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New Faces and Fast Friends in Bishop’s Administration
New Faces and Fast Friends
in Bishop’s Administration By Zach Jones ’01
What is The Bishop’s School? That’s a question with as many answers as the School has students and alumni, but common to almost all is a journey that began with an application, ended with the graduation to college and likely included some form of athletics in concert with academic rigor. Those are the tent poles of the Bishop’s experience over which three new administrators now preside.
PAULA CONWAY
Director of Athletics
WENDY CHANG
Director of College Counseling
That’s Vivien Valenzuela Mallick, the School’s new director of admissions and financial aid, and she’s referring to fellow newcomers Paula Conway (director of athletics) and Wendy Chang (director of college counseling).
The three formed a quick bond last winter over Zoom—as well as a group text entitled “Bishop’s Newbies.” Since then, Paula has helped Vivien scout out her new condo (“I was literally FaceTiming her from the ground taking pictures of the shag carpet to make sure it looked OK”) and brought crutches from the School’s training room to Wendy after an ankle injury.
The three share Boston-area roots in both their educational and working lives, but Paula—with her seven years as athletic director at La Jolla High—has served as the de facto San Diego welcoming committee.
“Paula started it before we even moved—we were still on the East Coast,” Wendy says. “At my previous schools, I never had that same dynamic of support.”
But more than restaurant recommendations or tips for good running trails, these three share a mission to shape the Bishop’s experience from start to finish. That begins with making that experience accessible to families living far from the School’s La Jolla footprint.
“For people who haven’t had friends and neighbors send their kids here, we need to get the message out that yes, Bishop’s is an accessible place to you,” Vivien says. “If you have a kid who loves to learn and wants to be part of an awesome community, then this place can be for you as well.”
A lifelong public school student herself, Vivien is focused on creating a sense of belonging for students who are new to the manicured independent school campuses where she’s worked. Knocking down barriers to potential applicants is a big part of that mission.
From offering both in-person and Zoom interviews (to cut down on travel), to formulating student-friendly application questions and making standardized entrance exams such as the ISEE optional, she hopes to cast an everwider net across the San Diego area.
“Having gone through the independent school application process multiple times with my own children, it’s a hard thing and an intimidating thing,” she says. “We want people to be interested in our school, and we don’t want the application—in and of itself— to trip them up.”
Once that new student arrives, so do
Bish Bowl 2021
a host of new questions, chief among them: What are these years for, exactly? The trip from sixth grade to the perfect college can be filled with pressures and a variety of expectations—nobody knows that better than Wendy, who’s in her 18th year of college counseling.
“There are ways that it feels really high-stakes,” she says, particularly in light of rising costs for independent schools and colleges alike. “How do you take advantage of the rich experience that Bishop’s has to offer without feeling like college is the be-all, end-all? How do we respect [the importance of college] while allowing kids to be themselves and not try to be a product that’s attractive to schools?”
Part of that answer lies in creating a place where students can belong and learn life skills that will be with them forever.
That’s why Paula’s first big purchase as athletic director was a giant, inflatable tunnel. The “spirit tunnel”—the kind with smoke and music and a football team running out of it—was a sign post for the kind of community she hopes to create.
“It seems like such a silly thing, but especially with these kids, at such an academic school, it’s good to mix in a little bit of fun, where everybody can be included.”
While high school sports can be an important part of a student’s college application, they can also be a critical balance to the other stresses of life.
“So many of our students play club [sports], where the coach doesn’t know anything about your academics or your friends or your struggles,” Paula says. “Here, we have a good percentage of teacher-coaches. [Football and boys’ soccer coach] Shane Walton ’98 is milling around at lunch and really connecting with the kids, and I think that piece is what really fills their cup athletically—they feel part of a family.”
Wendy says the sky-high competition at the most selective colleges makes it important to maintain perspective on what “success” looks like for a student’s high school career: “You could be someone who ‘does everything right’ and still not get into your tippy-top choice school.”
It points all the more to Paula’s dream of an athletics program with a full-time mental skills coach—to prepare students to grapple with everything from on-field challenges to mental wellness and leadership development.
“Even if you’re not going to play in college, all of these things still help so much,” Paula says. “What if you’re taking a bar exam? You might use some of the strategies you learned in high school on how to meditate, relax, have positive self-talk and put yourself in a position to perform better.”
So what is this place? At its best, maybe it can be a home. For these Bishop’s newbies, it already is.
