Spring Bulletin 2010 by The Park School

The Park School Spring Bulletin 2010

Board of Trustees 2009–10

Alumni Committee 2009–10

Editor

Officers

John Barkan ’85 Co-Chair Ali Epker Ruch ’89 Co-Chair

Design

Kevin J. Maroni Chair Paula A. Johnson Vice Chair Richard Banks ’74 Secretary Martin J. Mannion Treasurer Marcus Cherry Teresa Chope John Connaughton William B. Drucker Richard Edie Lisa Black Franks ’78 Abigail Johnson Heidi Johnson Brian Kavoogian Patti Kraft Anne Punzak Marcus Stuart Mathews Amy Lloyd McCarthy ’86 Pamela McLaurin Nicole Murray Peter Riehl Happy Rowe Carmel Shields Garrett Solomon ’86 Harold Sparrow Suzie Tapson Lanny Thorndike ’81 Ralph L. Wales Ex Officio

Jerrold I. Katz Head of School

Minnie Ames ’86 Peter Barkan ’86 Bob Bray ’53 Greg Cope ’71 Lilla Curran ’95 Lisa Amick DiAdamo ’86 Mark Epker ’86 Abigail Ross Goodman ’91 Anne Collins Goodyear ’84 Jennifer Segal Herman ’82 Jeff Jackson ’95 Julia Lloyd Johannsen ’93 Greg Kadetsky ’96 Rich Knapp ’90 Amy Lampert ’63 Abbott Lawrence ’85 Eve Wadsworth Lehrman ’95 Nia Lutch ’97 Melissa Daniels Madden ’85 Allison Morse ’89 Chip Pierce ’81 Meredith Ross ’86 Jordan Scott ’89 Rebecca Lewin Scott ’89 Garrett Solomon ’86 Anna Sullivan ’95 Kathrene Tiffany ’96 Diana Walcott ’85 Phoebe Gallagher Winder ’84

Cynthia A. Harmon Assistant Head for Program & Professional Development

Kate LaPine

Irene Chu Photography

Tom Kates ’84 Michael Lutch Kate LaPine Printing

Jaguar Press The Bulletin is published twice yearly for the alumni, parents, and friends of The Park School. We welcome your comments and ideas. The Park School 171 Goddard Avenue Brookline, Massachusetts 02445 To contact the Bulletin: Kate LaPine Director of Communications 617-274-6009 kate_lapine@parkschool.org To report alumni news: Eliza Drachman-Jones ’98 Director of Alumni Relations 617-274-6022 alumni@parkschool.org To make a gift to Park: Rob Crawford Director of Development 617-274-6020 rob_crawford@parkschool.org To report address changes: Sarah Braga Development Office Manager 617-274-6018 development@parkschool.org

Jane H. Carney Assistant Head for Finance & Operations Board Chairs Emeriti

Kennett F. Burnes David D. Croll Charles C. Cunningham, Jr. George P. Denny III David G. Fubini M. Dozier Gardner John L. Hall II J. Michael Maynard Anne Worthington Prescott Deborah Jackson Weiss Headmaster Emeritus

Robert S. Hurlbut, Jr.

Cover artwork: Second graders experiment with line, pattern, and color using dye and a special absorbent paper. Designs by Ambrey Hayes, Lucas Hill, Mikayla Paquette, Lara Simshauser, and David Shaw — all Class of 2017.

Park is a coeducational school that admits qualified students without regard to race, religion, national origin, disabilities, sexual orientation, or family composition. Our educational policies, financial aid, and other school-sponsored programs are administered in a nondiscriminatory manner in conformance with applicable law.

The Park School Spring Bulletin 2010

In this issue: 2

Around Park

Windmills, Green Club, Thai Connections 5

Letter from the Editor

A Short History of Technology at Park

Meet the Techies: Carole Carter, Chris Lindsay, Marshall Nelson, Jorge Vega

E-Readers and The Future of Reading

The Park School Library’s Blog 15

Alumni Profiles in Technology

Maggie Frank O’Connor ’73 Jamie Folsom ’85 Jay Livens ’86 Nick Thompson ’90 Lars Albright ’90 Rob Pyles ’93 Sumner Paine ’94 Jake Peters ’94 Emily Warren ’95 Adele Burnes ’96 Andrew Smith ’98 Julia Rosenthal ’01 34

Alumni Notes

On the Highline with Josh David ’78

Foundations for the Future capital campaign

Thank You, Anonymous Graduate and Park School Alumni!

school maintenance. Together, Raine and Mike hatched a plan for the kids to design and help build their own windmill out of recycled parts. “This sounded like a great project! I was happy to serve as a catalyst to bring it to life,” Mike remembers. Mike visited the classroom to explain how a windmill works. After he described the blades, motor, driveshaft, bearings, and directional fin, the Kindergarteners began to sketch their designs. Next, the class visited the shop to craft blades out of an old downspout. Mike had preKindergarten Builds a Windmill cut the pieces and let the students flatten them out with rubber maltextbook called Using Energy, a bro- lets. He attached the homemade aine Miller’s classroom is a ken bicycle, tractor fan blade, old blades to the windmill, but when veritable Fibber McGee’s closet, albeit one designed to delight shock absorber, and blue gum trees they whizzed through the air too to build a 16-foot high windmill for quickly, Mike swapped them for old five- and six-year-olds. For the last his family to generate power. “When fan blades that were better several years, Raine has been colI read about William to my class,” weighted. Finally, at the end of lecting old radios, cassette players, Raine recalls, “they were transJanuary, the windmill was ready to VCRs and the like for her students fixed.” Her students made the leap be installed on the playground. to take apart. “They love exploring immediately. ‘William took apart Enthusiasm for the windmill how these gizmos function,” Raine radios; we take apart radios.’ project spread throughout the says. “We’re not putting them back ‘William made a windmill; can we grade. When a student begged together, but they can distinguish do that too?’ Mike for a windmill of his own, “I between a radio circuit and a Energized but in need of an knew I couldn’t make just one, so I motherboard.” engineer, Raine reached out to Mike made one for every child.” A few This winter, Raine learned Massauro, Park’s director of operaweeks later, Mike oversaw the about a remarkable boy from tions. With a background in installation of personal pinwheels Malawi who shared her love for tinkering and spare parts! Now interna- mechanical design, Mike worked for on wooden bases for all 52 years as a machinist before a previ- Kindergarten students. tionally recognized, the young ous economic downturn necessiWilliam Kamkwamba used his own tated a move to the stable world of ingenuity, an eighth grade American

around R

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

Two designs for Park’s wind turbine by aspiring mechanical engineers in Raine Miller’s Kindergarten class.

Members of the Green Club proudly display stainless steel water bottles that are being sold to support clean drinking water worldwide.

Green Club Making a Difference

“W

e are trying to make Park more eco-friendly,” explains eighth grader Troy Joseph. Troy, together with classmate Danny Benett, helped launch the club in 2008. Now in its second year with 20 members, the Green Club, supervised by science teacher Karen Manning, has led the greening of Park with some very tangible improvements, including a “lights out” campaign to save electricity and replacing the paper cups in the dining room with reusable plastic cups. These changes are expected

to use approximately 15 times less energy overall. This winter, the Club launched a fundraising effort with a twist: selling stainless steel recyclable water bottles to support clean drinking water. How does it work? The price of one stainless steel water bottle ($14) includes the cost ($6.50) of one LifeStraw®, which is a portable water filter that removes 99.9% of waterborne bacteria and 98% of waterborne viruses, requires no electrical power or spare parts, and lasts for one year. “It is a simple and

very low-cost solution to a huge problem that exists worldwide. Our goal is to purchase 300 LifeStraws® for Haiti and other developing nations, where fresh water access is limited. Based on the success of the water bottle sales to date, I am pretty confident that we can reach our goal of raising the $2,000 needed to buy the 300 straws.” Karen says. The kids tease Mrs. Manning about her powerful sales pitch, but she is very passionate about this endeavor. She and a group of students set up a makeshift water bottle shop in the main lobby before school. So far, the Green Club has collected over $1,200, which will pay for 180 LifeStraws®. To tie into this year’s theme of water quality, Park’s director of operations, Mike Massauro, paid a visit to the club to discuss a new green initiative on campus. The School has long used runoff rainwater to keep the six playing fields lush and green. The water is stored in a small pond that must be aerated during the summer months to keep from getting stagnant and full of algae. The old pump, a 3 horsepower agitator that sits on the surface of the water, needs to be replaced. Mike has identified a new

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

aeration system that uses a 1/3 horsepower air compressor. In addition, Mike is exploring the possibility of generating the power for the pond using a windmill! Mike has discovered that the School can purchase a windmill that should generate approximately 6,500 watts of electricity. The new, more efficient pump only requires 325 watts, so Park could sell back the excess power to National Grid, the School’s electric provider. Mike hopes the Green Club will research and calculate average wind speed for Brookline: Is it enough to produce the electricity we need? “This windmill would provide a valuable and visible lesson for the kids,” Mike says. “It’s a great outcome for everyone.” What’s next for the Green Club? Composting! The Club invited worm-composting expert and fourth-grade teacher Ted Wells to one of its meetings to learn the rules for composting. Their goal is to eventually set up a large-scale composting program for the School. To get started, the Club is embarking on a Compost Challenge to see which members can keep their composting bin going most effectively. In April, the Club plans to promote Earth Month with themes such as energy

reduction and recycling (providing recycling stations for batteries, cell phones, eye glasses, and ink cartridges) and hopes to run workshops on composting for families to learn how to compost at home. “There are so many things we could do – it is almost overwhelming at times. Our goal is to find projects that are practical, engaging, and meaningful for the group to work on,” Karen says. “A good place to start is the 5-4-3-2-1 pledge,” shown on the right.

THE 5-4-3-2-1 PLEDGE 5 Replace at least one car trip every 5 (five) days with walking, biking or public transportation, or combine errands to make the trip more efficient. This would reduce carbon emissions by 520 pounds a year. 4 Shorten your shower by 4 (four) minutes. Doing so would save gallons a day—adding up to millions of gallons annually. 3 Unplug 3 (three) electronic devices when not in use. 2 Bring 2 (two) reusable shopping bags with you when going to the supermarket. 1 Replace 1 (one) high-use incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb.

Princess Galyani Vadhana of Thailand was a member of the Park School Class of 1938.

Park’s Royal Thais

W Top: Music teacher Janice Allen conducts a group of Park students singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at a ceremony commemorating when King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand lived on Longwood Avenue in Brookline. Bottom: The girls receive several thank you gifts, including small pins and Thai parasols.

hat brings 14 students in Kindergarten through Grade IV to an unveiling of a plaque on Longwood Avenue in Brookline? Why, the Park School, of course! In honor of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 82nd birthday, a local nonprofit planned a yearlong celebration and creation of a “Trail of Thai Royalty” in Massachusetts. On a rainy Sunday in October, the King of Thailand Birthplace Foundation placed a plaque on the front of

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

63 Longwood Avenue, an apartment building where the future king and his parents lived with his siblings, Crown Prince Ananda and Princess Galyani Vadhana. The only monarch of a foreign country to be born in the United States, the King resided briefly in Brookline while his father was studying at Harvard Medical School in the late 1920s. During those years, the three-year-old Princess Galyani Vadhana of Siam came to Kindergarten at Park, often accompanied by her little brother, Prince Ananda, and his nurse. The Princess, who passed away in 2008, had fond memories of her Park School days, recalling it as the school where she first learned English. In 1985, she visited Park with her royal entourage. To celebrate this important connection between Park and Thailand, music teacher Janice Allen and her choir prepared an a capella version of the “Star-Spangled Banner” to open the ceremony. The choir was also invited to sing at a subsequent ceremony at Mount Auburn Hospital, to mark the King’s actual place of birth.

echnology is getting to be as essential as plumbing,” Tom Smith remarked to me at the faculty lunch table one day this winter. “I mean, if the plumbing was down, we’d have to cancel school. I think we’re almost at that point with technology.” He’s right, of course. On the rare occasion when the School’s Internet connection is down, my own workflow is completely thrown off course. (But it’s an excellent time to catch up on filing!) I got to thinking about how much we depend on technology—all the time, in almost every aspect of daily life. Would a technological disruption interrupt teaching Pre-K and Kindergarten classes? Not really, except for their weekly visits to the computer lab. What about Grade II? Or Grade VIII? Yes! (Read p. 13.) Right away I knew it would be impossible to write about all the applications of technology at Park. Instead, I asked, ‘In 2010, what does technology look like here?’‘Who ensures that our hundreds of machines and wires (and WiFi) are humming along?’‘How do Park faculty teach with technology?’ ‘What is the future of libraries with the onset of e-readers?’ We also put out the call to Park School alumni who work in technology. From the scores of responses, we are pleased to present 12 profiles that represent a wide range of careers reflecting this diverse, digital age. Thanks for reading! Kate LaPine, editor

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

An early foray into computer programming on a PET computer, around 1982. The Math Department kept the precious machines in locked carrels.

Upper Division students enjoyed coding and playing their own computer games in the early 1990s.

In the 1970s, technology was synonymous with AV and included filmstrips (above), televisions, and record players. Tom Smith recalls that the Math Department had one programmable calculator that cost as much as a computer.

By the mid-’80s, students were using computers with applications, not just for programming.

A Short History of Technology at Park Inventory of technological equipment

Attribute the following statement: “I hated computers.” 900

A. B. C.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers Tom Smith, Director of Information Technology at Park

781

800 700 600

If you guessed “C,” you’re right! While it may be hard to believe now, Tom Smith admits that as an engineering student at MIT, his FORTRAN programming course turned him off so much that he managed to steer clear of the machines for a good while. In time, he overcame his aversion. Alumni will remember that it was Mr. Smith who introduced the first PET computers for math students to experiment with BASIC programming in the 1970s. Indeed, the Park School’s growth of technology has paralleled the path of Tom Smith’s career. Following ten years as the Math Department head, Tom rediscovered computers and left Park for “a 10-year stint ‘in the trades’ from 1983 to 1993.” He returned as the School’s first “Director of Technology” — a coordinator who dispensed technology, scheduled it, and fixed it when it broke for the relatively small number of teachers and administrators who used it. With time, his title and responsibilities evolved. Now, as “Director of Information Technology,” his is a much more systemic and strategic role. “Virtually all areas of curriculum, administrative work flows, and matters of

518

500 400 279

300 200

125 91

100 0

1994

1997

2001

2003

2009

communication involve technology,” Tom explains. “As such, my role is more organizational and behavioral.” Imagine the challenge of keeping a school of 550 students, 115 faculty, and 40 staff members up-to-date with the latest technology. “Keeping current is a matter of networking with colleagues, reading publications, and using new technologies myself,” Tom says calmly.

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Park’s first school-wide network coincided with Tom Smith’s return in 1993. This was also the first year of e-mail in the School.

The year 2000 saw the advent of mobile computing with laptop computers available for students. Tom doing some diagnostic work on desktops in a computer lab in 2002. By 1993, younger students began using instructional applications such as Delta Drawing, Oregon Trail, and LogoPaths.

Description Academic desktop computers

1994

1997

2001

2003

2009

145

190

147

Laptop computers

244

Administrative PCs

Servers

Projection devices

Digital cameras

Digital video

Network printers

Firewall

Network switches

Wireless access points

IP Phones

130

150

E-mail & Web servers

Handheld Mobile Devices

“When I started as the director of technology, I expected I would have the School in good shape technologically within three or four years. That was 1993, and I am still thinking that there is a great deal to do.” With such a wide array of possibilities to choose from, how do Tom and his team decide what’s right for Park? “We certainly are investing in technology,” Tom says of his $150,000 annual acquisition and

replacement budget, “but when we make a large commitment, we are confident that it will be a positive investment for the School, whether in the classroom or in administrative offices.” In addition to making sure that all the equipment (including phones and networks) is in good working order, Park’s Technology Department provides ongoing support and professional development for adult users in the School. “Initially, in the 1990s, we had a “Field of Dreams” approach. We built it, but only a few came.” So, with a seed grant from several generous parents, Tom launched the “Faculty Initiative with Technology,” or “FIT,” in the fall of 2003. This trial professional development program to support the use of technology tools for teaching and learning was a huge success. Participating faculty made a commitment to unpaid weekly instructional sessions with a Technology Department mentor, and follow-up practice sessions on their own for a year. “There was incredible interest among the faculty,” Tom recalls. “To ensure that every teacher at Park could complete the FIT program, a three-year schedule was funded by the Park School Pursuit capital campaign.” Each year, approximately one third of the faculty participated in FIT, beginning with an introductory workshop in September. Each teacher was given an Apple laptop computer for his or her exclusive use while employed at Park, instructions to install selffunded high speed Internet access at home, and lots of excitement about exploring new teaching and learning opportunities. (continued on next page)

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Students often use technology in the context of their classroom instead of going to a special computer lab.

Science teacher Heather Offen uses a SMART Board in a lesson about the solar system. Teachers love being able to integrate technology into their classroom instruction.

After learning the basics about their computers, teachers could meet in small groups based upon individual needs and interests. For example, the Music Department learned how to use iTunes and GarageBand to record live performances and to transfer old records and tapes to CDs. The Modern Language Department learned how to turn iTunes into a language curriculum delivery system. Learning Specialists chose to learn and use “Inspiration,” software especially suited to helping students organize their thinking and writing. The Science Department spent more time using experimental probes and software to support student work in the science laboratory, and presentation software like PowerPoint and Keynote. Lower Division teachers were particularly interested in digital cameras, which were used in conjunction with iPhoto and other software to produce slide shows and class newsletters. Physical Education teachers used iMovie to videotape students who were learning new skills so they could evaluate their progress. An important aspect of this professional development was that teachers learned about the potential of these technologies within the context of their daily work at school. The Technology Department grouped faculty not by relative skill with technology, but by groups of colleagues who worked together and had a common understanding of positive educational outcomes. Park’s technology specialists continue to train and support faculty and recently have begun helping parents manage their children’s

use of technology. This March, the Parents’ Association sponsored a forum entitled “Facing Facebook: Social Networks and Our Children,” in which Tom and technology specialist Jorge Vega demonstrated how Facebook works and offered suggestions on how to be smart users of the site. “Kids are going to use Facebook and other social media. It’s our job as educators to teach them to act responsibly. We’re trying to instill an appropriate, educationally thoughtful approach to using the technology.” Two years ago, Tom described some of the Internet activities then common among some Park School children, and the challenges they present to parents at a forum called “MySpace/TheirSpace.” “Although two years doesn’t seem like a long time,” Tom says with a laugh, “MySpace has completely fallen out of favor among our students. That’s why we’ve got to stay current.” Tom and his team are well-informed gatekeepers, staying ahead of trends in order to help direct students, faculty, and parents to applications that are both “cool” and transformative. Each member of Park’s Technology Department is a teacher first, technologist second. “The kids know how to use the technology,” Technology Specialist and Web Master Carole Carter says. “But it’s our responsibility to teach them why. We are helping Park students become good digital citizens.”

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Park’s Technology Department is staffed by a team of creative, innovative, and funny individuals. (Although Marshall Neilson is away from Goddard Avenue for a sabbatical during the 2009-10 academic year, we managed to track him down, and he responded via e-mail.)

What is the most fun? I am lucky to have the opportunity to be creative with technology and to work with people using technology, both adults and children. Every day is different. I get to see what happens all over the School and work with so many talented teachers. It’s the best. Fun, you bet. Always? Well, there are moments. . . CAROLE CARTER

How long have you been at Park? I was a music teacher here in the ’80s, but have been in Park’s Technology Department for 13 years. How has your role changed over time? My primary roles are to develop the School website and to provide technology support to faculty and students. While the actual roles have not changed, the expectations for both have — dramatically. As the use of the Internet has grown, so have the demands of our site. As the use of personal computers in education has grown, so has the demand on our department. Basically, my role is “the same” as it was, just more of it. Of course, it probably goes without saying that trying to keep ahead of the game, tech-wise, is a huge part of being able to create for the site or for working with teachers and students. It’s a challenge but a fun one.

What would you like to avoid? I think Park does a good job of making sure that the technology we support is appropriate to the mission of the School. While there are many devices that are “cool,” we need to ensure that they have more than just the “Wow!” factor before working with them and bringing them into the classroom. Otherwise, they become a distraction and a diversion. That’s important to me. Trying to avoid technology and media from becoming a distraction to learning. What is the most challenging? Time is and always has been the challenge, especially as we work

with teachers who are already very busy doing what they do best — teach. More and more people have a higher basic comfort level with computers and digital devices, but having the time to go beyond that and learn about best practices and then adapt them to our classrooms takes a lot of time and support. What project has made you most proud? As the School’s web developer, I am proud of what I have been able to do over the years with Park’s site. It’s been very rewarding to try to reflect our essence on the web while also creating a site that is used every day as a teaching tool. That has been a different approach from many other schools, and I am proud of what we were able to do. As we move forward to a new site with a larger framework for communications, I look forward to continuing to work to make our site communicative, informative, educational, and yes, fun. (continued next page)

A NEW WEBSITE IS IN THE WORKS THIS YEAR , Carole Carter and Tom Smith have been leading a team to consolidate and improve the School’s electronic communications. The result? A new website that will allow every member of our extended community to receive relevant and timely information. Upon logging in, the system will recognize the user and know his or her roles in the community and assorted relationships to others. We’re exited about this new, unified means of communications. Look for more information as we lead up to a planned launch this summer!

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What do you want Park students to know/learn about technology? Technology and media are moving targets. There will always be something newer and cooler coming up. I want Park students and their teachers to know that it’s not the device or the “technology” that is the cool thing; it’s what you do with it that’s cool. If you are able to harness the power of a computer, an application, a device, or the things we don’t yet know about for your own learning or that of others, then that is, indeed, very cool.

What are your responsibilities within the Department? My time is split between helping teachers and students use technology in the classroom/computer lab and ensuring that all the available technology is up and running properly. What is the most fun? It is amazing to see the creative content that students produce when they have the opportunity to use technology to showcase their knowledge. What is the most challenging? The most challenging thing is finding extended time to sit down with teachers so they can really explore all the new educational technology tools that are available. Fortunately, we are given time during faculty and grade-level team meetings to share new technology with teachers and this is very helpful.

C H R I S L I N D S AY

How long have you been at Park? Before coming to Park this year, I was a math teacher/technology coordinator at Newton Country Day School and the technology coordinator at Boston Renaissance Charter School and The Comprehensive Grammar School in Methuen.

“

What do you want Park students to know/learn about technology? I want students to realize that technology allows them to take ownership of their learning. If they are passionate about a certain topic, they can find online resources that will answer their questions and allow them to explore independently. However, students need to realize that with these benefits comes responsibility. They need to carefully consider what they are doing on the Internet and how it affects the community’s perception of them.

I want students to realize that technology allows them to take ownership of their learning.” — Chris Lindsay

MARSHALL NEILSON

What are your responsibilities within the Department? Well, it’s a little tough to recall at this point, but I believe it was something to do with computers. . . I’m usually the first line of defense when something is not working properly on the academic side — computers, printers, networking, etc. In a way, I’m essentially the Mac to Jorge’s PC. I also support teachers as needed when they use technology. I’m more of the nerdy, wire-head guy, so they tend to have the ideas and I try to help them figure out how to do them in the lab or their classrooms. We have an amazingly creative faculty at Park, and they are very helpful to and patient with me. Support is my first responsibility, but the people — both teachers and children — are really the part I like most. How long have you been at Park? Since about 9:45. Please don’t tell Mr. Katz I was late. [Okay, okay, 12 years — 13 if you count this year.] How has your role changed over time? I think hardware has been the biggest change. On a nerdy level, it’s changed a great deal. When I arrived there were only desktops. I think Carole and I might have been the only people at Park with laptops; not even Tom had one. They were slow. School-wide Internet access began the year I

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arrived, and really only about a third of the computers were even up to the task. The biggest change, probably, is just how much hardware there is. The number of computers to manage (to say nothing of the two network upgrades we’ve had since I arrived, the new phone system, or the addition of wireless) has increased dramatically. There was a point where anyone in our department could have helped with any problem (or at least have known where to find the solution), but there is just too much for one person to know at this point. I think Tom is really the only one who knows it all, but even he has asked the rest of us to document the systems for which we are responsible. Additionally, the teachers have become far more familiar with the tools, so they do more adventurous stuff, and need less support (or at least are more willing to leap right in and see what they can learn on their own). These two things have changed my role in that I spend far more time fixing and troubleshooting, and far less time supporting faculty than I did when I first arrived. What is the most fun aspect of your job? That’s tough to answer, because so much of it is fun. The people —both teachers and students — at Park are wonderful. The teachers are so capable, energetic, and creative; I don’t feel quite worthy to be on the faculty! I am often tinkering away in the back of a room while a teacher is doing her thing, and there is something so inspiring about watching it all unfold. It’s like I get to be part of alchemy or something — but everyone is always having so much fun. It makes me wish I could start all over again and go back to school here. I also like the challenge of the technical problem solving. A problem can seem totally impenetrable, and then after going over it for the millionth time, and running it by one

of the other people in our department, the solution presents itself. What is the most challenging aspect of your job? Saying no. I don’t like telling people I cannot help them — either because I am not capable enough, or because I have more pressing things to do. Sure, having the network up so that people can use the Internet e-mail and fileservers is obviously more important than helping a colleague download a plug-in to see a video of his son’s band play at the Rathskeller. The truth is, the choices are more nuanced in most cases. Luckily, our faculty is very flexible. Teachers are respectful of each other, and they understand that their individual needs are not always paramount. What project has made you most proud? I suppose I feel a sense of ownership about the technical stuff — rolling out new computers, getting the network set up for school in the fall, changing it over for summer. That’s fun, and it’s a little like that final song in Studs Terkel’s “Working,” I can point to it and say, “Yeah, I built that.” Still, even that is really Tom’s vision. I just execute. When we got the laptop program (FIT) going, that was pretty cool. Again, I felt a little bit like a fraud teaching these people I’d seen do a million amazing things in classrooms, but they were very patient and gracious, since there were things they wanted to learn. I learned a great deal about learning styles during those two years! What do you want Park students to know/learn about technology? I think the most important thing for anyone to learn about technology is its human side. It can isolate you if you aren’t careful. It can empower you in wonderful ways, but it’s important to remember to remain respectful and thoughtful as you interact with others. For some reason, it’s easy to forget and in the moment it’s possible to be

unkind. A big hang-up for me, and this is about the Internet in particular, is anonymity. I believe it has its place, but I’m a firm believer that if you are going to speak out, you need to be able to sign your name to it. Go to any forum where there are discussions, or websites or blogs that allow feedback, and invariably the conversation has deteriorated in at least some corner with at best unkind, and at worst, downright offensive, language. In most cases, the coarsest stuff comes from users who don’t sign their names. Would they be saying the same thing if they were talking face-to-face, or even just had to sign their names? My guess is, no.

etc). I’m also one of the people who occasionally shows up in a classroom or office if a computer (Mac or PC), printer or SMART Board is misbehaving. As a bonus, I teach eighth grade Growth Ed with Morgan Darby. This class is a ton of fun and provides me with a way to make connections with students. It’s definitely one of my favorite parts of the week! I’ve also enjoyed teaching at BOTH of Park’s summer programs. I’ve taught summer classes in web design and animation at CAAP and, most recently, taught courses in comic book creation and problem solving for Summer At Park. How long have you been at Park? This is my fifth year at Park.

JORGE VEGA

What are your responsibilities within the Department? You know “Isaac” on The Love Boat? What he does. Aside from mixing drinks and giving romantic advice, my main role is to manage the PC side of Park’s network. While all of our Park students and faculty use Macs, most of the administrative staff is PC users. It’s my job to maintain our PC clients as well as the Windows servers. The servers on the PC side support both the Business and Development Offices, along with the Library’s book catalog. I spend a good portion of my day “in the shadows,” handling server upgrades, administering network backups, and managing system security on both the servers and clients (i.e. viruses, spyware,

How has your role changed over time? Well, Park as a whole has changed a great deal over the last few years — much of it related to construction. With the new buidling came quite a few changes and additions to the network infrastructure. Some of the biggest changes to my role have been the direct result of these additions. Assisting in the installation of our VoiceOver IP phone system (think networked telephones) is a great example of what I’m talking about. Once the new system was installed, a good deal of the support and troubleshooting responsibilities fell to me. Similar adjustments have occurred with the addition of more classroom projectors, SMART Boards, network closets, and an entirely new wireless system. What is most fun about your job? Working with the staff and faculty. We have an incredibly professional and caring group of adults within the Park community, all personally driven to achieve the School’s educational mission. But the exciting part is that they’re all life-long learners too and just as excited by the prospect of learning all the

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new possibilities that technology can bring to their Park experience. What would you like to avoid? Ladders. Black cats. What is the most challenging of your job? Staying organized. There is ALOT that goes into what we do. It requires attention to detail and the ability to re-prioritize tasks on the fly. Another wrinkle to the whole organizational thing is that we often have to anticipate problems and tasks long before they rear their ugly little heads. It’s sometimes like juggling with the lights off. What project has made you most proud? It’s actually something that just came out of the blue one day. . . Two years ago, a fifth grade student by the name of Jamie Little walked up to me and said, “I want to learn how to make a website.” I said, “Sure,” thinking he’d quickly lose interest once he realized it wasn’t as easy as pointing and clicking a mouse. Jamie proved me so very wrong. What happened over the course of the next 12 months was just amazing. Jamie not only learned the basics of web design, he quickly began mastering HTML (the coded language behind much of the Internet). Before we knew it, he’d designed an entire website for fourth-grade teacher Ted Wells’s Recycling Initiative. It was incredible to watch! What do you want Park students to know/learn about technology? I’d like students to understand that in the real world they have a responsibility to a community, and that responsibility doesn’t go away when they jump online. In fact, it’s magnified to a global scale. So, it’s critically important that they not only learn how to have a positive effect on their physical communities but the virtual ones they exist in as well.

he Blogging Librarians will debut on Park’s new website next fall. Everyone in the department will blog on a subject of interest: Christian Porter, in Best Books, will follow awards and best book lists and how they relate to Park. Tory Lane, in Off the Page, will explore audiobooks, apps, and all manner of off-the-beaten-track libraryrelated tidbits; and Emily Kellogg, in The Curious Camera of Mrs. K, will share her keen photographer’s eye and love of nature.

Follow them at

www.parkschool.org/blogs/Library/

eReader Arrival January 3rd, 2010 With generous funding from the Parent’s Association, the Library recently ordered three e-readers: a Kindle DX, a Barnes & Noble Nook, and a Sony Daily Edition. The Kindle has arrived, and we expect delivery of the other devices in mid-January, when we will load them with children’s and adult books, newspapers, and magazines. Initially they’ll be available in the Library for everyone to use and compare. Eventually we’ll lend them out to interested faculty and families.

THE FUTURE OF READING The Park School Library’s Blog by Dorothea Black, Park School Librarian

Is online reading rewiring our brains? Is print dead? Will digital reading change the way we tell stories? What literacy skills are important for the future? The Park School Library’s Blog, The Future of Reading, will serve as a running account of the library’s experiences as we learn about digitization and where it leads us. I hope other people who are interested in the topic will add comments and engage in conversation, either online or with the librarians in person. 12

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Reading Apps January 18th, 2010 If you haven’t tried it, reading on a handheld mobile device isn’t as ridiculously uncomfortable as you might expect. In fact, two apps on my iPod Touch retain typographic features honed over centuries to enhance legibility, whereas my Kindle displays one inelegant typeface, and no page design. Stanza and Eucalyptus are apps that format text to make reading on a computer or hand-held more like reading a book. Both retain the characteristics of classic page design, and the pages flip gracefully at the touch or swipe of a finger on the screen. Both apps advertise access to large libraries of free ebooks — these are mostly public domain works, useful if you’re yearning to read or reread the classics. Launch of the Fleet February 7th, 2010 We’ve assembled the Library’s full complement of e-readers: (Kindle DX, Nook, Sony

Daily Edition, and iPod Touch) with two reader apps (Kindle and Eucalyptus) installed. Students are curious about all the readers and ask to use them during free time in the library. Sometimes they come in pairs and ask to “play with the Kindle.” E-reading is a novel and social activity for them. Among the small test group so far, students express a preference for the Nook. They like its smaller size compared to the Kindle DX, and the touch screen at the bottom makes more sense to them than the Kindle’s keyboard and buttons. Cushing, Round 2 February 22nd, 2010 In September the Boston Globe ran an article about Cushing Academy’s plan to discard their library collection of 20,000 books to make room for a cyber

café and a completely digital learning space. Jim Tracy, Cushing’s Head of School, was quoted: “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books.” In their Room for Debate blog of February 10, the editors of The New York Times ask five opinion leaders, including Dr. Tracy, “Do school libraries need books?” This time Tracy makes a mellower statement: “Cushing Academy today is awash in books of all formats.… It is immaterial to us whether students use print or electronic forms to read Chaucer and Shakespeare.” He probably realized, from the reaction to the Globe article, that it’s unwise for an educator to show a lack of respect for books. The traditional book is an almost two thousand year old symbol of learning,

The Park Library now has four types of e-readers. From left: Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Daily Edition, and iPod Touch.

deeply embedded in our culture. People immediately equate the wholesale discarding of books with book burning and other metaphors of ignorance.

A Look Inside the Classroom: A Sampling of Innovative Uses of Technology at Park

iPod Touch Pilot Program in Grade II

echnology specialist Chris Lindsay is based in the Shire computer lab, which is used primarily by Lower and Middle Division students. From this vantage point, she has struck up many conversations with teachers when they bring their classes to the lab or their laptops in for a “look under the hood.” Sometimes the conversations can transform how teachers teach and how students learn. Here are two examples.

His new message is in line with all the other commentators, who agree that it makes sense for libraries to offer both print and digital material.

Technology Specialist Chris Lindsay helps a second grader navigate her iPod Touch.

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“iTouches are a wonderful tool for secondgraders,” Chris Lindsay says enthusiastically. “The kids are at an age where they can quickly master this device, and it fits perfectly into their hands.” As part of a promotion, the Technology Department was given a number of iTouches for free when purchasing new laptops for the School. Chris wanted to get them into the hands of students and found a willing partner in Grade II teacher Kimberly Formisano. “More and more, mobile devices are becoming a common part of life,” says Kimberly. “So many kids are already facile with games on their parents’ iPhones. When Chris suggested that we could use them for real learning, I said, ‘Great!’” After researching best practices in elementary schools worldwide, Chris recommended several applications that have been well received. First, the students used GoogleEarth to locate their holiday pen pals in Texas — a visual lesson in geography. After winter vacation, she identified several math apps that were just right for second grade. Kimberly keeps the iTouches in individual zip lock baggies in the

Kimberly Formisano helps two of her secondgraders work with an iPod Touch.

classroom and incorporates them into daily lessons. “It’s definitely not an add-on,” Kimberly explains. “These devices enable me to create individualized lessons for each child. One student is ready for multiplication while another is working on subtraction. I load the appropriate problems on each iTouch, and all of a sudden practicing your math facts has become the thing to do!” More recently, the class has been using a voice memo app in which the students record themselves reading a book and e-mail the file to Kimberly so she can note their progress in improving fluency and literacy. A “story kit” app has been a big success, as well. Kimberly asked each of her second graders to compose a poem on the iTouch’s keypad, illustrate it using a drawing program on the device, and read the poem aloud into an auxiliary microphone. The completed multimedia poetry presentations have been uploaded onto the class blog. “The kids are so intuitive with these devices; it’s thrilling to think where we could go with this pilot program.”

book is now online. “Teachers want to use technology in their classes,” says Chris, “ but often don’t have time to research the best applications. I love being a resource for faculty and adding value to their teaching.” Remember having to sketch out a graph to test every equation? Now, the entire Math Department uses Geometer’s Sketchpad and GeoGebra software to reduce some of that time-consuming work so that students can spend more time discussing their observations and developing a deeper understanding of the material. Chris suggested some other ways that Elaine could use technology to enrich her classes, including an online course management system. Elaine posts homework assignments, refreshers, and enrichment activities on “Moodle” for her eighth graders. The program allows the whole class to collaborate; students post questions and answers on the discussion forum to share their understanding of mathematical concepts and help each other with difficult homework problems. Elaine is on Moodle as well to see if she can help students with the homework. “I check in before and after dinner, but I don’t always have to respond because often a classmate will have already answered the questions. The kids are amazing assets to each other.” They are also using software called Jing to create video tutorials that share their original word problems and the steps for solving them. These videos, also posted on Moodle, can help others who might be struggling with a difficult topic. Complimenting her colleague, Chris believes that Elaine’s use of technology “has been transformative for her students.” Elaine explains that GeoGebra, a free web-

Teaching Grade VIII Algebra with 2010 Tools Move over, slide rulers — here come GeoGebra, Moodle, Jing, SMART Boards, and graphing calculators. With Chris Lindsay’s support, Upper Division math teacher Elaine Hamilton is leveraging a number of technology tools to enhance her math classes. For starters, the kids don’t have to carry around their heavy textbooks anymore; the Discovering Algebra text-

Elaine Hamilton jumps nimbly between the white board, showing an exponential equation, and her computer monitor, where she graphs the equation using GeoGebra software.

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Elaine’s algebra classes often meet in the School’s Upper Division computer lab so students can take advantage of multiple technologies.

based program, “lets the students observe algebraic relationships with little risk and great benefits.” In a unit on exponential functions this February, she introduced “sliders” to her eighth graders. The class met in the Hogwarts computer lab in the West Building; each student was seated at a monitor, and Elaine stood at a SMART Board in the front of the room. When she plugged a graph into GeoGebra, the students could watch her manipulate it on the large screen, or follow her on their own screens. As the class explored these sliders, Elaine asked, “Is this a true exponential function? Are we growing exponentially? This ties back to linear equations. Does it get steeper?” A student exclaimed, “Oh! I see what it does! It rises more steeply because of the constant multiplier getting bigger.” Elaine’s students use all the tools at their disposal: One boy is jotting down notes with a pencil; one is using his graphing calculator to test his answers; and a girl is using the sliders function on GeoGebra. Without these new technologies, the class would have to be much more teacher-driven. Elaine says that class discussions are sparked by students’ discoveries and observations. “I no longer ask questions on quizzes that we’ve seen or talked about in class. Instead, I ask the eighth graders to bring together all that they have learned and apply it to new situations. The results, in terms of test scores and comments in discussions, have been astounding. They are seeing relationships and understanding the underpinnings of this work in amazingly powerful and insightful ways. They understand algebra much better than I did in eighth grade!”

MAGGIE FRANK O’CONNOR ’73

Maggie’s Park School career began at the “old” school on Kennard Road in the fouryear-olds class. “Park was central to my family,” Maggie says. “My mom worked at the clothing sales and was President of the Parents’ Association; my dad was on the Board; I babysat for lots of faculty kids, and my family was friendly with many teachers. I’ll never forget traveling to Prince Edward Island in 1972 with my dad and Bill Satterthwaite to see a total eclipse of the sun!” After making the move to the Goddard Avenue campus, Maggie graduated from Grade IX and attended Brookline High School, where she played on one of the first girls’ ice hockey teams. At UMass Amherst, she pursued legal studies but was waitlisted at law school. Her “temporary” job as a telephone operator at the University set her on a new course that has kept her career evolving with technology. She lives with her husband, Tom, in Granby, Massachusetts.

Maggie’s first job at an insurance company’s data center was in a room much like this — with huge mainframe computers and equally large reel tapes for data storage.

he year was 1980. UMass Amherst had just invested in a new computerized telephone switchboard. The older telephone operators wanted nothing to do with it, so I, the new hire and youngest operator, got the job of data entry — coding all the telephone numbers so that each department could be billed for their share of the phone bill. Surprisingly, I really liked it! Wanting to learn more, I attended a technical school in Hartford to learn computer operations. My next job, at an insurance company’s data center, was to oversee computer jobs, backups and printing (remember “green bar” paper?) on the third shift. This was the era of enormous water-cooled mainframe computers that required special rooms with raised floors to accommodate all the cabling and water detection sensors. Going to work, I had to dress for the outdoors! The computers would process the day’s transactions each night. Computer operators made sure that all the reports balanced and all backups were done during the middle of the

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night so that everything was ready for the next business day. When I moved my way up to the second shift, we had to run batch jobs by hand, take paper off the big impact printers, and put the vast reports in bins for the different departments. Over time, most of these print jobs were moved to Xerox laser printers, but the reports still had to be “balanced” as well as separated and distributed. I found that I really liked having my finger on the pulse of the company: its computer system. I left insurance to explore retail’s computer operations at Casual Corner. In 1986, I moved outside of the cold computer room to production control. From my new vantage point, I saw more clearly how essential computers were to making a business run well. (Of course, that’s even more true today!) Since our retail company would go out of business if the computer system was down for more than three days, one of my main concerns back then (and to this day) was disaster recovery — making plans for power failures with generators and back up tape sys-

tems to be used at offsite locations. I also began my work in the “change control” arena — the management of the programming code — from storage of source code, through compiling, and the test and production areas. In 1989, I moved to Monarch Life Insurance for a day job as an operations analyst in the production control department. In this role, I did a lot of job “scheduling” as well as the coding of JCL (job control language); not programming the application, but what “called” the programs and determined a lot of the input and output

tions like IBM’s CICS. We got our first PCs in 1992, complete with a big DOS book, which I read cover to cover. I really loved it! Merrill’s programmers began to write over all the programs with micro applications in the hopes that they would be faster, cheaper, and more versatile than the original ones. My job duties expanded to include providing and controlling security of access into our systems and safely transmitting files (by numerous means, including sending tapes) to other departments of Merrill Lynch that needed to process insurance data.

Looking back, I remember that Park had a computer while I was a student (at the “new school”), but I don’t know what it was used for. It might have been a Commodore. I don’t think we got to touch it... In high school I don’t even remember seeing a computer, although I did take a typing class that proved to be very useful. In college, one guy on our floor had an electric typewriter and the rest of us limped along with manuals or got in line to borrow his IBM Selectric! locations for files — some going into databases, file servers, print, or tape. In 1992, Merrill Lynch Life Insurance Company “bought’ 120 people from Monarch, as well as policies and rights to software that Monarch had developed. While still dependent on mainframes, by the early ’90s companies were going beyond shared data centers into the exciting world of personal computers and “micro” processing — using PCs and servers to replace the old “green screen” applica-

The early mainframes were enormous and required special rooms kept cold so the machines didn’t overheat. Maggie recalls dressing for the outdoors!

When Merrill moved its insurance division to Jacksonville, Florida, I chose to stay in Western Massachusetts. Since then, I’ve been working at Disability Management Services, a third-party administrator for disability insurance based in Springfield. I still work in the source code control area, although, as with all my prior positions, the job always grows to encompass additional areas. As a change control analyst/release engineer at DMS, my main responsibility is to oversee the process of releasing program updates to our company’s proprietary insurance application software. We have a team of programmers and developers and, once a month, I put out their newest code into production — after it has passed through the previous three steps (development, quality assurance and model office), and been tested by business analysts in each environment. One reason for the need of a gatekeeper (me) is to guarantee that the developers don’t write code that benefits them directly. Hypothetically, someone who can change code shouldn’t be able to send payments to his or her secret bank account. Also, from a security perspective, we can’t let a “user” (client) that can make payments from our system also make address changes. Such a person could then change the address of a payment. Of course, we presume to trust our employees, but since we do business for other companies, we

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are subject to extensive internal and external audits. As we seek new business partnerships with other companies (and maintain the ones we have), we must be able to show excellent ratings by auditing companies. What are some of the things that keep me awake? Power failures, new rules about privacy liability, disaster recovery. Remember all the hullabaloo about Y2K? The reason “nothing” happened was that people like me did a LOT of work to prevent anything too disastrous from occurring! The old code wasn’t up to standard, and plenty of stuff would have blown up without proper attention. Over the two years preparing for Y2K, we had a lot of laughs at the way the original programs had been written with years hard-coded as 19xx. We did work all night on the eve of the Millennium, but happily things went pretty smoothly. There were a few errors, but our onsite team handled them as they came up. Three years ago, I also became a member of the network team — helping to keep our 200 employees’ individual workstations up and running. Being a small shop, the network team (total of three people) also handles all forms of security (system and application), telephones, servers, and network infrastructure. I really enjoy the help desk function of my newest job — it’s fun solving puzzles like “Why isn’t this PowerPoint presentation displaying correctly on my colleague’s computer when it should be standardized?” The last thing we ever want one of our employees to have to tell an “external” customer is, “Sorry — our computers are down right now.” I should note that I’m about 20 years older than the senior network administrator, and 10 years older than my manager — a little strange to be old enough to be your boss’s mom! Fortunately, these young men (who grew up with computers) have a lot of patience for me and are teaching me new things every day. Looking back, my career has evolved alongside changes in technology. I have seen programs go from Cobol language on mainframe computers and “dumb terminals” to “.Net” and SQL-based client/server applications to enable client flexibility and network enhancements. But what I enjoy most about my job is helping people — the developers and business analysts, or the other 200 employees at our company — to worry about the technology!

As the director of technology at Be The Change, a national nonprofit based in Cambridge, Jamie knows all about the servers, the wiring, and lots more.

Jamie is a learner and teacher of languages, both natural and digital. At Park, he learned Latin from Mr. Bourne, Mr. Conway, and Mr. Gambone, and he continued his studies at Boston Latin School. At Vassar, he studied French, philosophy, and anthropology. In his first year out of college, Jamie returned to Park as a teaching intern, which gave him his start as a foreign language teacher. He continued teaching in the U.S. and with the Peace Corps in Guinea, West Africa. He earned a master’s degree in education at Harvard University, adding programming skills and educational technology theory to his language teaching “toolkit.” He has spent the last 10 years as a technology trainer and practitioner. Jamie lives in West Roxbury with his wife, Beth, and son, August, who is one year old.

JAMIE FOLSOM ’85

iven my background in foreign language teaching and the humanities, it’s a surprise to me to have found my career in technology. Perhaps just as surprising is how useful my humanities training has been to me in my technical roles. Web technology is an alphabet soup of pidgins, creoles, jargons, and slangs: HTML, CSS, AJAX, Perl, PHP, MySQL, REST, SOAP, and XML. My role, as the director of technology for Be the Change Inc., a national nonprofit based in Cambridge, requires knowing enough of those idioms and dialects to apply them to our work as an organization. It’s a job made up of equal parts technology, teaching, learning and translation. At Be the Change, we build nonpartisan campaigns — online and offline — that enlist citizens to work on problems we all face as a nation. I am surrounded by people who are inspired equally by our country’s urgent needs and by its boundless energy for solving problems. I help find ways to use the web and social media of all kinds to make a difference on issues that matter, from community service, to poverty, to democratic involvement and access. It’s a blend of Student Council and the Helping Hand, with some LOGO thrown in for good measure.

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It’s thanks in large part to Park’s ethos, and to my Park teachers and classmates, that I’ve always felt free to learn new things, that I see connections between diverse fields, and that I’ve found ways to apply or retool skills and solutions learned in one area to problems in others. I first programmed Commodore-64s using BASIC, with Mr. Smith leading the way. The computers at Park in those days were padlocked in orange plywood boxes, and loaded the software from cassette tape drives. To me, it was a revelation to write software, save it on a cassette tape, reload it, and work on it some more the next day. Reading Latin with Mr. Bourne offered the same kind of satisfaction: decoding, translation, encoding, storage and transmission of ideas and information across time and between people as efficiently and elegantly as possible. These days, everyone’s work is touched by digital technology. A career in computers and the Internet offers daily opportunities to learn about other people’s interests. I’m inspired by the challenge of figuring out how to help people do what they need to do more quickly, more effectively, and in new ways.

Jay attended Park School from 1976 through 1986. After graduating from Park’s ninth grade, he went on to Middlesex School in Concord and received his BA in economics from Bates College. Jay spent seven years working in financial services, where he achieved his CFA designation. While earning an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, he concentrated on entrepreneurship and marketing, taking particular interest in MIT’s focus on technology. For the last five and half years, he has worked as the director of product

marketing at SEPATON, a company that produces highperformance, disk-based solutions including replication and de-duplication technologies. Jay and his wife, Amy (Director of Alumni Relations 2001-05), live in Carlisle with their boys Teddy and Thomas.

have to admit something; I am a techno nerd. Yes, it is true; I am a gadget and computer guy at heart. This is part of the reason why I find photography so interesting. I love the challenge of creating new and interesting images and keeping abreast of all the technological changes. This shot (below) gets at my nerdiness. I have a web server that I use to host my images, personal emails and multiple blogs. Every once in a while, I decide to upgrade it to newer hardware; however new is relative term because I refuse to spend $2,000+ on a new server and so I always get used equipment. In this picture, we see the “new” server. It is not really new, but is new to me and has some serious horsepower, including 2 CPUs, lots of RAM, redundant cooling and redundant disk system. My new distraction is turning this into my webserver. As part of the project, I have decided to use VMware and CentOS for Linux. The challenge is building the system, migrating the data, and then transparently replacing the old server. As it stands, I have finished the primary build and data transfer and am just trying to get remote management figured out. Once this is done, this monster will be out of my house. Hopefully some time will free up once this project is completed. Blog post on Blipfoto.com: Saturday, 3 October 2009: “A New Distraction”

JAY LIVENS ’86

As long as I can remember, I’ve been working on technological projects like this one. Flashlights, toys, batteries — I was always taking them apart. The only problem was that I could never quite figure out how to put them back together. (This proved to be a little annoying for my parents.) My memories of Park are linked to discovering computers with my

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Thomas and Teddy Livens with their dad, Jay.

friends. I remember the PET computers in the school lab and playing with a drawing program. Was it called Turtle Draw? At recess, my classmate Matt McGinnes and I would play with a text-based B-1 bomber game on the PETs. I prevailed upon my parents to let me pursue my interest in computers at home. I spent many hours using that Commodore Vic-20, including elementary programming in BASIC. I have a fond memory of my classmate Csaba Serdy coming over and teaching me some advanced BASIC, which culminated in an extremely rudimentary video game where you shot at a rapidly descending space ship. My interest in technology would continue over the years as I learned Pascal programming at Middlesex School. At Bates, I pursued a degree in economics and my computer tinkering was limited to my free time. My first job, as an analyst at a financial services company that focused on the technology sector, kept me current with the latest technologies and trends, but I realized that I was a technological outsider. I interviewed management teams and analyzed markets and technologies but never participated in the creation of the technology itself. The more time I spent as an analyst, the more I realized that I desired handson experience. That’s not to say that I didn’t engage in any tinkering. The great thing about working in a small company is that there are opportunities to assume additional responsibilities. I parlayed my personal interest in technology to drive technology adoption for the company. I implemented our first network, e-mail server, and fax server. Recognizing that establishing these IT systems for a small company did not satiate my

technological hunger, I enrolled at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. With an MBA in hand, I found a great position that straddles both business and technology. I am the director of marketing for a company called SEPATON, which makes virtual tape libraries using a technology called de-duplication. This helps companies ensure that their data is always accessible. My role requires a deep understanding of technology and requires me to convert those details into a business-centric message that resonates with customers. In addition to the technological focus of my work, I also continue to enjoy technology in my free time. I tinker nonstop. Currently, I’m exploring VMware and have built a couple of different computers to try out the technology. I keep myself out of trouble with photography and social networking. I post a photo daily on my photo blog (www.blipfoto.com) and Tweet (SEPATONJay) and blog (www.aboutrestore.com) frequently about my work. I am also a monthly contributor to an online photo magazine (www.photographybb.com), maintain a personal blog, and contribute to other blogs as a guest writer. The amazing thing about technology is that it is always changing. There are always new trends and technologies that have the potential to radically change how we handle everyday activities. It is still hard for me to comprehend that my Blackberry (a Bold 9000 for you fellow techies) has about 600 times the computing cycles and about 1 million times the memory of my Vic 20. Our lives have already been changed immeasurably by commonplace technology like the Internet, cell phones, automobile systems, and storage. It’s difficult to fathom what the future will bring.

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Besides soccer, basketball, and ant collecting, Nick loved nothing more at Park than math tournaments. He took this passion to Stanford, where he studied environmental science and economics. After graduation, he headed south to San Francisco to try to take part in the tech boom, joining a company building Linux computers. That gig didn’t last very long, however, and soon moved back East. He is now a senior editor at Wired Magazine, a contributing editor at Bloomberg Television, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and the author of The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War, a book that The Washington Times said “may

be the most important political biography in recent memory.” Before Wired, Nick worked as an editor at Legal Affairs and the Washington Monthly. He’s now also a regular guest discussing technology on CNN, The Today Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly. Nick is married to Danielle Goldman, a dance professor at The New School in New York City. They have one son, Ellis Martin Thompson, born in 2008, and another on the way.

y career in journalism started when I was (briefly) kidnapped in Africa in 1998 while just traveling around. Luckily, my captors released me unscathed, but with a great story to tell. This led to my first newspaper clips (including one in the Brookline Tab), which gave me connections that eventually led to a job as an editor at the Washington Monthly. Covering politics in Washington, is a bit like being a Red Sox fan in Boston. It’s fun, but not terribly original. So, I started to develop a niche as a technology writer, covering topics like nanotechnology and the battle over genetic patents for the Monthly. After leaving the Washington Monthly, I was given a grant to go back to Africa to write about the use of technology in Ghana. I wrote about the first Internet cafes in the country, which technologies worked there, and which didn’t. My favorite piece — about how to design wheelchairs that actually work in West Africa, and why many of the chairs donated from the West do more harm than good — ran in the Boston Globe. The Ghanaian tech bubble, however, didn’t get that big, and then it burst. So I headed back home. Back in the States, I spent two years at Legal Affairs, and then joined the staff at Wired. Some of the recent stories I’ve worked on include a piece about how to fake your death and create a new identity online; the efforts to recreate pharmaceutical trials in computer-generated models of humans; and the Washington lobbying efforts of the companies that are trying to bring down Google. I also enjoy doing tech demos on TV and talking about issues ranging from Dell’s earnings to net neutrality to the latest underwater flashlights. On the side, I wrote my first book about how the lives of Paul Nitze (my grandfather) and George Kennan helped to define the Cold War. The goal of the book was to tell the story of those epic years through two people: the only men who were involved in matters of high policy from the beginning to the end. (That they were fierce rivals and also dear friends just made the story more intriguing.) At Wired, the main part of my job is to try to pair big ideas about technology with really smart

NICHOLAS THOMPSON ’90

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writers — which means I get to spend my time thinking about the big trends in technology (as well as the quirkiest side stories that involve technology) and then trying to find the right writers. Once the stories are assigned, my job is to work to make sure they’re filed on time and then to edit and try to improve them. Once I’m satisfied with a story, I send it off to the copy editors, fact checkers, and art department — all of whom make it even better. The other part of my job — talking about technology on TV — is fun in a different way. It’s much more of an adrenaline rush. I’m given a topic (for example, Dell has earnings coming out tomorrow!), I have to do a lot of research very fast, and then I have to answer complicated questions in a relaxed way without getting nervous or worrying about all the people watching me in airport terminals. Thank goodness for drama classes at Park — I’m sure that my limited stage fright comes from having sung the “patter song” in Iolanthe! The gadget that I’m most interested in right now is the iPad because it offers great hope for magazines. Right now, reading a long Wired story inside of a web browser is not as good as reading it on the printed page. The web has created all sorts of bad habits — like constantly jumping from story to story every six seconds — that make it hard to really concentrate on long pieces. And the stories just don’t look as good in browsers. But on tablets, the stories have the potential to look wonderful. It’s quite possible that, gradually, tablets will become the main way that people read magazines. I also believe that tablets will allow the industry to reverse some of the choices it made when the Internet came around. Ten years ago, almost every magazine and newspaper just decided to give away all of its content for free, figuring it would make it up with advertising dollars. When it turned out that web advertising was a very tough business to be in, everyone lost money. Now there’s a chance to reboot and to start charging readers for content from the get-go. It may fail; but it also may provide a financial lifeline to the struggling print media industry that plays a very important social role.

Nick is a frequent guest on national television shows. In December, he joined CNN’s Campbell Brown and futurist Watts Wacker to discuss upcoming trends for the new decade. (Below) This fall, he discussed his book the Hawk and the Dove with Stephen Colbert.

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LARS ALBRIGHT ’90

After more than a decade at Park, Lars went onto Milton Academy and Harvard, where he graduated with an honors degree in government. Lars earned an MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and his career has primarily focused on technology-based growth companies. Most recently, he was a founding partner and senior vice president of business development at Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company. In December 2009, Quattro was acquired by Apple, where Lars now holds the title of director of publisher partnerships and alliances. Lars lives in Watertown with his wife, Lawson, and their three-yearold daughter, Sage.

ne of my first introductions to technology was during a computer class with Steve Kellogg in the mid 1980s. I laugh when I think of a particular project we worked on using an early software program called Logo. A classmate and I used basic code commands to draw a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. I remember this for two reasons: not only did I live in San Francisco early in my career, but I’m sure that that was the last bit of coding I ever did! Despite my limited coding abilities, I have always enjoyed thinking of ways in which new technologies can transform how people interact with content, information, and services. I find the efficiency with which innovative technology can change entire industries a fascinating thing to be a part of. So far, my career has been focused on building companies with emerging technologies and figuring out how to bring a new service to market. My main role at Quattro was to get publishers, big and small, to join our mobile advertising network. The publishers that joined the network then allowed us to sell portions of their inventory to advertisers, and we took a cut of the revenue. We started with three people and an idea, and ended up with a 100+ person company, working with over 5,000 publishers, and reaching

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close to 50 million people per month worldwide. When Quattro started in 2006, we certainly did not envision that Apple would buy us less than three and a half years later, but we did have a sense that there would be several important developments in the mobile space. Prior to Quattro, a few of us on the management team worked at a mobile company called m-Qube, (acquired by Verisign in 2006). From this experience, we knew that more and more people were thinking of their phones beyond the ability to just make calls — increasingly, people were trying to search for content on their phones and were viewing the mobile web, but the experience was poor at best. We were also confident that handset innovation would only accelerate, which would accommodate this growing consumer demand. This would all lead, we hoped, to a big shift in consumer behavior, and would create a large mobile audience that would be compelling to advertisers. As Quattro grew, we began to see some of these predictions come true, but we had no idea just how quickly this shift would occur, and, ultimately, how influential one device would prove to be. In the summer of 2007, Apple announced the launch of the iPhone, and from that moment on, the mobile industry, and mobile advertising industry in particular, has never been the same. The iPhone exploded onto the scene, providing consumers with a great-looking and easy-to-use device that made interacting with content significantly better than earlier options. As a result, the number of people and the amount of time those people spent consuming content on their mobile phones grew dramatically. This growth got the attention of advertisers, who began to see the vast potential of connecting with consumers on mobile devices. No longer could anyone ignore that mobile was becoming the fastest growing channel for media consumption. Publishers as varied as CBS News, the NFL, and small game developers all began making sites and applications specifically for the iPhone. This, in turn, got advertisers like Proctor & Gamble, Sony, and Ford to start allocating considerable advertising dollars to mobile for the first time. When I think of how things turned out for Quattro, it’s exciting to know that we contributed new ideas and technology to a space that has attracted large investments from tech giants such as Apple and Google. In many ways, I attribute the success of this venture to my experiences at Park. Thinking creatively, building solid relationships, and taking risks are lessons that I learned from so many of my Park teachers, coaches, and peers.

very place has an epic story. Stories that “tourists” don’t normally get to hear, but “travelers” — those who yearn to really explore a place — do. In 2005, I co-founded a travel and technology company called Audissey Media (www.AudisseyMedia.com) to let other people experience the hidden stories that make a place special. We produce self-guided iPhone apps for cities and museums: you can show up in a new place, download an app to your phone, and get a really cool tour experience. Local narrators, sound effects, and original soundtracks make the experience of walking through a city neighborhood like walking through a virtual movie. The irony is that I’m not a tech guy. I’ve never been interested in technology for its own sake. (In my Park days, I remember playing “lode-runner” on a very green computer screen and learning how to print out a giant banner that said “Happy Birthday” for my older brother — this was a triumph of technology back then.) What I really love is traveling to new places and meeting people with incredible stories to tell; our apps help people to do exactly that. I think technology should unchain people from

ROB (BOBBY) PYLES ’93 Rob is looking for answers! How did two decades evaporate since he conjugated Latin verbs with Greg Grote or shot hoops with David Perry or dunked on Steve Kellogg? (Rob admits that never actually happened!) Though he has surfed in El Salvador and arm-wrestled (and lost) deep in Mexico, Rob says nothing compares to the sheer physical challenge of the dreaded sixminute run. Rob (“Bobby” in his Park days) graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols and then wandered for a year through Ireland in search of the perfect pint. He left the Irish pubs for the warmer climes of Malibu, California, where he studied international relations and creative writing at Pepperdine University. He lived in Costa Rica for a year, forgot everything he had learned in college, bartended in Boston, and married the love of his life, Juliet DeVries, in 2004. He founded Audissey Media in 2005. He lives with Juliet and a great group of neo-monastic neighbors in East Boston.

Rob and Juliet in Ireland — the source of inspiration for Audissey.

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their computer screens — to go out into the world and see just how awesome it really is. We want to help people experience the world around them. To me, it’s not about using technology to create an “alternate reality” or some sort of make-believe world; it’s about creating a heightened appreciation for the world around us. In every project we work on, I’m inspired by the stories of that place. Whether it’s talking to coal miners in West Virginia or jazz legends in Washington D.C., every person has something to teach the rest of us. We can learn from the trials other people have suffered through and triumphed over. The idea for Audissey came to me when I was standing in the middle of an Irish farmer’s cow field, looking up at an enormous castle. I wanted so badly to know the stories within those walls. I thought, “Wait a second. What if someone produced an iPhone app that could tell you the story in a really cool way?” And that was it. I partnered with some friends of mine, telling them this was a way to get paid to travel and see some awesome places. They were in. We’ve created about 30 tours so far, but this should be a big year for us. We’re growing quickly, and we are building a new software platform that allows cities and museums to create their own guided iPhone tours. We’re excited that we’re able to offer our tours for free. Cities and museums hire us to produce these tours, then they give them away for free to visitors as way to attract younger tourists. It’s a win-win — you get a cool experience, and it’s totally free. The fun — and challenge — of technology is that it’s always changing. We need to constantly stay up-to-date on what’s happening and new applications. It’s a continual evolution. It’s a lesson you can take from business and apply to your own life: change will happen; it’s how you handle change that determines the degree of your success. People ask me where the name “Audissey” came from. It can probably be traced all back to fourth grade at Park School, when I studyed ancient Greece. I clearly remember dressing up as Ares, god of war. (Can’t everyone who was in fourth grade remember what god they dressed as?) I also remember learning about Odysseus, and his wandering around the Mediterranean Sea. When I founded this company, I wanted to help people experience their own odyssey — and we use audio to help them do that. That’s how the name “Audissey” was born. So thank you, Mrs. Robb, my fourth-grade teacher!

M SUMNER PAINE ’94

any of my friends at UC Berkeley were from Los Angeles, and as a result I began spending holidays and breaks in Southern California. I was immediately drawn to the entertainment industry, impressed by its capacity to deliver products that permeate people’s daily lives around the globe, and by the immense ecosystem of organizations involved in production. The summer before my junior year, I interned at a talent agency in Beverly Hills, mostly doing the work no one else wanted, like spending hours a day in L.A. gridlock just to drop off scripts at actors’ houses, but

It feels like we’re making the future happen sooner by accelerating the development and the adoption of cool technologies.

After spending Grades VI–IX at Park, Sumner went on to Milton Academy, where he became a founding member of the Internet development team that built Milton’s first website in the mid ’90s. In 1997, he moved west to attend UC Berkeley. As a political economy major, Sumner studied how media and technology companies expand globally. He spent five years in IT at Lionsgate Entertainment, and then pursued an MBA to facilitate a career switch into software development. He returned to the East Coast in 2006 to attend Harvard Business School, where he was copresident of the TechMedia Club, a student organization focused on businesses in the high-tech and new media space. Upon graduating from HBS, he accepted a position as a product manager at Adobe Systems in San Francisco, where he lives now.

I got to shake hands with some interesting characters along the way. In the process I peeked into the inner workings of the entertainment industry, and I was hooked. Back at Berkeley, I also pursued a growing interest in technology that had pulled me westward from Boston a few years earlier. During the school year, I worked part time as an IT support specialist for Berkeley’s housing and dining department; this was my first job where I used an aptitude for applying technology to solve problems. As graduation drew near, I knew I was interested in both media and technology — I didn’t want to choose — and it was precisely at the intersection of the two where I imagined an exciting career for myself. Around mid-2001, just after the tech boom had crested, the initial hype was finally giving way to more tempered expectations for the Internet’s impact on daily life, and the focus shifted to practical applications of technology. The thinking moved from an implicit assumption that the Internet should remake every kind of business (think Webvan and eToys) to a hypothesis that it could improve specific areas of operation (think Brightcove and WebEx). The media and entertainment sector in particular continued to innovate and experiment, and it was in this environment after I graduated from Berkeley that I joined the IT group at Lionsgate Entertainment, an independent film and TV production and distribution studio in Los Angeles. Starting a career at a growing company provided some real advan-

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tages. As Lionsgate grew each year, acquiring other companies like Artisan Entertainment, I seized opportunities to define my own role and take on greater responsibility. Ultimately, I led IT project management, helping to merge networks, manage systems, and prepare the company for future growth. After five years of learning how to deploy and use technology in the context of the entertainment industry, I was eager to move into software development. What I wanted to do next was drive the process of creating technology. The desire to make this career switch from IT to software development led me to invest the next two years in the MBA program at Harvard Business School, and I graduated in 2008. Today, I’m a product manager at Adobe Systems in San Francisco. I work on a product called the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), a toolkit for content providers to build video players for their websites. Sites like Hulu and TV.com have video players on their web pages, and these players can be a huge expense for individual content providers to build. In order to reduce our customers’ costs of delivering online video, Adobe launched OSMF. Now, content providers can make use of standard components to deliver video instead of building their players from scratch. We liken it to this analogy: Adobe builds the “TVs” and other companies produce the “shows.” At Adobe, we build technology that helps media companies deliver content over the Internet in rich and engaging experiences. It’s TV reinvented — great content when you want it, and increasingly where you want it, too. Video on computers has come a long way: we’ve gone from the postage stamp 20-second videos of the mid 90s to high-definition live video watched by millions of people simultaneously. The technology involved in this feat isn’t trivial. Behind the curtain, there’s software that content providers use to prepare video for online distribution, software that content delivery networks use to scale distribution to millions of users around the globe, software that incorporates advertising and reporting, and software on each person’s own computer that provides playback. At Adobe, it’s our job to build the technology solutions that power these cool experiences while letting content providers focus on their core business. If we do our job right, our customers don’t have to spend too much time on the technology, and instead they can focus on creating more content.

What I love most about technology is its remarkable ability to make the simplest experiences feel brand new again. I remember back in the early ’90s setting up my Mac Quadra 660AV to do video conferencing. My Park classmate Chris Gudas and I only had a slow dial-up connection between his house in Brookline and mine in Wellesley, and our computers didn’t support what we were trying to do “out of the box.” But after a week of tinkering with the OS and the bundled software, we got it to work, and we were soon piping video back and forth in real time. At just one frame or two of video per second, it felt a little more like a slideshow than video conferencing, but for us it was a small technological achievement that rein-

vented our daily phone calls. Cut to today: online video proving useful in all kind of contexts. Retailers are finding remarkable increases in sales when they incorporate video into their websites as part of the online shopping experience, and news organizations are tapping the population at large, armed with mobile phones, as a new source for capturing otherwise undocumented events. The trends are clear: Each year, Internet video is finding new and unanticipated ways to touch our daily lives.

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Sumner is a product manager at Adobe, where he works on the Open Source Media Framework — good news for all of us who enjoy watching videos online.

JAKE PETERS ’94 Jake attended Park from sixth to eighth grade, then returned a few years later for his senior project in high school: helping Tom Smith with information technology. Jake continued his studies in the University of Pennsylvania’s dual-degree management and technology program, earning a BSE in computer science and engineering and a BS in economics from Wharton. After eight years as a strategy,

technology, and e-commerce consultant working in seven different countries, Jake now calls London home. He is the chief information officer and director of online strategy at Blink, a startup air taxi service in Europe. He can be reached at jake@jake.net, or found at uk.linkedin.com/in/jakep.

have always been interested in technology and actually cannot remember the first time I used a computer. It may have been on a visit to my dad’s office in 1984. He had some of the first Macs, and when I’d visit him at work I would use MacPaint to make pictures, which he stored on stacks of floppy discs. Things progressed, and I remember my first forays online with early, extremely slow modems — downloading the first version of the Mozilla web browser. I quickly taught myself how to build webpages and interactive websites. While I am still interested in computers and the Internet, my underlying interest in computing is really an interest in information. My career has been centered on using technology to do innovative things with information, solving challenging problems, and driving change. My first real summer job was working as a customer service representative at a quickly growing ISP (Internet service provider). This was 1996, the year when people en-masse started to use dial-up accounts to access the Internet regularly. While I tried to help solve people’s problems over the phone, I quickly realized that the key to providing better sup-

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Working as the chief information officer for a European air taxi service keeps Jake in the clouds.

Jake was a valuable contributor to our early ventures into computer technology at Park. When we grew from a couple dozen computers in the Math Department to hundreds of computers interconnected to a campus-wide network, it was Jake who helped us develop systems that would be easy-to-use, yet powerful enough for advanced users to do everything they wanted to do.—Tom Smith

port was better information. I helped improve the rudimentary database systems we had in place, which were used to track customer information and log calls. This enabled the continually expanding support team to know customers better, reduce call length, and increase customer retention when things went wrong. As a consultant for eight years, I was able to work at the forefront of web-based information collection/collaboration tools, advanced analytics/optimization systems, and the latest in e-commerce technologies. I helped clients solve interesting problems, such as how to buy $400 million worth of folding cartons (food boxes for cereals, Popsicles, etc.) more efficiently, or how to create web-based products for digital photography that would drive “foot traffic” to 5,000 stores. Two years ago, I was looking for new challenges and decided to join the startup air taxi service, Blink, in London, which is where I was based at the time. It was an opportunity to work on building something from scratch and to do things that no one had done before in the sector. This new role leverages my experience in logistics and optimization, e-commerce, and online marketing, as well as my broad exposure to security, hardware, and software. Accurate and timely information is a core component of running a low-cost, low-margin, high-volume business. Where is fuel cheapest? Which pilots should we use for this job? How should this flight be priced? How effective are our sales campaigns? How do we capture, analyze and archive safety-related data? How do pilots relay important customer information back to sales and operations in real time while in the cockpit? Park played an important role in my technology career. I remember playing on the old Apple II computers in the computer lab on the fourth floor. When I was at Park, we didn’t do much more with computers than that. But it was my ongoing relationship with Park throughout high school that brought me back as a technology volunteer for Tom Smith as more modern Macs were replacing older computers. One of my favorite tasks was serving as a “computer hacker” who would test out the security systems to make sure that private information remained private. I also stayed actively involved with the Park community at large, helping many Park families with home computing needs as an independent consultant. I also remember helping Tom run training sessions for faculty — what a neat

experience it was to teach some of my former teachers! (And, of course, sitting at the teacher table at lunch being the only one addressing everyone as Mr. Miller, Mr. Kellogg, Mr. Katz, Ms. Cunningham, Ms. Tucker, and Madame Cabot.) I have fond memories of the many Park teachers who taught me in the classroom, as well as the teachers and school staff whom I knew through my sister and parents. I’m inspired by the continuing advances in technology that change the way we live, work, and communicate on a daily basis. I am excited to see how cloud computing and mobile devices will evolve in the next couple of years. Personally, I am working on a number of projects that combine my love of traveling and learning about history with mobile technology and location-based services. Long term, I anticipate some currently unimaginable developments in materials science which will bring about significant advances in hardware technology — digital paper, batteries, nanocomputers, and who knows what else!

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M Emily making a presentation at the 2009 Webby Awards.

Emily spent Grades VII–IX at Park, diving head-first into all of her classes. She has fond memories of Mr. Walsh singing funny songs about algebra, Ms. (Papali) Nambiar’s handson lab science classes, and Mr. Gambone teaching critical thinking in English class. When she was at Park, Tom Smith was an early champion of using computers, but those were the days of dial-up modems! Emily went on to graduate from Concord Academy and Wesleyan University, where she majored in English and spent a semester in Bologna, Italy with the Wesleyan, Wellesley, and Vassar Consortium program. Since Wesleyan, Emily has lived in New York and worked for a major book publisher, an arts nonprofit, and is currently a managing director at The Webby Awards, the Internet’s most prestigious honor for online excellence. Emily lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their shelter dog, Cindy.

EMILY WARREN ’95

y career started back when people used zip drives for data storage and before WiFi — quite a different technological era from today’s. I’ve always loved technology, but as a liberal arts student — and an English major at that — my focus wasn’t really in that sector. After my first job in publishing, I worked at the Art Directors Club, a nonprofit membership organization where I was an editor and manager of its awards program for advertising and design. That experience led me to The Webby Awards, where my love of the Internet and technology really flourished. While I do not develop and code or even design websites directly, it’s my job to keep tabs on the latest and greatest online achievements in everything from creative endeavors to functional advancements. We look for sites that utilize the web’s best practices: clear communication, innovative navigation, and design that take advantage of the best technology available. As you can imagine, this is a constantly evolving, moving target! I’ve been working in this field for only about four years, but in that short time we have witnessed the birth of devices like the iPhone, the explosion of social tools like Twitter and Facebook, and the evolution of Web 2.0, all of which have completely changed the way we communicate with each other and how we do business on a global scale. The fast-paced nature of this industry is the most exciting part for me. I’m particularly excited by the rise of social activism on the Internet. Sites like GOOD.is and www.sheepless.org are dedicated to community and social entrepreneurship. Especially here in New York City, where there is a thriving “Silicon Alley” with a track record of ingenuity, a feeling of “anyone can do this” pervades the industry. The DIY-nature of business these days is directly fostered by the connective powers of the web and its innate ability to bring people and ideas together. Aside from the growth of the web, travel helps keep me inspired. At the Webbys, part of my focus is international development. I help to increase participation in the Webby Awards outside of the U.S. After all, the Internet is everywhere, and our mission is to recognize the best of the best. In the l ast few years, we’ve hosted events abroad to further our mission. Whether I am visiting Berlin or Brussels or London, traveling keeps me aware of what’s happening in other business cultures. Getting to know the Internet industry outside of New York deepens my perspective of how the web is evolving around the world. When I started at The Webby Awards, I never expected that we’d honor stars like Stephen Colbert or Lisa Kudrow for their original online work. But technology changes — constantly! In a short couple of years, innovations in online film and video, improvements in broadband services, and back-end upgrades in video players (like the kind used on YouTube), have changed our definition of Internet use. As video equipment becomes more and more affordable, anyone can be a filmmaker so long as they have web access and a camera. The intersection of film, television, and the Internet is a constant source of surprise.

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ADELE BURNES ’96

Adele fondly remembers her middle school years at Park: learning finesse and grace on the soccer field with Mr. Conway and finding her soulfulness in

Mrs. Allen’s music class. Upon graduating from Milton Academy, Adele continued onto Columbia University where she majored in archeology. After brief forays into sports marketing at TRACS Inc. and teaching English in Chile, she worked in broadband development at the John Adams Innovation

ince my middle school days at Park, trying to be cool, I have fully surrendered to my inner techie dork, and it has set me free. For years I searched for the right career, trying out photography, archaeology, sports marketing, and teaching English in Chile. However, it was when I took a job at the John Adams Innovation Institute in Westborough that I became intrigued by technology. At the Innovation Institute, I worked on broadband development, interacting with constituents in the public and private sectors in order to bridge the digital divide. Ultimately, I helped to found the Broadband Institute, which is dedicated to extending affordable, high-speed Internet access to every home, business, and public place in the Commonwealth. Through this work, I realized just how empowering technology and broadband can be for economic development, education, and community building. Throughout my education, both at Park and beyond, I was taught to be a free — but informed — thinker. I learned to observe the world around me: to learn from it, to question it, and to challenge it. Teachers like Juliet Baker infused me with a curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. Just last year, I attended a speech by noted business strategist and author Gary Hamel that was truly inspirational. In his speech, Hamel talked about the future of management and how most corporate management technology is outdated and has not evolved with the rapidly changing technology of today. He gave examples of innovative companies that are unleashing more human potential by breaking down the hierarchy and allowing employees to chart their own paths and work on the things that excite them, bringing their full creativity and humanity to the workplace. Shortly after hearing this speech, my BU

Institute. Adele is currently working towards an MBA in public and non-profit management and an MS in information systems at Boston University, along with helping develop BetterMeans.com. In her free time, Adele loves sailing, taking pictures, practicing yoga, and connecting with old friends.

classmate Karim Bishay and his brother, Shereef, hatched the idea for a company born out of this alternative view. I joined them to refine the model and start the company this past fall. Our company, BetterMeans.com, is an online platform that offers startup businesses and social enterprises a new, democratic model of management enabled by the principles of Web 2.0. What Wikipedia has done for articles, we are doing for startups. At the core of BetterMeans is our Open Enterprise Model — based on the principles of openness, meritocracy, autonomy, respect, purpose, and interdependence. We have a vision for a different kind of company, management structure, and way of working together that was inspired by thinkers like Gary Hamel, but is unique to BetterMeans. BetterMeans will be an online platform that provides the structures, the tools, and the community to allow innovative, open enterprises to form. On BetterMeans.com, there will be full transparency of work, decision making, and

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financials. Anyone can come onto the platform and see all of the workstreams and tasks taking place in any enterprise. Using crowdsourcing* for decision making, tasks and workstreams are voted upon and only those most important to the members of the enterprise will be completed. Anyone can comment on or take responsibility for a task. Individuals become members of an organization either by gaining confidence points from those already in the enterprise or by completing a certain amount of work. With this meritocracy, one’s work speaks for itself while a sense of community is maintained. When an individual completes work with a team, he or she states the individual’s contribution of work and what percent the other team members completed. In our model, compensation is based on the average percentage of what others assessed your contribution to be. Through structures such as these, BetterMeans will offer a different community of interaction that is based on openness and mutual respect. The goal is to create an environment for responsible business and fulfilling work for individuals. Karim, Shereef, and I are currently beta testing the site with a few enterprises and hope to launch the platform to the public in summer or fall of 2010. I am very excited about this company and how it could change the way we work. If you are intrigued, I encourage you to contact me or follow us online. Let the (r)evolution of work begin.

* Crowdsourcing: A term coined in 2006 by Wired magazine writer Jeff Howe. Noun. delegating a task to a large diffuse group, usually without substantial monetary compensation.

The son of long-time faculty members Tom Smith and Margo Ayers Smith, Andrew literally grew up at Park. After graduating with the Park School Class of 1998, he attended Philips Academy. In his college years, at UMass Amherst, Andrew followed his passion for technology and film, graduating with honors with a BS in mechanical engineering and a minor in film. Since graduating, Andrew relocated to California, where he has pursued a career in the cutting-edge industry of motion picture visual effects, specializing in motion capture.

ANDREW SMITH â&#x20AC;&#x2122;98

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ife is a funny thing. A few years ago, if you had told me that my job would involve fitting actors into spandex suits and drawing dots on their faces, I wouldn’t have believed you. In fact, I don’t think I would have believed you could get hired to do such things, or why you would even want to in the first place. Although I’ve moved on from the actual dot drawing, I found myself doing just that when I accepted a position as a systems engineer at Vicon Motion Systems. From the studio in Los Angeles, I worked closely with a range of motion capture consumers—from the computer science department at MIT, to top-rated video game studios like Electronic Arts. Vicon was a great experience, but I quickly realized my skill set was growing much faster than the job could accommodate. When an opportunity came up to work at director Robert Zemeckis’s new studio, Image Movers Digital (IMD), I jumped at the chance. Lucky for me, Zemeckis absolutely loves using motion capture. Fundamentally, “motion capture” is the recording of an actor’s motions, body, hands, or face, with the eventual goal of mapping it to an animated character. Motion capture provides the base and structure to achieve a specific animation style, one that involves a certain level of realism and tangible “weight,” which is difficult to achieve with keyframe animation. Keyframe animation is the labor-intensive process of defining the start and end point through which an object passes over time. Stop motion animation, as seen in the movies Coriline or Wallace and Gromit, is a great tactile example of keyframing, where the animator is literally moving a little model through space, taking a picture (setting a keyframe), and then moving it to the next position. These days you can’t talk about motion capture without mentioning James Cameron’s recent 3D film, Avatar. Cameron’s animation studio, Weta, was able to achieve some stun-

ning results and visuals with Avatar. This undoubtedly raised the bar as far as audience expectations regarding quality of motion and the general “fleshyness” of the digital characters. (By the way, in my circle, there is no greater compliment you can give a digital artist than calling their work “fleshy.”) True, they’ve created pointy-eared ten-foot-tall blue aliens, but they still exist in a universe based in rules and expectations. Deviate too far from those expectations, and you can end up giving your audience a case of the creeps. Humans are amazingly good at recognizing faces and emotional states, which is why building digital characters can be such a challenge. The tiniest facial movements can change an emotional state, so you can bet that anything out of place is immediately noticed; this is the worst thing that can happen, since it destroys the immersive experience of a film. The goal is to let the character speak for itself, which effectively makes the work I do invisible. But cutting-edge technology doesn’t necessarily make a good film. After all, the point is to tell a compelling story. When you talk about Avatar, you also have to mention the whopping $420 million price tag, which makes it an outlier, rather than a target for a filmmaking model. One of the goals of IMD is to produce great films with a reasonable pricetag. With Disney as a partner, we have been challenged to reach new levels of computer graphic visuals while telling interesting (and marketable) stories. IMD has been able to

definition cameras mounted to a lightweight helmet on the actor’s head. Using the captured video, we can track discrete points on the actor’s face and triangulate them in 3D space – basically giving us a digital record of the actor’s performance. This digital record can then be mapped to a character, so when Jim Carrey smiles, Ebenezer Scrooge does the same. The difficulty lies in both preserving the actors performance while properly matching the semantic meaning of the particular facial pose. In other words, when Jim frowns, how should Scrooge frown? When you move a bit of your face, all sorts of secondary motion takes place; skin stretches, muscles flex, lips compress, blood flows, etc. We have to build from scratch what nature provides for free. The best way to think about it is a sort of digital prosthetic, where we can completely change the appearance of an actor while letting the performance shine through. IMD has been a fantastic experience for me. As a technical director (or TD, for short), I’m lucky to work on the face team, developing new software and workflows while working with exceptionally talented artists and animators. Now that A Christmas Carol is finished, I’m working on Disney’s upcoming Mars Needs Moms, due to be released on Mothers’ Day 2011, and will also start to work on a remake of Yellow Submarine for 2012.

Motion capture technology is incredibly data-rich. Our high definition cameras record 48 frames per second—in a single session with a single actor, we record more terabytes than NASA has on the known universe! attract some of the top talent in art, computer science, and visual effects in order to push the limits of computer graphics in feature films. Our first film, A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, and Cary Elwes, started after Avatar and leveraged some of the lessons Weta had learned to push performance capture further. At IMD, we have developed a new capture technology that uses four miniature high-

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

JULIA ROSENTHAL ’01

Julia attended Milton Academy for high school following six years at Park. At Trinity College in Hartford, she played Division I squash and studied psychology. In college, as the Internet’s influence grew daily, Julia conducted a study on “the effect of Internet use on selfesteem,” in which she compared the Internet habits and levels of self-esteem and social anxiety between a group of baby boomers and a group of Generation Ys. “We found that in some cases, the increase in Internet usage across generations correlated with lowered self-esteem (attributed to people feeling more exposed from being on social networking sites) and heightened social anxiety (attributed to people interacting with others more online than face-to-face.)” Since graduation, Julia has lived and worked in New York City, where she interacts with thousands of online followers of the beauty supply company, Molton Brown.

Julia poses with some Molton Brown products in her office in New York.

’ve been using “social media” since 2005, when I opened my first Facebook account. (I always thought MySpace was creepy!) In fact, Facebook came out the summer before my first year in college. Originally, Facebook was limited to students at a very small group of colleges. I had three friends who were planning to attend Harvard in the fall, and they were already connecting with their future classmates online. I was so jealous! Trinity came on board a few months into my freshman year, and I was overjoyed! As a casual user of social media, I stayed up-to-date with my friends, reconnecting with names from the past, and sharing photos. Soon, everybody had a Facebook page, then, it

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

seemed like every company had a Facebook fan page. It piqued my curiosity about digital marketing. During college, I had an internship in Reebok’s digital marketing department, which helped me realize that I really wanted my career to be involved in the digital space, since it’s where everything is headed. Right out of college I worked at NBC Universal in the digital research department, creating surveys and analyzing results for online advertisers on NBC.com. Now, I work in the marketing department at Molton Brown, a British luxury goods company specializing in bath, body, travel, and home items. My main objectives include raising brand awareness in the U.S. (we are a leading brand in the U.K., but more unknown in this market) and driving sales to our six retail stores in the U.S., our e-commerce site, and our department stores and independent retailers. Before I joined the marketing team, Molton Brown did not have a social media presence, although many of our competitors did. (I’ve come to learn that American companies are setting trends in social media.) I got the green light to proceed from our main marketing office in London, and I began to use Facebook and Twitter as marketing tools. I try to post once a day on the Facebook page (Molton Brown USA) and tweet several times a day on our Twitter account (@moltonbrownusa). Using these sites, I promote new products, recent press, in-store events, special offers, and anything I think our fans or followers will find interesting, such as suggesting new gifts ideas for upcoming holidays.

In addition to reaching out to individual Molton Brown customers, we’ve been able to use social media to get our products in front of influential bloggers who track the beauty industry online. I’ve contacted all of the individual bloggers who are active on Twitter and have asked them to consider mentioning our products on their blogs. It’s a very inexpensive way to promote our brand name, and it only requires sending a package of sample products. When I first started this social media initiative, I made a goal to have 1,000 Twitter followers by the end of 2009. When I had reached 900, I tweeted that one of the next 100 followers who signed up would be automatically entered to receive a year’s supply of handwash. It was a great incentive: we got 150 followers in three days, and I accomplished what I had set out to do. One of the greatest aspects of social media marketing is the ability to interact directly with customers. Rather than reading all the posts from more than 1,000 followers, a search tool allows me to see if any Twitter users are mentioning Molton Brown. This capacity for direct

Social media changes the relationship between the brand and the customer. It becomes more intimate, creating a connection between that person and the company that is on a new level.

interaction is the most important part of using the Internet for marketing — we can engage people in real time, posing questions and receiving answers, and our fans and followers are able to ask us questions and receive speedy responses as well. As an example, here is a recent exchange: @sugarlumpy: @moltonbrownusa I can’t decide between the celestial maracuja sugar polish and the warming eucalyptus & ginger body scrub. Help!

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

@MoltonBrownUSA: @sugarlumpy you cant go wrong with either but personally i enjoy the warming euc in wintertime. plus which color goes best in your bathroom? @MoltonBrownUSA: @sugarlumpy those are both oil based scrubs. if you want a cleansing scrub i highly recommend our ambrusca wash & polish, i cant live w/o! Social media changes the relationship between the brand and the customer. It becomes more intimate, creating a connection between that person and the company that is on a new level. The Internet also provides access to a mass audience, and, as a company, that audience is always going to have something to say about you. By getting involved in the conversation, the company is able to make its brand relevant and can exert influence over those discussions.

Alumni Notes 34

GRADE IX LEADERSHIP LUNCHES Mike Deland ’56, recipient of the 2009 Alumni Achievement Award, spoke with the ninth grade on Friday, October 9, 2009. Mike was chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President George H. W. Bush. The students enjoyed hearing about Mike’s important contributions, from cleaning up Boston Harbor in the 1980s to helping to make Gillette Stadium the most accessible venue in the NFL for those with disabilities. Alumni Committee member Julia Lloyd Johannsen ’93 (far left) also attended.

1933

1953

1968

Ruth Crocker Young’s first greatgrandchild, Jack Manning, was born about a year ago with “two more grandchildren coming in March and June.” She tells us that she “expects to move into a brand new retirement community in Lebanon, N.H., in mid-May.”

Class Representative Bob Bray Rbray@thebraygroup.com 617-696-8673

Class Representatives Robert Hurst Rob.Hurst2@verizon.net 617-332-6808

1958

Vicky Hall Kehlenbeck vkehlenbeck@rc.com 781-235-2990

1938 Class Representative Putty McDowell pbmcd2@verizon.net 781-320-1960

Jim Newell writes, “We’re delighted with our first grandson born on April 7, 2009, and look forward to another grandchild next September. Hope to see some classmates at the Reunion in May.”

1960

50th REUNION

Class Representatives Needed!

1948 Renny Little met up with Ginny Lapham Pescosolido at a fall dinner at Harvard’s Eliot House. Renny writes, “Fortunately, she recognized me. We hadn’t seen each other in over 50 years.”

1963 Class Representative Amy Lampert aslampert@gis.net 441-232-7673

1950

1965

Class Representative Galen Clough 812-477-2454

Class Representatives Needed!

Rev. Reginald C. Rodman writes, “After 40 years of ministry in the Episcopal church serving a rector and vicar in parishes and missions in Colorado, Hawaii, and Oregon, I am now retired. Fishing for salmon seems a lateral move but has its own challenges and rewards.” He continues, “It is impressive to see the huge growth and development of Park School. What a change from the age of innocence when I was there.”

45th REUNION

1966 Class Representative Wigs Frank 610-964-8087

1967 Class Representative Davis Rowley Rowley@hammondre.com 617-469-0443

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

1970

40th REUNION

Class Representatives Needed! Paul Ayoub is a partner at Nutter, McClennen & Fish in Boston and was recently appointed to the Executive Committee and as Secretary and General Counsel to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. Paul’s daughter, Lizzie Ayoub ’09, is now in the 10th grade at Noble and Greenough School.

1972 Class Representative Andrew Cable 781-642-9910 Tom Kunhardt is enjoying working in the new energy economy for ClearEdge Power selling fuel cells to homeowners and businesses in northern California. Tom’s adult daughter, Vanessa, is a labor and delivery nurse for Kaiser “and loves it. She is a natural caregiver and I’m not surprised her patients adore her and a few have named their daughters after her.” Tom’s teenage daughter, Ursula, is enjoying junior year of high school, “but can’t seem to wait to study education, theater, and play D1 volleyball at Montana State University.” His

wife, Helen, runs her own advertising agency and still finds time to be an phenomenal mother, wife, and volleyball team manager. Tom recalls his days at Park: “I can’t believe so many years have passed since I spent my days at Park. Four years of days filled with carpools, classes, meals, sports, friendship, and laughter. Days that I remember vividly and fondly and often. Days that managed to hugely impact the man I am today. It is remarkable how many seemingly small moments in those days would turn out to be important life lessons. I don’t thank you enough Park School. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

1973 Class Representatives Rick Berenson Barbara@berenson.info 617-696-0523 Maggie Frank O’Connor Maggie-o@comcast.net 413-467-3966 Read about Maggie Frank O’Connor’s career in technology on page 15. Gil Kliman writes, “After numerous prompts from Maggie, I am finally writing in to Park for the first time. Life is great out here in California! I live in Portola Valley, just south of San Francisco, with my wife Yasemin (we got married in August 2008). I became a converted northern Californian after moving here for business school in 1992. I am a partner at InterWest Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund, where I invest in biotech and life science companies, and Yasemin works in high tech, most recently at Yahoo. Before transitioning to the business side of healthcare, I was an ophthalmologist and laser researcher on faculty at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and New England Eye Center. However, as I got more involved with innovative laser technology, I entered the world of business and venture capital, which has been an exciting second act after many years as a practicing doctor. When Yasemin and I get out of work, we love adventure travel (anywhere in the world; we got engaged in Istanbul), skiing (Colorado), boating (Puget Sound), wine touring (any place that has a winery), running and hiking (out our front door), singing and playing guitar (soundproof basement), and watching 30 Rock episodes (the couch).”

CLASS OF 1965 — 45TH REUNION!

CLASS OF 1970 — 40TH REUNION!

(continued on p. 37)

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

1. Got butter? 2. Members of the Class of 2009 3. Amanda Mitchell’s family enjoys the day 4. Rusty Wright Reiber ’58

Alumni Clambake 2009 On a gorgeous Sunday in September, over 50 Park alumni and their families celebrated the end of summer at the

annual clambake. Over seven decades of Park alumni were represented — from the Class of 1937 to the Class of 2009 — and everyone enjoyed the feast of fresh lobster, clam chowder and more.

Alumni enjoyed catching up with former faculty members Sally Baker and Dean Conway. The Class of 2009 gets the prize for most impressive turnout with more than 25 classmates returning for a mini-reunion! We hope to

see you next fall!

5. L-R: Dean Conway, Kathrene Tiffany ’96, Lilla Curran ’96, and Ladd Thorne ’96 6. Sally Baker (assistant head of school 1976–2004) with Sara Redd ’00 7. Chip Pierce ’81 and former English and social studies teacher Dean Conway 8. 2009 friends (L-R): Mercedes Orozco, Lexi Sparrow, Ben Logan, Daniel Bender-Stern, Cary Williams, Jess Franks 9. Whitney Sowles and Tom Sowles ’86 and their children stay cool under the awning 10. Amy Simonds Naimi ’49, Martina Albright ’83, and Shapur Naimi

Gil relays some of his many run-ins with Park alumni across the country: “It was great seeing classmates at our 30th Reunion a few years ago, but even more fun to see them spontaneously. I see Jim Welch most often, as we were college roommates, and I am often in New York where he has lived for many years with his wife, Sue, and five girls (some of you may remember he was oldest of six boys!). But Park people are everywhere. I saw Ty Burr at the Telluride Film Festival, where he was interviewing the stars but still had time for a fun dinner to catch up on old times. Rick Berenson has stopped by my office a few times, as he has started several interesting biotech companies. Last winter, I was with my wife on a snowmobile expedition deep into Yellowstone National Park when we ran into Macy Lawrence Ratliff and her family amid the snow-covered steam geysers, where we had a reunion lunch. Closer to home, I was recently in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts gift shop when I noticed a volunteer who looked familiar, and it was Grace Carroll, who nicely gave me the member discount even though I didn’t have my card. We Park people gotta stick together!” Gil also gives us an update on the Kliman family: “Speaking of Park people, my brother Doug Kliman ’78, lives in Tucson with his wife, Susan, and son, Randall. He is a geographic information systems consultant as well as a commander in the Navy Reserve. My father retired from his internal medicine practice but still lives on Newton Street in Brookline, just across the park from Park. Unfortunately, my mother, whom many of you may have known as a former trustee of Park back in the 1970s, passed away earlier this year after a long illness. She wanted to keep her transition very low key, but I know how much she appreciated everyone in the Park family who provided such a wonderful education and life experience for me and my brother. She undoubtedly would have wanted us to pass along a heartfelt thanks on her behalf to everyone at the school.” Gil ends by saying, “Well, that’s all the news for now, and it should make up for more than 35 years of never writing in. To avoid information overload, I have so far boycotted Facebook and LinkedIn, but for any of you wanting to keep in touch, my email is gkliman@interwest.com. Best wishes to all.”

1974

1979

Class Representatives Rodger Cohen skiboy@mindspring.com 508-651-3981

Class Representatives Lalla Carothers lcaro@maine.rr.com 207-829-2283

Margaret Smith Bell James_Bell65@msn.com 617-267-4141

Sally Solomon s.solomon@neu.edu

1975

35th REUNION

Class Representatives Colin McNay fivebear@mac.com 617-731-1746 Bill Sullivan 978-568-1303

1976 Class Representative Tenney Mead Cover tenney.cover@verizon.net 781-329-5449

Nina Frusztajer loves connecting with more Park alums on Facebook: “Hilary Hart, Holly Dando, and Cary Godbey Turner: I love how active you are!” Nina’s kids are 5, 6, and 7 now and very fun; “as I write now (in February) we’re on a great vacation in Naples escaping the snow.” The book Nina co-authored, The Serotonin Power Diet, which is particularly effective for weight loss among people who have gained weight on antidepressants, came out in paperback in December 2009. “I’m still finding it very gratifying to work with readers and clients following our diet. I continue to work as a pathologist three days a week — I love the work (and the part-time schedule!)”

1977 Class Representative Sam Solomon sa.solomon@verizon.net 781-784-0385

1978 Class Representatives Needed!

1980

30th REUNION

Class Representative Andres Hurwitz andreshurwitz@hotmail.com 323-468-9276 Stephen Conkling lives in Maynard, Massachusetts, “in a home I pur-

chased three years ago. I work part time at Codman Farm in Lincoln. With my other time, I build furniture, bows, and go fishing. I am not into hunting, though. I try to go camping a couple times a year. I also keep tropical fish, 40 of them.”

1981 Class Representatives Matt Carothers Mcarothers88@yahoo.com 508-785-0770 Alex Mehlman amehlman@yahoo.com 781-461-8510

1982 Class Representative Allison Nash Mael email@msn.com 716-332-0925 Looking for something new? “Four Stories” is Tracy Slater’s new literary series bridging Greater Boston’s nightlife and arts community (and now Osaka’s and Tokyo’s, too!). Each event is held in a club, bar, or lounge, and features appearances from some of the most acclaimed authors in the nation, all reading their work under a unified theme. To learn more, visit: www.fourstories.org

CLASS OF 1975 — 35TH REUNION!

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

O N

T H E

Author Unknown, 1934

Barry Munger

by Eliza Drachman-Jones ’98, Director of Alumni Relations

H I G H

L I N E

W I T H

J O S H

An elevated park running 20 blocks through downtown New York City? Fifteen years ago, if you had asked any New Yorker “Is that even possible?” you would have heard a resounding “No!” But that is not what Park School alumnus Josh David ’78 thought when he first discovered the High Line. The High Line was built in the 1930s as part of a massive publicprivate infrastructure project called the West Side Improvement. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan’s largest industrial district. Its history unfolds: “In 1934 the High Line opens to trains. . . It is designed to go through the center of blocks, rather than over the avenue, to avoid creating the negative conditions associated with elevated subways. It connects directly to factories and warehouses, allowing trains to roll right inside buildings. Milk, meat, produce, and raw and manufactured goods come and go without causing street-level traffic. Yet as twentieth century roared on, and the growth of interstate trucking leads to a drop in rail traffic, the High Line becomes obsolete. The last train ran along the High Line in 1980.”1 When rail service ceased, real estate developers began to see opportunity in the land and worked to demolish the High Line. A former freelance magazine writer, Josh was assigned a piece that would change his own life — and the physical landscape of New York City — forever. It was while working on an article about the changes in New York City’s West Chelsea neighborhood when Josh first discovered the High Line.“ I’d seen it many times since I moved to the neighborhood in 1985, but I never really paid it any attention until 1999, as I was researching the magazine article.” Once he started to learn about the High Line, he was instantly intrigued. “When I discovered that it was unbroken, from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, running through the middle of city blocks, 30 feet in the air, it seemed like the most incredible opportunity to create something amazing — a new way of looking at the city. It just sparked my imagination.” After reading an article in The New York Times about the High Line structure’s potential demolition, Josh decided that he wanted to get involved directly. At a community meeting in West Chelsea, Josh met Robert Hammond, a fellow neighborhood resident and fan of The High Line. Both men were surprised to learn that no nonprofit organization or historical preservation society had tried to save this piece of American industrial history. Together, in 1999, they founded Friends of the High Line, a 501c3 nonprofit organization advocating for the preservation of the High Line and its use as a public park, which quickly becomes a fulltime occupation for Josh. Over the next several years, Josh and Robert worked with a number of different parties to halt the High Line’s demolition and secure funding for the project from the City. One of the most significant victories for the Friends of the High Line was an eight-month long economic feasibility study. Essentially, the study proved that the increase in tax revenue from the land around the proposed park would exceed the cost of building the park itself. With that report, the public park concept received buy-in from the community, developers, and city government; the High Line was saved from the wrecking ball and was now on track to become New York City’s newest green space. One of the park’s key design elements is a landscape that emulates nature. Once a domain of steel and rails, after years of disuse the High Line had transformed into a self-seeded pathway of lush organic

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

D A V I D

’ 7 8

greens, grasses, and wild flowers. The landscape architects wanted to preserve the look of a spontaneous landscape while developing the gardens and pathways of the High Line. Pathways weave in and out of the gardens to evoke the railway; tall grasses and perennials grow in and around pathways to enhance the feeling of a natural landscape. Section 1 of the High Line opened to the public on June 8, 2009. The night before, Josh looked out onto the Hudson River from Section 1. “It was incredibly moving. I went up and saw it empty, pristine, exactly as we’d designed it, and I couldn’t believe it was real. But then, the next morning, when we cut the ribbon and the public poured in, that was when the High Line truly came to life.” For Josh, the High Line was also meant to be a socially compelling space. Having been integrated into the life of New York City in such a dramatic way, the High Line has already become enormously popular, with nearly two million visitors since its opening. Looking back on his Park experience, Josh fondly remembers his days as a student, where he felt that individuality was valued. “At Park, all students were encouraged to follow their own paths. Not only were they recognized for it, but also supported.” Josh fondly remembers many of his teachers from his days at Park School, including Bob Hurlbut, who “created such a great tone of tolerance and mutual respect among the student body.” Josh also remembers Mrs. Budd (“my first teacher at Park”), Mrs. Goff, Madame duCharme, Mrs. Marmachev, Mr. Bourne, Mrs. McKendry, and Ms. Aliskovsky. “The fact that the High Line instantly became such a vibrant social place, where people go to be part of the dynamic public culture of New York City, is the most gratifying part of the project to me,” Josh adds. “The social quality of the place never fails to thrill me.” Not only is the High Line a personal success for Josh, it has also a received critical acclaim. In June 2009, The New York Times called it “one of the most thoughtful, sensitively designed public spaces in New York in years.” With Section 2 projected to open within a year, and Section 3 in an early phase, we at Park look forward to watching the High Line’s progress! 1 www.theHigh Line.org/about/high-line-history

Right: Washington Grasslands, aerial view of the High Line over Little West 12th Street. Below: The Sundeck, one of the High Line’s most popular gathering spots, between 14th and 15th Streets.

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

1983

1986

Class Representative Lisa Livens llivens@hotmail.com 617-247-2441

Class Representatives Mark Epker mepker@beaconcommunitiesllc.com 781-326-4299

Juliet Siler Eastland has good news to report: “I am living in Brookline with my husband and two lovely daughters (ages 1.5 and 5) as a fulltime mom and part-time writer. Looking forward to the Park pool this summer!”

Jay Livens jlivens@sloan.mit.edu 617-247-2441 Read about Jay Livens’s career in technology on page 18.

1987 1984

Class Representatives Mary Sarah Baker Mary.sarah.baker@gmail.com 212-580-2345

Class Representative Anne Collins Goodyear ACG610@gmail.com 703-931-9016

1985

25th REUNION

Class Representatives Rachel Levine Foley rlfoles@aol.com 781-559-8148

Geoff Glick gmglick@aol.com 508-893-8912

Jessica Stone ’89 and fiancé Chris Baker on Stinson Beach, in California. The happy couple is getting married on 10.10.10!

1988

VH1’s Emmy-nominated “Bands on the Run,” and worked as a keyboardist for several major-label artists, including Marc Cohn and Toby Lightman. “I’ve redirected my focus in two ways: I’ve started training to become a psychotherapist, and I’ve co-founded a critically acclaimed boutique, custom-songwriting company called This Is Your Song (www.thisisyoursong.net), which writes and records original songs for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other special events.” Josh and his wife live

Class Representative Liza Cohen Gates lgates@digitas.com 617-267-6184

Hattie Dane Kessler hdkessler@yahoo.com 617-739-9639 Melissa Daniels Madden melissamadden@comcast.com 781-237-4959 Read about Jamie Folsom’s career in technology on page 17.

Josh Dodes graduated from Yale in 1995, then spent 13 years as a professional musician (www.jdband.com) touring nationally with his own band (the Josh Dodes Band). He released several albums, was featured on

in Brooklyn. “Although I was only at Park briefly, I remember my time there very fondly, and hope all my old classmates are great!”

1989 Class Representatives Dahlia Aronson 617-969-5045 Ian Glick ibglick@aol.com 617-264-7198 Rebecca Lewin Scott Rebecca.scott@earthlink.com 781-722-7593

CLASS OF 1980, GRADE VIII — 30TH REUNION!

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

Congratulations to Allison Morse for being named 2009 Massachusetts Nurse Practitioner of the Year, an award given by the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. Allison is a nurse practitioner for St. Elizabeth Hospital’s gynecologic oncology department. Her team has shown remarkably favorable clinical results for patients with gynecologic cancers as compared with national averages. Jessica Stone is living in Boulder, Colorado, where she met her fiancé, Christopher Baker. Jessica tells us “We are getting married on 10/10/10 in Calistoga, California, with our friends and families!” Her fiancé, Chris, has a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in high school education and is working on a second master’s in contemplative education and early childhood education. Jessica goes on to say, “I will be graduating from Boulder College of Massage Therapy (1,000 hours) and continuing on to earn an associate’s degree in massage therapy. I am focusing on earning additional certifi-

Anne Collins Goodyear ’84 and Frank Goodyear (who curated this exhibit at the Smithsonian) enjoyed their own tour of the American West in the summer of 2009.

cations in Zen shiatsu, prenatal/ postpardum and sports/orthopedic. I am taking as many bodywork classes as I can handle…because I love it! I hope to open a bodywork and wellness practice in Boulder in early 2011.”

1990

20th REUNION

Class Representatives Zac Cherry 212-863-3339 Alex Rabinksy arabinsky@hotmail.com 773-645-4381 Read about Lars Albright’s and Nick Thompson’s careers in technology on pages 20 and 22.

Park’s Private Tour at the National Portrait Gallery This past November, fifteen Park alumni joined Jerry Katz for a private tour and reception at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Anne Collins Goodyear ’84 and her husband, Frank Goodyear, both curators at the museum, gave the Park School group a special look at the exhibit “Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845 –1924.” Alumni in Southern California can view the exhibition at the San Diego Historical Society from March 12 to June 6, or catch it in Oklahoma at the Gilcrease in Tulsa from October 9, 2010 through January 2, 2011.

Nick Thompson’s new book, The Hawk and the Dove, was released this fall to rave reviews. In the New York Times, Nick said: “I did about 150 interviews” for the book about the two master builders of America’s Cold War strategy, Paul Nitze and George Kennan, and many of them “would not have talked to me if I wasn’t Paul Nitze’s grandson.”

1992 Class Representatives Needed!

For more information about the exhibition, please visit www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/frontier/

Elizabeth Sandman is in the middle of her second year of residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconness. She tells us she is “not sure what my long-term plans are yet, but after I finish the residency, I’ll do an extra year as primary care chief resident.”

1993 Class Representatives Jessica Ko jessicako@gmail.com 781-259-8680 Jamie Quiros qstips@yahoo.com 617-522-3622 Ali Ross alross@gmail.com 646-528-4248 Read about Rob Pyles’s career in technology on pages 23.

CLASS OF 1985 — 25TH REUNION!

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

How do you know if there is swine flu near you? Clark Freifeld has an app for that! Clark, a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab and cofounder of HealthMap, has created “Outbreaks Near Me,” an iPhone swine-flu application that lets users track and report outbreaks of swine flu and other infectious diseases in

GRADE IX LEADERSHIP LUNCH Jessica Naddaff ’93 came to Park this winter to speak with the ninth graders about her life since her days as a student at Park School. Jessica is a public relations professional who has worked with brands such as Burberry and has helped clients get involved with events ranging from the Oscars to the MTV Music Awards. She explained to the students exactly what public relations is and how it plays a role in their everyday lives. The students especially enjoyed hearing Jessica’s professional opinion on which Super Bowl advertisements worked and which didn’t. Jessica recently opened her own public relations firm, Bite Size Marketing. Take a look at her website at www.bitesizemarketing.com

their areas. The application uses the Global Positioning System and maps to pinpoint illnesses in an area and keep public health researchers informed about how diseases spread. Jamie Quiros is living in Jersey City, New Jersey and works as a realtor. He says, “Long story short, I was let go because of the downturn, and I fell into this. I am liking it a lot more than I thought I would.” Jamie is currently training for the Boston Marathon. He tells us, “I ran the Continental NYC Half Marathon as part of the training. I am running on the Cam Neely Foundation Team to raise money for cancer research. Basically, I committed to raising $3,000 and running in the Marathon. I know we are all on hard times, but if Park School alumni could help me raise money for the cause, that would be amazing. And if you are able to donate, please be sure to use my name. Check out the website (www.camneelyfoundation.org) Thank you, Park!” The Independent

CLASS OF 1990 — 20TH REUNION!

Reviewers of New England nominated Jennifer Glick Shaffer for her role in Seussical at Wheelock Family Theater in 2009.

1994 Class Representatives Alan Bern 781-326-8091 Jake Peters jake@jake.net

Lauren Ciccone became engaged on December 8, 2009. “We are looking forward to getting married in October 2010!” Jake Peters “would enjoy hearing from people in the Park community who are working on interesting technology projects or coming through London or anyone who wants to say hi.” You can read about Jake’s career in technology on page 26.

1995

Aba Taylor 617-361-6370 Read about Sumner Paine’s career in technology on page 24. Meryl Glassman just started a job as the West Coast gift officer for Partners In Health. “They have recently been in the news a great deal because of their long-term work in Haiti.” She is based in San Francisco but will be traveling back and forth to Boston and working up and down the West Coast. David Jenkins and

Class Representatives Nick Brescia nick_e_pockets@hotmail.com Merrill Hawkins merrillhawkins@gmail.com Katayoun Shahroki Katayoun_shahrokhi@yahoo.com Kathrene Tiffany ktiffany@gmail.com

15th REUNION

Class Representatives: Lilla Curran lillacurran@gmail.com 617-4807673 Matt Stahl StahlM@cbsnews.com Read about Emily Warren’s career in technology on page 28.

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

1996

Read about Adele Burnes’s career in technology on page 29. Leah Cumsky-Whitlock Lavin has lots of great news to report. In October, she married her college boyfriend, Brian Lavin, on Martha’s Vineyard. “Emmy O’Connell was my maid of honor and Luke Coppedge ’95 was also at our wedding, as he and my husband are good college friends.” Leah and Brian are expecting their first child in August! Melissa Tapper Goldman tells us that she recently finished up a docu-

e ’71, Greg Cop Ross ’00, ie Lee 0, Melissa st ’0 ri h C ra d ka as ien Joyita Bh ’00, and fr ichaelidis Yrinee M

Jerry Katz, Kathrene Tiffany ’96 and Ruthie Rowbotham ’93

Max Reale ’00, Spencer Bush-Brown ’00, and Lilla Curran ’95

FEBRUARY FÊTE

Nia Lutch ’97, Sarah Shoukimas ’97, Merrill Hawkins ’96, Alice Byrd ’96, and Suzy McManmon ’97

Over 125 alumni and friends gathered for the first annual Alumni February Fête. The gorgeous and historic Prescott House on Beacon Hill was filled with alumni from the Classes of 1948–2002 who enjoyed mingling with old friends and former teachers. Plan to join us for a Katherine M cManmon ’9 4, friend Meg Saltonstall ’9 Burke, and Gi 0 gi

Martina Albright ’83, Amanda Lawrence, Michael Gleba and Jennifer Nadelson Gleba ’83

Joe Weinograd, Jennie Tucker, and Chris Burrage — all Class of 2001

mid-winter celebration of Park next year! Amy Lampert ’63, Polly Hoppin ’74, and Paul Ayoub ’70

Abbott Lawrence ’85, Bart Steele ’86 and Nick Tarlov ’88

Stephanie Stamatos ’85 , Matt Krepps, Tim Sul livan ’85 and Elizabeth Sulliva n

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

0 and friend ss Whitman ’0 -Brown ’00, Je Spencer Bush

1989 classmates Dahlia Aronson Ehrenfried, Alison Morse, Ali Epker Ruch and Rebecca Lewin Scott

mentary, Subjectified, which was screened at MIT in February. For more information, check out her blog at http://subjectified.blogspot.com/. Melissa is still living in New York, where she’s an architecture student at Columbia. She regularly sees Park classmate Hannah Labaree, who was a close collaborator on the documentary.

1997 Class Representatives Suzy McManmon smcmanmon@svip.com 919-949-8262 Sarah Conway Sarah.r.conway@gmail.com 617-501-5837 Severine von Tscharner Fleming writes that she recently received the ‘Organic Spirit Award’ for her work advocating for young farmers. She is the director of a Hudson Valley-based non-profit called The Greenhorns that works to promote, recruit and support young farmers. Severine directed a documentary film of the same name that will appear on the Discovery Channel in 2010 — be sure to check it out. Severine tells us that she was “inspired by Mrs. Papali’s greenhouse at Park School.” The Greenhorns have hosted dozens of harvest festivals, young farmer mixers, and other educational/celebrational events around the country. Catch the Greenhorns next year in K-12 schools across the Northeast as part of a

CLASS OF 1995 — 15TH REUNION!

USDA program with Cornell University Extension that includes panels of young farmers and a set of six agricultural posters, which will also be available on Etsy. Severine’s issued this call to alumni: “If you know any young farmers, or have land that you might want to lease to young farmers, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. www.thegreenhorns.net 845758-1155” Anna Lewis writes, “I recently became the vice president of

a Los Angeles based private wealth management firm, Aqua Capital Advisors.” She is living in Santa Monica and lives just blocks from the beach!

1998 Class Representatives Lydia Hawkins lydiahawk@hotmail.com

Sarah Swett Swett.sarah@gmail.com Read about Andrew Smith’s career in technology on page 30. Adam Cohen tells us that he is living in Austin, Texas, where is a founder and vice president of Pioneer Green Energy.

The Park School

Reunion Weekend

2000–10th Reunion

Saturday, May 8, 2010 – Sunday, May 9, 2010

1985 – 25th Reunion

3:00–4:00 PM : Tour the “Old Park School” on Kennard Road 4:00–5:00 PM : Tour today’s Park School 5:00– 7:00 PM : All-class party in the new Park School Library 7:30 PM : Individual class dinners off-campus

1975 – 35th Reunion

To learn more, contact Eliza Drachman-Jones, Director of Alumni Relations alumni@parkschool.org or 617-274-6022

Meg Lloyd Buggs6@gmail.com

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

1995 –15th Reunion

1990 – 20th Reunion

1980 – 30th Reunion 1970 – 40th Reunion 1965 – 45th Reunion 1960 – 50th Reunion

2006 Class Representatives McCall Cruz Mccall_cruz@yahoo.com

2007 Class Representatives Thomas Cope thcope@mxschool.edu Ben Schwartz bschwartz@benlampert.com

2008 Class Representatives Manizeh Afridi Manizeh252@yahoo.com Marielle Rabins Marielle_swim@yahoo.com

2009

CLASS OF 2000 — 10TH REUNION!

Class Representatives Mercedes Garcia-Orozco Benzgirl727@aol.com

1999

2002

2005

Class Representatives Colin Arnold tanker223@gmail.com

Class Representatives Alex Lebow alexlebow@gmail.com

Class Representatives Lily Bullitt Lily_bullitt@yahoo.com

2003

Ashley Sharp asharp@deerfield.edu

Elizabeth Weyman weymane@gmail.com Susanna Whitaker-Rahilly Smwhit02@stlawu.edu This fall, Alex Goldstein accepted the position of deputy press secretary for Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Cat Reppert sent an exciting update from the coast of Haiti, where she is serving as the navigator on USS CARTER HALL (LSD 50). “We deployed within 24 hours of the earthquake and have been on station since Jan. 18th providing food, water and medical supplies.”

2000

10th REUNION

Class Representative Jessica Whitman Whitman.jessica@gmail.com

2001 Class Representatives Diego Alvarado Daalvarado@suffolk.edu Ben Bullitt bbullit@gmail.com Read about Julia Rosenthal’s career in technology on page 32.

Cary Williams Zocarebearzo327@aim.com

Class Representative Diana Rutherford drutherford@berklee.net We learned that Eleanor Foote will graduate from Stanford this year. She is studying human biology and is a member of the women’s lacrosse team. Nick Grenoble graduated summa cum laude from Connecticut College in May 2009 with double majors in international relations and economics. He tells us that during his senior year and post-graduation, he co-authored a paper with Connecticut College Professor William Rose, PhD, on the Colombian counterinsurgency against the FARC. The paper was submitted for publication in January 2010. Nick moved to Bogota in November and is currently teaching English to sixth- and seventh-grade students at a private school, Colegio CIEDI.

parkupdate Join other Park Alumni Online! Become a fan of “The Park Alumni Association” on Facebook by going to

www.facebook.com/parkschoolalums Follow us on Twitter at

2004 Class Representatives Steven Fox Steven.fox@richmond.edu

twitter.com/theparkschoolma Connect with other Park Alumni today!

Molly Lebow mlebow@tulane.edu

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

Clockwise from top: 1. 2010 Classmates: Daniel Rubinstein, Griff Seeley, Gilad Seckler, and Nick Spinale 2. Alan Rivera, Lami Olatunji ’07, and Grant Jones ’07 3. Kathy Coen, Imanni Rawlins ’09, and Cynthia Harmon 4. Annalin Carroll ’10, Alice Lucey, and Brittani Jones ’10 5. Padraig Sullivan’10, Josh Ruder ’09, Sophie and Isa Moss ’09, Annie Goodridge ’10, and Chris Collins-Pisano ’09 6. Jonah Kanin, Noah Benjamin ’10, and Tyler Kavoogian ’10 7. Luisa Alvarez ’08 and Greg Corrado ’08 8. Erica Mathews, Charlotte Ross, Emily Hoyt, Maddie Mills, and Lilybet Macrae — all Class of 2010

Young Alumni Bagel Breakfast

December 18, 2009 Dozens of young alumni from the classes of 2006–2010 crowded into the dining room on the morning of Yule Festival to reconnect with classmates and reminisce with Park teachers. 8

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

Gigi Saltonstall ’90 married Jean-François Goldstyn in Chestnut Hill on September 26, 2009. Park alumni in attendance (L-R): Lucy Byrd ’98, Alice Byrd ’96, Kate McGuinn Motley ’90, Alison Burnes Balster ’90, the bride and groom, Sarah Osteen ’90, Amy Saltonstall Isaac ’87, Rich Knapp ‘90. Missing from photo: Christina McGinnes McCormick ’87

Leah Cumsky-Whitlock Lavin ’96 and Emmy O’Connoll ’96 at Leah’s wedding on Martha’s Vineyard in October.

Weddings 1987 Kate Milliken and Tyler Vaughey December 12, 2009 1990 Gigi Saltonstall and Jean-François Goldstyn September 26, 2009 1992 Vanessa Kerry and Brian Vala Nahed October 10, 2009 1994 Hilary Sargent and Joseph Ramadei October 10, 2009 1996 Leah Cumsky-Whitlock and Brian W. Lavin October 3, 2009

Katie Calderwood joins big brother Sam (4), who is delighted with the arrival of his new baby sister.

1984 Hannah Swett and Mark Brookes Norris Jack Brookes July 1, 2009 1990 Nick Lloyd and Megan Lloyd Cara Lloyd October 27, 2009

Julia Lloyd Johannsen ’93 made sure Oscar Johannsen was bundled up warm this winter!

In Memoriam

Lissa Florman January 24, 2010 Mother of Sylvie Florman ’11

Frances S. Brooks ’28 January 21, 2010

Arrivals 1992 Audrey Hong Calderwood and Michael Calderwood Kathryn Lee Calderwood July 21, 2009

Norris Brookes with his mom, Hannah Swett ’84

A very happy Oliver Wilmerding, son of Eliza Wilmerding ’90.

Eliza Wilmerding and Amanda Herman Oliver Wilmerding August 20, 2009 1993 Julia Lloyd Johannsen and Peter Johannsen Oscar Lewis Johannsen November 11, 2009

Judith B. Caner November 24, 2009 Mother of Grace Caner Offen ’78 and Sarah Caner Gaylord ’83 Dr. John J. Collins March 6, 2010 Father of Anne Collins Goodyear ’84, Maureen Collins Beekley ’86, John Collins ’90, and Bob Collins ’91 Leslie Arends Eckel February 21, 2010 Kindergarten teacher (1965–2001) Mother of Leslie Eckel ’91

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

Robert D. Hartshorne February 19, 2010 Father of Charles K. (Shady) Hartshorne ’74 Sylvia Kliman January 1, 2010 Mother of Gilbert Kliman ’73 and Douglas Kliman ’78 Walter Koltun March 14, 2010 Father of John Koltun ’81 and Joe Koltun ’85

Susan H. McVeigh March 23, 2010 Mother of Katharine (Tina) McVeigh ’74 and Alice McVeigh Mayberry ’75 Allene Russell March 22, 2010 Mother of Katherine Russell McCurdy ’69, Allene Russell Pierson ’74, and Laura Russell Malkin ’75 Tom Taylor ’38 October 4, 2009 Steven Trustman ’78 March 25, 2010 Brother of Laurie Trustman Senger ’72 and John Trustman ’70 Joan E. Weiss November 8, 2009 Mother of Christopher Boutourline ’71 and Douglas Weiss ’83 Ann Wharton January 22, 2010 Mother of Sarah Wharton ’90, Kate Wharton Cury ’92 and Seth Wharton ’99

A memorial service will be held for Leslie Eckel on April 25th at 2 p.m at the Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill.

Her family has established a memorial fund here at Park for those wishing to contribute. Gifts in her honor may be sent to the Leslie Arends Eckel Memorial Fund, The Park School, 171 Goddard Avenue, Brookline, Massachusetts 02445

Leslie Arends Eckel 1947–2010

LESLIE ECKEL taught Kindergarten at The Park School from 1969-1998, and from 1999-2009 she served as a leader and special assistant in early childhood admission. This extraordinary gift of service was broken by only three years away from the School to accompany her former husband on his PhD studies. Leslie was always willing to undertake new responsibilities as long as they allowed her to focus on “the basic building block of education,” the pre-school and kindergarten years. These additional responsibilities included the roles of Pre-school Division Head; sabbatical coverage with Comfort Halsey Cope for Lower Division Head Jan Spaulding; director of Park’s Intern teaching program; and service on numerous faculty committees in work with the Board of Trustees on faculty compensation and teaching loads, diversity, and professional development. Leslie’s impact on over 500 students, and several dozen teacher/interns was profound, and as Headmaster Emeritus Bob Hurlbut noted, “Even days before she died of cancer, she was trading stories with me about her students, whether five or forty-five. To spot talent and human traits in a young person that would play out as difference-making adult strengths was a rare and deeply appreciated gift. How fortunate Park was to be in Leslie’s care!” Perhaps it was Leslie’s profound respect for five-year-olds that gave her, and them, the greatest joy. “Kindergarten is the year of the sponge,” she would say. “All their emotions are genuine. They are just independent enough to plan a course of action, impose order on a problem, and really enthusiastically attack learning.” When parents, colleagues, friends, and “grown” students look back on Leslie’s clarity, pace, personalized attention, humor, and bright, witty, outspoken spirit, they cannot help but rejoice in the difference she made in those she touched. Headmasters Harry Groblewski and Bob Hurlbut, who overlapped in the spring of 1969, agreed that even though Leslie had just graduated from Smith College, she had the spark, insight, and total commitment of the master teacher. Upon reflection, Bob recalled, “Did Leslie ever prove us savvy risk takers!” Leslie leaves a daughter, Leslie Elizabeth [Park School Class of ’91 and now a professor of English and 19th Century American Literature at Suffolk University]. —RSHjr

The Park School Bulletin | Spring 2010

Thank You, Anonymous Graduate and Park School Alumni!

n October 2008, as we kicked off Park’s Foundations for the Future capital campaign at the lowest point in the recession, a Park School graduate approached the School with an unusually generous — and daunting — proposal: “I will give Park School $500,000 if alumni who haven’t already pledged during the campaign’s silent phase pledge $500,000 to the capital campaign before December 31, 2009.” There were many more rational reasons to believe this couldn’t be done than there were rational reasons to believe it could be done. Yet in the end, it was our alumni community’s belief in the worthiness of this challenge and in their ability to meet this challenge that mattered most. Over the next 14 months, 280 alumni — inspired by the remarkable generosity of a fellow Park graduate — responded by contributing over $548,248 in capital gifts, for a total contribution of $1,548,248 to Park’s Foundations for the Future capital campaign. Of the 280 alumni who contributed, 25 made their first-ever gift to Park, and 150 repeat donors made their largest gift ever. Thank you, “Anonymous Graduate!” Your marvelous generosity is matched only by your ingenious, creative approach to philanthropy, and by your passionate belief in the mission of Park School! You inspire us all! Thank you, Alumni! From every continent and representing all Park eras, you responded to this “call to action” with zeal and determination! When Park needed you most, you came through for us!

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