Thacher Magazine: Special Campaign Issue

The Magazine of The Thacher School • Special Campaign Issue The Thacher School 5025 Thacher Road Ojai, CA 93023

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Campaign Events Thursday, September 14 Palace of the Fine Arts San Francisco, California Sunday, September 24 The Thacher School Ojai, California Sunday, October 15 Autry Museum of the American West Los Angeles, California Sunday, October 29 Hearst Tower New York City, New York

THACHER

Sunday, December 3 Clark Gallery Lincoln, Massachusetts Monday, December 4 Private Home Washington, DC Tuesday, April 3 Private Home Chicago, Illinois To register, please visit: www.thacher.org/nextpeak-events

The Next Peak ­— SPECIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE —

CONTENTS The Next Peak An Introduction to Our Six Strategic Initiatives

1

2

3

4

5

6

Securing Affordability

Supporting Faculty

Advancing Programs

Upgrading Facilities

Environmental Sustainability

Financial Robustness

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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

01 • View From Olympus Head of School Michael Mulligan puts the campaign into perspective.

04 • The Next Peak A brief overview of this campaign.

FRONT COVER As part of a spring climbing independent with fellow seniors Ronan Byrne, Edel Galgon, Liam Kirkpatrick, and Peter Schmidt, Luke Leasure leads a pitch in the Domeland Wilderness.

37 • Three Buckets of Giving Understanding fundraising at Thacher.

39 • Campaign Volunteers The people and the process of The Next Peak.

41 • The Best We Can Do One Thacher family makes a multigenerational commitment to financial aid.

VIEW FROM OLYMPUS… Q&A: Michael Sizes Up The Next Peak The Next Peak is Michael’s third major campaign at Thacher. He arrived for the Centennial Campaign, saw The Campaign for Thacher through to its successful conclusion, and now leads The Next Peak as he begins his final year at Thacher. In the interview below, he shares his thoughts about this effort, and what it means for the School and himself.

What is different about this campaign?

The most exciting element of this campaign, affectionately named

by Thacher campers “The Next Peak,” is that we have the opportunity to take Thacher to yet a higher level of excellence. Our previous campaigns were generally about catching up to the competition or, never mind the competition, just catching up with what we needed.

This campaign, on the other hand, will secure Thacher’s place as one of the brightest stars in the constellation of outstanding schools.

The Next Peak Campaign comprises six major initiatives. As with every other educational institution, our campaign is aimed at strengthening the three legs of the stool that supports our mission and purpose: the students, the faculty, and the facility. The students, of course, are our raison d’etre, the purpose of the whole operation.

The faculty is the means by which the education is delivered. And the facility is that which supports this educational mission. Thus, each of our six initiatives addresses one or more of these fundamental supports of our School.

The first leg of the stool is the students. We intend to increase financial aid to help make Thacher available to all socioeconomic quarters.

We’re doing a pretty good job of recruiting at the high-end and among those who are more full need, but how about all of those families— children of middle income, blue collar, and agricultural families— those who would never even consider a Thacher education because the price tag is too high? As well, the middle class is the biggest single missing demographic at the School. So we are going after that and we should have at least 20 more scholarships as a result of this campaign.

Also directed at our students will be enhancements to our programs that bring a more deliberate approach to the ways we develop good citizens and effective leaders. And we are expanding areas of our academic program with investments in our astronomy program, music instruction, and global awareness in ways that will broaden and deepen our offerings while giving our students better exposure to the challenges and opportunities of the world beyond Thacher.

The second leg of the stool is our faculty: We aim to pay ours competitively and support them effectively. We made huge progress on salaries in the last campaign, but this time we are particularly focused on supporting professional development, endowing sabbaticals, and ensuring that salaries are competitive. We also want to build new housing and retrofit old housing; appropriate housing is

essential to the way we work with our students and crucial to retaining faculty.

We are further supporting our faculty with a Master Teacher Program, an exciting and powerful way to help teachers become the best they can be. The best way to transform a teacher is through a close, one-on-one coaching relationship where you have a seasoned teacher coming repeatedly to the classroom and giving nuanced, refined feedback about how the students are learning. What is catching their attention? What good habits and approaches need reinforcement?

How can weaknesses or marginal methods be addressed? The key here is that we’re going to take our most effective teachers and have them support, in transformative ways, younger faculty—or any faculty who could benefit from powerful coaching.

And then, finally, on the faculty front, this campaign will provide youthful vigor to the School through the Fisher Fellows Program, an exciting way of bringing in talented and diverse teachers who want to get their start. These young teachers bring in more teen cultural

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VIEW FROM OLYMPUS…

literacy; they are more able to appreciate the music of adolescents, which actually matters; and they are better equipped to burn the midnight oil in the dorms or to take kids to (spare me, Lord!)Magic Mountain. And when we expand the ranks of younger teachers, they gain a peer group, which is essential to camaraderie and happiness.

The third leg of the stool is the facility. Trust me when I tell you I had no idea how often plant issues at Thacher would be the tail wagging our collective dog. It’s impossible to overstate the degree to which the needs of the physical setting impact budget and fundraising. Example: Thacher has nearly 100 buildings; over the years, they have all needed new roofing. Infrastructure requires constant upkeep.

(There is no avoiding the second law of thermodynamics: entropy.)

During my years here we’ve had to rebuild most of the campus. One of our main goals is to create a sufficient endowment so that the maintenance of buildings is not a taxation on future generations of the School. Thus, we have established a policy that for everything we build, we also set aside the funds needed to maintain it. So our effort to raise endowment dollars for maintenance is really significant. We simply cannot burden future generations with paying for unfunded plant maintenance.

One of the more visible and ambitious elements of the campaign is our vision of revitalizing the heart of campus, the hub of Thacher life. We look forward to eating in a dining room that can actually seat everyone, that allows us to hear each other, and where we can cook our food and dine together in a meaningful way, one that’s not overly stressed as it is with the tiny, antiquated kitchen and cramped, noisy dining space we have now. Once this new facility is up and running we look forward to retrofitting the Hills Building so that can be used purposefully for the School and for students. The Pergola itself will be extended and augmented to connect it to the new dining hall and improve our central outdoor gathering places.

Finally, one of the most exciting campus projects is the Creativity + Technology Center. Our aim is to create a classroom and workshop setting where kids can bring theoretical and practical knowledge together in a hands-on way. This, we know, is the future of the workplace, where you have to be able not only to design but also build.

This will be our new “Rough-House” for fostering the creative spirit and it is going to be totally cool. At a time when we can no longer easily predict the types of careers or paths our students will follow, we must look to training our kids to think through the challenges that they’re presented with and then come up with solutions by working with others. This is a powerful way forward for education, and it’s the classroom of the future.

Like many of our campaign initiatives, our work toward environmental sustainability serves more than one leg of the stool. Our new solar array and battery system, which supplies more than 90 percent of campus electricity needs, helps us make sure our facility makes the best possible use of scarce resources. We now use half the water we did in 2013. And we have a tremendous healthy food program that brings fresh, local, organic food to our kitchen. Many of these 2 Special Campaign Issue

innovations have been driven by student interest and incorporated into our curriculum by our faculty. They offer numerous applied learning opportunities that are good for our students and good for our bottom line. Our goal here is to make the campus a living laboratory of responsible stewardship; it’s what our students want and we know it prepares them well for the changing demands of this world.

So, what do our six initiatives have in common? They will not simply strengthen the School as we know it, but they will take Thacher to the next level. That next level is about expanding the horizon of the School and helping us look beyond our boundaries to the needs of the world. And this is not merely about helping our students succeed in college, but helping them succeed in the workplace and in their lives. It’s also about protecting the School from the vagaries of the economy and shifting educational landscape.

As transformative as we expect these initiatives to be, there is also a deep continuity in the campaign with respect to our mission and culture. We are digging down and reinforcing our mission and building it in ways that Mr. Thacher would recognize and approve. For example, he knew that you don’t develop a strong character in individuals just by virtue of discussion or transfer of knowledge. You need hands-on opportunities. This is why he took his students out into the wilderness.

It’s why we still ride horses today. And it’s why we want students to have these hands-on opportunities. Students can have great notions in their minds, but, upon implementation, there’s a huge breakdown between what seemed to work and what actually works. We want these kids to have that experience of sticking with a challenge and working through any number of iterations.

You and Joy have announced your plans to “graduate” with this year’s seniors. To what extent does this campaign feel like the culmination of your vision for Thacher?

Protecting and supporting the faculty has always been closely tied to our vision for Thacher. Providing our teachers with fair compensation and supporting them with exciting professional development options are critical components in recruiting and keeping great teachers. And as noted, financial aid is very important to all of us as well. We want Thacher to be a School that can recruit hardworking, curious, thoughtful, passionate, kind, dynamic young men and women regardless of their parents’ ability to pay. This is monumentally important. Finally, of course, Joy and I are so excited about building a dining room that will embrace the School and constructing a new classroom and lab building that will inspire new generations of multitalented scholars and artists. One thing I have learned is that architecture really matters. You can either bring a community together or pull it apart by virtue of how you’ve designed your buildings and landscapes. There is no better example of this than the dormitories we constructed in the last campaign. Our new dormitories now embrace kids and pull them together. They create a sense of individual privacy for them and for the faculty members, while providing communal spaces that invite everyone to come

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The Magazine of The Thacher School Special Campaign Issue August 2017 EDITOR Christopher J. Land ASSISTANT EDITOR Natalie Selzer CdeP 2008 DESIGN Charles Hess, design director CONTRIBUTORS Blossom Beatty Pidduck CdeP 1992, Amy Flanagan, Bo Manson, Mark Zingarelli PHOTOGRAPHY David Kepner CdeP 2007, Christopher Land, Elli Papayanopoulos, Brian Pidduck CdeP 1992, Cam Spaulding CdeP 1992, Dana Vancisin HEAD OF SCHOOL Michael K. Mulligan DIRECTOR OF ENROLLMENT AND PLANNING William P. McMahon

together. It’s no accident that the construction of these dormitories corresponded with a significant drop in student attrition and a significant increase in applications.

Where you live makes a difference. How you interact with your environment in terms of fresh air and sunshine and community space is hugely important. We expect to see the same success with this next round of campus improvements.

Some schools pursue construction projects as a way of keeping up with the Joneses. Does Thacher feel that pressure?

If you compare the Thacher physical plant to other national boarding schools, we barely make a mark. Our construction has never been about how we beat Exeter and Andover in terms of shiny new buildings. Rather, it has always been about what will best serve our students in a way that is going to make teaching effective and easy and living joyful. Life is too short not to do this.

To some, a campaign like this is about gathering more for an institution that already provides its students with more resources than most schools can offer.

What do you say to those people?

Thacher is, by definition, elite, but we don’t want to be elitist; the purpose of this kind of education is to give a small but blessed number of students a truly first-rate educa-

tion that is inspirational to them such that we hope they will make a significant positive difference to their communities, this country, and the world.

And this kind of inspiration is like planting a seed in the ground that we hope will sprout into a large and powerful tree that provides shade and fruit to others.

Unfortunately, we can’t invest these kinds of resources in everyone, so the trick is to find those young men and women who are most likely to really take advantage of what we can offer, and then prepare and inspire them to go out and create a better world.

The alumni we have working in the world show us every day that Thacher has been successful in this mission. This campaign is meant to give us the resources to strengthen and secure our work in this direction.

Do you have anything else to say to potential donors?

One of the beautiful things about the last campaign that I hope will be true about this campaign is the understanding that your gift is valued and important regardless of its size. Simply participating in this effort is a statement that you care about your School and you wish for it to remain strong and grow; it’s a meaningful vote of confidence in the institution we all hold so dear. Every Thacher alumnus, parent, and friend can make a difference here. Let’s pull together and make Thacher the best School it can be for generations to come. 0

DIRECTOR OF INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT Jeffery D. Berndt

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To tend, to protect, to imagine the future of Thacher—that’s been the charge of those who love the School for over 125 years.

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The Next Peak

Increasing Affordability

SINCE ITS EARLIEST DAYS, when Casa de Piedra was

little more than a citrus ranch where a handful of boys studied and enjoyed “out-of-door life” under the guidance of Sherman Day Thacher, our School has been protected, buoyed, and bettered by its community. Parents, friends, alumni, neighbors—again and again, they’ve stepped up and helped to leave Thacher a little better than they found it.

The work of building on Mr. Thacher’s vision for our school in the Ojai Valley is, of course, never done. We know what those before us knew: Excellence is perishable.

The world we send our graduates into is always evolving, and we must, too—or risk falling behind. That’s why we continue to train our sights down the trail, where the next peak, the next uphill climb, awaits. Along the way we draw on our deeply rooted core strengths; upon

arrival, we carefully consider the perspective gained from a new vantage point. In this way, we work to cultivate the next generation of resilient, compassionate, curious, and hard-working men and women who are ready for the world of the 21st century. That’s what this campaign— The Next Peak—is all about.

With your help, we aim to fund six initiatives in support of the people, programs, and places that make Thacher, Thacher. Springing from years of strategic planning by the School’s leaders, the campaign is ultimately an investment in one thing: transforming students’ lives and futures.

Many of you helped create who we are today. We hope all of you will join us in creating who we will be tomorrow.

SIX CAMPAIGN PRIORITIES 1

2

3

4

5

6

Securing Affordability

Supporting Faculty

Advancing Programs

Upgrading Facilities

Environmental Sustainability

Financial Robustness

Securing access and affordability for talented and deserving applicants

Supporting our exceptional faculty and strengthening teaching

Advancing program initiatives, including leadership training, music, and astronomy

Investing in facilities to enhance the living and learning ecosystem of our community

Supporting innovative environmental sustainability measures

Ensuring financial robustness to take us through the next century and beyond

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WHERE WE’RE GOING Today’s research validates much of Mr. Thacher’s original vision for the School over 125 years ago; the values and philosophies that have always been at the heart of a Thacher education are now widely considered key to cultivating both excellence and fulfillment in students. He believed in developing resilience and grit through calibrated challenges and positive risk-taking; in placing strong relationships at the center of learning; and in trusting the transformative power of the horse and the backcountry trail. We still believe in these things. It’s why this campaign is about investing rigorously in what Thacher has always stood for while ensuring that we continue to serve the needs of a changing world.

Our roadmap is clear. Investments in professional development, sabbatical opportunities, and teaching fellowships will ensure that we continue to hire and foster talented teachers who change lives. Sustainability innovations will make our campus a living laboratory for environmental education and a model for sustainable schools. A more robust financial aid program will open our doors wider for promising applicants and make for a diverse learning environment that’s more like a microcosm of the world. Facilities projects will catalyze community gathering and engagement, innovative interdisciplinary curriculum, and big reductions in our environmental footprint.

HOW WE’LL GET THERE Thanks to our community—thanks to you—the School is as strong and healthy as it’s ever been.

But we’re also at a critical juncture, one where we’re best served by reaching toward the next peak and heeding the familiar call to “do the best work in the world that we can, till the best we can do is all done.” Thacher thrives today because those before us rolled up their sleeves and got to work safeguarding and improving a School that makes a profound and lasting impression on its students. We hope we can count on the Thacher community of today to do the same. For the lifelong relationships you forged; for the person this School helped you become; for the Thacher sons and daughters you’re raising; and for the Thacher graduates that give us all greater hope for the future.

TAKE THIS RIDE WITH US. 6 Special campaign issue

A (VERY) ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CAPITAL GIVING AT THACHER Founding 1889 Sherman Day Thacher receives his first Increasing student, Henry W. Farnam.

Affordability Incorporation 1924 In 1920, a group of alumni and other friends propose erecting a memorial to honor the 11 Casa de Piedrans who died serving during World War I. The idea of soliciting and accepting funds for the project while the School remains his own private property bothers Mr. Thacher; in June, he sends letters asking for advice about incorporation. Four years later, it becomes official.

Boot Hill Legacy Society 1971 Trustees John Metcalf CdeP 1933 and Robert Hunter CdeP 1940 found the Boot Hill Legacy Society to recognize those who include Thacher in their estate planning.

Centennial Campaign 1985 A campaign is launched in anticipation of the School’s 100th anniversary. The goal: Raise $11.3 million to bring the endowment to $16 million. The focus is on faculty, student scholarships, educational programs, and the physical plant. In 1988, Reid Dennis CdeP 1944 announces that he and other supporters will donate an extra $1 million if the goal is met. It is, and then some.

The Campaign for Thacher Completed 2008 Fruits of this $82 million effort include the Milligan Center for the Performing Arts, the Thacher Commons, new dormitories, and significant funding for faculty and financial aid.

The Next Peak 2017 Thacher launches $160 million capital campaign.

Fire 1895 Just a few days before summer vacation, flames erupt in the kitchen. Due to an easterly breeze and limited water supplies, the fire soon overtakes and destroys the buildings. The community’s response is swift and immediate. Letters pour in offering funds or a helping hand to rebuild in “the Ojai.”

First Library 1928 Mr. Thacher’s brother-in-law, Will Kent, was among the first to offer money after the 1895 fire; he later refused the return of the funds but insisted the interest be spent on books. This collection wouldn’t be housed in a proper library until 1928, when the mother of three alumni manages to convince Mr. Thacher to allow her to raise money for the new facility.

Hills Building 1980 What was once the old Lower School and Parlor, now a second dining room, is in disrepair. Vice president of the board of trustees, Herbert Moffitt CdeP 1933, brings his friend, Reuben Hills, to tour the school. An impromptu conversation with three students (and a promise from Herb that their praise of the School wasn’t planted propaganda) prompts Hills to offer his help in remodeling the whole building. A new Dining Hall is born, along with administrative offices that students dub “Olympus.”

The Campaign for Thacher Launched 1999 A campaign to raise $70 million toward increased faculty salaries and professional development, financial aid, unrestricted endowment, and a number of capital projects is announced.

Casa de Piedra Dormitory 2013 After 50 years of wear and tear, the cherished dormitory is in need of a serious update. A $6.5 million mini-campaign brings the building up to the same standard as others on campus and the girls of CdeP 2017 move in.

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A portrait of Harry Andrews at home in Snowmass, Colorado, taken by photographer John Kelly and transmitted to Thacher magazine via the Internet using technology pioneered oo spring summer 2017 14 2017

by Harry himself.

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Securing Access and Affordability

Even the Sky Is Not a Limit The Many Benefits of Access

By Amy Flanagan

“My four years at Thacher were undoubtedly the most influential in my educational development. Honesty, integrity, responsibility, study habits, respect for the outdoors, were all wrapped into an unimaginable experience for a 100 percent scholarship kid, the son of a single parent.”

—Harry Andrews CdeP 1960

LIMITS, OR THE LACK THEREOF, have always defined Harry Andrews CdeP 1960.

Financial aid benefits not only those who might not otherwise be able to attend a school, it enriches the entire community and improves educational outcomes.

In short, a diverse school makes for a better school, and ultimately, a better world.

Limitations a second-grade teacher tried to place on Harry set his path to Thacher. What Harry went on to accomplish after his time as a Toad led to lifting limits on what was possible for the entire world.

Imagine young Harry struggling to get through second grade. His mother, refusing to accept his teacher’s insistence that he needed remedial schooling, confides in a man she meets in a dentist office. A chance meeting changes Harry’s life. And, really, everything.

The man, Thomas Chandler, of the Chandler Day School, discovered the problem was not lack of ability, but rather genius ability. Immediately offering a full scholarship, Chandler later made the connection that led 13-year-old Harry to be dropped off at Thacher with a too-big hat sitting on a head filled with possibilities.

“What horse?” Such was Harry’s answer on the first day of Thacher. Through someone’s generosity, a horse, Glendora, was immediately made available to him, and so began a beautiful relationship. Harry remembers the sheer love and great responsibility. “You save its life by taking care of it every day. It saves your life by not throwing you off a cliff. The value of what you learn taking care of that horse stays with you for the rest of your life.”

The next four years would be transformative. From the character formed at Formal Dinners to the teachers who demanded the highest academic achievement, the bar was set high.

Harry’s prowess on the horse was as impressive as his accomplishments in the classroom and on the soccer field. Classmates remember his always pushing limits and leading others to seek more. One famous moment came during a Gymkhana sack race when Harry fell from his horse, and quickly jumped back on yelling, “I’m still in it!” He proceeded to win the contest. Others remember him leading a Pack and Saddle initiation trip into the hills for which his friend insisted on making Baked Alaska for dessert—an idea that meant dragging up heavy equipment and dry ice, and whipping egg whites by hand on the side of a mountain.

“Always pushing limits and leading others to seek more.”

After senior year, it was no surprise when Harry moved on to college at Harvey Mudd.

However, the newly established school turned out to be the wrong fit for Harry, who decided to write the dean of Stanford and ask if he could transfer. “Just keep your grades up,” came the reply. In September, Harry showed up at Stanford ready to sign up for classes. When he was told he hadn’t even applied to the school, Harry pulled out his letter from the dean and Continued on page 10 » Special Campaign Issue 9

“Those who donate to Thacher’s Financial Aid Fund have changed my life. My time at Thacher has helped make me a better student and leader, and has helped me forge friendships with people from all over the world that mean more to me than I could explain. None of that would have been possible without the benevolence of donors. I owe so much of who I am today to Thacher, to the doors that have been opened for me, and to every donor gracious enough to invest in me and students like me by giving to Thacher’s financial aid fund.”

“Ethnic diversity is like fresh air: It benefits everybody who experiences it. By disrupting conformity it produces a public good. To step back from the goal of diverse classrooms would deprive all students, regardless of their racial or ethnic background, of the opportunity to benefit from the improved cognitive performance that diversity promotes.”

—Sheen S. Levine, professor at the Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas; David Stark, professor of sociology at Columbia.

—Raúl Soto CdeP 2014, Occidental College.

Even the Sky continued here

»

was given a class schedule and a full scholarship on the spot.

Eventually, Harry found his way to the University of Southern California, where he completed his master's and PhD while on a Hughes Aircraft Scholarship. His challenge was to find a way to receive high-quality images from cutting-edge satellites that were photographing distant galaxies. He cofounded the Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI) with William Pratt and together they became the first scientists to digitize analog images, making highquality compression and transfer possible. Suddenly humans could get a glimpse into the greatest unknown. This compression would also be used on the ARPANET— a technology that would later evolve to become the Internet; and lead to jpegs, color television, Google Earth, and just about any high-resolution image we send today.

To create a new computer that could handle his image compression software, Harry became a partner at Comtal. From there he went on to have a long and rewarding career traveling the world with 3M. To this day, Harry credits his Thacher years for the belief he has in himself, and the constant urge to always say “yes” to the next adventure. Now a semiretired day trader in Colorado, he has time to foster his love of the great outdoors. At every chance, Harry is out in the world hiking, biking, skiing, and enjoying this good Earth as much as he did as an eager teenager in the Ojai hills.

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“Harry credits his Thacher years for the belief he has in himself, and the constant urge to always say ‘yes’ to the next adventure.”

Harry is happy to be able to give back to the School that gave so much to him, financing scholarships for other inspired students who just need a chance, and giving the School access to bright minds it might otherwise never have known. He remains steadfast in his belief that the teenage years are the most impressionable, a time to imprint a life. To him, this only makes the need to offer a Thacher education to those who might otherwise not afford one even more important.

What advice does Harry have for students starting their Thacher experience this year? “Keep an open mind. Enjoy the unique experience. You will carry it with you for the rest of your life.”

“Thacher was a place where you were taught to trust yourself, nature, and the world. You were given the freedom to test yourself.

And succeed.” 0

“As a dorm head who also works in the Admission Office, I see it on both ends. I see the amazingly talented and interesting students who we are unable to take because Thacher is not affordable for their families. And then I see how life in the Casa dorm is enriched, and how learning is deepened, when we have students from many backgrounds represented—sharing different perspectives, broadening each other’s horizons, and sometimes working through challenging differences in our little microcosm. To see these discussions taking place so fruitfully in our common room gives me hope for our world. And confirms for me the need for a robust financial aid program.”

“What I do today is driven both by a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunities I’ve been given, as well as a sense of justice about what is right in the world and what people should have access to…. One metaphor that really resonates with me is this concept of a ripple effect: I was given this opportunity and it is only right that I ripple out that opportunity to others. It’s because of what was done for me.”

— Rhea Wong CdeP 1997, Executive Director, Breakthrough New York

—Megan Carney, Associate Director of Admission and Casa Dorm Head

The Quick Case: What We Are Doing and Why SECURING ACCESS AND AFFORDABILITY Current Situation: Despite our longstanding commitment to opening the School to families from a variety of socioeconomic situations, each year we are unable to take many promising applicants who would be great additions to our community. We also lag behind our peer schools in this area.

Goal: Increase Thacher’s endowment enough to raise our tuition assistance as a percentage of tuition from 19 percent to at least 28 percent, enough to support approximately 20 additional students per year in perpetuity.

Feature: We also plan to meet more of the additional expenses (books, camping equipment, music lessons, etc.) facing our financial aid families.

FOR MORE DETAIL ABOUT THE PLANNING PROCESS AND GOALS OF OUR CAPITAL CAMPAIGN, VISIT WWW.THACHER.ORG/NEXTPEAK.

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Supporting Faculty and Strengthening Teaching

The Heart of the School

ELLI PAPAYANOPOULOS PHOTOGRAPHY

Great teachers make their schools great. And great schools make their teachers great.

The typical full-time, lives-on-campus Thacher faculty member knows little of the separation of work and home that most of the working world takes for granted. Here, there is no clocking in and out. There is no commute (unless you count the cross-campus half-walkhalf-jog, often with coffee cup or dog leash in hand, books and papers tucked under the arm). There is not even a weekend in that sense of a break from work until Monday. Instead, there is only the unrelenting flow of time, some of it divided neatly into class periods, but most of it a more freestyle juggling act of research, class prep, grading, family responsibilities, committee work, coaching, advising, and, oh yeah, eating, sleeping, and maybe some exercise. The teachers are the muscle that keep Thacher going, and they are always on the beat.

From Thacher magazine, Fall 2015 In 1991, Peter and Bonnie Robinson moved into "Cob Cottage" with their daughters, Julia CdeP 2004 and Catherine CdeP 2006. The following winter he began the garden he has maintained ever since. This year, he, with the help of the maintenance crew, relocated some 150 out of 250 plants in order to make room for the four new faculty homes going in along Perimeter Road.

Working from Home Making a living and a life at Thacher.

By Bo Manson

THE KNOCK ON MY FRONT DOOR startled me. The class of 2017 had received their diplomas just a couple of hours ago. I had changed from coat and tie to T-shirt and shorts.

My feet were propped on the coffee table and a post-exam-and-graduation-week nap seemed in order, but someone at the door had altered my plans.

I hopped to my feet, crossed the living room, and opened the front door. Standing there was Asher Wood—former advisee and English student, and now a Thacher graduate— holding a gift bag and smiling.

“Hello, Asher!”

“Hi. Before I leave campus, I wanted to say goodbye and thank you, and also drop this off.”

Asher handed me the gift.

“Wow, thank you. Come in. Congratulations! How’s it feel to be a graduate?”

We sat on the couch and reminisced for 15 or 20 minutes. Then Asher was off to meet classmates for their grad night gathering. I repeated my congratulations and we committed to staying in touch.

As I watched Asher head down our steps, it occurred to me that this was most likely the final Thacher student to ever knock on my door. By the end of June, Julie and I were scheduled to move off campus and into our home in Ojai after 29 years of oncampus residency.

Standing by the open front door and listening to Asher’s footsteps recede on the gravel driveway, I found myself thinking back over the years I’d enjoyed as a campus resident. After almost three decades of welcoming students to my door, the final student, both unexpected and appreciated, had come and gone.

Julie and I first pulled up to a Thacher house on a hot July afternoon in 1988. Our two young sons tumbled out of our VW van and into the Ojai heat. Before we could get our bearings, two towheaded boys came running across Perimeter Road.

“Where have you been? We’ve been waiting all day!” they exclaimed.

Apparently Ryan CdeP 1998 and Todd CdeP 2000, Kurt and Alice Meyer’s boys whom we had never met, had been anticipating the arrival of the “new” Thacher family. Our sons Jeff and Tyler glanced up at us, grinned, and raced off with Ryan and Todd to the soccer field, leaving Julie and me smiling after them. With their immediate and unqualified welcome, the Meyer boys had transformed The Thacher School from my new employer to our new home.

More specifically, that house overlooking the Upper Field became our home for the next 19 years, before we moved in 2007 to the Beck house by the Gymkhana Field. We raised our four children there adjacent to Casa dorm. During those years as the dorm head, I hosted hundreds of students and many of their parents in that house. I gradually added onto it, first enclosing the back porch to create a bedroom for our son Tyler, then building a family room off the living room, a space that continues to host many student gatherings with current residents, Jason and Megan Carney.

Living as we did on campus allowed for routine daily interactions with students in our home. Both Thacher students and faculty come to appreciate that in the public areas of faculty homes our professional and personal worlds overlap. While making pizza with 11 advisees, for instance, the kitchen counters cluttered with ingredients, students laughing as they chop and grate, relationships and memories rise along with the pizza dough. Our homes become extensions of the dorm communities. According to Alice Meyer, dorm head for 17 years, “Throughout our time living in the dorm, Kurt and I tried to have the kids feel Special Campaign Issue 13

Supporting Faculty

Bo Manson rallies his afternoon climbers before the jog out to Banjo Cave.

welcome in our home. The first lesson, on the first day of the school year, was ‘don’t knock, just come in.’ We tell the boys that we are all living together, and that they should feel free to just come in when they need something.”

Around Thacher faculty tables of all sorts—dining, coffee, kitchen—students find adults who know them, engage with them, and care for their well-being. “The benefit of having kids in my home,” says Jake Jacobsen, a 25-year dorm duty veteran, “is that they can relax, sit at the counter informally, have a coffee and chat, perhaps as they would at home.” Jake has found that students enjoy perusing his family photo gallery to get a sense of the Jacobsen family and their history. “I also enjoy having parents stop by, and, of course, advisees helping to prepare a meal is always fun.” He adds, “These days prefects of Casa like to come by to have some of my home-roasted coffee.”

“Students do appreciate the comfort of having a faculty family living among them,” adds Alice. “Silly requests, like ‘Do you have a sewing kit to sew on a button... and can you teach me how?’ or ‘Can you help me figure out what I need to bake a birthday cake for a friend... and can I borrow the stuff?’ or ‘All of my laundry turned pink, what do I do?’ give me an opening to have a more meaningful interaction.”

For dorm heads, rare is the evening when the doorbell doesn’t ring. While running Casa, it was routine for students to come and go.

Evening help sessions, weekly prefect meetings, and advisee dinners brought kids into our home. “Somehow, when these moments occur in our homes,” Alice believes, “the ‘business’ aspect merges with the social and familial, and more important stuff comes out.”

I agree with Alice that some of our most effective work as dorm heads came in small meetings in our living rooms, where we presented an issue or problem to a group of boys or girls, and we worked together to come up with strategies or solutions. “The subject,” says, Alice, “might be ‘treating classmates with respect’ or ‘taking responsibility for your actions’ or even ‘explaining to me what happened last night, and how it could have been avoided.’ Even though my intent was to effect behavior change, the fact that all of us could spend the time together working it out ended up being a positive and affirming experience. Whenever I triggered one of these meetings, my relationships with the individual boys always felt stronger in the weeks following.”

Kurt Meyer wholeheartedly believes that his dorm living has enhanced how he has been able to work with students outside of class. “I have adopted a routine of being available virtually every 14 Special Campaign Issue

school night. That may seem like a lot, but when it’s a 15 meter walk out to the common room from our apartment, it’s pretty easy to ‘be available’ and also feel ‘at home’ at the same time.” As a result, students feel their teacher is approachable and their questions are worthy of consideration. This kind of regular help allows Kurt to create a sense of the teacher and student working as a team. “It’s not teacher versus student; it is the two of us working shoulder to shoulder to master the mathematics and explore the meaning and the concepts.” In this context, the kid’s math homework becomes more than just getting a list of 10 problems answered. It creates an opportunity for discussion and reflection.

In addition to the many scheduled events were the inevitable surprise visits. I remember a tearful freshman, accompanied by her prefect at 11:30pm, convinced that rattlesnakes were in her room, but comforted when I explained that the lawn sprinklers had come on. Or a panicked prefect early one Saturday morning concerned that her charge might “bleed to death” after putting her hand through the glass window of her room, which she had inexplicably locked.

Moments of student fear and frustration find their outlet in a visit to a faculty home whose welcoming atmosphere is established during the scheduled events: dinners, meetings, and extra help sessions. Students come to accept the faculty home as an extension of the school spaces they occupy so comfortably. “By inviting them into our homes, we gain both intimacy and trust,” suggests Peter Robinson. “When we have children of our own, we allow students to see us in a very different light, one that they are, for the most part, familiar with.”

One might argue that Internet and cell communications have reduced the need for on-campus student support, but a cup of tea and lively conversation at a kitchen counter remain deeply meaningful for students working through issues with a friend, questioning a school policy, or missing home and family.

Almost three decades after that first July day in 1988 when we drove onto campus, Julie and I packed the last boxes into our rented U-Haul truck for one final run down the hill to our new home in town. As we rounded onto Perimeter Road, the sky darkened. No, this summer’s solar eclipse had not occurred earlier than predicted.

The first 14-ton module for the new faculty homes swung across our view. A crane gently lowered the pre-fab unit, complete with kitchen installed, onto its foundation. A new kitchen counter ready for Thacher student and teacher conversation and camaraderie. 0

The Master Teacher Program Three Thacher veterans, Kurt Meyer, Alice Meyer, and Joy Sawyer-Mulligan, begin the process of developingand formalizing a newframework of peer mentoring and support to cultivatethe next generation ofmaster teachers.

The Quick Case: What We Are Doing and Why SUPPORTING FACULTY AND STRENGTHENING TEACHING Current Situation: Thacher faces two significant challenges with respect to faculty composition: First, we can expect that more than a quarter of our most seasoned faculty leaders will be retiring in the next 15 years; and, second, we need to do more to attract and retain a faculty that reflects the diversity of our student body.

Goals: We’re creating a Master Teacher Program to better manage the transfer of knowledge from our most experienced teachers to their younger colleagues. We’ve also created the Fisher Fellows program to attract younger talent to Thacher and to ensure that they are mentored and developed into the next generation of master teachers. To help us remain competitive in recruiting and retaining the best teachers across the board, we are also increasing and improving faculty housing and compensation.

Feature: We are raising the funds needed to secure our Sabbatical Program, which is key to helping our teachers find balance, inspiration, and personal advancement in their work.

FOR MORE DETAIL ABOUT THE PLANNING PROCESS AND GOALS OF OUR CAPITAL CAMPAIGN, VISIT WWW.THACHER.ORG/NEXTPEAK.

Special Campaign Issue 15

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Advancing Programs

“For one student in particular, Nick Edwards, the light bulb went on.

He told me, ‘We should help monitor Tabby’s Star at Thacher. And I want to be the one to do it.’’’

Where,s the Flux?

Monitoring “the most mysterious star in our galaxy” at the new Thacher Observatory.

By Natalie Selzer CdeP 2008

APPROXIMATELY 1,280 LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH, in a stretch of sky marked by the imagined lines of the Cygnus constellation, there’s a highly unusual star that’s making headlines here on our home planet. KIC 8462852—more commonly known by the nickname “Tabby’s Star” in honor of Dr. Tabetha Boyajian, the astronomer and astrophysicist who first reported strange observations associated with it—has displayed erratic and apparently inexplicable changes in starlight brightness, or flux. These variations in flux, measured over a given period of time, make up what is known by astronomers as a star’s light curve; the light curve of Tabby’s Star is so bizarre, and so unlike any other the scientific community has seen before, that Dr. Boyajian has called it “the most mysterious star in our galaxy.” Now, she’s on a mission to unravel the mystery. And thanks to major upgrades that were implemented at the Thacher Observatory in the fall and the spirit of curiosity fostered among students in the revitalized astronomy program, Thacher will be a part of that process.

Thacher’s connection to Tabby’s Star began in December 2016, when a group of about 20 students heard Dr. Boyajian speak in Santa Barbara. She was in the area to launch a new round of Tabby’s Star observations at the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), an initiative she’d funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign. The available light curve for KIC 8462852—which she and a host of both professional and citizen scientists alike had been analyzing for years, with no resolution—was collected during the four-year NASA Kepler Mission. During that time, the Kepler spacecraft monitored around 150,000 stars (including Tabby’s) in a single region of the Milky Way, providing ultra-precise light curves for use by the scientific community. But the mission had ended in May 2013. Nobody had been watching Tabby’s Star since then. If Dr. Boyajian wanted to understand KIC 8462852, that needed to change.

“It was a great talk. Everyone was really excited,” remembers Dr. Jon Swift, the director of the Thacher Observatory and a math, physics, and astronomy teacher who had organized the trip. “For one student in particular, Nick Edwards ’18, the light bulb went on. He told me, ‘We should help monitor Tabby’s Star at Thacher. And I want to be the one to do it.’ So he got an independent in the spring to implement this ongoing survey of Tabby’s Star.”

“When I heard that a student from Thacher wanted to help monitor KIC 8462852, I thought then the same thing that I think now—what a great opportunity for a student to be able to contribute to science!” said Dr. Boyajian, formerly a postdoctoral fellow at Yale and now an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University. “This star was actually originally discovered by citizen scientists through the website planethunters. org. The planet hunter volunteers come from all backgrounds and all ages, so we’ve encouraged these sorts of collaborations from the start.”

“I found her work so interesting,” said Nick. “She’s at the cutting edge of her field.”

In the spring, Nick got to work. He’d be joining eighteen other professional telescopes in eight sites around the world—all part of the Las Cumbres Observatory network spanning Hawaii, California, Texas, Chile, Israel, South Africa, the Canary Islands, the UK, Tibet, and Australia—to help provide continuous observation of KIC 8462852. But first, he had to get up to speed and prepare the Observatory for the project—no easy feat. Thanks to the fundraising completed during the leadership phase of the capital campaign, the Observatory had the professional research capabilities needed for such a project (installation of a fully robotic dome, a Plane Wave CDK 700 telescope, and an Andor iKon L-Series CCD camera were completed in December). Now, it was just a matter of understanding and implementing Special Campaign Issue 17

Photos (clockwise): Nick Edwards '18 (second from right) with the group Dr. Swift (in back) took to see Dr. Boyajian (center front) speak in Santa Barbara.

Katie O'Neill '18 presents at the Observatory's first light event. Students monitor observatory systems.

Thacher data showing dips in flux.

Advancing Programs

“They’re learning to be self-starters—asking and answering their own questions through innate curiosity, smarts, and hard work.” the processes needed to conduct the measurements.

“The most challenging part of my independent was that Dr. Swift let me work on my own for the majority of the project,” said Nick.

“He was there when I needed help with some math or how to solve a higher-concept problem I was having, but he let me implement those solutions on my own.”

“Nick was learning some really high-level skills that are not traditionally academic,” explained Dr. Swift. “I think a critical skill that he was exercising is this idea that you’re digging into something very specific but at the same time holding in your mind the big picture of where you’re going with that result. That’s an important life skill that is not typically taught at the high school level.”

“There were also some pretty hairy equations that Nick was working with,” Dr. Swift added. “Even some calculus, which he hasn’t studied yet. He was dealing with some really intricate mathematics that were essential for him to interpret the results he was getting.

So he learned some new math, but the more important thing, in my mind, was that he was building a new relationship to mathematics and understanding the relevance of things at a totally different level.”

Indeed, it’s here that Dr. Swift zeroes in on the bigger-picture possibilities that have emerged with the revival of the Observatory: the skills, tools, and learnings that extend beyond facts, figures, and hard concepts to prepare students for a whole host of applied learning and real-life pursuits—things that teach kids new and various ways of thinking and problem-solving.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how much enthusiasm the kids have for the Observatory and the research program, how quickly they’re getting up to speed with some really difficult material, and how willing they are to dive into problems for which there are no answers in the back of a textbook,” said Dr. Chris Vyhnal, chair of the science department and one of the individuals who first imagined a revamped astronomy program and facility. “They’re learning to be self-starters—asking and answering their own questions through innate curiosity, smarts, and hard work. The computer coding they’re doing, the math and physics and astronomy they’re learning—and how mature and responsible and engaged they are with it all—it’s humbling, frankly.”

Dr. Boyajian echoes some of these ideas when asked what she thinks students can learn from real-life projects like this. “Students get firsthand experience in critical thinking and the process of how science works,” she says. “There is never just an experiment one day 18 Special Campaign Issue

and then things are done. Science takes time. Often, the experiment shows that the data are not compatible with the theory. So the theory is then revised and another experiment is performed to test the new theory. It’s invaluable for the students to learn how this process works.”

For Nick’s part, he, along with a host of other collaborators, is compiling the data that will ultimately help prove or disprove various theories about what’s causing the extreme “dimming events” in the light curve of Tabby’s Star—something that can often be explained by a planet or other materials orbiting the star and temporarily blocking our view but that, in this case, does not really match the available measurements. In May, just as his spring independent was nearing its close, the data started yielding some very interesting results.

When Nick and Dr. Swift returned from spring Extra-Day Trips, KIC 8462852’s light curve showed another dimming event—the very first observed since the Kepler Mission ended four years ago.

They’d missed the very beginning of the “dip” in brightness—the system, for now, cannot yet be automated for more than a couple of days at a time—but had caught most of it, meaning they provided data that could be compared with and used to corroborate measurements from other telescopes that captured the same fluctuation.

Articles came out. Theories seemed less likely, or gained credibility.

Dr. Boyajian and her hundred or so collaborators moved slightly closer to cracking a cosmic mystery, one that could have repercussions well beyond Tabby’s Star.

This summer, Nick has been keeping tabs on what the Tabby’s Star collaborators are working on via the collaboration tool Slack, which they use to communicate and share information remotely.

He or another student will continue to monitor the star from the Thacher Observatory next term, and probably for many terms after that. Nick admits that his work on the project helped him realize that becoming a professional astronomer probably isn’t in the cards for him, though it was an incredibly interesting and satisfying project to work on for a while. In fact, he feels that this realization in and of itself is a productive one. And that’s just fine with Dr. Swift.

“What I’m not doing with this program is creating astronomers,” he is quick to say. “Once they build up confidence and fluency in mathematics, programming, data, quantitative endeavors, then it’s transferable to anything. They can go into whatever field they like and they’re going to have this really wonderful, rock-solid foundation to work from.” 0

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THACHER FLUX OBSERVATIONS Relative Flux

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The Quick Case: What We Are Doing and Why ADVANCING PROGRAM INITIATIVES CURRENT SITUATION: Thacher has a long history of preparing independent thinkers and leaders. We have identified three program areas—astronomy, leadership, and music—that offer us solid platforms for fortifying existing offerings and expanding opportunities for students.

GOALS: Astronomy: Build a new observatory and revive our astronomy program by giving students opportunities to participate in true scientific research. Leadership: Codify and enhance the leadership education elements that have long been present at Thacher and integrate them more thoughtfully and explicitly into our programs.

Music: Create a new full-time music faculty position and make individual music lessons affordable for all who want them.

FEATURE: Work done by students has already been presented to the professional community at national conferences and will be included in upcoming peer-reviewed astronomy journals.

FOR MORE DETAIL ABOUT THE PLANNING PROCESS AND GOALS OF OUR CAPITAL CAMPAIGN, VISIT WWW.THACHER.ORG/NEXTPEAK.

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4 Upgrading Facilities

Constructing a Rough-House for the Mind

By Blossom Beatty Pidduck CdeP 1992

“We want to create spaces that students and teachers can’t stay out of because of all the possibilities that arise when they’re in them—spaces that invite creativity, risk taking, learning from and with others, thinking and doing.”

WE DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY AT THACHER, a fact of which I’ve always been unabashedly proud. My freshman year at Amherst College I talked so much and so admiringly about my high school most people knew me as “that girl who went to the school where they take un-proctored exams on horseback.” While it’s possible I exaggerated Thacher’s defining characteristics a tad, the essence of my message was honor code truth: Thacher is no ordinary high school.

As director of studies, it’s now my job to lead the faculty in evolving that extraordinary education, crafting a vision of the future of teaching and learning, Thacher-style. As the best founding fathers’ philosophies do, Mr. Thacher’s nineteenth century wisdom has set us up well to meet the needs and challenges of the twenty-first century. His belief in the transformative power of the horse, the backcountry, honor, fairness, kindness, and truth presaged the foundational elements of a twenty-first century skill set: resilience, curiosity, compassion, and commitment. Moreover, Mr. Thacher modeled the innovator’s mindset, insisting that we question best practices so that we can develop next practices. “We who try to prepare our boys for college in a certain way,” Mr. Thacher wrote in 1921, “are in danger of thinking no other way will produce good results. I try, however, to stop occasionally and consider whether some radically different way may not produce better results, and I think this often proves to be true.” We couldn’t have found our way to a program that requires freshmen to ride and care for a horse, leaves doors unlocked, and anchors each school year with week long wilderness trips without considering radically different ways to educate young people.

With that spirit of curiosity and innovation, the School has embarked on a process of envisioning the future Thacher classroom and the best practice and next practice learning it will support. Thacher’s strategic plan recognizes the need to revitalize the academic core of campus, particularly the Anson Thacher Building, which houses roughly forty percent of our classroom space. The strategic boon of any classroom renovation or rebuild is the necessity it creates for deep thinking about teaching and learning. What does it look like now? What will it look like in fifty years? How do we create spaces that will support that vision?

In a series of three workshops over the course of the 2015-2016 school year, faculty, students, staff, alumni and Board members took Mr. Thacher’s advice and stopped to consider whether some different approaches might not yield results better suited to Thacher’s core educational goals. The discussions were far ranging, passionate, inventive, and always keenly rooted in our fidelity to the essence of this extraordinary school.

It was in the midst of one workshop that a faculty member reminded the group of Thacher’s Rough-House, that structure that for generations of students served as the four-story, redwood home for every form of fracas and fun the Thacher boys could invent. The idea of a space that enticingly provokes adventure, in this case of the academic sort, resonated. We want to create spaces that students and teachers can’t stay out of because of all the possibilities that arise when they’re in them—spaces that invite creativity, risk taking, learning from and with others, thinking and doing.

Perhaps most interesting are the ways in which a Rough-House of the mind might share structural similarities with its eponymous predecessor. First and foremost, we want to create Special Campaign Issue 21

a building eager to be used in unexpected ways. Its surfaces and materials should be rough enough to welcome an impromptu hook drilled into an overhead beam for an in-the-moment pendulum demonstration in physics class. The teaching and learning space of Thacher’s future is flexible—adapting to the needs of the moment. Rather than isolating students and teachers, its classrooms connect faculty and students to one another and to shared spaces with the tools, technologies, and resources necessary to approach learning as the bold and fun undertaking it ought to be. Its communal spaces reinforce the notion that curiosity, creation, and learning shouldn’t stop when class ends. The designs that have grown out of those initial workshops feature group lab space, classrooms, and studios arranged around a two-story core where visibility and access invite connection, collaboration, and creativity. Like the original Rough-House, the future Thacher classroom requires daring if you’re going to make the most of it.

That daring is something our students and teachers embrace; in many ways, our spaces need to catch up with the creativity and ingenuity of our community. On any given day Thacher students might be designing three dimensional build-outs of their literary analyses in Ms. Sawyer-Mulligan’s senior English class, organizing and decoding raw big data in Dr. Swift’s astronomy elective, re-imagining the design of the typical coffee table in Mr. Bueti’s woodworking course, joining forces with students in schools across California to create applicable solutions to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in chemistry class with Ms. Grant, or planning a sustainable city in Spanish with Mr. Sánchez. And that’s just one day. Thanks to the innovation and energy of our faculty and students, Thacher’s academic program has never been more allegiant to the School’s mission “to train young men and women in the art of living for their own greatest good and for the greatest good of their fellow citizens in a diverse and changing world.”

We believe a Thacher education should be unlike any other. We believe, in the vein of Ralph Waldo Emerson, that the scholarly endeavor is the highest calling not because it elevates us above others, but because it allows us to know ourselves in connection with others.

In short, we believe in doing things differently.

I hope in a few years another eager Thacher grad will be known on her college campus as “that girl who went to the school where they ride horses and spend all their time in a RoughHouse.” Sounds just about right to me. 0 22 Special Campaign Issue

Plans for the new C + T Center call for an exterior that evokes the Western ranch architecture of campus and an interior with versatile and welcoming spaces where discovery is on dislplay.

Upgrading Facilities

Q&A: Revitalizing the Historic Campus Core

Two members of Thacher’s Architectural Review Committee, Dan Gregory CdeP 1969 and Ross Anderson CdeP 1969, answer questions about the proposal to construct a new dining facility, restore the Hills Building, and connect them with an extension of the Pergola.

Above: Ross (left) and Dan (center right) with Thacher classmates Marshall Milligan (center left) and Justin Faggioli.

Below: The extended Pergola will flow down toward the new dining hall, offering a well designed amphitheater for All-School Assemblies, numerous settings for alfresco dining, and a broad commons suitable for large campus events, such as family weekend barbeques and commencement. All has been designed with an eye toward maximizing the valley vistas.

How did the current plan come about?

Ross: Initially, the challenges of creating a dining hall to meet the current needs of the School suggested a plan to take down the old Dining Hall and build a new one where it stood. The existing facility no longer worked as a dining hall, a gathering place for the school, or as a place to prepare and serve food. The interior changes made to it over time also cheapened the experience. It is loud, poorly lit, with poor sight lines and crowded.

Dan: The Architecture Review Committee (ARC) looked into ways to shoehorn the new facility into the old building, but found that such an expansion would have essentially obliterated its historic character. And yet the site on the Pergola is the heart of the campus, where any new dining hall logically must be—or at least be nearby. So it was a dilemma, and for a while the ARC very reluctantly entertained the idea of replacing the Hills Building with a new dining hall on that very site. But then the Thacher community understandably balked at that idea and argued for preserving the original building for a new use. And this prompted the ARC to ask the architects to begin again. It was a kind of intervention that proved beneficial.

Ross: With time, and much conversation and debate, we began to recognize that we could have it all: an enhanced, larger pergola; a repurposed Hills Building, and a fully functional and inspiring dining hall.

What does the new plan involve?

Ross: The architects were asked to explore a new site for the Dining Hall, leaving the Hills Building in its historic location. The new facility was re-sited further downslope to ease the impact of servicing the building (food deliveries, maintenance, and recycling) and to provide an opportunity for a stronger connection to the distant landscape as well as to the more immediate one of the redesigned Pergola and outdoor green space.

Dan: I would call this new space Pergola 2.0. It sits just below and west of the Pergola and Hills Building. Removing the two upper tennis courts creates space for a new dining hall on the north side opening to a wide grassy terrace on the south, and where both can share the grand and iconic valley view. A new outdoor amphitheater with three hundred seats flanks the stairway from the original Pergola down to the new dining hall enclave. continued on page 24 Âť

The Thacher School 01

Upgrading Facilities

Ross: The new dining hall has a layered connection to the landscape, acting as a filter between outdoors and in. The lines are beautifully blurred with doors that can remain open, shades that may or may not be drawn and a fireplace that may be lit. Most importantly, it creates a new relationship to food! Diners can see their meals being prepared and served with style and efficiency, adding another vital and visible component to this building.

As a result, the procession—and yes, it is one—from classrooms to Pergola to dining has now become enriched by steps down towards the valley view, the addition of more outdoor seating, useable, landscaped spaces, a green common for school wide events, and more opportunities for outdoor dining. In the end, we believe this is a scheme that preserves and strengthens that heart and soul of campus while providing needed upgrades in scale and efficiency and creates an important new indoor-outdoor, vista-focused venue for all-School and alumni gatherings 0

The Heart and Hearth of The School: A Short History of the Main Building THACHER’S OLDEST SURVIVING BUILDING—known today as the Edward E. Hills Building or the Dining Hall—has been remodeled many times since it was completed in 1896. But the old sandstone fireplace has been there since the beginning, a literal touchstone for generations of Thacher students, going back to the days when the hall was known as the Main Building and the room with the fireplace was known as the parlor, and functioned as the center of community life.

This venerable California redwood structure was a product of the effort to rebuild the campus that had been destroyed by the fire of 1895. The goal was to build quickly, simply, and economically, but this did not prevent Thacher from opting for a design that gave the nod to sophisticated architectural projects taking shape in places like Newport, Rhode Island, and Pasadena, California. The design itself was the brainchild of Sherman’s brother Edward, who had studied architecture at Yale and in Paris, and took its cues from Eastern and European traditions while also acknowledging the Western setting of the Casa de Piedra Ranch. Moderately pitched hip roofs and full-width porches echoed the Monterey style established earlier in the century—itself a blending of New England and California styles.

Over time, as the school grew, these porches were converted to interior spaces. In addition to enclosing the porches, renovations gradually replaced virtually every board and beam of the structure, while still retaining much of its external appearance. The most substantial of these projects began in 1979, when the Hills Foundation funded the renovation that turned the abandoned dormitory spaces upstairs into administrative offices—today’s Olympus— and created the dining and kitchen spaces we recognize today.

As Thacher awaits its new dining hall, we also anticipate the restoration of Mr. Thacher’s parlor, the original heart and hearth of the school. Meanwhile, many of the Dining Hall’s most iconic elements—the wood paneling, round tables with lazy susans, and plaques bearing the names of team captains and other school leaders dating back to the nineteenth century—will migrate downhill a bit to become focal points of the new facility. 0 24 Special Campaign Issue

This page: an architectural rendering of the proposed renovation of the Hills Building, showing a new terrace where the kitchen currently stands. The new dining hall and extended Pergola can be seen in the background.

Facing page: The new dining hall will replicate the wood panelling, round tables, and memorial plaques of the current facililty, while impoving substantially on efficiency, capacity, and views.

The Quick Case: What We Are Doing and Why CREATIVITY + TECHNOLOGY CENTER

HEART OF CAMPUS

Current situation: The Anson S. Thacher Building comprises 40 percent of our academic space, yet it fails to support our evolving teaching and learning methods.

Current situation: Our century-old Dining Hall is unable to provide a suitable place for our community to gather for meals and it fails to meet educational, administrative, and sustainability goals.

Goals: Replace the AST building with a Creativity + Technology Center that meets the evolving academic needs of the School and promotes collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.

Feature: An additional 10,000 square feet of academic space, including art classrooms, technology laboratories, and maker spaces designed to meet the needs of Thacher’s faculty and 21st century learnings.

Goals: Construct a new dining facility that meets community needs, restore the iconic Hills Building, and extend the Pergola.

Feature: The restored Hills Building will harken back to Mr. Thacher’s days, when a parlor served as a living room for campus life. Finishes will celebrate the building’s history while updated offices and meeting spaces will offer a more efficient facility for conducting school business.

FOR MORE DETAIL ABOUT THE PLANNING PROCESS AND GOALS OF OUR CAPITAL CAMPAIGN, VISIT WWW.THACHER.ORG/NEXTPEAK.

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From water conservation to manure composting and from solar energy to healthy, locally sourced meals, Thacher is advancing toward energy independence and sustainable practices while making the campus a learning laboratory for our students.

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Environmental Sustainability

Green Growth For many years, sustainability at Thacher was primarily fueled by student energy. As the program evolves, can it remain student-centered?

By Natalie Selzer CdeP 2008

Indeed, this process—intentional, collaborative, strategic, and studentdriven—is beginning

PHOTO: MARK HANAUER

to be a hallmark of environmental sustainability at Thacher…

THIS PAST YEAR, Margaret Phipps ’19 and Béa Pierrepont ’18 had an idea: What if they could cut down on the number of “town runs” to Ojai—and the associated carbon emissions— by implementing a campus bikeshare program? It’s not entirely uncommon for kids to jog into town together as a way to get exercise and run errands at the same time. Could bikes make that even more appealing? The Sustainability Council—a panel of students, faculty, staff, and board members who strategize and collaborate on campus sustainability projects—agreed that the idea had legs and encouraged them to explore it further. When Margaret and Béa sent a survey to the rest of the student body in February to gauge interest, nearly 80 percent of the students were on board. This year, they’ll continue their research and, if everything checks out and the resources are there, begin the process of implementing it.

More and more, this has become a familiar story on campus. Students come up with an idea, assess and flesh it out with the help of the Sustainability Council, and then gather people who have the interest and the expertise to make it happen. Indeed, this process— intentional, collaborative, strategic, and student-driven—is beginning to be a hallmark of environmental sustainability at Thacher and a model for the sort of applied learning that the School is implementing across disciplines.

“I think that’s the main success of the sustainability program, that the students are involved at pretty much every stage,” said Sustainability Coordinator Juan Sánchez. “For example, with the bikeshare idea, Margaret and Béa are championing this. They’re planning this. The idea is that they have to figure it out, talk to the community—we go with the flow and then give them the support that they need along the way.”

Kurt Meyer, faculty advisor to the Environmental Action Committee (EAC), echoed this sentiment. “Part of the authenticity of what’s developed at the School in this domain is the real involvement of students,” he said. “It’s not a bunch of adults flipping switches and pulling levers and investing money and making awards happen. There’s some of that, because the scale on which we’ve improved required that, but all along the way the kids have been involved. And the kids have been working hard. And the kids have been coming up with ideas. And the kids have been following through.”

“It’s not a bunch of adults flipping switches and pulling levers and investing money and making awards happen.”

In fact, from Mr. Meyer’s telling, the initiative, curiosity, and passion demonstrated by the students has remained one of the few constants as the environmental sustainability program has evolved. About ten years ago, when he first started getting involved, the EAC (championed by Brian Pidduck CdeP 1992 and some of his AP Environmental Science students as a way to turn classroom learnings into local action) was a fledgling organization and rumblings about developing a strategic framework for sustainability were just starting to reach a higher pitch. As energy continued to build, Mr. Meyer found himself managing a task force of students and faculty who, over the course of 18 months, developed a 25-page report on sustainability at Thacher as part of a wider strategic planning effort by the board of trustees and the administration.

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Environmental Sustainability

mental sustainability into the curriculum in one form or another, Alas, the best laid plans.... “That report kind of landed with a from classes fully dedicated to the topic to courses that integrate thud,” Mr. Meyer admitted. “In the interim, between then and just a sustainability concepts into certain units. Think mathematics probfew years ago, when we really started pumping some resources into lems that use data from campus solar or water catchment systems to sustainability, it was really the student effort and passion and interdemonstrate concepts, a Spanish class where students read articles est and work that brought the School along.” regarding sustainable development in South America, or biology Despite the incredible energy from the student body, however, courses where students explore the real-life problem that the Asian the lack of a more intentional, strategic framework could be felt.

Citrus Psyllid poses to local citrus growers.

“Early on it was things like recycling, planting a tree, doing a little bit And the list goes on—greywater from the dorm laundry facilities of Ojai Creek cleanup downtown, getting up at Assembly and making announcements about using less water,” Mr. Meyer explained. “It was irrigating campus grounds, rainwater catchment facilities storing water for use in the Horse Program, freshmen learning about natural a scattershot, high-interest, maybe low-impact, effort. There wasn’t a systems and environmental and ecological issues during their first sense of a unified purpose.” visit to Golden Trout in the fall. Indeed, the sustainability program Today, you’d have a hard time taking a stroll around campus without stumbling upon a whole host of different environmental sus- has evolved so much that the School received major recognition this year when it was named both a Green Achiever (the highest honor) by tainability projects, often accompanied by students who are (maybe the California Green Ribbon Schools recognition program and was literally) hands-deep in helping out with some aspect of design, connamed a 2017 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon School. struction, or maintenance.

So what’s next? Quite a lot, according to those in the know, if Stop by the Dining Hall for a chat with Director of Dining Services Richard Maxwell and you might discover that only organic milk, we can continue to be serious about investing the necessary time and resources. organic and free-range chicken, humanely raised eggs, and seafood “I think that we have made a lot of the physical changes that we from sustainable fisheries are on the menu; that, during peak growcan on campus, and that has happened really rapidly,” said Mr. Sáning season, 60 percent of our produce is sourced from local farms; chez. “Our next phase is really sustainability education. We began and that our Dining Hall produces almost zero waste thanks to proby envisioning a long-term program, developing goals, and creatgrams that funnel different types through our compost, recycling, ing a mission statement. That gave the School a framework to work and hog initiatives, along with a Chefs Against Hunger partnership from, as opposed to just very cool projects that the students were that allows us to donate edible leftovers to food pantries and homepushing but that we didn't have the resources to focus on. Once less shelters. we demonstrated the educational potential of these efforts, the Take the dirt road out to Carpenter’s Orchard and you’ll probably resources began to appear, and big time.” find a couple of students delivering Dining Hall scraps to hungry Margaret Phipps is hatching a plan to turn Patton’s Cabin into a hogs—just a snapshot of the 5,000 pounds of food waste that are sustainability lab and outdoor classroom. Peyton FitzHugh ’18 parredirected through the program every year. The students could tell ticipated in a conference this summer where students from schools you that, later in the term, the hogs will become food themselves. around the world exchanged ideas and worked on real problems And that, yes, they will accompany the animals to the butcher’s. related to campus sustainability. She’s coming back with a number of While you’re there, it would be hard to miss the 2.5-acre phonew ideas under her belt and an increased sense of excitement and tovoltaic solar array that went online last summer. The facility energy. Last year, then-seniors Liam Kirkpatrick and Peter Schmidt provides around 90 percent of the School’s electricity and sixorganized a sustainability conference on campus for students from figure savings to our annual electricity bill—savings that will rise around the Ojai Valley. Participants exchanged ideas, discussed chaleven more now that the School has installed a battery system that lenges, and shared solutions with the aim of inspiring new initiatives allows us to avoid tapping into the electrical grid during the most for the future. The engine of ingenuity continues to run. expensive hours of the day.

When asked how he’d like to see the sustainability program grow Behind a certain grove of avocados you might stumble upon our six-bay composting facility, where nearly 1,600 tons of horse manure, and evolve in the coming years, Mr. Meyer paused for a few moments.

Dining Hall waste, and green waste are processed every single year— “I would like us to continue to support and strive to maintain the kind of student-centered focus we’ve had,” he said. “It’s important a program that was piloted, in the words of Mr. Meyer as a “set of that we continue to feel like the emphasis is on the kids doing it for wooden boxes that the kids built to test out composting formulas” the School, the kids doing it for their School. We want to keep this before it developed into a major program. sustainability program running very much like a classroom. I think Pop your head into a classroom and you could find yourself that’s the way it’s been, and that’s what it should continue to be.” 0 observing one of the more than 20 classes that integrate environ28 Special Campaign Issue

“We want to keep this sustainability program running very much like a classroom. I think that’s the way it’s been, and that’s what it should continue to be.” —Kurt Meyer

Piloted by student interest and research, Thacher's composting program now boasts a six-bay industrial-scale facility that can process 1,200 tons of manure each year. Meanwhile, our student-run hog program ensures that Dining Hall leftovers are put to good use.

The Quick Case: What We Are Doing and Why SUPPORTING ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY Current Situation: Thacher has made great strides in our effort to reduce our environmental footprint, but we continue to see critical opportunities to improve the ways we use energy, water, and food.

Goals: Generate 90 percent of our electricity through our solar array, reduce fuel consumption, and increase our water efficiency.

Feature: As we pursue our goals, we are responding to student interest in the environment by integrating our efforts with our academic curriculum.

FOR MORE DETAIL ABOUT THE PLANNING PROCESS AND GOALS OF OUR CAPITAL CAMPAIGN, VISIT WWW.THACHER.ORG/NEXTPEAK.

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We are grateful to the many members of the Thacher community who have already opted to join us on this journey.

Thanks to you, we’ve made good progress toward our goals.

But we still need help to get us all the way there. www.thacher.org/nextpeak

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THREE BUCKETS OF GIVING UNDERSTANDING FUNDRAISING AT THACHER

The generous support of alumni, parents, grandparents, and friends like you allows The Thacher School to thrive year after year.

Please consider these ways of supporting Thacher.

PHOTO/ILLUSTRATION CREDIT HERE

THE ANNUAL FUND Our foremost responsibility is to support the Annual Fund, which covers about 15 percent of our operating budget. The annual fund is an essential component of how we finance Thacher each year. During the course of this capital campaign, our goal is to increase our Annual Fund from $3.5 million to $4.5 million.

THE BOOT HILL LEGACY SOCIETY Membership is as simple as informing us of your plan to make a legacy gift of any amount.

These gifts, which may also count toward the campaign, can include naming the School as a beneficiary of a retirement account or life insurance policy; future gifts of real estate; or participation in one of several “life income” vehicles. We hope to increase membership by 30 percent during this capital campaign.

THE NEXT PEAK CAMPAIGN We hope that, over the next two years, many members of our community will make a special gift to our capital campaign—over and above their Annual Fund gifts. Gifts to the campaign will be primarily focused on enhancing endowment and financing important improvements to our physical plant. Pledges to the campaign can be fulfilled over a five-year schedule.

Only one outcome of our investment matters: transforming students’ lives and futures. We believe Thacher is uniquely suited to this important mission and that it is worthy of generous support.

For more information or to speak to someone about giving to Thacher: The Alumni and Development Office: 805-640-3220 Sandi White, Campaign Director: swhite@thacher.org, 805-640-3201 ext.

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Gearing Up: The Process The successes of the strategic planning process and the leadership phase of our capital campaign were made possible by many; the board, focus groups of alumni and parents, the administration, the faculty, and—yes—even our students contributed substantially to our process and progress. There are too many to thank individually.

There are however, five people who deserve special recognition for their gifts of time and counsel, and for their willingness to provide early, pace-setting gifts to the campaign.

Cabot Brown CdeP 1979 P ’10 ’15 and Philip Pillsbury CdeP 1967 P ’08 co-chaired and championed the strategic planning processes that led to The Road to the Future, the initial, guiding document of our strategic plan. Their encouragement, advice, time, and persistence provided a plan that became the map we followed as we undertook this journey.

Following the release of The Road to the Future, Riley Bechtel CdeP 1970 P ’99 ’00 ’03, Sarah Lavender Smith CdeP 1986 P ’16 ’19, and Dan Yih P ’10 ’12 ’15 agreed to serve as co-chairs of the leadership phase of our capital campaign. Their bold vision, philanthropic example, and guidance allowed Thacher to think boldly about what we could accomplish. Thanks to their leadership, we have raised more in the leadership phase of our campaign than the sum of all of the capital campaigns in the history of the School.

Additionally, we are fortunate to be able to boast that all of our emeritus board presidents and former capital campaign chairs agreed to serve as honorary chairs of this capital campaign. Thank you to Reid Dennis CdeP 1944 P ’67 ’74 GP ’03 ’07, Justin Faggioli CdeP 1969 P ’00 ’02, Marsh Milligan CdeP 1969 P ’00 ’02, Andrew Shakman CdeP 1990, and Bill Oberndorf P ’04 ’08.

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The Next Peak Campaign Leadership Committee We are pleased to announce that the following alumni, current parents, parents of alumni, and grandparents have agreed to serve as chairs of the public phase of our capital campaign. On behalf of everyone at Thacher, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to these leaders for their willingness to serve.

Campaign Chair Janet A. Carroll Richardson CdeP 1983 P ’15 ’17 Chair of the Board of Trustees Cabot Brown CdeP 1979 P ’10 ’15 Development Committee Chair Michael Galgon P ’17 ’19 Campaign Honorary Chairs Reid W. Dennis CdeP 1944 P ’67 ’74 GP ’03 ’07 Marshall C. Milligan CdeP 1969 P ’00 ’02 Justin M. Faggioli CdeP 1969 P ’00 ’02 Riley P. Bechtel CdeP 1970 P ’99 ’00 ’03 Sarah E. Lavender Smith CdeP 1986 P ’16 ’19 Andrew R. Shakman CdeP 1990 Daniel W. Yih P ’10 ’12 ’15

1960s Campaign Committee Campaign Co-Chair Nicholas S. Thacher CdeP 1963 Robert K. Gardner CdeP 1960 P ’99 ’00 Jeffrey H. Frank CdeP 1964 Neal Howe CdeP 1969 P ’13 1970s Campaign Committee Campaign Co-Chair T. Newlin Hastings Jr. CdeP 1970 P ’99 ’02 Edward L. Cahill CdeP 1970 P ’99 ’01 ’03 ’05 Bryan N. Beckham CdeP 1974 P ’14 Paul L. Yelder CdeP 1977 Reza Zafari CdeP 1978 1980s Campaign Committee Campaign Co-Chair Christina L. Chiu Alfandary CdeP 1985 Emily Williamson Hancock CdeP 1983 P ’10 ’12 ’13 Launce L. Gamble CdeP 1984 P ’16 ’18 Sophia L. Brown Twichell CdeP 1985 P ’17 ’19 Jaime K. Araujo CdeP 1988 1990s Campaign Committee Campaign Co-Chair Eric B. Dachs CdeP 1994 Laura K. Van Winkle James CdeP 1993 Alec H. Perkins CdeP 1991 E. Brian Krumrei IV CdeP 1995 Brooke L. MacDonald Moorhead CdeP 1999

2000s Campaign Committee Campaign Co-Chair Sarah S. Shaikh CdeP 2003 Lucy Milligan Wahl CdeP 2000 Patricia R. Abou-Samra Kearney CdeP 2002 Jose L. Estrada CdeP 2002 Peter C. Oberndorf CdeP 2004 William J. Dawson V CdeP 2009 Parents Committee Campaign Co-Chair Scott C. Brittingham P ’17 ’20 John J. Pierrepont P ’16 ’18 Holly J. and John L. Hancock P ’18 Lisa Wallmark and Jonas Svensson P ’20 Jennifer B. and Scott L. Gwilliam P ’19 Parents of Alumni Committee Brian P. Driscoll P ’13 ’15 Mary N. and Mark R. Hoffman P ’10 Derek G. Kirkland P ’09 ’12 ’15 Grandparents Committee Campaign Co-Chairs Esther and Thomas Wachtell GP ’13 ’15 ’19 Frederick C. Twichell P ’83 ’85 ’86 GP ’17 ’19 Boot Hill Committee Toby Rosenblatt CdeP 1956 John G. Lewis CdeP 1959 P ’89

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Thacher thrives today because those before us rolled up their sleeves and got down to the tough work of safeguarding and improving a school that impacts students for the rest of their lives.

TAKE THIS RIDE WITH US

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THE BEST WE CAN DO… THE CARTER FAMILY Three generations join forces to make a campaign gift in support of Olympus Scholars.

AN ENDURING THACHER CONNECTION The Carter family has loved The Thacher School for 30 years. Tim and Sylvia dropped their oldest child Christine (then “Christy”) off in August 1986 as a freshman. Their son, Tim T., arrived three years later and graduated in 1993.

In 1995, Christine returned to Thacher for two years to work in the Admission Office (and live in the Upper School and on the Hill) and in 2001, she joined the Thacher Board of Trustees as the president of the Alumni Association. Currently, Fiona Carter McLaughlin—Christine’s daughter and Tim and Sylvia’s granddaughter—is an enthusiastic member of the Class of 2019.

RECOGNIZING A NEED Almost three decades after Tim and Syl dropped Christy off, yet another chapter has begun! Tim and Sylvia, Christine and her husband Mark, and Fiona, who is a junior this year, have come together as a family to establish The Carter Family Fund for Olympus Scholars as a permanent part of the School’s endowment. The income from this endowed scholarship underwrites expenses over and above tuition, like SAT tutoring, athletic or camping equipment, travel to and from the School, or music lessons.

“Coming together to establish this scholarship fund has been an incredibly rewarding family experience,” Tim said as he reflected on the process. “Thacher continues to be both an important part of our family, and an important part of what has made our children who they are today.

We want to give back as much as we can.” Sylvia adds: “We like that it levels the playing field and is designed to give a little more to those with a little less.”

The Carter family has long been passionate about making Thacher accessible to students from a variety of socioeconomic circumstances—and making Thacher a place where students can thrive regardless of their parents’ financial resources.

“We know the more diverse Thacher is, the better it will be. Having students from all walks of life enhances the experience for each and every student at Thacher,” says Christine. “I’m so grateful we are able to contribute to Thacher’s success in this way.”

Christine saw for herself the value of attending school with peers from different backgrounds.

“Learning and living among a more diverse community than I would have gotten at home broadened my world in a way that shaped who I am today,” she observes. “There is no doubt in my

mind that I am a sociologist today largely because of my friendship with one classmate in particular. She was this super smart, unbelievably kind kid from inner city LA. She let me into her world, which was so different than my white suburban upbringing. She took me home to meet her family, and it gave me a whole new understanding of culture. She was witty and brutally honest, she helped me see and appreciate what a privilege it was for us both to get to go to Thacher.” Together, the pair did an independant project on race relationships and founded United Cultures of Thacher (UCT), which remains a vital student club.

THE FAMILY THAT GIVES TOGETHER Despite the influence that Thacher may have exerted on the Carters, they don’t see their gift as connected to their own experiences. “It’s about doing what we can do today to make a difference, to protect something valuable,” says Christine.

There’s a Greek proverb the family loves: “A society grows great when old [people] plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

“I think that Thacher grows great when families give back,” says Christine, “in whatever way they can, by planting trees for future generations.

This is, by far, the most rewarding way to give.”

The Thacher School 01

The Magazine of The Thacher School • Special Campaign Issue The Thacher School 5025 Thacher Road Ojai, CA 93023

NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID OXNARD, CA PERMIT NO. 1215

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Campaign Events Thursday, September 14 Palace of the Fine Arts San Francisco, California Sunday, September 24 The Thacher School Ojai, California Sunday, October 15 Autry Museum of the American West Los Angeles, California Sunday, October 29 Hearst Tower New York City, New York

THACHER

Sunday, December 3 Clark Gallery Lincoln, Massachusetts Monday, December 4 Private Home Washington, DC Tuesday, April 3 Private Home Chicago, Illinois To register, please visit: www.thacher.org/nextpeak-events

The Next Peak ­— SPECIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE —