NMH Magazine Spring 2023

Living Our Mission

28

A Different Kind of Rigor

Nature’s Balance

Students

In Their Own Voices

The “Head, Heart, and Hand” podcast shares stories from NMH alums.

MISSION

Northfield Mount Hermon educates the head, heart, and hands of our students. We engage their intellect, compassion, and talents, empowering them to act with humanity and purpose.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Drop us a line at nmhmagazine@ nmhschool.org and let us know what you think.

Editor Maureen Turner

Design

Aldeia, www.aldeia.design

Contributors

Ben Barnhart

Matthew Cavanaugh P’26

Jo Chattman P’25

Elise Gibson

Alexandra Hanson ’23

James Heflin

Candace Hope

Emma Hughes ‘23

Nicole Letourneau P’26

Alex McCullough ’23

Tekla McInerney

Kathryn Rathke

Aaryaman Rathor ’24

Risley Sports Photography

Rob Strong

Lindsey Topham

Harry van Baaren

Peter Weis ’78, P’13

David Yeomans

Claude Zhang ’24

Director of Marketing and Communications

Natalie Georges P’23, ’26

Head of School

Brian Hargrove

Chief Advancement Officer

Trish Jackson

NMH Magazine

Northfield Mount Hermon

One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354

Phone 413-498-3345

nmhmagazine@nmhschool.org

Address Changes

Northfield Mount Hermon

Advancement Services

One Lamplighter Way

Mount Hermon, MA 01354

413-498-3300

addressupdates@nmhschool.org

NMH Magazine (USPS074-860) is printed by Lane Press, Burlington, VT

Cover photo by Jo Chattman

LETTER FROM HEAD OF SCHOOL BRIAN HARGROVE

Living Our Mission

Together, We Can Carry NMH’s Mission Forward for Generations to Come

As this issue of NMH Magazine went to press, I was looking forward to presiding over my fourth Northfield Mount Hermon Commencement. I feel a special kinship with the Class of 2023, as we entered NMH together. When I reflect on these last four years, I often think about our mission: Northfield Mount Hermon educates the head, heart, and hands of our students. We engage their intellect, compassion, and talents, empowering them to act with humanity and purpose.

I also reflect on our values — inclusivity, learning for life, and service — which I seek to embrace every day. I know that many of you do as well.

Our mission and values are purposeful and aspirational. They are also fundamental to every aspect of our community: our outstanding faculty; our rigorous, immersive, and innovative curriculum; our amazing students, parents, and alumni; and our magical, meaningful sense of place. While I cannot assert that NMH owns with exclusivity a noble mission, I firmly believe that our school’s DNA and our ability to hold to our mission through multiple generations differentiates us among schools.

To be clear, we fall short of our aspirations every single day. Yet, in those moments, we also hold fast to our commitment to reflect, learn, and grow, as we push forward for the benefit of our current and future students as well as for our world.

Our mission and shared purpose are grounded in our existential why: We are here to make a difference. We are called to serve

and to lead in communities around the world. While this call requires something unique from each of us, together, our efforts have an enormous impact.

As members of the NMH community, we must endeavor to give our students the tools they need to discover the best versions of themselves. We must hold them to high standards. And, we must support them when they inevitably fall short of our — and their own — expectations.

We know with certainty that NMH’s approach to educating the head, heart, and hands of our students yields profound results. When I meet with alumni, I hear over and over again how NMH changed the course of their lives. They credit great teachers, passionate coaches, dedicated workjob supervisors, and trusted mentors with this transformation. Our graduates depart NMH with the skills, resources, and shared purpose that allow for success across infinite fields and industries. In short, they make a difference, and we are all better as a result.

At this year’s Founder’s Day assembly, NMH Farm Director Jake Morrow offered his own reflection on our why and on the importance of finding purpose in one’s life. He shared a quote from author and theologian Fredrick Buechner, who noted that vocation is “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” At NMH, we find that sweet spot as we dedicate ourselves to shaping the next generation of alumni who will live and act with humanity and purpose.

As you walk around our campus, you see students and teachers embarking together

on journeys with unpredictable twists and turns, though not necessarily a certain destination. We are committed to securing the resources necessary to allow more students to take these journeys.

In early May, we were proud to reinforce this commitment with a call to our full community to join us in living our mission through the Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon. We seek to raise at least $225 million. Our campaign goals include:

• Increasing scholarship support by 50%.

• Establishing and expanding endowed scholarships.

• Recruiting and retaining more outstanding faculty through increased compensation, housing, and professional development opportunities.

• Ensuring that all our campus facilities support our students.

• Growing support of the NMH Fund.

This edition of NMH Magazine highlights some of the incredible work that our students and their teachers do — work that requires all hands, as well as heads and hearts. It also celebrates the ways our mission and values carry beyond campus in the lives of alumni. This campaign is bold in its aspirations. Yet, it is also unquestionably the right step for NMH. I am reminded of our founder D.L. Moody’s words: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.” Indeed. Our school matters, our mission matters, and our work together matters.

As we embark on the Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon, we ask our community to dream even bigger dreams for NMH. This moment calls for a strong response. Together, let us reflect on and support the enduring impact of NMH’s mission, as we seek to secure the resources for today’s students — and tomorrow’s. [NMH]

From the Heart

A few months ago, I interviewed NMH’s academic dean, Lori Veilleux, for our feature story about capstones. Capstones are self-directed projects that allow students to pursue creative work beyond the regular curriculum. As the first person to see the proposals submitted by students, Veilleux has a unique perspective on the ideas that students come up with, in their first iteration.

Invariably, those initial proposals go through some fine-tuning. But one thing that doesn’t change, Veilleux said, is the spirit behind the ideas, the desire students have to apply their talents and imaginations to creating something for a greater, common good — in short, ideas that capture the essence of NMH’s mission.

“Nobody told them: ‘Here’s how you have to do it,’” Veilleux said. “It’s from their heart. What they come up with is very much aligned with what we’re trying to do, what we’re all working really hard toward.”

Since joining the NMH communications team a little over a year ago, I’ve seen that work happen every day, in ways big and small. I’ve watched dedicated teachers and coaches and advisors put impressive thought and care into helping students discover who they are, what gifts they have to offer to the world — and why they have a responsibility to share those gifts. I’ve seen students embrace those lessons, as they grow, take risks, and find exciting ways to give back to this community and to communities beyond this campus. I’ve also had the pleasure of connecting with

alums, who’ve shared their stories of the ways that they carry what they learned here with them in their journeys after NMH, as they continue the work of growing, taking risks, and giving back.

When it came time to pick a theme for this issue of NMH Magazine, then, the answer felt obvious: “living our mission,” something I’ve spent the past year watching this community do, day in and day out. In these pages, you’ll read about campus activities that affirm the values at the heart of this institution, from our MLK Week commemoration to NMH’s first-ever celebration of first-generation college students. You’ll get to know some of the adults who ensure that those values are reinforced in every aspect of the student experience, from the classroom to athletics to spiritual life. You’ll also meet alums (maybe your former classmates!) who every day apply the lessons they learned at NMH to their work — ensuring that Native American communities have access to financial resources, leading a business with a spirit of inclusivity and entrepreneurial drive, embarking on research to improve health care access in underserved communities, or giving back to the school to allow future generations to have the life-changing experience they did, through our current campaign or other endeavors. You’ll also learn more about NMH’s “Head, Heart, and Hand” podcast, where alums speak about the remarkable ways their time at NMH has influenced their lives and careers.

And you’ll hear from students, who share the many ways that their NMH experience has helped them grow and flourish, as learners, community members, and future leaders. You’ll meet members of the inaugural cohort in NMH’s innovative new Farm Semester, some of the extraordinary capstone students, and one of our many deeply engaged scholar-athlete-citizens. I’m also thrilled to count among this issue’s contributors two talented student writers: Aaryaman Rathor ’24, who reports on how Alumni Hall is dealing with rising food costs, and Claude Zhang ’24, whose essay on the magic that happens behind the scenes at the Rhodes Arts Center’s Chiles Theater made more than one early reader a bit teary.

As I worked on this issue, hearing the voices of these students was particularly gratifying. After all, they’re the reason that all of us adults are here, the reason we’re committed to supporting, in all sorts of ways, this special place. And while students come to NMH for an education, they also teach us, every single day, the value and rewards and joy of living our mission. [NMH]

CAMPUS NEWS

“Those of Us with Privilege Have a Great Responsibility”

NMH welcomed South African activist Ndaba Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela, to campus in February, a highlight of the school’s weeklong celebration of the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Every one of us in this house has privilege,” Mandela told students in Memorial Chapel during a keynote speech. “Those of us with privilege have a great responsibility — that is what my grandfather told me.”

Mandela is co-founder and chair of the Mandela Institute for Humanity, which focuses on developing a new generation of African leaders and fighting for the end of HIV/AIDS, the disease that killed both of his parents and that is inextricably linked to poverty and racial discrimination. He is also the author of Going to the Mountain: Life Lessons from My Grandfather, Nelson Mandela.

“Ndaba’s work comes from the man who fought his entire lifetime to change the world he loved,” said Student Diversity Committee member Christian Georges ’23, who introduced the speaker.

NMH dedicates a full week of activities to mark King’s birthday, reflecting the school’s commitment to inclusivity, learning for life, and service. MLK Week is planned by students, led by the Student Diversity Committee, in cooperation with the Office of Multicultural Affairs. This year, events included a gospel concert by Camerata Baltimore and a jazz performance by student musicians.

“I love being at a school that takes a whole week to engage with the themes that we know are important not just on MLK Day but all year, such as social justice and inclusion,” said science teacher Darik Velez P’25, whose astronomy students had the opportunity to meet with Mandela.

— Nicole Letourneau

MLK Week at NMH

NMH marked MLK Week with a special visit from South African activist Ndaba Mandela. The week also included a gospel concert by Camerata Baltimore. Ashley Rakotoarivo ’24, a member of the Student Diversity Committee, offered a Moment of Silence reflection during that week’s all-school meeting.

NMH CELEBRATES

First-Gen College Graduates

On Nov. 8, teachers, staff members, and students across campus proudly wore stickers reading “I’m First Gen!”, as NMH took part in the First-Generation College Celebration.

Launched in 2017 by the nonprofit Council for Opportunity in Education, the day recognizes the achievements of first-generation college graduates and seeks to inspire students who will be the first in their families to get an undergraduate degree.

“The idea of celebrating our adults on campus who were first in their family to go to college is an important down payment on creating an inclusive and thoughtful environment that meets our diverse students where they are,” said College Counseling Director Joe Latimer, whose office organized the event and who is a first-gen college graduate himself. “I look forward to celebrating this important day every November.”

Gretel Schatz P’19, ’21, ’23, a dance teacher and chair of the Performing Arts Department, was one of the people sporting an “I’m First Gen!” sticker. She credited a local community college with helping to launch her on her path to college. “On a whim in 12th grade, I visited Greenfield Community College,” Schatz said. “The registrar’s office helped me petition my school board to do a dual-enrollment program. I borrowed $824 from my great-grandmother to go to all my classes at GCC and get my high school diploma.” She went on to receive a bachelor’s of fine arts from UMass Amherst.

NMH first-generation college graduates were also celebrated on “Head, Heart, and Hand,” the podcast hosted by Alumni Relations Director Stacie Hagenbaugh. Rai Wilson ’13, who went on to Manhattanville College, and Iiyannaa GrahamSiphanoum ’17, a graduate of Wesleyan University, joined Hagenbaugh for a conversation about their NMH experiences and their paths to college and about how to be stronger allies to first-gen community members. (Find the podcast at nmhschool.org/alumni.)

The messages resonated with current students. “Celebrating first-gen students acknowledges all the hard work that they have put in and removes the stigma,” said Karla Lazaro ’24, who expects to be the first in her family to go to college. “It’s important that we recognize the people in our community who are not only doing this for themselves but for their families as well.”

— Nicole Letourneau

Lee-Ellen Strawn

LEE-ELLEN STRAWN HAS PLAYED MANY ROLES since joining NMH in 2014: In addition to serving as the school chaplain, she chairs the religious studies and philosophy department, has taught in the history and social science department, and serves as a student advisor and as the advisor to the Korean Students Association and the Interfaith Leaders.

Indeed, Strawn says, the opportunity to “wear different hats” is part of what attracted her and her husband, Tim Relyea, chair of history and social science, to NMH in the first place. (They’ve since taken on another role: NMH parents, with daughters in the classes of ’21, ’23, and ’26.) Strawn — the daughter of United Methodist missionaries, who grew up in Seoul and taught there as well as in Asuncion and Manila — was also drawn by the diversity of the NMH community, including its many international students.

Strawn spoke to NMH Magazine about her work, her hopes for students, and why Alumni Hall holds a special spot in her heart.

What does your role as chaplain entail? As chaplain, I help the community see that spirituality can be a resource for individual wellbeing and for community building. I help the community see the many places that spirituality is present in the work we do as a school community. I offer invocations and benedictions, work with students on Moment of Silence messages, and facilitate the Interfaith Leaders. I work with the religious/spiritual life groups and their advisors and offer multifaith chapel (“Sacred Space”) on Wednesdays. I prepare the Founder’s Day and Baccalaureate celebrations, offer pastoral counseling to students and faculty as requested, and collaborate with others at the school on residential life programs and concerns. I send weekly messages to the community and offer some religious worship services during the academic year.

In all that I do, I strive to highlight the skills of living together in a pluralistic, multifaith community and suggest ways to practice these skills together.

How does spirituality fit into campus life at a secular school like NMH? Northfield Mount Hermon is a secular school that affirms religious diversity. It is a multifaith community that strives to uphold the value of pluralism. In this context, multifaith signifies many ways to engage in faith-related thinking, activities, and growth, which is theistically oriented for some and not for others.

In the school environment, an inclusive way of talking about faith can be that it pertains to the big questions of life: Who am I? Where/from whom do I come and what kind of person will I become? What is my place? How, then, shall we live in joyful community on this planet with concern for the following generations?

Faith can be expressed as a process that involves trust in our abilities to grow in empathy and compassion, that values students’ freedom and curiosity, that embodies persistence and commitment to the search for understanding even when answers elude us. It’s a process of intentional justice- and peace-directed community-building across differences, which emanates from a critical aware -

ness of global systems of oppression, while asserting hope that a better world is possible for all.

At NMH, faith activity can happen in many places — in classrooms, with advisors, in the theater or with the concert choir, with a workjob supervisor or an athletic coach — because this way of thinking about faith aligns with the overall NMH mission: to empower students to act with humanity and purpose.

How do you see D.L. Moody’s legacy in action at NMH in 2023? Moody’s legacy can be talked about in various ways. The spiritual part of Moody’s legacy is shown in NMH’s continuous striving to value spirituality and faith (in the many ways that faith can be spoken of) in the education of young people. As chaplain, I value the throughlines — to borrow a phrase from Dean of Equity and Social Justice Martha Neubert — in NMH history of diversity and inclusion, especially with regard to religious and spiritual life. To me, this is part of Moody’s legacy.

What’s your favorite spot on campus? It’s probably not a surprise that my favorite spot on campus is the dining hall, because food has a sustaining spiritual function. I see a lot of ministry happening at the dining hall!

What do you hope students take with them from their time at NMH? Joy for what life can hold in community. An openness to learn from others with humility and compassion. A respect for that which we cannot ever fully understand.

— Maureen Turner

The Enduring, Evolving Nature of Workjob

After a couple of years of COVID-19-related modifications, workjob returned in full for the 2022-23 academic year. Every student is back at work, putting in their weekly hours prepping meals at Alumni Hall, doing farm chores, serving as a resident leader in a dorm, cleaning classroom buildings, or otherwise doing their part to keep the NMH campus operating.

The work program has been an integral part of life at NMH since its earliest days. It’s the school’s commitment to service made man ifest, a way for students not only to do their part for the community but to develop a practical understanding of the value of each and every person’s contributions.

But while the work program has been a part of the school since its founding, it hasn’t always looked quite the same. For decades, notes NMH Archivist Peter Weis ’78, P’13, job roles reflected gender biases of the times: On the Mount Hermon campus, male students did a wide range of jobs, from milking cows and cutting hay on the farm, to cleaning dorms and shoveling snow, to waiting on tables for the three sit-down meals students ate every day. Students who came to the school with specialized skills might be assigned to relevant jobs — for example, working in the campus blacksmith shop.

On the Northfield campus, meanwhile, girls were assigned to just one of two jobs. “The girls did not do groundskeeping. They did not shovel snow,” Weis says. “They cooked and they cleaned, and that was it.”

And they did it in a special uniform: a so-called “dummy” (short for domestic) smock. “It was required garb that you wore over your regular clothes,” says Weis.

Several versions of the smock are housed in the school archives. Despite the unglamorous name — not to mention the less-thanglamorous tasks students performed while wearing them — they were cheerful items, in a selection of pastel colors: peach, sunshine-y

The NMH archives has several “dummy” smocks like this one, in a range of pastel colors.

yellow, mint green. Along with the smocks, students wore small white kerchiefs over their hair.

Four decades later, the merging of Northfield and Mount Hermon signaled the end of the smocks and kerchiefs — and of gender-based work assignments. “The whole notion of separate spheres went away when we went coed,” Weis says, and today, NMH students perform every kind of workjob. For many alums, workjob was a formative part of their NMH experience, one that drove home for them the enduring value of service as part of a meaningful education.

— Maureen Turner

Alum Named Rhodes Scholar

Julia Zhao ’19 has been selected to receive a Rhodes scholarship, a postgraduate award that enables talented young people from around the world to study at the University of Oxford. She is one of only four Rhodes scholars selected from the People’s Republic of China this year.

A biomedical engineering and computer science major at Columbia University, Zhao will pursue two master’s degrees at Oxford, one in statistics and a second in medical humanities or translational health sciences. She plans to focus on the use of artificial intelligence in clinical settings to increase access to health care in low- and middle-income communities.

“Julia’s goal to use scientific study and advocacy to contribute in a meaningful way to improve the lives of others, especially those who lack access to adequate medical and health care, exemplifies the mission and values of Northfield Mount Hermon,” said Head of School Brian Hargrove.

Zhao is a clinic volunteer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she’s also a member of a pancreatic cancer research lab. She has worked in rural Uganda on outreach efforts to improve health care for women and to increase access to solar power. In 2022, Zhao was named a Goldwater Scholar, which recognizes students interested in research careers in STEM.

After Oxford, Zhao intends to return to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, then become a physician scientist, studying clinical data and using machine learning to develop innovations in therapeutics, drugs, or diagnostic platforms. “I am also interested in outreach work, such as working with Doctors Without Borders or studying diseases that impact people in less-developed areas of the world,” she said.

Zhao credits Northfield Mount Hermon for her commitment to service. “I really benefited from that sense of duty to do good in the world instilled in me at NMH,” she said. “That is something I think they look for in selecting Rhodes Scholars. They not only want people who excel in their fields but also people who can change the world for the better.”

— Nicole Letourneau

Julia Zhao is interested in using artificial intelligence to improve access to health care.

The Rhodes Scholarships are the oldest and most celebrated international fellowship awards in the world.

Generations of Northfield students wore “dummy” smocks while cleaning and cooking in the school kitchen.

Sofia David ’23

David Didn’t Come to NMH until Her Junior Year — But She’s Made the Most of Every Day Here

When Sofia David decided to transfer to Northfield Mount Hermon for her junior year, she says, “I anticipated it to be a struggle. I didn’t know anybody, and it was like starting all over again, so late in the high school process.”

But after visiting NMH as a prospective student, she felt like it was a risk worth taking. “I was looking for community — that was really important to me,” she says. “And I really got a strong sense of community from my visit here.”

She also got the sense that NMH was a place where she’d be fully supported in all her interests. “The students [I met] were all passionate about their sports or arts or academics. But it wasn’t just one thing — it was two things, three things, four things. Everyone was very multi-faceted.

“As a student-athlete who also loves to be challenged in school and participate in clubs, in band, and in singing, [it was important] for me to be at a school surrounded by peers who share that drive and that motivation and who are super-involved and a presence in the community,” David adds. “So I ended up transferring to NMH, and it was probably the best decision I’ve ever made.”

To say that David is super-involved feels like an understatement. She plays field hockey in the fall, ice hockey in the winter, and, in the spring, she rows — a sport she picked up at NMH. As a new junior, she decided to run for

class chair in Student Congress and, despite a crowded field, won; this year she’s co-chair of the student assembly. She also sings in an a cappella group, the Nellies; plays saxophone in the jazz and concert bands and the honors jazz combo; works on Gemini, the student yearbook; is a campus tour guide; and serves as a resident leader in a dorm — all in addition to a course schedule that includes advanced courses in math, her favorite subject. David, who plans to major in civil engineering in college, has been able to move ahead in STEM studies, taking courses like multivariable calculus and engineering physics, because of NMH’s college-model academic schedule.

“I just love to be involved in a lot of things,” David says. “That’s who I’ve always been. I like to make a difference. I never like to settle. I like always trying to keep making things better, and I’m not afraid to take risks.” Having her first two years of high school upended by the COVID-19 pandemic made her even more motivated to expand her horizons at NMH, whether by taking up a new sport or running for student government as a brand-new student, she says. “I want to make the most of the time I have here.”

As an athlete, David especially appreciates NMH’s focus on supporting students in all their pursuits. In some settings, student athletes are pigeonholed, neither expected nor encouraged to expand their reach

A typical day for David might include playing saxophone in the jazz ensemble, going to physics class, and practicing with her hockey teammates.

beyond sports. “What makes it different here is that it’s not always just about athletics,” she says. “It’s really easy to do athletics and be part of other things as well. I’m busy, but my coaches are very understanding. They know that playing the saxophone is really important to me — just as important to me as being goalie on the field hockey team. And my music instructor knows that playing field hockey is as important to me as playing in the band. There’s this understanding and willingness to let me be fully engaged in everything that I’m interested in. … You can be the [advanced program]-student,

saxophone-playing goalie. I’m not limited or told ‘you can only do this.’”

She also appreciates the ways her coaches care for their teams, whether it’s organizing a workshop on creating a healthy team dynamic or pausing a training session for a much-needed meditation break. “Coaches will recognize how players are feeling,” David says. “They take time to talk about how school is going. Or if there’s something that’s happening in the community or in the world, and it’s making everyone feel down on a certain day, they’ll take a pause and discuss it.”

That feeling of being seen and cared for is meaningful to David. Last

fall, she took advanced French with teacher Gorgui Diaw. “It was an awesome experience,” she says. “It was a very small class and that made it very focused, and Gorgui fostered a really amazing classroom environment.” She and her former classmates still speak French to each other when they cross paths on campus. “And when I see Gorgui outside of class, he always checks in.

“That’s something also valuable — not just the education I’m getting, but the relationships that I’m forming,” David continues. “I see my teachers from last year in the hallway and they say, ‘Hey, Sofia, how’s it going? What classes are you in now?’ It’s this connection. The relationship doesn’t end after the class is over, and their doors are literally and figuratively always open.”

And that, David says, is what she’ll miss the most about NMH. “I’ll miss all of the relationships I’ve formed — with my teachers, my coaches, my teammates, my peers, my dorm mates. And the environment. It’s just so supportive — I can’t think of a better word. It’s just such a nice place to be — a home away from home. I’ll look forward to coming back for visits.”

— Maureen Turner

“There’s this understanding and willingness to let me be fully engaged in everything that I’m interested in. You can be the advanced-program student, saxophoneplaying goalie.”

NEW TO THE TEAM

NMH welcomed several new coaches to the community this year.

Katie Clark is the new girls’ varsity lacrosse coach, bringing extensive experience in coaching and recruiting, including 14 winning years as head coach at Keene State College. Off the field, she is assistant director in NMH’s admission office.

Clare Knowlton has joined NMH as head coach of girls’ crew and a biology teacher. Knowlton previously coached and taught at Forman School and spent summers coaching at St. Paul’s School and the West Side Rowing Club in Buffalo. As a member of the crew team at Trinity College, she competed in the NCAA National Championships.

Rebecca Swift is NMH’s new girls’ soccer coach, as well as director of summer programs and a history and health teacher. She comes to NMH from Tabor Academy, where she taught history and served as class dean, and brings a deep background in coaching at camps and travel clubs throughout western Massachusetts.

RJ Swift has joined NMH to coach the boys’ varsity lacrosse team and work in the admission office, where he serves as a liaison to the athletics department. He was previously at Tabor Academy, where he coached boys’ lacrosse and ice hockey and worked in the admission office.

Coach Michael Shelton

Embracing the Mission, On and Off the Court

BY EMMA HUGHES ‘23

When a student-athlete plays for coach Michael Shelton, he says, “You’re gonna come play for a coach that’s not looking at you as just a basketball player and how to win basketball games. I’m trying to prepare you for the next 40 years of your life.”

Shelton, who joined NMH this year as the head boys’ basketball coach after coaching at the prep school, Division 1, Division 2, and Division 3 levels, embraces the school’s mission as he pushes his players to be well-rounded leaders. As his first season at NMH came to an end, he reflected on the values and beliefs that shape who he is as a coach and how he leads the program. Shelton took over the team from John Carroll ’89, P’23, who had elevated the program to the national stage. “I think my only goal coming into this year was to preserve the NMH basketball brand,” Shelton says. “JC left a legacy of greatness, and his teams competed at the highest level, both athletically and academically. I wanted to maintain that standard of expectation, and in order to do that I knew we had to have an extremely competitive schedule. By continuing to compete at the highest level on the floor, we were able to give college exposure to the players we brought in and maintain the NMH brand.”

Shelton has enjoyed becoming part of the NMH community. “There are so many people in this community that have been warm and welcoming,” he says, naming Head of School Brian Hargrove and Rich Messer P’06, ’13, ’16, director of dining services, in particular. “They are two examples of people that are just really wonderful souls that reach out to you when you have a good day or reach out to you when you have a bad day.”

Shelton appreciates how much attention the NMH community pays to the well-being of both its students and adults. “When there are things that are happening outside of the NMH bubble, we’re cognizant of that, and we give time and space for conversation,” he says. “And I think that’s extremely important.” NMH’s affinity groups, he adds, give both students and adults opportunities to “heal, mourn, be frustrated, and articulate what’s on your mind.”

NMH’s focus on helping students develop their full potential — in sports, in academics, in the arts, in other pursuits — so they can contribute to the greater good resonates with Shelton and his own approach as a coach. “The reason I got into this profession in the first place was to present an idea to families: Come and play for me and a community where you can be more than just a basketball player,” he says.

PHOTO: JO CHATTMAN

At NMH, he notes, excellence is ubiquitous across all aspects of student life. “You’re going to be pushed to be a young man; you’re going to be pushed to be a leader on and off the court.”

He also urges his players to maintain a balanced perspective, to think about the long term and the values that matter to them. “I think that in this generation, young people struggle with the pressures that come with social media,” he says. “There seems to be a constant need to compare yourself to peers locally, regionally, and around the globe. It constantly has our athletes thinking about the end result rather than the process.

“In my program, we focus on the process and what that looks and feels like,” he continues. “What are the building blocks of success, both for you as an individual and our program as a whole? The only comparison I want my players to make is to who they were yesterday. Our goal is to get better every day, and you do that by being the best version of yourself every day you step into the classroom, on the court, or as you engage throughout our community.”

Emma Hughes ’23 was a member of the track and field team at NMH, where she especially enjoyed her classes in journalism, multimedia storytelling, and foreign policy.

Introducing NMH’s Next Athletics Director

Northfield Mount Hermon has selected Rick Hendrickson to serve as the school’s next director of athletics. As athletics director at Mercersburg Academy, Hendrickson oversaw an expansive, inclusive program with 46 teams at three levels. In that role, he focused on gender equity in sports programs and emphasized coaching development for adults and leadership training for student-athletes.

Hendrickson said he’s honored to join the NMH community. “The ethos of the school — with its commitment to empowering students, fostering leadership, and living a mission of equity and purpose — spoke strongly to me as I progressed through the candidate process,” he said.

“Cocurricular activities — from the outdoors to the arts — can be transformational in a young person’s life, and coaches and program leaders are an integral component of that. The true measure of success is the culture that we build: supporting our coaches, challenging and nurturing our students, and setting a standard for independent-school sports. That will not only bring competitive success — it will impact students for the rest of their lives.”

—RICK HENDRICKSON

NEW TO THE TEAM

NMH welcomed several new coaches to the community this year.

Katie Clark is the new girls’ varsity lacrosse coach, bringing extensive experience in coaching and recruiting, including 14 winning years as head coach at Keene State College. Off the field, she is assistant director in NMH’s admission office.

Clare Knowlton has joined NMH as head coach of girls’ crew and a biology teacher. Knowlton previously coached and taught at Forman School and spent summers coaching at St. Paul’s School and the West Side Rowing Club in Buffalo. As a member of the crew team at Trinity College, she competed in the NCAA National Championships.

Rebecca Swift is NMH’s new girls’ soccer coach, as well as director of summer programs and a history and health teacher. She comes to NMH from Tabor Academy, where she taught history and served as class dean, and brings a deep background in coaching at camps and travel clubs throughout western Massachusetts.

RJ Swift has joined NMH to coach the boys’ varsity lacrosse team and work in the admission office, where he serves as a liaison to the athletics department. He was previously at Tabor Academy, where he coached boys’ lacrosse and ice hockey and worked in the admission office.

PHOTOS: BEN BARNHART, MATTHEW CAVANAUGH, ALEXANDRA HANSON ‘23, ALEX MCCULLOUGH ‘23, RISLEY SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHY

Scenes from an exciting year in NMH athletics.

Behind the Scenes

From costumes and makeup to sets and props, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into every production at the Rhodes Arts Center. Go backstage with Claude Zhang ’24 and learn about the hard work, creativity, collaboration, anxiety — and magic — of theater tech.

I came to NMH with some experience in theater. I was part of the cast of a musical in middle school, but I didn’t quite enjoy performing in the spotlight. Still, I loved theater and wanted to approach it from a different perspective. I decided, why not try doing some behind-the-scenes work?

During 9th grade, though, I was hesitant to join technical theater immersion, as I was in a brand-new environment, trying out a new discipline. I finally got the courage to join in the winter of my sophomore year and worked my first show, Alice. I fell in love with the work I did as a stagehand, moving props and sets, and knew Chiles Theater was going to become my home for the next three years.

Now, I have been involved with theater tech for over a year. Since then, I’ve dived into many more aspects of tech: I stagemanaged my first show, Asterisk, last fall, designed lights for student-choreographed dances, operated the soundboard, and designed sets. Rather than being in the spotlight, I thrived behind the scenes — quietly, carefully, and confidently helping bring a production to life.

In tech immersion, we start with building the sets and props together in the scene shop. The work in the shop requires collaboration between students but also between students and teachers to problem-solve. A lot of the time, Emily [Salfity, NMH’s technical theater director] involves the students in the design and problem-solving process. She is always open to students’ ideas and suggestions, giving us the chance to make the show “ours.” The shop is an open place for all, regardless of experience, where we all work alongside each other.

Theater has been a rewarding experience for me. Unless you are involved with theater, you most likely don’t know just how much work the crew does. Without people working behind the scenes, there would be no background tracks, lighting, sets, props, costume — and no show. Because of the tremendous amount of work that goes into a show, I feel accomplished and proud of all the work we have done in order to provide the audience an amusing experience.

The mixture of excitement and nerves during house-opening never fades with time, and neither does my passion!

—

Claude Zhang ’24

Some of the work that went on behind the scenes at NMH’s fall play, 12 Angry Jurors. In the photo above, Claude (right) helps build a set for the production.

Sustaining & Adapting

NMH Dining: Resilient through Food Inflation Panic

BY AARYAMAN RATHOR ’24

“Inflation is a time when those who have saved for a rainy day get soaked,” goes an old economic adage. But at NMH, when it rains, we don’t get soaked. We bring our raincoats out.

National food inflation has been sky-high since the pandemic began, and its effects are felt immensely in Franklin County. The price for chicken has doubled, beef is three times more expensive, and local suppliers of fruits have raised their selling prices by 70-80%.

Even with this much economic turbulence, NMH dining services has made it a point not to compromise the quality of the food menu.

“I have experienced no difference, especially in the quality of food at school since the beginning of the year,” said Dennis Penny Lopez ’24.

“I agree,” added Gus Wilson ’25. “The food quality at NMH hasn’t declined at all; in fact, the new items on the menu are excellent.”

So, with an ongoing labor crisis, a bird-flu scare, and increasing freight delivery charges further aggravating the problem of acquiring food, how does dining services cope and remain efficient through this difficult time?

The answer lies in contract renegotiations and food management.

“As a nation, how we buy our food should be made more local,” said Rich Messer P’06, ’13, ’16, director of NMH dining. Supporting local is the philosophy at NMH, and its history of working with numerous suppliers in Springfield, such as Arnold’s Meats and Performance Foodservice for poultry and greens, verifies this.

However, due to food inflation in Massachusetts, it is more expensive to obtain food from a local farmer than from halfway across the country or from other parts of the world. According to Messer, this is “the system’s problem.”

In addition, the NMH farm’s output is limited. The growing season in New England is short, which means food must be imported for part of the year. The farm is down in staffing, too, as is Alumni Hall — making the stir-fry bar a rarer occurrence.

Weighing all these dynamics, NMH dining made contacts in the Midwest for poultry while continuing to acquire greens locally. This process has resulted in an efficient and less costly system of importing food.

But what about how much to buy? To truly be efficient, food waste must be minimal. NMH dining follows a reflective process to learn from previous experiences and ensure that less food is wasted in the future. “We

set our menu four weeks ahead and look back and see how much was served and wasted the last time the same menu was used,” Messer said.

The school has adapted to financially challenging situations and made the necessary calls to remain resilient. Dining services has and will continue to make adaptive decisions regarding food purchasing in the short run. However, Messer strongly believes that “we need to get the Northfield farms active” in the long run. These farms once spread across the mountain ranges we see around campus and are no longer used. Acres of land are no longer actively farmed, and Messer is confident that reviving them is the best way to sustain productive dining at NMH.

Aaryaman Rathor ’24 is a rising NMH senior from New Delhi, India. His favorite food in Alumni Hall is chicken with fried rice from the stir-fry bar.

PHOTO: MATTHEW CAVANAUGH

ON THE ROAD

Travel Programs Take Students around the U.S. and the World

NMH’s travel programs returned in full this year, offering students opportunities to explore other cultures, take part in rich academic and cultural opportunities, and engage in service learning.

In January, 14 students participated in a Model United Nations conference at Harvard, where Erika Jing ’23 received an “outstanding delegate” award and Gabrielle Alingog ’24 received honorable mention for her work as a delegate.

Over spring break, a group of students traveled to Costa Rica to study wildlife and environmental conservation, from exploring mangrove habitats to tracking dolphins to collect data about the animals and their environment. A group of sophomores, meanwhile, spent two weeks in Brazil, learning about the country’s complex forces of race, class, natural resource management, and urbanization, in a program connected to the Humanities II world history and religions courses.

Students on the Alpine ski team spent their spring break traveling in Italy, skiing and experiencing the local history, culture, and food. And the NMH Senior Dance Company traveled to the 2023 National High School Dance Festival in Pittsburgh after being selected to perform a piece from their fall NMH concert, titled “Stuck.” The dancers also took part in master classes and connected with high school and professional dancers from around the country.

Nicole Letourneau

Dedication

New Chan Cottage Recognizes Long History of International Students at NMH

In October, Cottage 1 London dormitory was renamed Chan Cottage, in honor of NMH’s first Chinese graduate, Chan Loon Teung, Class of 1892.

The new name, designated by NMH Trustee and campaign co-chair Justin Wai ’02, is both a tribute to the trail-blazing Chan and a recognition of the school’s historic commitment to serving students from around the world. This year, NMH’s student body hailed from 58 countries and 32 states.

Chan, who was born in Canton in 1866, went on to become the first Chinese student at Harvard University, graduating in 1897.

“Clearly, the world has changed drastically since the days of Chan’s attendance at Mount Hermon,” Wai said at the dedication. “But some things have remained constant. Over the past 140 years, this building has been a warm, loving home for our students, full of memories that many, like me, revisit in our dreams.”

Head of School Brian Hargrove unveiled a plaque to hang in the dorm and presented Wai with a framed drawing of the building. “Chan Cottage recalls both those generations of international students who have traveled the furthest to these doors and more especially honors our first Chinese graduate, Chan Loon Teung,” Hargrove said.

Board of Trustees Chair Mariah Calagione ’89, P’18, ’20 expressed gratitude for Wai’s “ongoing service, leadership, and generosity — for his very embodiment of head, heart, and hand.

“Thank you, Justin, for keeping NMH close to your heart, for reflecting on the many lessons learned here, the opportunities gained, the connections made, and for providing exceptional opportunities for future generations of students,” she said.

— Nicole Letourneau

Trustee Justin Wai ’02 was joined by fellow Trustee Tiffani Brown ’96 and students to celebrate the naming of Chan Cottage.

Arshay Cooper Scholars

This year, NMH welcomed the first two recipients of the Arshay Cooper Scholarship, which recognizes excellence in rowing and in academics: Janelli Garcia and Fernando Garcia, both members of the class of 2026.

The scholarships are supported by NMH Board Chair Mariah Calagione ’89, P’18, ’20 and Sam Calagione ’88, P’18, ’20.

Janelli and Fernando (who are not related) came to NMH from San Miguel Academy in Newburgh, New York, which has the largest minority rowing program in the U.S.

The San Miguel program has enjoyed the support of rower and youth advocate Arshay Cooper and his foundation, A Most Beautiful Thing Inclusion Fund, which works to make rowing more diverse, inclusive, and equitable. The fund is named after A Most Beautiful Thing, Cooper’s memoir about being a member of the first all-Black high school rowing team in the nation. Cooper also has a special relationship with NMH: He was the school’s commencement speaker in 2021 and has mentored other NMH rowers.

Marvin Garcia, NMH’s director of financial aid and a member of San Miguel’s board of trustees, said the partnership with Cooper is one example of NMH’s commitment to expanding access to students from diverse backgrounds. “When students’ traditional paths don’t include boarding school, it is the responsibility of schools like NMH to make sure students and their families feel as if they belong,” said Garcia (who is not related to either student).

Head of School Brian Hargrove called Fernando and Janelli “strong citizens and scholars ... who want to take full advantage of the academic and outside-the-classroom experiences at Northfield Mount Hermon.”

Both students are doing just that. “It’s a really life-changing opportunity that I was given,” Fernando said.

“I think it’s amazing that they opened an opportunity for girls to experience what I am experiencing and to be able to go away and attend an amazing boarding school like this one,” Janelli said.

STUDENTS ELEVATE STORIES OF WOMEN ARTISTS

Women are woefully underrepresented on Wikipedia — only 17% of biographies on the site are of women, according to NMH Librarian Beth Ruane. During Women’s History Month, NMH students did their part to address that imbalance, at the school’s first-ever edit-a-thon.

On a Sunday afternoon in March, students gathered in Schauffler Library to update entries about notable women artists and writers on the site. By day’s end, the group had edited seven articles and added 2,350 words and 21 references. Less than two weeks later, the articles they’d contributed to had already been viewed more than 2,400 times.

The edit-a-thon was “a cool opportunity to contribute to a collective knowledge pool, learn some editing skills, and emphasize the stories and contributions of those who history has glossed over,” said English teacher and event co-organizer Sierra Dickey ’11. The NMH edit-a-thon was part of a worldwide effort, called Feminism+Art, that addresses gender bias on Wikipedia.

“It’s an actionable way to contribute, even if it’s a small difference,” said Delphi Lyra ’24, who edited the entry about African American poet Latorial Faison. “I can walk in here and then an hour later walk out having contributed to something positive.”

— Nicole Letourneau

Talent is everywhere, hunger is everywhere, thirst is everywhere. Access and opportunity are not.

ARSHAY COOPER

Janelli Garcia and Fernando Garcia, pictured above and below, in a screenshot from a video about the San Miguel rowing program.

VISITORS HELP STUDENTS EXPLORE THE IMPORTANCE OF CITIZENSHIP AND SERVICE

Each year, NMH centers learning around a theme that connects to one of the core principles behind the school’s mission. Throughout the year, that theme is woven into classes, activities, athletics, and special events, including campus visits from people who are engaged in work related to the theme.

In the 2022-23 academic year, students explored the theme of Citizenship and Service. The speaker series kicked off with a visit from U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, whose 2nd Congressional District includes the NMH campus. McGovern spoke to students about his lifetime of work in areas including human rights and food insecurity and encouraged them to take action on the issues that matter to them.

Later in the fall semester, students heard from cultural educator and author Larry Spotted Crow Mann.

A citizen of the Nipmuc Tribe of Massachusetts, he received the NAACP’s Indigenous Peoples Award in 2021 for his lifetime commitment to social justice and to sharing the culture of his tribe.

The speaker series wrapped up in the spring with a visit from writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2020 for The Undocumented Americans, which is in part a memoir about growing up as an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. in 1990s and 2000s and in part a collection of essays about the experiences of undocumented day laborers.

The talks helped students envision the many ways they can pursue service in their lives. Hazel Handy ’23, who introduced Mann at his visit, described his message as “an invitation to also lead our lives with the understanding that hopefulness enacts change. When multiple people understand the power of believing in communitycentered goals, it’s a recipe for healing while also moving forward.”

— Nicole Letourneau

I don’t think anyone in the world right now has the luxury to do nothing, to sit back. We all have an obligation to be engaged. I’m a big believer that if you want to do something, you just do it.

—JIM MCGOVERN (PICTURED LEFT)

As I stand here before you — all these young bright minds — you are the future. Racism, prejudice, bigotry — that’s not going to end on its own. That takes action.

— LARRY SPOTTE D CROW MANN (PICTURED BELOW)

“

Whatever your thing is, do as much of it as you can — and delight in it. … Make as many mistakes as you need to while you are young. Take risks. Expose yourself to as many things as possible.

—KARLA CORNEJO VILLAVICENCIO (PICTURED ABOVE)

DAWSON HER MANY HORSES ’94

Walking in Two Worlds

BY JAMES HEFLIN

For Dawson Her Many Horses, an enrolled member of South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux tribe, attending Northfield Mount Hermon meant entering a very different world than the one he’d grown up in. “Throughout my life, I’d heard my grandparents talk about walking in two worlds — walking in the Native world and the non-Native world,” says Her Many Horses, who came to NMH for a postgraduate year in 1993-94. “I’ve done that in all areas of my life.”

Walking in two worlds has given Her Many Horses insights that have allowed him to thrive in many settings, including in his role as a senior vice president and head of Native American Banking for Wells Fargo. The financial services company works with four federally recognized tribes, committing $3 billion in credit and holding $3.9 billion in deposits for tribal governments and tribally owned enterprises.

In 2021, Her Many Horses delivered the keynote address at the Tuck Diversity Conference, where he shared a lesson he’d learned doing this work: “My colleagues’ expertise would get us into the room, but my background as a tribal member would keep us there.” It was a lesson he learned early in his career, when he was working at Merrill Lynch as an investment banking analyst and director of Native American Business Development. One day, he attended a pitch meeting to a tribal council, for a deal that involved a refinance of hundreds of millions. “I was

the analyst, and I brought in the pitch book,” he recalls. While Her Many Horses wasn’t one of the key players in the room, at one point, “the tribal treasurer said, ‘Mr. Her Many Horses, what do you think of this deal?’

“I realized that the treasurer understood and knew that I come from a community like his, and he wanted to see what my perspective was,” Her Many Horses says. “He knew the impact this financing would have and understood there were also risks. I think he asked me as a banker but also as a tribal member. He wanted to know if this was a deal we could do that wouldn’t do harm or put them in jeopardy.”

Her Many Horses has had similar experiences throughout his career. One Native finance director, Her Many Horses says, told him, “It makes me feel good to know you’re on that side of the table.”

How he got to that side of the table is a story that begins during his time at NMH. Her Many Horses references the work of Harvard sociologist Anthony Jack, who writes about “the privileged poor,” people who come from poverty but attend elite schools and must learn to navigate in new circumstances. “I think that concept applies to me,” he says.

Coming to NMH from a poor, rural area in South Dakota, Her Many Horses discovered a different world. NMH’s academic rigor prepared him well for college — he attended Amherst College before transferring

to and graduating from Columbia University, then received an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. But just as important, he says, were the nonacademic lessons he learned at NMH.

“There was a socialization process that took place for me there,” Her Many Horses says. “My parents were the first people in my family to go to college.” Being around classmates from much more privileged backgrounds “was eye-opening.”

Nonetheless, he found a welcoming community at NMH. “My teachers were super nice,” he says. “It was never a place that felt intimidating, even though there were a lot of pieces that were new to me and my experience. That socialization really helped me. I learned about table settings eating in Alumni Hall. All those little cues, traditions, practices, things that people do that I didn’t grow up with — they have served me very well.”

The community Her Many Horses found at NMH was broader in other ways, too. “NMH was a place with a lot of diversity, and coming from South Dakota, that was a big part of my experience,” he says. “A lot of my friends were from New York City, and a lot of them were diverse students like myself. We all became pretty close, and that shaped my experience and my outlook.”

Her Many Horses was also profoundly affected by the emphasis NMH places on the importance of giving back. He gives back to the

school as a donor, and he gives back to the Native community, through his work at Wells Fargo, where he elevates financial and policy issues that affect tribal communities. Most tribes, he explains, are sovereign entities but haven’t been well-served by traditional banking, in part because they are located in rural communities. “Some tribes have had trouble getting access to the capital they need,” he says. “Banking services have been a challenge for them.” In his role, he works to lessen those challenges. “I’m proud of that work,” says Her Many

Horses, who also serves as vice chair of Wells Fargo’s National Unbanked Advisory Task Force.

He gives back in many other ways as well: Her Many Horses is a member of the board of trustees at both the American Indian College Fund and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he’s the first Native American to serve in that role. He co-chairs Dartmouth’s Native American Visiting Committee, and he sits on the Leadership Council of the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve

Bank of Minneapolis, which works to address systemic barriers to economic opportunity in tribal communities. He’s also chair of the corporate advisory committee of the nonprofit Native American Finance Officers Association, which supports economic and educational initiatives in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

Whether it’s serving as a trustee to one of the highest-profile museums in the nation or sitting on an advisory committee to the president of an Ivy League institution, Her Many Horses often finds himself walking in a different world than the one he grew up in. And he does so informed and empowered by the Native culture from which he comes and by the education and values that he gained during his time at NMH.

“It’s something that’s prepared me for where I’m at today,” says Her Many Horses. “A lot of that is from an academic perspective. But the socialization process that occurred when I was there has helped me in so many different ways as I advanced in my career and became more senior. I’ve been invited into new discussions, new meetings, new groups of people, and my ability to navigate in these spaces where people like me haven’t always gone — my experience at NMH prepared me for that.” [NMH]

James Heflin is a writer and editor based in western Massachusetts.

PHOTO: ROB STRONG

← Dawson Her Many Horses brings his cultural background and lessons learned at NMH to his work as head of Native American Banking at Wells Fargo.

AZANIA ANDREWS ’96

Making Change from the Top

BY ELISE GIBSON

She is young for a CEO of a $500 million company, yet Azania Andrews ’96 seems to have been journeying toward success for a very long time. She will tell you she likes to work hard, but there’s more to it than that. In fact, her drive seems to come from her very core, from a lifetime of high expectations. “The standard for me was always excellence,” Andrews says.

Her parents came of age in the South during the civil rights era, and Andrews grew up hearing their stories of segregation and the move toward integration. “It was ingrained in me that my job was to help take our family to the next level,” she says. “I was pushed to have great grades and to aspire to do and see and experience more than they had.” And her parents’ job, as they saw it, was to create opportunities for her.

By any measure, parents and daughter did their respective jobs very well. Andrews distinguished herself as an athlete and student at NMH, receiving the Head of School’s Award her senior year. Last May, she was named CEO of 1440 Foods, a leading producer of protein bars, powders, and shakes for high-performance athletes as well as for active people who want a boost of nutrition. Before that, she worked for nine years at Anheuser-Busch, where she helped

turn Michelob ULTRA into the fastestgrowing beer brand in America.

Andrews’ expertise, which she honed at the Harvard Business School, is in marketing and digital communication. But she didn’t always know that the business world was where she was heading. While at NMH and then Stanford, her goal was to become a physician. But a hard brush with a chemistry course at Stanford nudged her to change direction. She had found community-service work to be gratifying during her NMH years, and so at Stanford she began volunteering for nonprofit organizations that addressed community needs. She also changed her major to urban studies. “I thought I was going to be a community organizer,” Andrews recalls.

A post-grad public-service fellowship led her to a job in Seattle helping newly tech-wealthy young professionals find ways to give back to their communities. She then moved to New York City to work as a fundraiser for the Robin Hood Foundation, which provides grants to a range of poverty-fighting nonprofits. There she discovered what she calls “incredible and life-saving” groups that were starved for funds because they struggled to tell their own stories to potential donors. “I decided I would go to business school to get some proper

marketing training, with the idea that I could go back and help nonprofits better communicate what they do,” she says.

First, though, she planned to spend a few years in the corporate world. Fifteen years later, Andrews is still in that world, but she hasn’t lost the drive to “do good,” as she says.

“Being a Black woman in the rooms I am now in, I have tremendous power to create change,” she says. “I hire people and can make clear the value of diversity. I’ve been able to represent the point of view of women and people of color, whether it’s in policies, procedures, or retention, but also externally, like how we are portrayed in marketing materials.” She speaks with pride of helping develop the careers of young people who may not otherwise see workplace leaders who look like them. And she’s grateful for

the managers and mentors who have helped her and pushed her forward.

“I kept growing, and now I’m a CEO!”

Andrews lives in New York City with her husband, Martin, and 9-year-old

son, Benjamin. When she was offered the rewarding but demanding job leading 1440 Foods, she turned to them for input. “We felt like it was a leap we could take and could make

work for our family,” she says. “I am lucky in that Martin and I are really partners, sharing in all responsibilities at home and supporting each other’s career growth.”

As the leader of a newly created company within a large private equity firm, Andrews has been tasked with building a team. “I like to win, and so I like creating teams of people who want to win and who are excited to achieve things beyond what they thought possible,” she says. She credits some of that spirit to her experience as an athlete at NMH, where she captained the track team and won the track award her senior year, as well as played on a championship field hockey team.

Jumping from a legacy company like 160-year-old Anheuser-Busch to a new company might seem risky, but Andrews is bullish on the prospects of 1440 Foods. Its products are sold in major grocery chains nationwide and beyond and are part of a health and wellness category that is growing by double digits.

Still, she says, “I’ve never chosen roles based on name brand or status. It’s always been about the challenge, and if I felt I could really get out of the experience something that was meaningful and could help me be a better leader. To have a CEO opportunity at a company of real scale was phenomenal. It felt like a really powerful growth move.” [NMH]

Elise Gibson is a freelance writer based in western Massachusetts.

←

As CEO of 1440 Foods, Andrews brings to the boardroom the winning spirit that helped her excel as a scholar-athlete at NMH.

“Being a Black woman in the rooms I am now in, I have tremendous power to create change. I hire people and can make clear the value of diversity. I’ve been able to represent the point of view of women and people of color, whether it’s in policies, procedures, or retention, but also externally.”

PHOTO: DAVID YEOMANS

A Different Kind of

Through Capstones, Students Pursue Their Passions — and Give Something Back to the Community

Rigor

STORY BY MAUREEN TURNER

PHOTOS BY MATTHEW CAVANAUGH

Academic Dean Lori Veilleux.

For Veilleux, the embodiment of this idea is the capstone, a self-directed project that allows students to pursue creative work beyond the regular curriculum. An optional course open to seniors, the capstone empowers students to follow their intellectual passions while contributing to the community.

“The capstone [allows students] to carve out dedicated and well-supported space to do their own thing,” Veilleux says. “To me, it feels like we’re living up to our mission and our vision of what school should be like through the capstone.”

While no two capstones are alike, Veilleux says, they all offer students an invaluable experience. “I love that it’s open to everyone,” she says. “Not everyone has the privilege. People say, ‘Oh, follow your passion; follow your dream.’ That’s really easy for people who are independently wealthy but very difficult and unattainable for lots of other people. But here, there’s this equalized opportunity that students can strive for.”

Students interested in doing a capstone submit a proposal, which must be approved by the relevant academic department. Each capstone student works closely with a faculty advisor, who offers everything from suggested readings on their topic to time-management advice. The

student, however, bears significant responsibility for the project, starting with developing a plan to achieve their goals — and, in some cases, altering their plans if their original ideas don’t pan out or their work takes them in new, intriguing directions.

In the end, students present their work to a faculty panel and produce a final, tangible product to be shared with the community; this year, that included works of art, new material for the humanities curriculum, and a free, open-source app designed to help students sleep better.

That final project is key to the capstone experience. “It’s built in from the ground level that it has to be something that you’re giving to the community in some way,” Veilleux says. “You’re sharing your results, you’re sharing your knowledge. It’s like a gift.”

For students, a capstone is a chance to experience the sort of self-directed, self-motivated

↗

For his capstone, Nico Zhang created an app to help students sleep better.

he notion of academic rigor means different things to different people. For some, it conjures up images of stressed students glued to their desks, spending long hours memorizing information and slogging through exams. But at Northfield Mount Hermon, “we think about rigor in terms of a student who has excelled to the point where they’re capable of exploring their own individual interests in a highly independent and sophisticated way,” says

learning they’ll do in college — where, in some cases, they’ll even continue to work on their capstone topic. When Veilleux sits on a capstone panel, she says, “the question I always ask is: ‘If you had more time, what would you do next?’ And they always have a plan for that. There’s the immediate gift back, but I think that we can trust that that gift keeps giving.”

Jennifer Keator, a teacher in the religious studies and philosophy department, served as the capstone advisor last fall for Athena Zhao, who created lessons on existentialism for NMH’s Humanities I course. (See “Asking the Big Questions.”) Part of her role, Keator says, was helping Zhao narrow down her many ideas into a plan that could be executed in one semester. “Kids who are drawn to capstones are big, deep thinkers. The first step is helping them hone it down to a particular topic that’s manageable,” Keator says. “Once a student has identified what they’d like to focus on, we help them come up with a timeline for how they’re going to meet this goal. Sometimes, we have to make room for the students’ ideas to shift and change.”

Keator had been Zhao’s Humanities I teacher, so it was particularly gratifying for her to watch her former student develop her own curriculum for the class — and then actually teach it to a current crop of 9th-graders. “It was really exceptional,” Keator says. “She had smallgroup discussions. She had an object lesson. She had a PowerPoint. She got students up out of their seats.”

Equally impressive, Keator says, was Zhao’s presentation of her work to a faculty panel. “That’s pretty daunting, right? To present your thoughts and your ideas and your research around one of the most foundational courses [at NMH] and offer some feedback or some critique,” Keator says. “And it was so welcomed by the department. It was gratifying to know that she cared so much about the material when she was learning it the first time that it led her to ask these questions and then develop her own work.”

Through capstones, “students get agency over their learning,” Keator continues. “And the community gets a passionate learner,” whose excitement, in turn, inspires others. “Other students see it, and they say, ‘Oh, she did that? I want to do that. Here’s my idea.’ And we give them the opportunity to do it.”

↑ Humanities I “is really precious,” says Athena Zhao, who developed lesson plans for the class.

Asking the Big Questions

Athena Zhao has always been a philosopher at heart — she just didn’t know it.

As a child, she says, “I didn’t know what philosophy was. But I’ve always had this natural tendency to ask big questions, like ‘Who am I?’ I just didn’t know the questions I was asking myself were actually philosophy.”

At NMH, Zhao found a place to explore her questions (not to mention a name to describe what she was doing): Humanities I and II, the foundational courses in which students engage with four essential questions: Who am I? What is my place? What does it mean to be human? How, then, shall I live?

Zhao went on to take more philosophy classes, at NMH and at a summer program at Stanford, and she plans to major in the subject in college. “I was really inspired by my experience in Hum I,”

she says. For her capstone, she wanted to find a way to contribute to the curriculum. “It’s one of the core courses that we all have a shared memory of, and I think it’s really precious,” she says. “And I wanted to add more to it.”

After exploring a few options and digging into the history of NMH’s humanities program, Zhao ultimately decided to develop a unit on existentialism, the philosophical ideology that recognizes the individual’s responsibility for creating meaning in their life. “Since we are all responsible for our own actions, each action should reflect and contribute to the general social welfare,” Zhao wrote as part of her capstone. That aligns with NMH’s goal of encouraging students to examine their personal identity and then consider their role in their community.

Working with her former Humanities I teacher, Jennifer Keator, Zhao developed lesson plans on the topic, which she then taught to a group of 9th-graders. “I was asking them [questions] like: What is the meaning in life?” she says. While the students had not yet been introduced to the concept, she notes, their responses “were getting right to the point of existentialism.”

Philosophy sometimes gets a bad rap, Zhao says. “I think a lot of people would consider philosophy to be impractical. Philosophy can be frustrating, because you never get the immediate answer.

“But it’s a process of exploration,” she continues, “and that’s important for all of us, especially students at NMH: to be exposed, to be challenged intellectually, to reflect on who we are, and to be challenged all the time and to challenge other people’s ideas — because that really sparkles creativity. And that really sparkles reflection. Philosophy is important.”

Taking on Health Care Inequities

For her capstone, Clara Shin created The Magical Sunscreen, a children’s book that addresses misconceptions about race and skin-cancer risk.

The project reflects Shin’s interest in addressing inequities in health care and empowering people by providing them with reliable information about their health. She developed that interest while volunteering at medical clinics for underserved populations in Mongolia and in her home country of Korea during school breaks.

“Because my parents both work in the medical field, I always had access to medicine,” Shin says. “And I didn’t really think of that as a big privilege. I thought that was something that’s offered to everyone.” Her volunteer experience — seeing people line up for treatment at a makeshift hospital set up in an abandoned church, talking with patients about the stigma associated with certain diseases — opened her eyes. “It showed me that health disparities really do exist,” she says. Back at NMH, in her social science and humanities classes, Shin delved into the broader context in which these disparities exist — and possible solutions for reducing them.

The Magical Sunscreen takes on a common but false belief: that people with darker skin don’t need to use sunscreen to protect themselves from skin cancer. While people with dark skin are less likely to develop melanoma than lighter-skinned people, Shin learned through research, they experience higher mortality rates from skin cancer, in part because their early symptoms often go undetected.

“There’s this misconception that it’s not as much of a threat, so people go longer before seeking help or getting the diagnosis,” says Shin, who wrote and presented a paper on the topic at the 2022 Symposium of Rising Scholars. “But another underlying issue is that health education doesn’t target these populations [with messages about] sunscreen’s importance. Interestingly, even doctors have this misconception.”

“Philosophy can be frustrating, because you never get the immediate answer. But it’s a process of exploration and that’s important for all of us.”

Shin decided to create a children’s book, since studies show that UV exposure early in life leads to higher rates of skin cancer later. The book — a collaboration with illustrator Oma Tasie-Amadi, a fellow NMH senior — offers an accessible, appealing lesson to kids about the importance of using sunscreen, whatever your skin color. Originally, Shin says, she thought about depicting the sun as a snake whose bites would represent the symptoms of skin cancer, but she rejected the idea as too scary for young readers. Instead, the story shows the sun giving warm hugs to kids, who use sunscreen to protect themselves from the spiky triangles of the sun’s rays while still enjoying its warmth. Tasie-Amadi’s illustrations depict children with a range of skin colors, underscoring the universality of the story’s message.

While Shin envisions one day going to medical school, in college she plans to study medical humanities, an interdisciplinary field that considers the connections between medicine and the humanities and social science. She’s also interested in exploring ways to advance scientific literacy. “Education is at the core,” she says. When scientific knowledge is accessible to people, “they have the confidence and understanding and independence to assess their own health and make their own decisions.”

Helping Students Sleep Easier

Like a lot of busy students, Nico Zhang sometimes has trouble with sleep: sticking to a regular schedule, logging enough quality hours — and dealing with the repercussions the next day when he doesn’t get as much as he needs.

So for his capstone, Zhang created an online tool that can help users learn more about healthy sleep habits and begin implementing changes to get more, and better, sleep.

“Hey, night owl. Ready for a change?” asks the opening page of the website, ShiftC.app. (The name, Zhang says, refers to shifting your circadian rhythm, the internal clock that regulates your sleep-wake cycle.) The site invites users to set bedtime and wake-up goals, then generates a schedule to help them make small, daily adjustments to achieve those goals. It also offers information about how the sleep-wake cycle works, along with evidence-based strategies for improving sleep.

A largely self-taught computer programmer, Zhang has worked on many personal projects as exercises for developing new skills. “Some are more complex than [Shift C] and some are less,” he says. “But I’d never actually set out with a clear goal to work toward, to make something for people to use. The capstone project is kind of the culmination of what I’ve learned up to now and a way for me to create an actual product.”

Creating something for public use was itself a learning experience for Zhang; while his previous projects were for him alone, for Shift C, he took into consideration every aspect of the user experience, from accessibility to ease of use. For instance, rather than a phone-based or wearable app, he created a website, which can be accessed, for free, from a range of devices. While working on a web platform limited some of the features he could include, “it was a solution to serve as many people as possible,” he says.

That’s not the only way Zhang incorporated accessibility into his capstone: He created Shift C with open-source software, which is released

↑ Clara Shin’s capstone was driven by her desire to address inequities in health care.

under a license that allows users to inspect, modify, and distribute it free of charge. “It’s just a philosophy that I agree with: making your knowledge available to others, contributing to a whole,” he says.

Zhang plans to study computer science in college and is drawn to programs that incorporate the social sciences and humanities. As he did with his capstone, he’s interested in exploring not just the technical aspects of software development but also how he can use that powerful tool to improve people’s lives in tangible ways. “We make software to make people’s lives easier. Ultimately, it comes down to people making something for other people. I want to learn in a way that’s focused on finding what kinds of solutions will help a person and then using the knowledge of computer science to achieve that.”

Combining Two Passions: Math and Art

“I used to be a very typical STEM student,” says Bailey Koo. From a very young age, “I developed my natural passion for math,” she says. Prior to coming to NMH, she attended a STEM-focused school, where she delved into college-level number theory in the third grade and participated in math competitions.

At NHM, she discovered a new passion: art. “When I started liking art, people would ask me, ‘Oh, but you’re a math student — are you changing your career to art?’” But for Koo, this new interest wasn’t a change of course but rather a creative and intellectual expansion, fueled by NMH’s interdisciplinary approach to education in general and the support of her mentor, art teacher Jamie Rourke, in particular.

“I realized that rather than see math and art as separate categories, I can merge the two interests together,” Koo says. “That’s when I started making mathematical art” — art inspired by the mathematical concepts that she finds so engaging.

For her capstone, Koo created five striking pieces that explore math, philosophy, justice, memory, and identity. In an artist statement accompanying her work, she wrote, “By incorporating elements from mathematics, computer science, and logic into my selfhood and perceptions of society, I seek to continue exploring the interconnections and interactions between the theoretical and physical worlds within myself and the wider universe.”

At the end of the fall semester, Koo installed her pieces throughout the Gilder Center. One piece, “Network,” incorporates drawings of electric circuit boards — invoking memories of her childhood habit of taking apart household appliances to explore their workings — as well as a tower, from which vinyl strands extend, representing both computer and social networks. Another piece, “Connection,” made of steel wire, plaster cast, and fiber-optic lights, was inspired

“I’d never actually set out with a clear goal to work toward, to make something for people to use,” Nico Zhang says.

by the Hopf link, a concept in mathematical knot theory, and explores the seemingly paradoxical concepts of earth-bound reality and unbound imagination. Imagination is also a theme of “Unbound,” a miniature tableau that represents Koo’s rich childhood fantasy life, complete with alien attacks, flying houses, and lava eruptions — “a return to the blurred boundaries between the normal physical and imaginative worlds of my childhood,” she wrote in her artist statement.

Sometimes, Koo says, she sits in Gilder and watches students and teachers stop for a few minutes in their busy days to engage with her pieces. Each observer, she notes, brings their own experiences to the work and takes away their own impressions. “Students here are very busy. And oftentimes, when we’re just running to class, we don’t look at our surroundings.” But the art pieces, with their scale and compelling elements, catch people’s eyes. “They’re kind of startled, and they stop for a few seconds to look at the space around them.” [NMH]

“I realized that rather than see math and art as separate categories, I can merge the two interests together. That’s when I started making mathematical art.”

↑→ With the help of art teacher Jamie Rourke, Bailey Koo installed her art work in the Gilder Center.

Nature’s

STORY BY ELISE GIBSON

PHOTOS BY JO CHATTMAN Balance

In the New Farm Semester Program, Students Learn Lessons of Sustainability — from Literature, Science, and the Fields

he barn is chilly on this otherwise mild midwinter morning. A pair of Belgian draft horses — Belle and Shorty — are enjoying their winter respite as a handful of goats play in the next pen. But warming sunshine beckons through the wide open east-facing barn doors, revealing a vista of snowy fields sloping down to the river valley and of the hills rising beyond.

Winter may be a down time for farm animals, but not for the farmers. Jake Morrow and Emma Lindale ’17, who keep the NMH farm running, are taking full advantage of the fair weather as they work quickly to frame a new greenhouse. Later, students in a new farm program will join in on constructing the first of two hoop houses in time for spring planting.

Farm work has been a part of the NMH experience going back to the school’s founding in 1879. But this year, a cohort of seniors — seven in all — are pioneering a new approach, one that combines classroom coursework with hands-on farm work into two full-credit, linked courses, called the Farm Semester.

“Farm work requires you to be intellectually engaged while also participating in the physical world,” says Morrow, who is in his sixth year as farm director. “This program helps students see how satisfying work is when it combines

the intellectual and physical realms. It supports the idea that the farm is academically meaningful.”

At around 11 am, five days a week, Farm Semester students arrive at the Farm Classroom, a sunny, one-room, newly renovated building adjacent to the barn. The classroom is the home base for the program’s two academic classes: Reading and Writing the Land, an English course taught by Meg Eisenhauer, and The Science of Farming: Sustainable Land Use, taught by Mary Hefner, newly named NMH’s Margaret J. Sieck ’72 Endowed Teaching Chair in Environmental Studies. [See “Recognizing a Commitment to Teaching Sustainability.”]

On this day, the English class is discussing meaningful passages

↗ In the Farm Semester program, learning takes place in the classroom and beyond.

from Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape, by Lauret Savoy. The students reflect and then write about the author’s meaning of inhabiting “terrains of memory.” They will record their thoughts in handsome, hardbound

field notebooks that will also hold their observations, in both prose and drawings, from their regular walks in nature. “I wanted to center the work of observing,” Eisenhauer says.

The oversized notebooks are big enough, she notes, to include

students’ work from their English and science classes as well as from their farm work for the entire semester. “I want them to experience how the habits of mind of science and literature overlap and in some ways are very much the same,” Eisenhauer says. She and Hefner selected the notebooks in part to encourage students to slow down, to write by hand instead of by keyboard. “The pace here can be frenetic. We want to slow it down,” Eisenhauer says. “We inhabit a different space and place here from the rest of campus.”

Hefner’s science class immediately follows Eisenhauer’s. Hefner has been teaching her course since 2016, in part to inspire more students to get involved in the farm, but also “because, for me, farming is a legitimate science,” she says.

By joining forces, Hefner and Eisenhauer are able to synchronize their respective courses to the

While students have always performed farm chores as part of the workjob program, the Farm Semester has a broader ambition, to approach agriculture from multiple perspectives.

calendar of the farm. Dormancy, for instance, was the first study topic when the Farm Semester began in January. The students considered it as a literary concept, then as a scientific process, and then by closely observing the plants and land outside the classroom door. Germination came next, as they discussed concepts such as what it means to germinate an idea, and then they explored the biology of seed germination.

Emma Lindale stepped in to teach the science class one day to discuss germination from a farmer’s perspective. After they complete the greenhouses, the students will put germination into practice by planting seeds; they will have already studied germination rates so they’ll know how many seeds are needed for an expected harvest.

Students say they appreciate the course’s multidimensional approach. “This combination of the science, the writing, and the practice of farming just broadened my understanding of agriculture,” says Lucas Macedo ’23. “The fact that we can spend two classes talking about farming is astonishing to me.”

As Eisenhauer says, “Being its own program gives [the Farm Semester] unity and coherence.”

While NMH students have always performed farm chores as part of the workjob program, the Farm Semester has a broader ambition, to approach agriculture from multiple perspectives. Morrow, who taught high-school Latin and Greek before he took over as farm director, believes in elevating the practice of farming as a pursuit that combines head, heart, and hand. He worked closely with NMH trustee Theresa M. Jacobs ’10, who wanted to provide a meaningful campaign gift to the school [see “Inspiring the Next Generation of Environmental Stewards”], in creating a list of needs to launch the program. The list included the cost of teachers, new greenhouses, farm equipment, and a classroom building.

RECOGNIZING A COMMITMENT TO TEACHING SUSTAINABILITY

Veteran science teacher Mary Hefner has been named Northfield Mount Hermon’s first Margaret J. Sieck ‘72 Endowed Teaching Chair in Environmental Studies, in recognition of her distinguished work in the field.

“We are very excited about the opportunities this endowed chair opens for us and thrilled that we can recognize Mary Hefner’s work,” said Bea Garcia, dean of faculty and assistant head for academic programs. “Mary has dedicated her career to work in the area of sustainability and farming. She has inspired hundreds of students to take responsibility in their relationship with the land and the environment.”

In addition to developing and teaching in the Farm Semester, Hefner has taught classes in biology, botany, and environmental studies and co-led travel programs in Costa Rica, New Zealand, and Brazil over the course of her 37-year career at NMH.

Endowed chairs, a priority of the new NMH campaign, support teachers through compensation, continuing education and professional development, and travel opportunities. In turn, recipients work closely with colleagues to help shape programs that reflect NMH’s mission and values. “Endowed chairs recognize outstanding teachers like Mary,” who are leaders on campus and in their fields, said Head of School Brian Hargrove. “Dedicated, innovative educators like Mary are a testament to the vital role that teachers play in shaping the lives of our students at NMH.”

The chair is funded by Margaret J. Sieck ’72, P’03, a former NMH trustee and current member of the campaign committee, and her husband, Bob Baldwin P’03. The award will support Hefner in her teaching and ongoing work to advance environmental studies at NMH, including evaluating the farm program, visiting local farms, designing projects, and coordinating interdisciplinary work across the curriculum. Donating the chair was an apt fit for Sieck’s and Baldwin’s interests: In their retirements, they have worked to protect water quality in central New Jersey and to educate people about climate change.

“We’re grateful to supporters like Margaret Sieck and Bob Baldwin,” Hargrove said. “The Sieck Chair directly supports each and every student, affirms NMH’s leadership in environmental studies, and honors our abiding commitment to deep learning and excellent teaching.”

— Maureen Turner

↑ Mary Hefner

“I have this hope that the program will connect students to the physical world at a time when they are so often disconnected from it,” Morrow says, referring to the digital dimension that dominates many young lives.

Environmental answers

The Farm Semester curriculum is grounded in respect for the land, the plants that grow on it, and the animals that rely on it. For this generation of students, environmental stewardship is a central concern, and amid dire warnings of environmental crisis, learning about positive agricultural practices can offer a ray of hope.

“It’s so easy to feel helpless. There are a lot of reasons to despair about the environment and the state of food and industrial farming,” Morrow says. “We can offer a reply to that. Students can see you don’t have to treat the animals and land that way.”

Through Hefner’s science class, the students learn concepts like no-till methods of growing food. “They learn about tools that don’t disrupt the soil. They’ll use a broad fork to open up the soil rather than a rototiller that slices the soil,” she says. These young farmers use hand tools like hoes and harvesting knives; weeds get pulled by hand, and Belle and Shorty pull the plows. “How does agriculture fit in with the environment and how can it be done sustainably? The students want to know, ‘Can we figure out an answer?’” Hefner says.

Lessons about sustainability are deeply meaningful for Macedo, who came to NMH from a rural area of Brazil. “What I’ve seen in my hometown is that even though the whole economy is carried by agriculture, most of the people are not aware of the negative impacts on the environment, the exploitation, the people that were on the land before,” Macedo says. “This course has been teaching me a lot about these other aspects of agriculture.” He now intends to study agriculture at Cornell University.

“There is no knowledge about land in Brazil. It’s mostly seen as profit,” he says. “I want to be able to change this perspective not only in my country but all over the world.”

John Hanscom ’23 grew up around farms in the Connecticut River Valley. For him, the Farm Semester reinforces big-picture lessons he learned from his grandmother, who modeled, as he says, “a gentle love for the earth and nature.” He aspires to go into business — he’ll attend Babson College in the fall — but in a way that improves the world. “It’s about treating the land right,” Hanscom says. “If you treat the earth right, you’ll treat people right. It’s all about balance.”

Planting seeds

The farm practices at NMH are, in fact, all about treating the land and the people right, and the Farm Semester brings students into the center of this work. An immediate task is to plan for the spring growing season, with the goal of matching food production to demand from Alumni Hall.

This might seem an impossible goal for a residential campus whose formal school year ends in May. But the new greenhouses, which are replacing outdated ones, will use game-changing technology and practices to extend the growing season. “Winter growing has come a long way in the Northeast,” Morrow says. “We’ll be

able to intensively grow vegetables year-round.”

The two new greenhouses will be used for starting seedlings and for growing salad greens throughout the colder months. Morrow anticipates the farm will produce 40 to 50 pounds of salad greens a week for the dining hall. The year-round harvest will include lettuce mix, baby kale, arugula, and spinach. As the weather warms, cucumbers and tomatoes will be grown.

When outside temperatures allow, the farm will begin its traditional growing season for its 1.5 acres of vegetable fields, where tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beets, carrots,

leeks, zucchini, winter squash, potatoes, sweet corn, and other veggies will join the bounty. In the summer, students can fulfill their workjob requirement for the coming school year by spending a full week working on the farm.

↑

Farming is a year-round job. The new hoop houses will allow the NMH farm to grow more produce, even during New England winters.

The entire NMH community reaps the benefits of fresh, organic seasonal produce.

“Students take a lot of pride in seeing that they actually feed the community.”

MARY HEFNER

Along the way from farm to table, students will have used spreadsheets for ordering seeds based on expected yield; they’ll also have learned about organic soil amendments (Belle and Shorty are year-round contributors), rotational grazing of animals, and all the myriad details of running a successful, bountiful farm. “I didn’t realize how much work went into preparing and researching,” Hanscom says. “You can plan out a whole season by creating a spreadsheet.”

The entire NMH community reaps the benefits of fresh, organic seasonal produce, which also includes, on special occasions, maple syrup from NMH’s sugarhouse and freshly pressed cider. “Students take a lot of pride in seeing that they actually feed the community,” Hefner says.

For the first time this year, the greenhouses will be used to grow flowers for the grounds crew to plant around campus. The school will no

longer have to rely on commercial nurseries for geraniums, violas, impatiens, begonias, and marigolds around the school grounds.

Beyond food and flower production, the students are taking the lead on a separate project, which will fulfill their workjob requirement. The interior of the new Farm Classroom, with its whiteboards and high-top worktables, provides a bright and cheerful setting for class discussions, but the large windows look out over the muddy disorder of its recent renovation. That will change once these seven students finish designing and executing a landscape plan for the grounds around the classroom. This semester they’ve been dreaming and drawing up plans for flower gardens, picnic tables, and a patio to make the building a welcoming, beautiful spot for future students to use and enjoy.

It, too, will reflect the sustainability ethos that permeates all aspects of

↑ Farm Semester students took part in this spring’s maple sugaring work.

↓ Jake Morrow and Emma Lindale ‘17, who run the NMH farm, play a key role in the Farm Semester.

the farm program. The flowers, Hanscom notes, will be native species selected to attract pollinators like bees and butterflies to the garden. In February, the students were doing what many gardeners do in winter: researching plants and perusing seed catalogs. Once the weather warms and the ground can be worked, they’ll be out planting flowers and building picnic tables.

Beyond the skills and competencies the students are gaining from it, the Farm Semester is already nurturing a sense of teamwork and shared purpose. “Our group is special. We have kids from all over — Brazil, Pennsylvania, South Korea, Puerto Rico — and we’ve gotten very close from the work we have to do together,” Hanscom says. “I hope every kid who wants to can take this class in the future.” [NMH]

INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDS

NMH’s innovative Farm Semester, which combines academic study with forward-thinking farm practices, grew from the inspiration and resources of a trustee, Theresa Jacobs ’10, whose own work on the farm when she was a student planted the seed for her lifelong interest in agriculture.

“My experience on the farm was an important connector for me back to the land and built my curiosity about where food comes from,” Jacobs says. “Food is consumed and valued differently when you actively helped prepare it. I can promise you there is no better cider than the NMH cider that you helped press yourself.”

Jacobs has carried that mindset into her career. She works for an NGO that envisions and implements transformation strategies — including social issues — for companies in the agriculture supply chain. Her campaign gift to NMH was a way to give back but also a way to support and build a program she describes as “truly good.”

“Investing in the farm just makes sense,” Jacobs says. “If we can spark interest in just half of the students attending a farm-focused program at NMH each year, what is the impact of that? We are talking about smart, driven young adults who learn to be curious and ask questions about where our food comes from and how we can ensure food safety without jeopardizing the health of our planet. For me, this is huge!”

With new resources in hand, NMH has been able to dream big about its farm program, from initiating the Farm Semester to building a dedicated classroom and maximizing food harvests. The school will also:

• Expand the workjob program to allow for more students to work at least one season on the farm.

is part of the work of Farm Semester students.

GET A SWEET TASTE OF NMH

• Develop partnerships with local farms and businesses to source more food locally and create new learning opportunities for students.

• Emphasize environmental stewardship by expanding courses that rely on the NMH farm.

• Create a metric to assess how specific skills and competencies for environmental stewardship are delivered across the curriculum.

As Jacobs notes, “I see an immense untapped potential in the NMH farm that can leverage NMH’s mission of environmental stewardship.”

—Elise Gibson

↑ Caring for the farm’s animals, including goats and draft horses,

Stacie Hagenbaugh, director of alumni relations, brings a deep curiosity and a background in career advising to her role as podcast host.

The “Head, Heart, and Hand” Podcast Shares Stories from NMH Alums

STORY BY NATALIE GEORGES

PHOTO BY JO CHATTMAN

I was only on campus for a year but I’m a hogger for life. [NMH] transformed me in so many ways. I’m so thankful to all the people who saw something in me. I really believe that you get your belief and your confidence from others telling you that you can do it, especially when you’re a young person. And NMH was one of the places where I got that in abundance.

On NMH’s podcast, “Head, Heart, and Hand: Stories of Professional Wayfinding from the NMH Alumni Community,” host Stacie Hagenbaugh, director of alumni relations, invites some of the remarkable members of the NMH community to tell their stories. Listeners are provided with a window into the many ways the NMH experience changes individuals, communities, and the world. (Listen at nmhschool.org/alumni.)

Hagenbaugh recently agreed to have the tables turned on her, sitting down for a conversation about her vision for the podcast, which she launched in 2021, not long after she joined NMH. Surrounded by her supporting cast — Reddy, Leo, Teddy, Madigan, and Robin, the dogs she shares with her wife, Linda — Hagenbaugh recalls her eagerness to get to know her new community. “I came to this role after working for almost 30 years in career development, coaching, and advising, serving as a conduit between students and alums,” she says. “But I was always student-facing. In my current role, I’m focusing on intentional engagement around where alumni are as adults, in their adult lives, and where NMH has played a role in that.”

To accomplish this, Hagenbaugh relies on her deep curiosity about other people: what piques their interests, what worries them, where their past intersects with their dreams for their future. “That capacity for being patient in conversations and letting someone feel confident and

comfortable, to let their stories come to life, is something I did in my career-advising capacity,” she says. “And I think that’s really served me well in getting to know NMH alumni.”

The idea to do a podcast came about as Hagenbaugh dug deeply into the pool of NMH alumni and discovered the breadth and depth of their global reach. “Whether it’s a postgrad who spent one year here or someone who had been here for four years, there’s a common narrative of how transformative that experience was,” she says. “And I thought: I have to bring this to life in some way.”

A podcast is a perfect vehicle for sharing these deeply personal narratives. “When you can hear their voice, it becomes much more personal,” she says. “This is an intimate way of hearing someone’s experience, of celebrating those experiences and those narratives.”

The name “Head, Heart, and Hand” was selected because it’s a phrase that serves as a powerful mantra for many alums, Hagenbaugh says. “It courses through their veins, and it really has shaped who they are.” The stories told on the podcast are more than recaps of how an alum landed on a career path, but rather show where “the confluence of the head, the heart, and the hand has come together and stitched itself into each human being and become deeply embedded in who they are and what they’ve gone on to do, personally and professionally.”

THE NORTHFIELD MOUNT HERMON story can be traced back to the first students who attended the Northfield School for Girls in 1879, through to the incoming class of 2027. It’s a story as deep and varied as the lives that have been transformed by NMH’s mission.

LEE MOULTON ’03 is a board member at the Uncle Nearest Venture Fund, which invests in minority-owned spirit brands, and works on ecommerce partnerships at Google. (From the episode “Using Privilege for Good.”)

ALUMNI VOICES FROM THE PODCAST

(( Listen at )) nmhschool.org/alumni

Hagenbaugh’s approach to the podcast has evolved since its inception. In her role as director of alumni relations, one of her priorities is to build a professional network that’s inclusive of all NMH graduates. To accomplish that, “all students and alumni must see themselves represented in the stories and the pathways that are shared,” she says. The earliest episodes, then, focused on the vital importance of professional networks, especially for women and people of color.

While her guests represent the rich diversity of NMH’s alumni community, there are common threads that connect their stories. “There’s an ethos that alumni have no matter what industry they’re in, a deep desire to leave the world a better place and to act with humanity and purpose,” she says. “It’s palpable. It bubbles out in all of these stories, and it surprises me every time that it’s still there.”

And, Hagenbaugh adds, NMH alums are ready to make pivots in their careers to keep their professional identities aligned with that sense of purpose. “The willingness and ability to change course when something isn’t working or doesn’t align with their inner compass has been a theme,” she says. “And that’s often coupled with becoming more comfortable with taking risks. It’s scary in the moment, but, in time, I think many alums find it becomes their superpower.”

As she looks ahead to future episodes, Hagenbaugh is committed to ensuring that listeners of “Head, Heart, and Hand” hear a little bit of themselves in the stories shared. “I also want it to be inspirational,” she says. “I want someone to feel empowered by listening to another person’s journey and think: ‘OK, I’m gonna try this now; though I never thought I could, I’m going to.’ And if it inspires someone to just lean into that life of purpose in a different way, that would make me feel like I’m accomplishing my goal.” [NMH]

NMH didn’t just educate me; it educated a whole community of people. NMH is not just an education; it lifted me to live, to survive — not just me, but my family and multiple of my relatives. I will continue to give the gift that NMH has given me to the people in my surroundings, to the people where I work, and the people who need what I have learned.

I’ve been lucky to have very, very, very good mentors who knew me as a person and at all times had my best interests at heart. … It’s why I spend so much time with current students trying to mentor. I think it’s imperative that I don’t pull up the ladder and that I pass along that knowledge. … Mentorship is my number-one passion. It’s so, so critical for the next generation to have mentors to pass along the lessons that they’ve learned so that we’re not recreating the wheel.

Remember that there’s no race. There’s no set path, there’s no speed that you’re supposed to be achieving something. … Because some people get it right away and some people, like me, it [takes] a little time to get there. And you eventually get there. It’s definitely not always linear. You follow your gut, you follow a sense of adventure. There will be missteps along the way, setbacks — and that is 100% OK.

I discovered my voice at NMH. … Having been at a place like [NMH], I was so sure of myself and I was so sure of who I was and what I believed in and what I wanted to do in this world. That has honestly carried me so much further than almost anything else in my life.

RAI WILSON ’13 attended Washington University School of Law, practices family law in Ohio, and is developing a social justice podcast called “No Your Rights.”

Check out the podcast “Head, Heart, and Hand: Stories of Professional Wayfinding from the NMH Alumni Community” at nmhschool.org/alumni.

(From the episode “We Are Worthy.”)

LISA KOPP ’88 is a senior marketing and communications professional at the World Bank Group. (From the episode “Embracing Serendipity.”)

CHARMEL MAYNARD ’03 is associate vice president, chief investment officer, and treasurer at the University of Miami. (From the episode “The Power of Not Knowing and Taking Risks.”)

FATIMA SAIDI ’13 was born in Afghanistan and came to the U.S. to attend NMH and then Bates College. She’s the development and relations manager at the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition. (From the episode “Perseverance and Hope.”)

Chuck Kennedy ’47 lives in Concord, New Hampshire, where he enjoys singing in the community choir and being near his daughter. He’s had the pleasure of attending several NMH Sacred Concerts in recent years — “a real treat,” he shares.

Matt Maczan ’06 and his wife, Charlotte, are the proud new parents of Linus Phineas Maczan, born in October in Hamburg, Germany.

Laura Carbonneau ’06 has been named artistic director of theatre and of C.A.K.E., a summer arts program, at MoCo Arts, a nonprofit in Keene, New Hampshire.

Class of ’78 friends Chris Crowder, Eric Chatman, and Joe Sternlieb spent a week biking from Glacier National Park, up the Rocky Mountains and through Banff National Park — “a stunning ride with old friends,” Chris says.

Bill Hawley ’58 and his wife, Betsy, recently connected with Dale (Beetle) Bailey ’58 and his wife, Arlene, when both couples were visiting family in Phoenix. “We had a grand time discussing events of long ago at Mount Hermon and at the same time resolved many of the world’s problems,” Bill writes.

Helen (Bogle) Crawshaw ’55 enjoyed being back on campus for her class reunion last summer and for a special visit with her grandson, Wil Johnson ’24, and her daughters, Cricket Crawshaw ’86 and Abby Crawshaw ’91. “We went to an American literature class and then a concert, from classical to jazz,” Helen writes. “I like knowing about the school today as well as remembering all those times when I was the student.”

Harriet Scott Chessman ’68 wrote the libretto for a new opera, Sycorax, which had its world premiere last fall at the Buehnen Bern Theater in Switzerland. The opera, with music composed by Georg Friedrich Haas, is inspired by The Tempest.

WHAT ELSE ARE YOUR FRIENDS AND CLASSMATES UP TO?

Find the latest NMH alumni news — and share your own — at our online Class Notes portal at nmhschool.org/classnotes

You can also find fellow alums in our searchable alumni directory at nmhschool.org/alumnidirectory

We can’t wait to hear from you!

You can support the entire NMH community with a monthly recurring gift to the NMH Fund, an important campaign priority. Your gift goes to work immediately, helping NMH meet critical current and emerging needs. A recurring gift plan makes your annual gift convenient and affordable. It also reduces fundraising costs so more of your gift goes directly to supporting students. And it’s easy to set up!

Set up a monthly recurring gift using our online giving form: nmhschool.org/nmhfund

“There are people all around to support you. Everyone has a teacher or a staff member they really connect with, and they’re always ready to help you.”

— ANISHA ’24

It’s one of NMH’s most delicious traditions: the annual BEMIS-FORSLUND PIE RACE ! This year’s race — the 132nd — once again saw students, faculty, alums, and friends hit the 5K course to compete for a sweet prize: an apple pie, courtesy of NMH Dining Services, which this year baked 165 pies (plus 50 smaller versions for the smaller runners who competed in the Tart Race). Cheers to Campbell MacDonald ’23, this year’s Pie Race winner!

PHOTO: LINDSEY TOPHAM