close to 70 percent of independent schools offer Web-facilitated classes (meaning up to 29 percent of the course takes place online). Four in 10 are considering online courses.

LAKESIDE

Spring/Summer 2012

From Oct. 10 -Dec.18, Stanford computer science prof Se b ast ian Thr un offers a free online class on artificial intelligence with Google’s Pe t e r No r vig, which includes giving feedback on progress and a statement of accomplishment; 160,000 in 190 countries, from high schoolers to retirees, enroll.

Sebastian Thrun

Peter Norvig

Take a “tour” of a global online clas s sion (albeit asynchronous). But there’s the possibility for doing those things differently, and for taking advantage of what online can do best, such as multimedia. If they just mimic the brick-and-mortar classroom, they say, they’re short-circuiting the potential. By the end of the conference, they feel much more ready to face their classes September 6. Well, not face them in person, but interface with them. As the ye ar goes on, many of

the early worries resolve themselves easily; others require more work. There are little technology glitches that are mostly quickly corrected. They ditch some technologies that seemed surefire but end up being cumbersome. It turns out the Internet in Jordan is weak. Boston students on spring break in Italy find they can’t upload on Haiku (schools’ differing schedules mean different holiday and finals’ times). But teachers and students say they expected some hiccups. And new technologies emerge continually, making things like group scheduling, collaborations, and screencasting even easier. One lesson teachers learn: Students come with vastly different technological ability. Even those adept “natives” know technology more on a “hobby” basis than with a real mastery. Teachers (who have faculty meetings via Skype) decide that, to address that, they will need to build into the first part of their courses various activities around online learning technology that will also build a classroom class culture. They will make sure that before classes start, students are ready to go with needed tools, whether Web apps to download or profiles that must be updated for Voi-

ceThread or YouTube or Google Docs. Early on, some students drop classes when they realize online classes aren’t “easier” and so they don’t have room in their schedules. Others conclude they don’t have the self-discipline or the comfort level for a class without a physically present teacher. Part-way through the first semester, Nachbar polls the students, asking what they’d like to see more, or less, of. They say they wish for more interactivity with teachers, and the teachers respond. As Rabinowitz notes on her blog at the time, it’s “useful feedback. … They want to ‘see’ us, they want to ‘hear’ more from us, and they want to get to know each other better. I am beginning an ‘if you want to say it to your students, film it’ plan …” She is not alone. The teachers step up making videos of themselves, a timeconsuming business, and arranging and moderating more real-time group Skype discussions, in addition to the online written discussions and the regular “office hours” they hold, via Skype, phone, and email. Sometimes that means teachers must schedule three different realtime video conferences with students on computers using an embedded chat room to accommodate students in different time zones, as Clapp does, having students discuss the book Sizwe’s Test, about HIV testing and stigma in South Africa. Time consuming but, he says, the results are worth it, for the class connections and camaraderie formed. With these changes in approach, the student attrition rate goes from 20 percent the first semester, to 1.6 percent (one student) the second semester. And then, soon enough, the academy’s first year is over, and they are looking back at successes and challenges, ➢

On Nov. 19, Stanford University rebrands an initially experimental online project aimed at gifted youth as S tanford Online H igh School ; The New York Times reports that some experts consider this a milestone in online education, noting that several other universities already operate online high schools but none with the pedigree of Stanford.

• STUDENTS CHECK IN to their virtual classroom every day. They enter the class via their teacher’s Haiku home page. Haiku is a learning management system that hosts digital media content and has interactive features that support online class discussion, assignments, and assessments. Each teacher’s home page has contact information: email, Skype address, “office” hours. The teachers have learned that it’s easier for students to navigate if Haiku page are simple and linear.

of themselves to give that personal touch. They demonstrate required technologies (such as Diigo, a social bookmarking tool) and skills (such as how to find accurate health statistics on the Web). Global Health teacher Bob Lapsley makes a video reviewing assignments and goals at the beginning of each unit, such as this one about the social

• TEACHERS MAKE VIDEOS

determinants of health. ➢

In December, MIT announces M IT x , an experimental online interactive learning platform that will offer a portfolio of MIT courses for MIT students and for a virtual community of learners around the world who, for a modest fee, will be able gain a credential for completed work (issued through a separate nonprofit); the goal is to later make the software available for free to other schools.

☛

Global Online Academy

TOM REESE

Zoe W. ’13 “enters” her Global Health class from her North Seattle bedroom, and checks to see the latest comments posted by other students about her supergraphic on a South African novel about HIV. “I like how interactive and collaborative the class has been,” she says. “We all have different perspectives and backgrounds and I think that aspect has been wonderful, especially in a course whose subject is global health.” ➢ GLOBAL ONLINE ACADEMY:

reaching across continents

and planning for what will make it even better next year. Some le ss on s:

The “right” students

2012

Online learning does require students to be more independent at planning their schedules, since there are no set class times. Students who aren’t going to see their teachers in, say, the cafeteria line, may not feel quite as accountable, teachers find. Ishani U., the Lakeside junior who enjoyed her Global Health class and did well, says she decided that, even though she didn’t have to be “in class” for a set time, “I wanted to dedicate the same amount of time I would put into my other classes.

34 34

On Feb. 13, MIT opens registration for its first MOOC, or Mass ive O pen Online Cour s e (Circuits and Electronics), as a prototype for MITx.

LAKESIDE LAKESIDE

That seemed fair.” And that was a winning formula. For Zamojski, the Lakeside senior who took Media Studies, the online format made her want to work harder for her teacher, Rabinowitz. “You kind of want to show off your skills, you want to impress her, because she’s seeing such a limited view of you. So in an assignment, I’d want to make this the best thing ever.” That was also a winning formula. Students concluded they did not feel academy classes could replace their brickand-mortar classes—“too lonely,” as Zamojski says. But they say they enjoyed them and got a lot out of them. Especially valued: the chance to take classes they wouldn’t have had room for in schedules, or that weren’t offered at

Winter: NAIS reports that nearly 30 per cent of college students have taken at least one online course.

Fall/Winter 2011 Spring/Summer 2012

Spring: Thrun creates U dac i t y, a new, free online institution of higher learning independent of Stanford, announcing two classes, a goal to eventually offer a full slate of classes

home schools; and gaining ease in technology, including the ability to collaborate with other students from far and wide, publishing work online that went far beyond the walls of an individual classroom. As a senior at Jordan’s King’s Academy, Fakher Elfayez, who took Media Studies, said: “Apart from the fact that I’m learning new things, I like the idea that I can also bring something to the world. I can contribute.” Her fellow King’s student, junior Yazan Fakhoury, appreciated that “you no longer take classes with just peers who share your same culture, same beliefs. Through GOA you learn alongside peers with diverse and very different backgrounds and experiences.”

in computer science, and plans to monetize its students’ skills and help them get jobs by getting their permission to sell leads to recruiters.

Technology

The boost students got in their technology skills ended up being a major plus, in students’ eyes. Students got great satisfaction from becoming more proficient in using different Web tools, software, social media, and finding quality information on the Web. Lakeside’s Alana A. ’14 says she signed up for a spring course exactly because “I’m not a technology person.” She wanted to push herself to become more adept. Now she says she’s applying useful new skills to research for her brick-and-mortar classes as well. Relationships

While it took more deliberate work than some of them had banked on, teachers and students say they did build relationships, in many ways much closer than they thought possible. “I was surprised at how I was able to form relationships with students that are not at Lakeside, only via email and mostly videoconferencing; I was actually able to get to know them, not as well as in the brick-and-mortar setting, but pretty darned well,” says Clapp. Emily McCarren, the online Spanish teacher from Punahou, described “different relationships, but still valuable and rich.” Zamojski says she does wish she could have met her online teacher Rabinowitz in person—because she liked her so much. She’s used to being in close communication with her Lakeside teachers, and she made sure the same was true with Rabinowitz, which Rabinowitz appreciated. They often emailed and spoke on the phone. “It’s really cool to have a teacher who’s not from Lakeside get to know you,” she says. When “I wanted the perspective of someone who didn’t know me as well, I asked her if she would read my college essay, and she said she would totally love to.” Unbidden,

September 2011 ongoing: New York Times series on “gr ading the d i gita l sch ool” explores “the push to digitize the American classroom and whether the promises are being fulfilled,” finding a mixed bag that includes success stories and for-profit companies that tap public funds with insufficient accountability and questionable results.

Rabinowitz, who’s also a college counselor, wrote her a recommendation, too. As for Rabinowitz’s early fretting that her humor might not shine through, she needn’t have worried. “She has this energy, she’s funny,” Zamojski says. “She’s very on top of things. A little East Coast, go-go-go. She’s a fun personality.” No surprise that the relationships did feel somewhat different. A one-to-one Skype with a student tends to feel more “high-stakes” than a conversation in a classroom when the interaction involves everyone else in the class, or a casual encounter in the hallway. It also feels different when the student appears on the other end in her home, holding up the screen to show it’s snowing in Chicago, says Lakeside’s Bob Lapsley, who taught the spring Global Health class. An online quiz tends to make students more nervous than a “get-out-your-papers for a quick quiz” in the first 10 minutes of class, Lapsley notes. Discussions among students, led by other students or by the teacher, felt different, too, in some ways that both teachers and students found thought-provoking. Because the students don’t know each other in the context of the social settings of their school, discussions are truly just about the subject at hand. And this also allows students who wouldn’t necessarily jump into a fast-paced, in-person discussion, to participate equally. It promotes deeper thinking rather than the quick thinking promoted by oral discussion, Nachbar says. Zamojski says she missed the natural flow of an in-class discussion. It takes a while for all the discussion posts to accrue. Ishani U., while agreeing, liked the fact that “Once comments do get there, people were very insightful, very thoughtful. In GOA, you can come back and read comments through again to understand if you didn’t the first time. You can take your time to respond, which has its benefit, ➢

In April, Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Michigan announce a partnership with a new for-profit, Cou rse r a , to offer free courses, with $16 million in venture capital. In May, Harvard joins MIT to create e dX , a not-forprofit partnership offering an array of MOOCs for free, investing $60 million.

• CLAS S AS SIGNMENTS may be posted three weeks ahead, but the goal is for the class to stay on a shared timeline. Assigning students to collaborate with one another, comment on each others’ work, post comments by a certain time, or have a group Skype discussion, is a way to ensure that—and to encourage students to get to know each other. Teachers assemble work pairs or groups from different schools, states, and countries. Here students had to use a statistical graphing website, Gapminder, to show graphically how achieving World Health Organization’s Millennium Development Goals would correlate with public health outcomes. They collaborated on presentations they narrated using VoiceThread.

built into Haiku that serve as a quick check-in with students. Here, IMAGE OF POLL students weigh in about which social factors POLLS are a tool

. built into Haiku that serve as a quick check-in with students. Here, students weigh in about which social factors most affect health

most affect health • POLLS are a tool

K- 1 2 O nli n e – So m e N u m b e rs • 30 states have statewide full-time online schools, 40 states have state virtual schools or state-led initiatives. • An estimated 1.82 million students were enrolled in distance-education courses in K-12 school districts in 2009-2010, almost all of which were online courses. This doesn’t count those in most fulltime online schools (250,000 students in 2010–2011). Source: International Association for K012 Online Learning (iNACOL). More at inacol.org.

Global Global Service OnlineLearning Academy

35 35

require students to post comments by a designated time. Because of the different time zones, it takes a while for everyone’s comments to be collected, but unlike a brick-and-mortar classroom, in this virtual learning space, everyone weighs in eventually. Here, students are commenting on the poll on health factors they took earlier.

• ONLINE DISCUS SIONS

• DISCUS SIONS MAY BE HEARD as well as seen. Here, Lapsley has assigned students to answer one question by VoiceThread and a second question in writing. The topic is breast-feeding policies for mothers with HIV.

• QUIZZES are on the honor system.

Once they begin, however, they have a limited amount of time to complete the quiz, and Haiku gives them a score immediately. Lapsley, who doesn’t count quiz results heavily in his grading, sees them as a good tool for students to gauge their depth of understanding, and for teachers to adjust their teaching accordingly.

➢ GLOBAL ONLINE ACADEMY:

you have a more thorough response. “The flip side is, you have to spend a little more time on it, because you’re reading and trying to digest, as opposed to listening in class, where maybe you’re not always hearing every word said.” “In some ways I know my online classmates a little better than my Lakeside friends,” she says, because, “What they post is what they honestly think; they have no reason to post something different. There’s none of that judgment call, that ‘he or she may think X or Y.’ With friends there are certain people I won’t say things to, because I know how they’ll react. When you take that factor out of a discussion, it becomes something that is almost true. There’s nobody hiding anything. Some of our discussions were very heavy topics. You hear everyone’s thoughts, not just the dominant person in the class. That’s a huge part of how you learn about people; it’s easier to learn about people from the way they write and convey information, from this class.” Still, what everyone intends to work more on next year is building in ways for the online classmates to know each other better socially. Students did form friendships— Ishani U., for example, is still close Facebook friends with the Germantown Friends’ girl she partnered with on a project in which they did individual surveys and then combined their Excel data for a joint presentation. But teachers found it takes a great amount of work, and intention, to make a really engaging interactive curriculum that also works to build a student social community in an online class.

Brick-and-mortar crossover

Some ideas considered for next year

So is online the key of the future? How many classes will Lakeside students eventually take online? Nachbar says he envisions possibly a few hundred member schools eventually. While eight Lakeside students took academy courses this year, 14 are already signed up early for next year. The academy is increasing the number of sections of each course, adding teachers for each, allowing more students to enroll. Clearly as a consortium the academy

Formal training in online teaching already is being beefed up; a four-week course for next year’s teachers began in April, taught by Nachbar and Clapp. They plan to add a blog or a Haiku page that’s a central meeting place for the teachers to learn technologies, share strategies, and tap best resources. And they want to create some kind of virtual social hang-out spot for academy students.

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Spring / Summer 2012

reaching across continents Universally, the academy teachers found that their own adeptness with technology grew, and they brought new techniques, resources, and tools into their brick-and-mortar classrooms. For most, the trend towards “blended” classes—that is to say, a blend of face-toface and technology—is one that they had already embraced, along with other Lakeside and consortium school teachers. This just accelerated it. In particular, the academy teaching experience has prompted many to make more videos that students can watch for homework, then spend class time working in groups or independently, synthesizing what they’ve learned, with the teachers there to guide them. They’re also more likely to assemble their own customizable digital texts to suit students’ learning styles, allowing for more individualized student work in class (something they’ve found natural to do online). More and more the model is of the teacher as “curator” who guides. As Clapp says: “We are making strides, and making learning be more about students tapping into knowledge on their own. If you want to know how HIV infects a T-cell, you don’t need me to show you a PowerPoint. You can find an explanation pitched at the right level, if you know how to search well. As a teacher, my value-added is providing students with guidance and coming up with activities and assignments that are meaningful, while getting them to cross-reference constantly: ‘OK, you read this, and now what is the connection to that?’” What’s next?

Meg Goldner Rabinowitz, bottom, a Germantown Friends teacher, had students in her fall course in Media Studies make short videos to introduce themselves to each other. Global academy classes seek to build social as well as academic ties, to create “communities of learners.” Lakeside’s Mary Zamojski ’12 is at top.

In Media Studies, students shared the images they created in the style of photographer Barbara Kruger. This one is by Mary Zamojski ’12, who says she welcomed the chance to take the class online because her senior schedule was too crowded for a seventh brickand-mortar class. “I’m interested in the way media impacts our everyday lives.”

can offer a greater variety and range of courses than would be possible for any of the individual schools. The curriculum committee received 60 proposals for courses from teachers at 12 schools, choosing 19 for next fall and spring. Students will be able to learn about the Arab Spring from a teacher in Jordan, environmental economics from a teacher in Jakarta, and Japanese language and culture from a teacher in Boston. That will only get more powerful as they add more international schools to the three now participating in Jordan, Indonesia, and China. But Lakeside and the other consortium schools believe the brick- and-mortar classes where teachers and students share physical space are essential. Says Nachbar: “We’ll never have online-only.” Clearly brick-and-mortar classes are increasingly “blended,” though. What’s also clear is that change is happening so fast that it’s hard to make clear-cut predictions. Muses Clapp: “Maybe some time in the future, students come to school and

our curriculum is online and we’re interacting with people in different countries, we’re taking different classes. The social piece may be more disengaged from the curriculum piece. In the morning, maybe students will do a project for school together, or a sport, or work on a service project together—and there could be a two-hour block in the afternoon where we each sit and do homework or have a joint videoconference. Online all the time won’t work; it would be too lonely. There will have to be interpersonal interactions. But the social interactions could be disentangled from the curricular.” We’re still a long way from that, but, says Clapp: “The role of the teacher is fundamentally changing. I feel it is improving.” And Global Online Academy will continue to play a pioneering role in that future. ■ Carey Quan Gelernter is editor of Lakeside magazine. You can reach her at carey.gelernter@ lakesideschool.org or 206-440-2706.

The f irst Media Studies assignment was to choose a photo of 9/11 and write an essay. Students’ photos often reflected perspectives influenced by where they live. This one is by Mary Zamojski ’12. She was especially struck by a fellow Jordanian student’s essay, which included the line, “I’m a Muslim and I’m not a terrorist.”

Global Online Academy

SEATTLE ALUMNI RECEPTION 2012

by KELLY POORT

Polly Hogan ’85 and Bruce Bailey ’59.

Old friends, favorite memories

n March, 200 alumni, current and former faculty members, and friends gathered at Portage Bay Café in South Lake Union for the annual Seattle Area Alumni Reception. Alumni Board President Christian Fulghum ’77 encouraged those in attendance to find ways to get involved with the alumni association and previewed the many upcoming alumni events. Head of School Bernie Noe reminded alumni to help and support each other (it’s easy to connect via the alumni groups on LinkedIn and Facebook) and shared exciting updates on global programs and the new Athletics Center. Alumni in attendance enjoyed an evening of revisiting favorite high school memories, reconnecting with old friends, and renewing ties with Lakeside. ■ Kelly Poort is assistant director of development, alumni relations. She can be reached at 206-440-2730 or kelly.poort@lakesideschool.org.

US science teacher David Joneschild ’90, with Liza Shoenfeld ’05, and Carmen Mikacenic ’97.

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Collin Jergens ’01 and Lakeside’s Upper School Arts Department Head Al Snapp.

Above, Head of School Bernie Noe with Noreen Frink ’56 and Peter Steinbrueck ’75. Below, from left, Charlie Balter ’06, Ericka Ward ’08, and Gabby Owens ’06.

Members of the Class of 2006 share a laugh.

Members of the Class of 1988 from left, John Patton, Matt Minas, and Wright Dickinson.

Alumni Board Member Betsy Hawkanson Ribera ’90 and Jennifer West Higgins ’90.

Above, members of the Class of 1997, gearing up for their 15th Reunion, from left, Ian Babbitt, Jazmyn Scott, Carmen Mikacenic, Cara Atchison, Joe Hampton, Kelly Fox, and Taraji Belgacem. Below, from left, Alumni Board President Christian Fulghum ’77, Sarah Levy ’77, Bob Schinske, and Helen Erwin Schinske ’81.

Above, classmates from 1980, Jackie Durbin and Scilla Andreen. Below, members of the Class of 2004, from left, Colin Johnson, Rachel Popkin, and David Smith.

Seattle Reunion

REUNIONS 2012

SAN FRANCISCO and NEW YORK

PLAN A REUNION Are you interested in helping to plan a gathering of Lakeside alumni in your area? Contact the alumni relations office at alumni@ lakesideschool.org.

Coast to coast alumni gatherings

n February, Lakeside and St. Nicholas alumni from a broad range of ages and professions gathered together in the Bay Area for a lively evening of camaraderie. Two months later, alumni in the New York City area assembled at the Core Club (special thanks for our hosts Tim Panos ’85 and Alex Panos ’88) to network and share stories of their school days. Head of School Bernie Noe spoke about exciting happenings on campus and encouraged the groups to stay connected. Athletic Director Abe Wehmiller joined both gatherings to share how the athletics strategic plan is energizing athletics at Lakeside and to update the groups on plans for a new athletics facility. For more photos from both events, visit www.lakesideschool.org/alumni.

From left, Henrietta Chandler Ratcliff ’52, Clive Chandler ’53, Greg Jones, and Barbara Walters Jones ’66 in the Bay Area.

From left, Daniel Kan ’05, Sarah Koo ’06, Amir Ghazvinian ’05, and Deborah Lipson ’05 in the Bay Area. .

From left, Christian Crynes ’06, Wendy Weiden ’94, Shannon Fitzgerald ’94, and Gavin Crynes ’06 in the Bay Area.

LAKESIDE

Head of School Bernie Noe, center, with Emma Schuster ’11 and Andrew Kaluzny ’11 in New York. From left, Alex Panos ’88, John Emch ’89, and Tim Panos ’85 in New York.

From left, Jason Lee ’02, Athletic Director Abe Wehmiller, and Leslie Fray ’72 in New York.

Members of the Class of 1959, Ed Ferry (left) and Bruce Bailey in the Bay Area. .

Spring/Summer 2012

Alumni Basketball Tournament Intense play from Ian Bolliger ’06 (front), Sten Jernudd ’10, and Thomas Buck ’03 (back).

Hard-fought hoop victory by Bruce Bailey ’59

n one of the most

evenly matched competitions in the 24-year-history of the annual event, five teams made up of alumni, faculty, staff, and current Lakeside coaches battled Below, the 2012 tournament winners from left: Sam Ballmer ’10, varsity coach Tavio Hobson, Phil Manheim ’00, Johnnie Mobley ’02, freshmen coach Ben Monnig, David Changa-Moon ’06, Brewster Stanislaw ’04, and Jason Buursma ’04.

through the 13-game-tournament format. In pre-tournament remarks, Athletic Director Abe Wehmiller introduced plans for Lakeside’s new Athletics Center and varsity coach Tavio Hobson talked about the recent success of the basketball program. Special note was made of the “most veteran” competitors present, Bruce Moses ’83, who played in all of the 24 annual tournaments, and T.J. Vassar ’68. In the end, the team of Sam Ballmer ’10, Jason Buursma ’04, Phil Manheim ’00, David Changa-Moon ’06, Johnnie Mobley ’02, Brewster Stanislaw ’04, freshmen coach Ben Monnig, and varsity coach Tavio Hobson were victorious in a hard- fought championship game.

■

Bruce Bailey ’59, executive secretary to the Alumni Association, is retiring later this month. See the related story about him on Page 14. He can be reached at 206-440-2855 or bruce.bailey@lakesideschool.org.

Alumni news

CLASS CONNECTIONS

T.J. Vassar ’68 is flanked by family members as he receives the Diversity Leadership Award of the National Association of Independent Schools; from left: Fred Youmans, Mary Ann Youmans, Asha Youmans ’89, T.J., Lynda Vassar, T.J. Vassar III ’94, Elizabeth Vassar, Eva Vassar, Mikelle Page, and Talia Page.

1953

In December, Lois Wilson Hoy contacted the alumni relations office to get in touch with fellow St. Nicholas alumna Dr. Betsy Baxter-Baalman ’57. The two hadn’t seen each other since 1953, but when Lois discovered that a box of antique ornaments she bought at an estate sale years ago had belonged to Betsy’s greatgrandfather, she tracked her down so the ornaments could hang on Betsy’s Christmas tree.

1959

See Page 14 for news on Bruce Bailey’s retirement from Lakeside. Thank you, Bruce, for 42 wonderful years of dedication to Lakeside students! Look for photos from Bruce’s retirement celebration in the fall/winter magazine. Bruce Bailey shared a note from Lisa Powell Burke, who has moved back to the Seattle area from Richmond Beach, Va., and is “so thrilled to be retired.”

1962 – 50th Reunion

Sally Hiscock Clarke writes, “I am the very proud grandparent of Grace Clarke,

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Spring/Summer 2012

Attendees at the annual Lakeside/Princeton dinner hosted by Matt Griffin and Evelyne Rozner were, seated from left: Eugene Yi ’04, Colleen McCullough ’07, Sojung Yi ’08, Evelyne Rozner, Maya Gainer ’09. Standing, from left: Ross Smith ’11, Richard She ’08, Margo Brown ’09, Zachary Siegler ’10, Marjorie Xie ’11, Matt Griffin ’69, Laura Dingfield, Mali Skotheim, Mark Dingfield ’97, Lauren McCullough, and Ryan McCullough ’04. who is a 5th grader at Lakeside Middle School. I am also a member of the SNS Class of ’62. We’re celebrating our 50th reunion in 2012.”

1964

Michael Mates retired from the U.S. Department of State in August 2011. He is now taming 2.5 acres of lawn and

woods in Monroe, and teaching history at Northwest University in Kirkland. He reports that blackberry vines are a worthy opponent, slashing back at attempts to tame them.

1968

Congratulations to T.J. Vassar, who was presented with the prestigious Diversity

Leadership Award of the National Association of Independent Schools at the NAIS annual conference in Seattle this spring. Thank you, T.J., for all you’ve done for Lakeside, Seattle, and thousands of kids! See Page 12 for more information on this award.

1969

Pam Nelson, Candie Taylor Miller, Marcia MacDonald Pettersen, and their husbands shared a condo and some skiing in Sun Valley in February. Not much snow, but a lot of fun. Matt Griffin and his wife, Evelyne Rozner, hosted their annual dinner for Lakesiders at Princeton University in November. Lakeside alumni in attendance, all current Princeton students or graduates, included Eugene Yi ’04, Colleen McCullough ’07, Sojung Yi ’08, Maya Gainer ’09, Ross Smith ’11, Richard She ’08, Margo Brown ’09, Zachary Siegler ’10, Marjorie Xie ’11, Mark Dingfield ’97 (who works in finance at Princeton) and wife Laura, and Ryan McCullough ’04 and wife Lauren. After dinner, Matt and Evelyne stayed with Hal Foster ’73, Princeton faculty member, and his wife, Sandy.

Maren Grainger-Monsen ’80 was invited to speak and screen scenes from her f ilm The Revolutionary Optimists at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.

Members of the Class of 1969, from left: Marcia MacDonald Pettersen, Pam Nelson, and Candie Taylor Miller in Sun Valley.

1971

Alec Hill was named Seattle Pacific University’s 2012 alumnus of the year for his impact on so many students, faculty colleagues, and the broader Seattle business community. Alec taught his first business course at SPU in 1980 and began to teach full time a few years later. He was named Professor of the Year in 1988. For the past 10 years, Alec has served as president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical campus mission serving 36,000 students and more than 1,500 faculty participants on college and university campuses nationwide.

1972– 40th Reunion

In April, Student Sponsored Day at Lakeside, a day of alternative learning planned by students, brought a unique group of speakers to campus, including five alumni. The 2012 theme was Identities at Lakeside, “IDEAL” day, and included more than 40 classes on identity, gender,

socioeconomic class, race, sexual orientation, and religion. Henri Fischer, chaplain at the Monroe Correctional Facility, taught Religion in the Prison System. Margaret Fuchs Mitchell ’87, a clinical psychologist, taught Identity and Differences. Sean O’Donnell ’90, senior deputy prosecuting attorney for the King County Prosecutor’s Office, taught Gender in the Justice System. Ronnie Cunningham ’86, a former teacher and educational psychologist, taught Race and the School System. Laura Clise ’97, director of sustainable development and continuous improvement at AREVA, taught Sexual Orientation: From Personal Identity to Professional Responsibility. Thank you to our alumni speakers for

sharing their knowledge and experience with current students!

1975

Bruce Bailey ’59 shared that he recently heard from Scott Hedge, who is living in Santa Clara, Calif. and working for Kaiser Permanente as director of health information management.

1977– 35th Reunion Leyla Brown Welkin has been living and working in Ankara, Turkey since 2008 doing research, training, and consultation on the treatment and prevention of family and sexual violence. She visited the Seattle area in March. With the support of the U.S. State Department and organizational help from her classmate ➢

Alumni news

CLASS CONNECTIONS BABY PICTURES We want your notes and photos! Events big and small, personal or professional, are always of interest. And if you send us a baby announcement and photo, we’ll outfit your little one with a Lakeside hat. E-mail: alumni@ lakesideschool.org.

Captain Husky aka Barry Erickson ’82. Dana Hufford, she offered several trainings in the area on prevention and intervention in “honor” crime. Next visit she hopes to have time to see more friends.

1978

Ty Cramer shares, “My husband, Steve Romein, and I are restoring two historic farms on Bainbridge Island (now called Heyday Farm) to provide more pasture-based, local, organic food such as produce, eggs, meat, and dairy for the local market. We are doing this as modeled by Joe Salatin from Polyface Farm in Virginia.” Check out The Great Arctic Air Adventure on PBS, a film about Doug DeVries and Mark Schoening’s 2008 trip attempting to circumnavigate Canada via the famed Northwest Passage. The pair flew 12,000 miles in vintage Canadian-built de Havilland Beaver seaplanes, which provide access to some of the most remote areas of the High Arctic.

1980

Erin Fray writes, “After my first career in art appraising, studying art history at Smith College and in Paris, training as an art appraiser at Sotheby’s in London, and serving as director of an art gallery in Napa,

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I turned to food marketing. I graduated from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley with an MBA in marketing, and have now dedicated my career to growing and promoting natural and organic food and beverage brands, turning my passion into my livelihood. My company is called Luminous Brands, and I work with senior management to develop business and marketing strategies for growth.” Maren Grainger-Monsen was invited to speak and screen scenes from her film The Revolutionary Optimists at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, England. The film tells the story of Amlan Ganguly, a hotheaded Bengali visionary who doesn’t rescue slum children but rather empowers them to become change agents, transforming their neighborhoods from within. The Skoll Foundation also invited Amlan Ganguly and the two children followed in the film to come to the forum to speak on their community empowerment work to increase polio immunizations and access to clean water. Maren says, “It was such a remarkable experience, probably the highlight of my career thus far.” While in Oxford, she was thrilled to run into classmate Maria Eitel, president

Jackson Todd “JT ” Larson, son of Scott Larson ’89 and his wife, Christina.

Helen Elizabeth Joneschild, daughter of David Joneschild ’90 and his wife, Kristi. Below, Nolan Bassetti, son of Mike Bassetti ’91 and his wife, Hannah.

of the Nike Foundation, who was also attending the forum. Maren has another film, RARE, that will screen at the Seattle Science Festival on June 4 and broadcast on public television later in the summer. RARE follows one extraordinary mother in a race against time to cure her daughter’s genetic disease.

1981

Farewell to Middle School Director Anne Stavney, who is leaving Lakeside after 13 years to become the head of The Blake School in Minneapolis in July. Good luck, Anne! See Page 10 for more on Anne’s impact at Lakeside.

1982– 30th Reunion

As the University of Washington Huskies played their last season in Husky Stadium before its renovation, another Husky tradition came to an end. “Captain Husky,” aka our own Barry Erickson, hung up his cape at the end of the season. After 25 spirited years, his third quarter H-U-S-K-IE-S cheers and hilarious skits will surely be missed by Husky fans. Barry is leading the charge for the Class of 82’s 30th reunion celebration in June. Congratulations to Elaine Schneider Christensen, Lakeside’s new Middle School director! See Page 8 for more on this exciting news.

1983

Anne Farnham Taylor was on campus in April for the Private Schools in Public Partnership (PSPP) conference hosted by Lakeside (see Page 15 for more information on PSPP). After graduating from Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program (LEEP) and Lakeside, and assisting in the LEEP program for two summers, Anne chose to pursue a career in independent school education, and has remained in the field since 1987 (with a few years off to pursue travel and other life adventures). For the last six years she’s been teaching English and history at The Colorado Springs School, where she recently was given an opportunity to design and implement a LEEP-type summer program. The program, called REACH, is a partnership with a charter school in the city’s lowest performing

Trevor Klein ’03

Anne Farnham Taylor ’83, at left, at the Private Schools in Public Partnership conference at Lakeside.

district; 90 percent of the children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. REACH will begin with 32 kids this June. Anne writes, “When I walked back onto the Lakeside campus last week to attend the PSPP conference, to learn from the masters of programs at Lakeside, Punahou, Head-Royce, and Odyssey (Westminster), it was with the distinct impression that I was coming back to the source of my own teaching inspiration, with an incredible opportunity to create a program that can inspire students to pursue a college path and a life journey that takes them to places they might not have dreamed possible. Who knows, maybe the path may ultimately lead them in a circle back to where they started.” Laura Dail is an adoptive mom and a literary agent. She edited the book Truly Yours: Wise Words on the Miracle of Adoption, out now. The book looks at the unique journey of adopting a child, as told in a collection of quotations from

Laura Dail ’83 and her daughter, Eva. Dail edited the book Truly Yours: Wise Words on the Miracle of Adoption. sources that range from Confucius to the Old Testament to President Obama. Laura lives in New York with her daughter, Eva.

1985

Congratulations to Mary McCagg-Larin and Betsy McCagg Hills who were inducted into the National Rowing Hall of Fame on March 10 in Connecticut. Both women rowed for Harvard University (they were inducted into the Harvard Hall of Fame in 2004) and were named to the national team in 1991. They earned their first World Championship medal in 1994, taking silver ➢

Alumni news

CLASS CONNECTIONS in the 8s and bronze as a pair, and won gold in 1995, competing in Finland. Betsy now teaches pre-school and Mary works for Candlewick Press in Cambridge, Mass.

1986

See Class of 1972 notes for news on Ronnie Cunningham.

1987– 25th Reunion

See Class of 1972 notes for news on Margaret Fuchs Mitchell.

1988

Lisa Christoffersen is proud to announce the establishment of her law firm, Christoffersen Law PS (www. pnwimmigration.com) in Seattle. After 12 years in the field, she will continue to practice business and family immigration law with a focus on employers in the Pacific Northwest. She can be reached at 206-9353824 and lmc@pnwimmigration.com.

1989

Scott Larson and Christina Larson are thrilled to announce the arrival of Jackson Todd (“JT”) Larson, born on November 19. Baby JT, mommy, and daddy are doing great! Erin Kenny and Cam Pelly returned to campus to see the spring production of The Good Doctor, directed by longtime staff member Rob Burgess. Erin and Cam were part of the cast when Rob directed the show in 1989.

Fred Northup ’91 and Cookie Monster.

On January 28, 2012, Seattle Fire Department firefighter/paramedic Michelle Perkins ’92 helped Kristi and David Joneschild welcome the arrival of their second daughter, Helen Elizabeth. A precipitous labor resulted in an unanticipated home birth and having a familiar face arrive in the midst of the chaos was quite a relief! Michelle’s expertise and caring warmth saved the day for David, Kristi, and Helen’s big sister Kate.

Anna Zefferys writes, “In September, I launched a New York City-based handbag company, Oscar and Anna, which consists of me and my Vizsla! The launch line, Take Me Out, consists of gorgeous, Italian leather bags that bring a unique level of functionality and design to the handbag market. The December issue of InStyle magazine, with Amy Adams on the cover,

1991

Mike Bassetti and his wife, Hannah, are proud to announce the addition of their son, Nolan Bassetti, born on September 2, 2011.

1990

Mia Kim Sullivan writes, “I am currently working with an organization that is attempting to redefine feminism for young people, and to link traditional women’s rights issues to other social justice concerns, such as racial and economic justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ issues, freedom from violence, and climate and environmental justice. Wearing my other hat, I am also on the board of a small, activist fund called the Third Wave Foundation. Both groups are part of a new movement away from more siloed, issuebased organizing.” See Class of 1972 notes for news on Sean O’Donnell.

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Shana Bestock ’92, left, directed Gabriella O’Fallon ’18 as Gladys in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Bestock played the role of Gladys, right, 30 years ago.

Bags from Anna Zefferys ’91’s handbag company, Oscar and Anna.

Melissa Morgan Nelson ’92 with her family in Jerusalem. featured Oscar and Anna in a piece on how to organize your life. I am very excited to introduce this baby brand to the market! www.oscarandanna.com.” Members of the Class of 1991 Laura Altieri, Kevin Field, Alison Thoreson Bhusri, and Kristen Wigen Gilmore were thrilled to cheer on their classmate Ryan Link at his performance of touring Broadway show Hair. Fred Northup shares, “My production company, Southdown Creative, recently produced a spot for Xbox 360 featuring Cookie Monster. Writing for Cookie—and acting opposite him—was pretty darn cool. We’re now friends on Facebook, of course.”

1992 – 20th Reunion

Jennifer Owen writes, “In 2006 I founded a dance company with composer Brad Cox called the Owen/Cox Dance Group. You can find out more about the ensemble at www.owencoxdance.org. Our emphasis is on creating collaborative new music and dance works, and offering educational outreach programs in at-risk communities.” Shana Bestock shares, “My first professional production was when I played Gladys in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever at Seattle Children’s Theatre. Gretchen Orsland, Upper School drama teacher, was in the cast, and she was then a member of the original Bathhouse Theater ensemble. Now, 30 years later, I am the artistic and education

Al Snapp, US Arts Department head (far left) and director Rob Burgess (second from right) with Cam Pelly and Erin Kenny, both Class of ’89, at The Good Doctor. director of Seattle Public Theater at the Bathhouse (www.seattlepublictheater. org), and I direct for both the professional and education programs. I have the great pleasure of counting numerous Lakeside alums as subscribers, and current Lakeside students as members of our youth ensemble. I was thrilled to direct Gabriella O’Fallon ’18 as Gladys this last winter!” Melissa Morgan Nelson and her family traveled to Jerusalem last summer. While in Israel, they were thrilled to connect with Class of 1993 alumnus David Selig, who lives in Tel Aviv. ➢

Members of the Class of 1991, from left: Alison Thoreson Bhusri, Ryan Link, Kristin Wigen Gilmore, Laura Altieri, and Kevin Field, after Link’s performance in Hair. Alumni news

CLASS CONNECTIONS

Lewis Bradley Moten III, son of Lewis Moten Jr. ’96 and his wife, Nadgie.

Jorie Carolina Northup, daughter of Temple Northup ’95 and his wife, Dalis.

1993

Labor Day Weekend 2011, Todd Larson ’95 and Camila Altschul Larson were married on a beautiful farm in Snohomish. Other Lakesiders in attendance included Julián Altschul ’89, Barclay Calvert ’94, CJ Calvert ’97, Emile Pitre ’96, Ben Barker ’95, James Kimmel ’95, Will Rademaker ’97, Kate Tune ’97, Taraji Belgacem ’97, Tommy Wood ’95, Lisa Hong ’95, Shael Anderson ’90, Scott Larson ’89, David Herrman ’90, Bruce Larson ’92, Kari Kraft Larson, and Mali Munch Hawthorne. The ceremony was officiated by Taraji Belgacem ’97.

1994

Jason Barnes writes, “I work in a relatively new field within geosciences,

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tectonic geomorphology, which seeks to understand mountain landscape evolution. We used to think tectonics built mountains, then erosion, and climate patterns passively responded to the uplift. Now we are learning that a threshold can be crossed whereby focused rainfall and erosion can, in turn, influence the tectonic processes, even modulating where within the mountain belt the active deformation (think earthquakes!) gets concentrated. This advancement in thinking is the result of technological advances in computing and isotope analysis techniques. As a Seattleite, I grew up valuing rain, but the idea that the accumulation of tiny raindrops over geologic timescales can actually influence mountain masses made of thousands of cubic kilometers of hard rock is simply mind-boggling. I’m currently working in the Andes, Himalayas, Antarctica, Morocco, the Spanish Pyrenees, and the California Sierra Nevada.”

Ciara Brady Stewart ’00 has signed a three-book deal to Kensington Publishing, writing as Kira Brady.

Check out “Come,” the new single from singer/songwriter Ifé Thomas’s forthcoming album, at www.ifemusic.com. You can sign up on the website to join her mailing list and follow her on Twitter at @ifesinger. See 1993 class notes for news on Todd Larson.

1996

Visit www.ifemusic.com to hear Ife Thomas ’95’s new single.

Congratulations to Seth Gordon, who won an Academy Award as the producer of the best documentary of 2012, Undefeated. Sara Wetstone completed a successful first season as Ballard High School’s girls varsity basketball coach. She was assisted by Tom Weeks ’74.

1995

month of May. On May 8, Jorie Carolina Northup was born at the University of North Carolina’s Women’s Hospital. It was a good thing she was born there as the following day on the other side of campus, I successfully defended my dissertation. I’m fairly confident that I’m the first person to have ever defended a dissertation after not having slept, or showered, the previous three days. In August, Dalis, Jorie, and I packed up and moved to Houston, Texas, where I am now an assistant professor at the University of Houston. Although seeing all the pictures of Seattle with snow this winter has made me miss the Northwest, typing this update in shorts while it’s still January makes me get over it pretty quickly.”

Temple Northup shares, “2011 was a busy year for our family, especially the

Lewis Moten Jr. and his wife, Nadgie, welcomed their son Lewis Bradley Moten III into the world on July 30.

1997 – 15th Reunion

In November 2011, Brian Griffey moved to Kosovo to serve as senior human rights/legal advisor at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s mission in Kosovo (www.osce.org/kosovo). Prior to that he was living in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he worked at the United Nations human rights agency. See Class of 1972 notes for news on Laura Clise.

Lakesiders at the wedding for Todd Larson ’95 and Camila Altschul Larson ’93, from left: Julián Altschul ’89, Barclay Calvert ’94, CJ Calvert ’97, Emile Pitre ’96, Ben Barker ’95, James Kimmel ’95, Todd, Camila, Will Rademaker ’97, Kate Tune ’97, Taraji Belgacem ’97, Tommy Wood ’95, Lisa Hong ’95, Eric Jensen, Shael Anderson ’90, Scott Larson ’89, David Herrman ’90, Bruce Larson ’92, and Kari Kraft Larson ’93.

1999

Thomas Both married Danielle Kraus last December in a small ceremony at San Francisco City Hall. Danielle and Thomas are spending the spring and summer living in Berlin, Germany where Thomas is working as a designer and teacher at the Hasso Plattner Institute School of Design Thinking at the University of Potsdam. Marnie Hanel wed James Bordley V in Seattle this winter. Marnie is a Portlandbased reporter-researcher and online contributor for Vanity Fair, as well as a freelance writer.

2000

Matthew Klobucher and his wife, Kate, are settled now into the historic Virginia town of Fredericksburg. Matt continues to teach young officers in the Marine Corps and will shortly pick up his own platoon of freshly minted lieutenants to lead and mentor before they join the Fleet Marine Force. He and his wife welcomed their first child, Lucy Marie, on August 26, 2010. They think she is awfully cute, and while Lucy is definitely both a joy and a challenge, she is much more the former than the latter. Ciara Brady Stewart, writing as Kira

Thomas Both ’99 married Danielle Kraus in December.

Brady, is pleased to announce the sale of her first book, Hearts of Darkness, in which one woman’s courageous search plunges her into a millennia-old supernatural war— and an irresistible passion—in a threebook deal to Kensington Publishing for publication starting in August. San Francisco-based creative studio Seedwell (co-founded by David Fine, Peter Furia, and Beau Lewis), launched its new YouTube channel “American Hipster” on March 26 with premiere episodes for three weekly, hipster-themed shows. This is the newest channel to launch as part of YouTube’s original channels offering. Fine, Furia, and Lewis hope the American Hipster channel’s blend of both short, comedic content and longer form, documentary-style content will engage young, tech-savvy YouTube viewers in a variety of ways. “People already know that YouTube is the best place to watch and interact with the latest pop culture news and Internet memes, and we think our shows, Max Movie Reviews and Hipster Grandmas, will offer those viewers a unique and comedic hipsterthemed lens through which to engage with that news,” says Lewis. “But we’re ➢

Alumni news

CLASS CONNECTIONS time at Lakeside, he was also a mentor and fundamental influence for me to continue onto art school. I do not take for granted the ability to connect with a former teacher after all these years, or that his poignant memories of being at Lakeside indicated a truly unique, progressive learning environment.”

2002 – 10th Reunion

Millicent Jane Griffiths arrived on March 18, 2012, to proud parents Elizabeth Sands Griffiths and her husband, Simon.

2003

Matt Lutton is a freelance photojournalist based in Belgrade, having moved there in 2009 after attending the University of Washington. He works for a variety of publications and companies, including The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He is currently working on a photo book project about Serbian/Balkan history. Matt’s work can be seen at http://www.mattlutton.com.

2004

Briana Abrahms recently returned from doing research in northern Botswana with Briana Abrahms ’04 in northern Botswana doing research with the Botswana Predator the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust, Conservations Trust, founded by Tico McNutt ’75. studying the ecology and conservation equally excited to bring new audiences of cheetahs, lions, hyenas, African wild (S.F.A.I.). She spent the fall and winter of to YouTube with the documentary series dogs, and leopards through on-the-ground 2011 developing her sculptural projects “America Hipster Presents,” adds Furia. radio tracking. One of the projects that in found metal from New Mexico’s vast “These are beautifully filmed, longer she worked closely on is glorious scrap yards episodes that profile trendy people the BioBoundaries Project, and experimenting who are truly passionate about their which seeks to alleviate with weaving fiber and respective crafts.” You can check them human-wildlife conflict in textiles. During her out at www.youtube.com/americanhipster. residency she also the area by investigating the function of scent marking connected with two 2001 and its potential application retired Lakeside faculty Jacqui Goldman writes, “After working in managing the ranging members, Fred Wright in private equity investment in New York behavior of African wild and Edward Pincus. and London, I moved back to the West dogs. She also worked on She writes, “It was an Coast in September of 2009 to start my collecting behavioral and unexpected pleasure Elizabeth Sands Griff iths ’02 MBA at Stanford (with Matt Miller, also a demographic data on all five to connect with two and her husband, Simon, welLakeside 2001 grad!). I graduated in June study species. The BPCT pivotal, influential comed Millicent Jane Griff iths and joined a classmate and his wife in was founded and is directed teachers 10 years in March. cofounding an eco-fashion start-up based by Tico McNutt ’75 and later as adults in the in San Francisco called Amour Vert his wife, Leslie, though Tico and Briana world. Fred kindly attended October’s (www.amourvert.com).” did not realize their Lakeside connection open studio at the S.F.A.I. and provided After five years of working full time in the until she arrived in Botswana. Briana is the kind of moral support one receives art services industry in New York City, currently working at an environmental from somebody who has watched you Liza Buzytsky was granted a three-month consulting firm in Seattle and will enter a grow during those formative, bizarre leave of absence to pursue her own PhD program in ecology at UC Berkeley high school years. Ed was not only my art career at the Santa Fe Art Institute this September. ceramics teacher for almost my entire

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science and a minor in American history. Her senior thesis has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. In January, she headed to Christchurch, New Zealand on a Fulbright Fellowship to begin her master’s research on the Canterbury earthquake sequence of 2010-11. However, given the chance, she would ditch grad school in a heartbeat for a part in the Hobbit movie.

Sam Shapiro ’07, a Teach For America corps member, teaches third grade at Harriet Tubman Charter School in New Orleans.

2005

Daniel Kan, Amir Ghazvinian, and Justin Kan just launched their startup, Exec, a mobile app and website designed for people to find others to complete jobs for them in real-time.

2007 – 5th Reunion

Peri Sasnett graduated in May 2011 from Columbia University magna cum laude, with departmental honors in earth

2010

Sam Shapiro graduated from the University of Iowa last spring with a degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing and a minor in American studies. Highlights from his college career included acceptance into Iowa’s Undergraduate Creative Writing track and summer Irish Writing Program, having four stories published in the university’s undergraduate literary magazine, Earthwords, and being selected as an organizing fellow for the Obama campaign during the summer of the 2008 presidential race. Additionally, Sam served on the executive board of his fraternity for two semesters and worked as a rhetoric tutor for freshman students throughout his college career. This past fall, Sam moved to New Orleans to serve as a 2011 Teach For America corps member. He currently lives with ’07 classmates Tony Simeone and Eli Bench and is finishing up his first year of teaching third grade at Harriet

Members of the Class of 2010, from left, with boys basketball head coach Tavio Hobson (second from right): John Schmale, Sam Fein, Nic Lane, Tavio, and Sten Jernudd.

Tubman Charter School in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. Congratulations to Dartmouth College football player Luke Hussey, who was nominated for the 2011 William V. Campbell Trophy, which recognizes an individual as the best football scholarathlete in the nation. Devin Petersen was the scenic designer for two shows at Annex Theatre in April, Team of Heroes: Behind Closed Doors and Sideshow, as well as the scenic designer and co-developer of a performance piece that’s being created for the Northwest New Works Festival at On The Boards Theatre in June. He was a co-designer and scenic artist for Hairspray at Seattle Musical Theatre last fall.

2008

Katherine Warren, a junior at Harvard University, has been selected as the 2012 Truman Scholar for Washington state.

FORMER FACULTY & STAFF After 28 years in the Lakeside business office, Ellen Davis retired in March. Her retirement plans included moving to the Spokane area to live on their 22 acres in Deer Park and enjoying her family, including four grandchildren. In February, former Lakeside faculty member Frank Cunningham celebrated his 90th birthday. The Washington State Senate passed Resolution 8675 to honor Frank for his service to the community and the nation as a teacher and coach. Of the honor, Frank said: “It was fun to meet the governor and it is nice to get that kind of attention. But it was kind of a charade. It doesn’t compare to the things that my students made with their own hands. I feel quite sentimental about that.” In addition, Frank’s birthday was celebrated by a group of 200 family, friends, and rowing associates at his “second home,” the Lake Washington Rowing Club boathouse in Fremont. Many Lakesiders were among the group of well-wishers. ■ Alumni news

IN MEMORIAM

ST. NICHOLAS ALUMNAE Charlotte Greer Baxter ’28 • October 7, 2011

The following remembrances were submitted by families and friends of St. Nicholas alumnae and Lakeside alumni. If you have a remembrance to share about one of the following individuals, or if you are a family member and have an obituary that you would like to have published in the next magazine, please e-mail the alumni relations office at alumni@ lakesideschool.org or call 206-368-3606. All remembrances are subject to editing for length and clarity. Your thoughts and memories are much appreciated.

Bruce HedderlySmith ’62

Sept. 6, 2011

Charlotte “Bay” Ellinwood (Greer) Baxter was born on September 19, 1908, in her grandparents’ home in San Francisco, Calif., and died peacefully in Seattle on October 7, 2011, not many days after her 103rd birthday. “Bay,” as she was called by all, lived a full and interesting life, most of it in Seattle. She was the second daughter of Robert Papin Greer and Charlotte McDowell (Ellinwood) Greer, residents of San Francisco, who built a summer home on Capitol Hill in Seattle around 1912. The Seattle house became their permanent home in 1916 when the family moved to Seattle so that her father could run his business there. Bay attended St. Nicholas School and then Miss Ransom’s School in Piedmont, Calif. After she graduated, she returned to Seattle, where she lived the rest of her life. On January 12, 1932, she married John McGraw Baxter, a Seattle native. They had two children, Elizabeth Papin Baxter and John McGraw Baxter Jr. Besides her family, Bay’s passion was gardening. After the death of her mother, she and her family moved into her parents’ Capitol Hill home, where, as a legacy to her parents, she maintained and enhanced a beautiful Japanese-style garden originally established in the 1920s. She spent many an hour tending her flowers, shrubs, and trees; she was a master at flower arranging, winning many ribbons. Bay was an active volunteer, especially with the Junior League of Seattle and her guild at Children’s Orthopedic Hospital (today Children’s Hospital and Medical Center). She was a member of the Seattle Garden Club, The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, the Sunset Club, the Seattle Tennis Club, the Seattle Golf Club, and the Washington Athletic Club. She was also a lifelong member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. She was preceded in death by her husband, her parents, and her sister, “Bobby” (Marie Elizabeth [Greer] Donahoe Cole). She is survived by her children Betsy Baxter-Baalman (and her husband Ray Baalman) of Pasco, Wash.; John McGraw Baxter Jr. (and his wife Kay); her granddaughters Kendall (Baxter) Frazier (and her husband Jim) and Stephanie (Baxter) Roalkvam (and her husband Kurt); and three great-grandchildren, McKenzie and Carson Frazier and Anders Roalkvam, all of Seattle.

Mona Riach Biddle ’44 • September 24, 2011

Wow! What a beautiful life. Her family will remember her as “Tutu.” A dear friend dubbed her Mad Mona of Medina, which always made her smile. She was the daughter of John Riach and Maude McDonald, born September 3, 1926. She attended John Muir, Roosevelt, and St. Nicholas schools, majoring in English at the University of Washington. She loved the Huskies almost as much as the family Vizslas and Labradors. As a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority she established lifelong friendships and most importantly met her true love, G. Brooks Biddle.

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They married on June 14, 1952 (Flag Day) and thereafter parented four children, Brooke, John, Duncan, and Allison. In addition to her children, Tutu is survived by her 12 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Although she traveled extensively with her parents as a young lady, Mona loved no place more than the waterscapes of the Northwest. Kye Bay, B.C., her family summer home on Hood Canal, her waterfront home in Medina, and the San Juans were some of her favorites. She would often recount, “If you are lucky enough to live by the water, you are lucky enough.” Mona loved birthday parties, holidays, and special occasions. She dressed up as Mary Poppins, a J.P. Patches look-alike, the Wicked Witch on Halloween, and Yankee Doodle Dandy on the Fourth of July. Her family believed that Mona was Martha Stewart’s tutor. Her creations in the kitchen, her flair with flowers and gift wrapping, and her decorating schemes were quite brilliant. Mona enjoyed tennis tremendously and played into her 80s. While playing with younger opponents she would quote, “Old age and treachery will prevail over youth.” Her final week saw the fingerprints of God on many events, from the family storytelling at her bedside, to her remarkable humor and strength, and finally to her joy anticipating the reunion with loved ones in Heaven. Mona passed away peacefully with family at her side on September 24. She left us with the quotation by John W. Whitehead, “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”

Pamela Olmsted Bobroff ’47 • February 15, 2012

A lifelong Seattle area resident, born May 8, 1929, Pamela Olmsted Bobroff was the only child of Harry Carson Olmsted, M.D., and Virginia Boutelle Olmsted. A graduate of the University of Washington, she was a public health educator, homemaker, and outdoorswoman. As a teen during World War II, Pamela served three summers as a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout. An early-day mountaineer, she summited numerous Washington peaks. Pamela is preceded in death by husband Arthur Bobroff, M.D., and children Theodore and Cynthia. She is survived by children David, Constance, and Harold (Yonah Karp), and grandchildren Hannah, Abraham, and Nora.

Maryhelen Grande Fisher ’39 • September 15, 2011

After a fulfilling life of 90 years, Maryhelen Fisher passed away peacefully on September 15, 2011. She was born January 30, 1921, in Seattle. Maryhelen grew up in Seattle and graduated from St. Nicholas School. She attended the University of Washington, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She traveled the world while working as a travel consultant for more than 30 years. Maryhelen enjoyed living in Palm Desert, Calif., with the love of her life, Paul Fisher. Her favorite activities were playing tennis, golf, and bridge and entertaining her

family and friends. Maryhelen’s family includes children Jan, Diane (preceded in death), and Susie; step-children Tira, Tammy, and Jeff; and 12 grandchildren.

Jeanne Fleming Hammond ’46 • September 10, 2011

Jeanne Hammond died peacefully at home on September 10 surrounded by family and friends. An interior designer for more than 50 years, Jeanne will be remembered for her beauty and grace, creativity and style. Hers was a generous and kind heart. Her beloved home was open to so many, so often. Thank you, Jeanne, for letting us celebrate the most important days of our lives in your home. Jeanne is survived by her son, Dr. Rockwell Hammond, and his wife, Jill, of Fall City; her grandson Madison of Santa Clara; and her daughter Leslie of Bellevue. We will miss you, Jeanne. Thank you for staying with us longer than we thought possible. We have loved you and needed you for so long. Bye bye, Nanna. I love you, Mommy. We will take care of your garden. Rest now and be at peace. You are at a place where white flowers are always in bloom.

Elizabeth Case Williamson Kenady ’42 • October 29, 2012

Elizabeth Williamson Kenady died peacefully in Napa, Calif., with her family at her side on October 29. She was born in Seattle on March 14, 1924, to Elizabeth Wilbur and Roy H. Case. Two years later her sister Ann was born and they have spent 85 wonderful years together as sisters and best friends. In 1953 she married David A .F. Williamson. They lived in Southern California and relocated to San Francisco in 1960. She raised three children, Charlotte, Stephen, and Alec. She was widowed in 1980, after she and David established a vineyard in the Chiles Valley District of Napa Valley, which she managed for many years. In 1989 she married Charles W. Kenady. Elizabeth is survived by Charles, her sister, her children, step-daughters Melissa and Carolyn, daughter-in-law Alexandra, and three grandchildren.

Sally Storm Myers ’42 • September 13, 2011

Sally was born on July 25, 1924, to Dorothy Anderson Storm and Jerome Richard Storm in Seattle. She was brought home to her parent’s newly built home on North Capitol Hill. She attended Seward Elementary School, Broadway High, and St. Nicholas School. Whitman College followed (Class of ’46), where she majored in chemistry and French. She graduated with honors, and was president of her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. She began her working career as a medical technologist. She received her master’s degree from Wayne State University, Detroit, in 1951. Shortly after, she moved to San Francisco to begin a 35-year career as lab technician at Shriner’s Hospital for Crippled Children. Her warm personality and respect for people made her greatly loved by the children and staff alike. In February 1954,

Sally married Edwin Myers at the St. Francis Yacht Club. They settled down in the Forest Hill Extension area of the city and the following year had a son. Sally was predeceased by Edwin in 1986, but after retirement continued to enjoy travel, visiting Japan, Scandinavia, Australia, Italy, and the national parks, as well as puttering in her garden and activities at Dolores Park Church (formerly First Covenant), which she attended for more than 40 years. In 2007, Sally moved to The Sequoias retirement community, where she was well cared for. Sally is survived by a son, daughter-in-law, two stepgrandchildren, and three step-great-grandchildren.

Elizabeth Smith Rourke ’38 • September 4, 2011

Elizabeth S. Rourke passed away peacefully on September 4, 2011, at the age of 91. She was born in Seattle on July 16, 1920 to J. Speed Smith and Anna Gillan Smith. Elizabeth (Libby) was preceded in death by her husband, Robert B. Rourke (Bob), and her sisters, Jane Smith Michael and Margaretta Smith Boucher. Libby grew up in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle and graduated from St. Nicholas School. She was the first of her sisters to graduate from the University of Washington. In 1942, she married her high-school sweetheart, Robert B. Rourke. With the onset of World War II, Libby accompanied Bob to San Diego, Calif., where he was stationed in the Navy. In 1943, Bob’s fleet moved overseas, and Libby was left to fend for herself. On February 16, 1944, daughter Jane was born. After the war the family returned to Seattle, settling in Montlake and later in Madison Park. Libby dearly loved her summer home at Port Madison, Bainbridge Island. Whether innertubing, swimming in the sound, or just stoking the fire on a drizzly day, Libby always made it a great time. Nothing was ever too much for her children and grandchildren, whom she often referred to as her lamb chops. Libby played singles and doubles with Bob at the Seattle Tennis Club, and made many lifelong friends there, including her special birthday group. She was an excellent cook and loved to entertain, always trying a new recipe or the latest kitchen gadget, and she and Bob hosted many wonderful dinner parties. She was active in the Arboretum Garden Club, Pi Beta Phi Alums, Sunset Club, and Children’s Hospital Orthopedic Guild, and she served on the board of Planned Parenthood. Tennis friendships led them to spend their winters in the Palm Springs, Calif., area for more than 30 years. She and Bob also loved their beach and tennis vacations to Montego Bay, Jamaica, and Wailea, Hawaii. Later years were spent playing with the grandchildren and then great-grandchildren. She was the perfect grandmother, always there to tie a shoe, make Christmas cookies, help with driving lessons, dig worms for fishing, or read a bedtime story. Her empathy and compassion were boundless. She was a special lady who will be terribly missed by all of her family and friends. ➢

In Memoriam

➢ IN MEMORIAM: alumni

LAKESIDE ALUMNI

Brigadier General James H. (Hal) Berge ’40 • September 19, 2011

Brigadier General James H. Berge, “Hal,” US Marine Corp. (Ret.), passed away peacefully in Roanoke, Virginia, on September 19, 2011, at the age of 88. He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Ruth Grace Berge; his daughter Wendy Shalita and her husband Anthony; his daughter Barbara Berge; his grandson Bob Stanley; and two great-grandchildren. Also surviving are his brother Bill Berge ’47 and sisters Sabra Berge Bushnell ’44 and Melinda Berge ’62. Hal Berge was born on July 21, 1923, in Seattle, and grew up enjoying all that the great Northwest offered. He rose to Eagle Scout and enjoyed mountain climbing. He became a Naval Aviator in 1944 and served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He served in England as an exchange pilot with the Royal Air Force (Tiger Squadron) Fighter Squadron 74. He was Commander of Squadron 242 in Cherry Point, N.C. Transferred to East Asia, Hal served as Deputy G-3 (Air Operations), Headquarters, III Marine Amphibious Force, from July 1967 until March 1968, then served as Commanding Officer, MAG-13, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, until September 1968. After receiving his master’s degree in political science at the National War College, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1970. He was assigned as Commanding General, 4th Marine Aircraft Wing/Marine Air Reserve Training Command, Glenview, Ill. General Berge was awarded the Legion of Merit for Valor for his contributions in Southeast Asia and subsequently was awarded First and Second Gold Star devices for this decoration, 4th through 12th Air Medals, and the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces Meritorious Unit Citation. General Berge was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for meritorious achievement in aerial flights in Korea. After his retirement Hal served as vice president of Canteen Corporation in Chicago, where he devoted much of his time to finding work for the 1980 Winter Olympics athletes, allowing them time to practice their craft while still earning a small salary. Later, Hal became part of the Telecommunications Industry Association and Electronic Industries Alliance family in Arlington, Va., and retired as a vice president of EIA Association. He enjoyed traveling, reading, and being part of his local church and outreach programs. Hal was adored by all and he is now resting peacefully in God’s hands. Burial was at Arlington National Cemetery.

Laura Wilder Greene ’87 • November 4, 2011

Born February 27, 1969, Laura came to Seattle at six months of age, and died here with her family in attendance on November 4, 2011. After attending Seattle Hebrew Academy, Roosevelt High School, and Lakeside School, she matriculated at Bard College in New York and later earned her Master of Arts in Russian Studies at University of London. Her love for Russia continued to her death. A fluent Russian speaker, she lived and worked in St. Petersburg for more than seven years, administrating a joint program with Bard College and St. Petersburg State University. Her family, friends, and associates, both in Russia and the United States, will miss her very much. Laura leaves her daughter, Emma Kisselev, of Portland, Ore., and St. Petersburg; mother, Beth Weisberg; father Dr. Martin L. Greene and his wife, Toby Saks;

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brother Jonathan and his wife Catherine; brother Richard Greene and his wife Beth; nephews Ariel, Eitan, and Jacob Greene; and niece Lila Greene, all in Seattle. She also leaves her companion for the last seven years, Maxim Gudkov of St. Petersburg, and her ex-husband and Emma’s father, Dmitri Kisselev of Portland, Ore. Her extended family includes Toby’s children, Claire Berlinski of Istanbul and Mischa Berlinski and his wife Cristina and son Leo, of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Andrew Jackson Hedgcock III ’37 • February 13, 2012

Jack was born on May 11, 1919, in Chicago, Ill. to Andrew Jackson Hedgcock II and his wife, Ruth DuPlan Hedgcock. He passed away with his family around him on February 13, 2012. Jack’s early childhood was spent in Chicago and Decatur, Ill. After the death of his father, his mother remarried J. L. Grandey, and he and his family moved to Seattle where he attended Coe Elementary, Queen Anne High School, and where he graduated from Lakeside School in 1937. He attended the University of Washington and graduated from Willamette University in 1946. Jack lived a great life. Jack’s college career was interrupted by World War II. He served in North Africa and Sicily under the command of General George S. Patton, and in the Italian Campaign, where he was commanded by General Mark Clark. Jack was a lieutenant in command of nine ambulances throughout the fight, and saw extensive combat during the battle of Monte Cassino. For his service, he and the brave men under his command were awarded the Bronze Star. In the field during the Korean War, Jack served at Valley Forge Army Hospital and was honorably discharged as a captain in 1952. Jack was a successful businessman who worked for The William Volker Company, and later was the owner of Gra-Mac Office Supply in Ballard. He was a member of the Ballard Rotary Club, the National Office Products Association, Washington Athletic Club, Seattle Tennis Club, View Ridge Swim Club, and Broadmoor Golf Club. He was a 35-year Husky football season ticket holder and enjoyed the Husky Marching Band as much as he liked rooting for the football team. Jack was a great husband, father, and grandfather. Jack was married to his loving wife, Martha Rose, who predeceased him in December 2010. They were married for 61 years. They raised their children, Mardy and Drew, to be good citizens and set wonderful examples of how to live their lives. He loved his family. They were the most important thing in the world to him. He never missed a game, a swim meet, or a school show. A week before his death, while entertaining relatives in his den, Dad said, “This is the greatest thing, to spend time, and to be with family.” We all love you, Dad. We will miss you. We will carry on, and so will your legacy.

Willett Ranney Lake Jr. ’45 • January 4, 2012

Bill Lake passed away in Northridge, Calif., surrounded by his family after a brief battle with cancer. Bill was born in Denver, Colo., and moved to Lake Oswego, Ore., with his family in 1930. He attended Lakeside School, served in the U.S. Coast Guard, and graduated from University of Oregon in 1950. At Oregon, he

majored in business and was a member of Phi Gamma Delta. In 1950, Bill married Janet Lee Morrison in Portland, where they raised their four children. Professionally, Bill joined his father at Mail-Well Envelope Company and began a long career in the paper and packaging industry. He became chairman of the company in the early 1960s and took the company public as Pak-Well Paper Corporation in 1966. The company was sold to Great Northern Nekoosa Corp. in 1975. After the sale, Bill began to assemble a new business enterprise, acquiring Pioneer Gift Wrap in Los Angeles in 1980 and merging with Bonita Packaging of Tigard, Ore., in 1992. The company continued to grow after the merger, eventually combining operations in Tigard and Winnipeg, Canada as North American Packaging Corp. Bill served as chairman of the board of Bonita Pioneer until his death. Bill was deeply committed to philanthropic pursuits. He served as chairman and board member of the Northridge Hospital Medical Center Foundation, was an active member of Rotary International, and a longtime contributor to the Oregon Duck Athletic Fund. He also supported an athletic scholarship established by his father for business administration students at the University of Oregon. He was especially proud of his role in sponsoring the educational ambitions of two families from Kenya for more than 30 years. Socially Bill enjoyed memberships at Waverly Country Club, the University Club of Portland, and Porter Valley Country Club in Northridge, Calif. Past memberships included the Multnomah Athletic Club and The Arlington Club of Portland. With his wife Dorothy, whom he married in 1984, he made many trips abroad and regularly attended concerts at Disney Hall and Hollywood Bowl. Preceded in death by his parents and sister Susan Lake Howell, Bill is survived by his loving wife Dorothy (née Roscoe) Cady Lake and his children Willett R. Lake III (Betsy), Tami Lake Jewett (Alan), James M. Lake (Chaylene), and John M. Lake. He also leaves behind stepsons Mark Cady (Casey), Joe Cady (Violette), Patrick Cady (Alfonso), and Dan Cady (Lisa). In addition, he is survived by 14 grandchildren.

John Weldon Mauk ’54 • January 19, 2012

The son of John Scrafford Mauk and Elsbeth Young Mauk, John led a full and interesting life, characterized by love of family, humor, being outside, telling stories, enjoying work, and being creative. John was born in Seattle, the youngest and only boy of three children. He went to the Orme School in Arizona, Shawnigan Lake School in Canada, and Lakeside School, where he graduated in 1954. John attended Colorado College and pledged Kappa Sigma fraternity. He shared many stories of youthful indulgence and fun and made lifelong friends in Colorado Springs. He graduated with a BS in zoology in 1960. John married his college sweetheart, Susie Knowles (Adams) of Chicago and Phoenix, in June, 1960, and they moved to Seattle a year later. He had a brief stint in the family business, Mauk Seattle Lumber. He struck out on his own in the mid-1960s and formed Mauk Forest Products, selling cedar products for the majority of his working life. John and Susie had two children, Scott Frederick (1966) and Katherine Anne (1969), but divorced in 1972. John was an avid bird hunter and outdoorsman. He began duck hunting in 1960s in

the Columbia Basin, a place where he hunted until the year before he died. He was able to hunt with one of his grandsons before he died and it was clear he was thrilled to share this passion with him. His son, Scott, disputes many of the hunting stories he told, especially those of fine marksmanship, but has been willing to concede their validity out of respect for his age and passing. John moved to Moses Lake in 2004 to be closer to the “Duck Ranch” at Mesa Lake, and to escape the stress and expense of King County. In the last years of his life he made dear friends on Pirate Lane, sharing stories, laughter, cocktails, and loving support. His cantankerous tendencies were perfectly met by the openness and gregariousness of the Moses Lake people. He learned to fish for walleye and bass and changed from martinis to tequila and orange juice. John was the quintessential mossback with webbed feet. He enjoyed so many things. John is survived by his daughter Katie (Morford), son-in-law Mike Morford, and their two sons, Cole and Jesse; son Scott, and his two sons, Sage and Sawyer; sister, Ann (Groff-Smith); nieces (Elsbeth) Becky and Susan, nephews Chris, Todd, John (Tico), Tom, and Michael. John was preceded in death by his nephew, Tim Herron, brother-in-law, Steve Herron, brother-in-law Del McNutt, and sister Catherine McNutt-Rooks (Cappy). He is missed.

Edmund Dan Moritz, PhD ’58 • October 4, 2011

Dan Moritz, 70, was taken suddenly from his family on October 4, 2011, due to a fatal car accident. He was born November 27, 1940, in Beatrice, Neb., to Dr. John R. and Mary Ellen Moritz. He grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho, with his two siblings, where he developed his life-long love of skiing. It was also in Sun Valley where he met his beloved wife of 43 years, Janis Asher Moritz. After Dan served two years in the U.S. Army, he graduated with his bachelor’s degree in psychology from the College of Idaho. He then obtained his master’s degree and PhD from the University of Montana, and his first child, Jeffrey Adam, was born. In 1971, he and his family moved to Flagstaff, Ariz., where two more sons, John Asher and Eric Alan, were born. For 22 years he was a practicing psychologist at the Flagstaff Guidance Center until he opened his own private practice in 1993. He also taught part-time at Northern Arizona University. After his retirement in 2010, Dan and Janis enjoyed their time to the fullest. Dan was an avid outdoorsman, and particularly enjoyed skiing with friends and family. The Snow Bowl knew him best as Dan “The Candyman” Moritz. He also loved afternoon bike rides, mountain hikes, and vacationing with family and friends. His favorite hobbies were wood-working and working on home improvement projects. Dan was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother, and friend to all who knew and loved him. He is survived by his loving wife Janis; his sons John Moritz (Jon Delany) and Eric Moritz (Natasha Moritz); his daughter-in-law Stacie Moritz; his beloved grandchildren Holden, Gavin, Connor, Ethan, and Sabrina Moritz; and siblings Alan and Derry Ann Moritz. He also leaves behind his beloved dog Sierra. Dan was preceded in death by his parents and son Jeffrey Adam Moritz. Dan’s outlook on life could be summarized by one of his favorite phrases, “Life is good!” ■

In Memoriam

PLANNED GIVING

To find out more about naming

by CAROL BORGMANN

Lakeside in your will, or as a beneficiary of a life insurance policy or retirement account, or to inform the school that you have already done so, please contact Carol Borgmann, director of major and planned giving, at 206-440-2931. To learn more about planning your estate, visit www.lakesideschool.org/plannedgiving.

CIA officer, philanthropy chief, & more

Craig Stewart

daniel sheehan

raig Stewart is dedicated to educational excellence and helping people achieve their personal best. That’s the thread that connects a career that has stretched in several directions—from soldier, to CIA officer, to college dean, to development director at Lakeside School, to trustee and president of Bruce ’64 and Jolene McCaw’s philanthropic foundation. After graduating from Middlebury College in 1963, where he went through a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Program (ROTC), he joined the Army as a second lieutenant, spending three years on active duty, including in Korea. He did graduate work in law and public policy, then entered a career training program to become a case officer for the CIA. His work at the agency focused on Southeast Asia, a hot spot in the late 1960s. He became an employee relations manager with Standard Oil of Ohio and later vice presi-

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dent of university relations at Lewis University, while earning an MA in ethnic studies and a doctorate in higher education. In 1976, Bruce Bailey ’59, a fellow Middlebury classmate, told him Lakeside was looking for an athletic director and a physical education teacher. Athletics was a major passion for Stewart and when he and his wife, Val, met Dan Ayrault, then head of Lakeside, they felt an immediate connection. “The next three years were a whirlwind,” Stewart recalls. “Lakeside changed the athletic league we were playing in from single A competing with teams throughout the state to Seattle AA Metro—a move that allowed us to compete locally against schools with substantially more racial and ethnic diversity, which we valued. In addition to a new library and performing arts center the school raised money for a new field house. I also served as director of Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program (LEEP) for two summers. Val taught

physical education. Our son Clint was born. The teachers were as talented as they are today. The students were highly motivated. It was an exceptional period of time for our family and the world.” To be closer to family Stewart headed East for a time to work at other schools but Lakeside pulled him back to become development director in 1986. “It was a wonderful 10-year run marred by Dan’s untimely and tragic death in 1990. We had an amazing Board and development committee; the alumni and parent leadership were enthusiastic. I had a development team that was awesome! And both Clint and our daughter Ali were attending Lakeside.” “During the capital campaign at the time, several trustees, faculty, and some alumni shared with us their commitment to include the school in their estate plans,” Stewart says. “This seemed an opportune time to launch the Founders Circle and to honor those individuals and families committed to Lakeside’s future.” The Board did so in 1993; it was the beginning of the school’s planned giving program. “I was pleased to join the Founders Circle by naming Lakeside as a beneficiary of a current life insurance policy held in my name, a simple thing to do. I since have decided to include Lakeside in my will and have designated this bequest go to the Dan Ayrault LEEP Endowment.” After 10 years of success at Lakeside, Stewart received an offer he couldn’t refuse from a mentor and friend. Bruce McCaw ’64 and his wife Jolene asked Stewart to oversee their philanthropic interests. “It has been quite a ride,” Stewart says. “A centerpiece of our grantmaking has been education, which resulted in the creation of Talaris Institute, whose mission is to support parents and caregivers in raising socially and emotionally healthy children. Many organizations in the Northwest, nationally, and internationally have been the beneficiaries of Bruce and Jolene’s generosity.” Stewart has dedicated his life to helping others reach their full potential. “My wish would be that everyone could have the same opportunities and access that I’ve had,” he says. “That’s why Lakeside School is so special. I feel deeply indebted to the teachers and coaches and all they have given our family." ■

P.ERSONAL S.TORY

TELLING YOUR STORIES P.S., or Personal Story, is a personal essay written by a Lakeside alum. If you’re interested in contributing a short piece for a future issue, please write us at magazine@lakesideschool.org.

by CHRIS

D E VORE ’86

More about Chris DeVore ’86 Chris D e Vore is general partner at Founders Co-op, a Seattle-based seed-stage venture capital fund. He lives in Wallingford with his wife Emily and two kids.

How I found work I love and why it took me so long to figure it out.

Why is work a four-letter word? Chris DeVore ’86, at far right, with business partner Andy Sack at left and angel investor Geoff Entress in the middle. They posed for a calendar put together by tech media f irm GeekWire for its annual “geeks who give back” event.

y job is ridiculously fun. M All day, every day, I meet with incredibly smart and passionate people working to

invent a piece of the future. They all have a vision for how the world can be better, and my job is to find some way to help them. It wasn’t always this way. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I got out of college. All my life I had thought of education and work as separate domains—learning was a commercial-free zone dedicated to ideas and discovery; work was something you had to do to make money. If you were really lucky your work might have broader significance— my dad was a First Amendment lawyer and was passionate about the principle of free speech— but that was rare and not to be expected. Because I didn’t see the relationship between my education and my future working life, I studied subjects I was naturally drawn to—language and culture, history and human behavior—not ones that I thought would help me get a job. When I graduated from college I didn’t have a clue what to do next.

Somehow I talked my way into an entrylevel job at a small management consulting firm. I didn’t know the first thing about business, and I spent two years in a state of constant confusion about what I was doing and why it mattered. One of our clients, a huge public company, recruited me to join them and I spent two more years learning how even admired brands do crummy things to make a buck, and how much of the “work” at big companies is internal squabbling over power and money. I still had no idea what I wanted my work to be like, but I was getting clearer about what I didn’t want. By another random turn of events, I found a job at a startup—and encountered a radically new idea: entrepreneurial companies were messy, chaotic things you made, not “worked for,” and making them was exciting—and fun. Almost two years later, we were acquired by the same big company I had worked for before. I started looking for something new. I now understood that I was happier at

ALUMNI

NEWS

smaller companies, and had a growing conviction that I should actually care about what business I was in. I heard about a job opening at Patagonia, a company I had always admired and whose products I used and liked. I wasn’t really qualified but I was passionate about it and talked them into hiring me. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had, and the one in which I learned the most about business and leadership. It also gave me a chance to build a new business from scratch (its e-commerce channel)—something I had never done before. That set me on the path I’ve been following ever since. I brought to that business a passion for this new thing called the Internet, and in my second year, 1995, I convinced them they should be selling their goods online and invented a new job for myself running that business. I left for business school two years later and have had many work-related adventures since, but I no longer think of work as a stable, preexisting system to which I must adapt myself. Instead, I understand it as a dynamic, creative exercise in which I have as much a right of authorship as anyone else. It no longer sits outside my “real” life, but at the center. My only regret is that it took me so long to figure out that my dream job isn’t out there waiting for me to find it, it’s something I get to make. My one piece of advice to younger people who are about to enter the working world: don’t wait to start making yours. ■

Dr. Frederic Moll ’69 receives 2012 Distinguished Alumni Award

r. Frederic Moll ’69 is the 45th recipient of D the Distinguished Alumni Award, which honors Lakeside and St. Nicholas alumni who

make outstanding contributions to their professions or communities. The award was presented to him at the March 14 assembly. Students gave

Moll a standing ovation after hearing of his robotic technologies that help surgeons treat everything from prostate cancer to heart problems. To read the full award citation, please turn to Page 25, where Moll and his accomplishments are featured in our story on alumni innovators. ■ Planned Giving, Personal Story

FROM THE ARCHIVES

The legacy of

kent evans ’73

any are familiar with the

story of how, in 1968, four Lakeside School students formed the Lakeside Programming Group (LPG). Fewer know the story behind the name of the Middle School’s Evans Theater and the large lecture hall in Allen-Gates, known simply as “Kent Evans.” Kent Evans was one of the founders of LPG with classmate Bill Gates ’73, who considered Kent his closest friend at the time; Paul Allen ’71; and Ric Weiland ’71. Kent’s accomplishments by age 16 were impressive. With the LPG, he wrote a program to run payroll for a Portland computer service company. The four also taught computer programming to Middle School students—developing curriculum, writing comments, and assigning grades. Beyond computers, his interests included politics and backpacking. At 16, he enrolled in a basic university-based

Courtesy Pearl’s Boy: A Memoir by Marvin Davis Evans, 2010

mountain-climbing course. Tragically, on

Kent Evans ’73 at the Teletype machine (a predecessor to the personal computer) at Lakeside School, circa 1968.

May 28, 1972, during the final climb, Kent fell to his death on Mt. Shuksan. Kent’s legacy lives on at Lakeside through Allen-Gates Hall, funded by Gates and Allen, and dedicated in Kent’s memory in 1987; the building’s lecture hall, named for Kent; Evans Theater, dedicated in his memory in 1999 by Gates; and the Kent H. Evans Memorial Scholarship, established in 1973 by the Evans family. To learn more about Kent Evans, visit the archives’ most recent virtual exhibit, Kent Hood Evans

Mary, Marvin, and Kent Evans with Bill Gates ’73 and Jim Munro aboard the Evans’ boat, 1970.

’73: Lakeside’s Ubiquitous Student at www.lakesideschool.org/archives (click on “Special Exhibit”). ■ Leslie A. Schuyler is archivist of the Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives at Lakeside School. You can reach her at 206-440-2895 or archives@ lakesideschool.org. Please contact her if you have questions or materials that you wish to donate, or visit the archives’ Web page.

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Courtesy Pearl’s Boy: A Memoir by Marvin Davis Evans, 2010