The Hotchkiss Magazine, Spring 2012

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BELOW: ISEEN Conference educators in the Hotchkiss Woods

Teachers at Hotchkiss are students. We are interested

in learning, in many guises. We pursue personal intellectual interests as well as trying to understand better,

through appropriate research, our craft of teaching.

A series of talks, workshops, and presentations called the Faculty Colloquia runs through the year. In these, members of the faculty discuss with their peers the research and writing that engage their scholarly time.

In November I gave a talk called “Experiential Learning and its Place at Hotchkiss.“ I advertised it in a campus e-mail in the following way: This colloquium will be more of a seminar. I shall outline a few thoughts about the nature of experiential learning, and try to suggest both a working definition and a typology. I shall then consider some aspects of experiential learning at Hotchkiss, past, recent, and future. I want to share some ideas and engage in a conversation.

I must also declare a parallel agenda. In January, I am giving the introductory address at the ISEEN (Independent Schools’ Experiential Education Network), which Hotchkiss is hosting. I would like my talk to be representative of some of the wider thinking on this topic within our community, and I invite your input on that.

We did indeed hold the ISEEN gathering in the early days of January, impeccably hosted

by Josh Hahn, and almost 100 experienced experiential educators came to it. They enjoyed a fine conference and were surprised by some of the advances that we have made at Hotchkiss in this area.

So what is experiential education? My working definition of experiential education is that it promotes learning through direct experience, often outside the classroom, at times not directly related to academic courses, frequently not graded, and sometimes not mediated through language, or academic discourse and practice.

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It is sometimes traced to a saying attributed to Confucius: “Tell me, and I will forget.

Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.”

I find it useful to work with a three-way typology: experiential learning that takes place in the classroom, through the immediate apprehension of what is imaginatively shown rather than told; that which occurs outside the classroom but is related directly to the discourse of the classroom, such as field studies or focused trips; and then the work of doing things, such as growing food or learning a sport, which has a value in and of itself that is not academic. All three, but especially the last, can act as useful counterbalances to the virtual, electronic learning that is more and more a modern, and desirable, aspect of the way we do things now.

John Dewey is one important name in the annals of experiential educators. Although he never uses the word ‘experiential’ in his brief classic published in 1938, Experience and Education, he writes insightfully about his topic in ways that are strikingly contemporary: progressive education is based on experience but experience-based learning can occur in traditional classrooms; experience can lead both to educative and to ‘miseducative’ outcomes; educative experience is characterized by continuity and interaction; and it is important to select experiences that build on each other, a curriculum of experiences, so as to move away from the merely episodic.

We are engaged in implementing this last insight at Hotchkiss through designing a program where each year focuses on what we are calling a Class Theme. For the Preps it is sustainability (what a resource our farm is for this), and for the Lower Mids interculturalism. This year’s tenth-graders have enjoyed

both, as they were the first group of Preps to set out with the concept in its current form.

Next year they will focus on service. This year’s seniors have already begun a movement from the opposite direction, with their Class Theme of Citizenship and Leadership.

Among the many questions posed by these developments, the following two stand out for me.

Is experiential education faddish and ephemeral? My answer is most definitely no.

We have been doing it for decades in athletics and residential life. We know that the skills and lessons learned in those areas are indelible and invaluable. Our Class Themes are extensions of that.

What is the value of experiential education in relation to traditional academics? Does it enhance scholastic learning? Here the answer is a resounding yes. This type of learning builds confidence, encourages risk taking, reduces the fear of failure, gives oxygen to collaboration, nurtures imagination, promotes problem solving, allows reverie, and grows a taproot from which scholastic learning flowers.

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PROSSER GIFFORD ’47: THE QUINTESSENTIAL GENTLEMAN AND SCHOLAR B

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n November 4, 2011, P R O S S E R was presented with the 2011 Alumni Award, the highest honor the School bestows on an alumnus or alumna. A versatile and gifted scholar, he was the first dean of faculty at Amherst College, deputy director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of scholarly programs at the Library of Congress for 15 years. After Hotchkiss, he spent a postgraduate year at the Sherborne School in England, graduated magna cum laude from Yale, and attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He holds a law degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. in history from Yale, and taught African history at Yale for several years. The author of Creating French Culture: Treasures from GIFFORD ’47

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the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, he organized the eponymous Library of Congress exhibit in 1995 that brought 207 French books and manuscripts to the U.S., many for the first time. Despite this varied and distinguished résumé, when he spoke to the School community gathered at the Esther Eastman Music Center’s Katherine M. Elfers Hall last fall for the Alumni Award presentation, he seemed surprised by the honor.

“I left Hotchkiss 65 years ago in 1946. It was inconceivable to me then that in 65 years I would still be ambulatory, much less returning to the School to receive an alumni award,” he said. He went on to describe how the trajectory of his career was “unplanned, serendipitous, opportunistic” and pointed to the wisdom of

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remaining open to new fields and new endeavors. “Careers nowadays are unlikely to be linear,” he said. “We are always learning. Until the speed of our forgetting exceeds that of our remembering, we need to modify what we know by absorbing what we can of the new, the different, the unanticipated, the improbable.”

He emphasized “the returning relevance of the humanities,” and spoke movingly of the “humanizing sustenance” of poetry. The key to learning is a vibrant teacher, he added, and “at Hotchkiss you are blessed with good teachers, mentors, guides. What they teach you will serve you well, not only now – and although you may not believe this – at some surprising moment in the years ahead, when you don’t expect it, and suddenly you realize what that word, that passage, that question means.”

He closed by reciting The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise by Emily Dickinson, a haunting poem that “makes us think of all the dead, That sauntered with us here, By separation’s sorcery, Made cruelly more dear.”

LEFT: Shown at the award ceremony are, from left, Malcolm McKenzie, Katie Allen Berlandi ’88, Prosser Gifford, and Jack Blum ’47, who made the introductory remarks for Gifford.

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RIGHT: Students line up after the speech to meet and talk with Prosser Gifford.

At the start of your talk, you said you couldn’t understand why you’d been selected for the Alumni Award and mentioned that perhaps George Van Santvoord might have envisioned this, but that you did not.

What exactly did you envision your career being when you graduated in 1946? What were your goals?

I did not have any career goals at Hotchkiss beyond doing well in my courses. I think Mr. Van Santvoord realized that I could graduate in three years and proposed the English-Speaking Union experience for me – perhaps to see if I could do well elsewhere. As a Rhodes Scholar, he knew England and English education well.

You talked about the trajectory of your career being unplanned and serendipitous.

What satisfies you most as you look back?

Was it working at the Library of Congress?

Amherst? The Woodrow Wilson Center?

Each job I accepted was rewarding. My working premise has always been “never look back,” so my full attention was devoted to the requirements of the situation where I was. The underlying connection of these positions is that they all dealt with academic inquiry and research.

You mentioned how your love of English, of reading, writing, and wordsmithing, began with Mr. Gurney and Mr. McChesney. Was your interest in French culture similarly sparked by a particular class or teacher at Hotchkiss?

While I enjoyed Mr. Beaumont’s course at Hotchkiss, I never was really proficient in French. I could read, but never spoke colloquially or easily. My wife, who had attended the Sorbonne, was much more fluent than I ever became.

Now that you’re retired, have you continued to work in the group setting you mentioned as being so important? Is there a specific organization that you’re involved with that keeps you absorbing “the new, the different, the improbable”?

Living in Woods Hole, I can keep up in an amateur way with the science being done at the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I organize a winter lecture series for Woods Hole. My own writing at the moment is primarily about local history and family history.

Although Messrs. Gurney and McChesney had you writing essays and book reviews at Hotchkiss, you didn’t mention whether or not they were responsible for your love of poetry. Were they? Or was it someone or somewhere else?

In elementary school I wrote poor schoolboy poetry, but I didn’t do much with poetry at Hotchkiss. I read more at Sherborne School in England [where he spent senior year as an English-Speaking Union exchange student]. I first experienced the full force of poetry at Yale,

where I majored in English and wrote my senior thesis on Wallace Stevens. At Oxford, I took a second degree in “English Language and Literature” (Beowulf to the Romantics). At the Library of Congress, through the Poetry Office, I met, heard, and read many poets over the course of 15 years.

What is it about The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise that caused you to select it to close your talk? What life lessons does it help us understand?

Emily Dickinson’s poetry is enigmatic, provoking, surprising, sometimes difficult, sometimes almost incidental, often observational, simple yet profound. I became attracted to her poetry at Amherst College, which owns her house and guards her legacy. The poem I read seemed appropriate for an alumni occasion which had both celebratory and memorial aspects to it.

The natural descriptions and the musical theme seemed also relevant. Emily was thinking of the Civil War, but it could apply to any major memorial occasion when current pleasure is tempered by freighted memory.

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Jane Reynolds appointed to head Admission and Financial Aid Office Jane Reynolds has been appointed Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, effective July 1. She succeeds Rachael Beare, who steps down as Dean of Admission and Financial Aid at the end of this school year.

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eynolds comes to Hotchkiss with extensive knowledge and experience in admissions, external affairs, and development at independent schools, colleges and universities.

In making the announcement, Head of School Malcolm McKenzie said, “I am delighted that Jane will be the Hotchkiss Dean of Admission and Financial Aid from July. Jane brings exceptional skills and fine qualities to this important position. Her experience in the admissions, development, and external relations fields includes her tenure as Dean of Admission at Amherst College. Jane and her husband Russ Weigel, the former head of school at Loomis Chaffee School, will live on campus, and I am pleased to welcome them to our community.”

Reynolds earned her B.A. degree from the College of the Holy Cross and her M.Ed. from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. She began her early career in admissions at Boston University with additional posts at Trinity College and Tufts University before being appointed dean of admission at Amherst College in 1989. For nearly nine years she led the College’s admissions operation there, achieving record-breaking application totals, continuing to diversify the student body, and initiating international recruitment programs, while maintaining the college’s top rankings in national publications. Highly regarded as a speaker, she was frequently invited to speak to professional organizations and high schools nationally and internationally.

Recruited to the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) in 1998, Reynolds made the switch from admissions work to advancement with her appointment as YSM’s Associate

Dean for External Affairs, which included the medical school’s development office.

After five years at Yale, she added to her experiences in development, communications, and alumni affairs with senior posts at the New-York Historical Society and The Nightingale-Bamford School in New York, where she served as Director of Institutional Advancement until 2008.

During the 12 years she lived at Loomis Chaffee during Russ’s tenure as school head (1996-2008), she worked full-time and also enjoyed the pleasures of experiencing a closely-knit academic community. She welcomes the return to the boarding school lifestyle at Hotchkiss.

More recently, Reynolds and her husband Russ completed an 18-month consulting assignment for the Qatar Museums Authority, initiating the launch of a high school for the visual arts and design in Doha.

Back in New York once again, she comes to Hotchkiss from The Brearley School in New York, where she has been serving as director of philanthropic initiatives and stewardship.

Rachael N. Beare “Rachael’s accomplishments during four years here are many,” said Malcolm McKenzie. “She oversaw the move of Admission and Financial Aid to a beautiful and welcoming home in Harris House.”

Also to be noted, he said, is Admissions’ success in bringing the very best students to Hotchkiss – and this, in an increasingly competitive recruiting environment. Colleges are noticing that quality, and this is reflected in the college choices of our students, he said.

Rachael Beare came to Hotchkiss in 2008

from Lakeside School, the leading day school in Seattle, WA, where she was the Director of Admissions & Financial Aid for ten years. Previously, she had worked in Admissions at Phillips Exeter and Deerfield academies, and at Loomis Chaffee School, her alma mater.

During her tenure at Hotchkiss, Admissions has seen the most competitive applicant pools in the School’s history, with inquiries and applications increasing more than 20 percent. In addition, Beare supervised the production of a new DVD and Admissions viewbook to reflect and highlight the changing culture of the School.

“We’ve seen in our surveys of admitted students that perceptions of Hotchkiss have been changing from a school that is intense to one that is ambitious, but also warm, welcoming, diverse, and dynamic,” says Beare. “These changes in perception honestly reflect the School today and the effectiveness of the Admissions staff.”

Beare will be the Dean of Admission for a new school in Beijing called Keystone Academy, opening in the fall of 2014.

Primarily a school for Chinese students, grades 1 through 12, it will provide a worldclass formal education and an appreciation for Chinese language and culture, and also an appreciation for other cultures. Rachael and her husband, Instructor in Philosophy and Religion David Beare, will continue to live on campus in 2012-13, while she begins preliminary work on this exciting project.

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GRADUATION 2009 The Promise of a New Day

Camrinn Hanley ’12 and the next generation of solar technology B Y A L A N M U R P H Y

Young researchers

WILL SOLAR PANELS COMPLETELY REPLACE KILOWATT METERS FOR THE

in the lab

POPULATION AT-LARGE INSTEAD OF JUST SPINNING THEM IN THE OTHER DIRECTION ON SUNNY DAYS? ACCORDING TO SENIOR CAMRINN HANLEY OF SAN ANTONIO, TX, THEY WILL DO THAT AND MORE.

Camrinn had the opportunity to work on a research project with a leading scientist in photosynthesis research, Dr. K. V. Lakshmi. The objective was to improve the efficiencies of solar power. As a result of his work, Camrinn was honored as a regional finalist in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology and received a cash prize of $1,000.

Time and time again we’ve heard that direct sunlight is by far the most abundant source of energy available on earth.

The problem is that we're not yet able to harness it in an efficient and affordable way. Camrinn spent his summer working to change that, in a study titled “Spectroscopic Characterization of the Reactivity of Substrate Water Molecules in Bio-inspired Catalysts for Water Oxidation.” For one month he worked with Dr. Lakshmi and Aneesh Shah, a high school student lab partner from Long Island, in the Lakshmi Lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They conducted experiments with Photosystem II protein structures in plants. This protein "harvests light and breaks water into hydrogen and oxygen," Camrinn explains. "The important part of the light reactions of Photosystem II is that they are over 90-percent efficient whereas solar cells are only at around 20-percent efficiency. If we can better understand Photosystem II and eventually emulate it, there will be no need for any other form

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IN SCIENCE CAN COME IN SMALL STEPS.

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Some of the most important A D VA N C E S .

RIGHT: the students have more opportunities for research ahead of them.

of energy.” He came away enthused about his experience: “The particular field of research is very important and exciting," he says. "Most students wouldn’t be able to perform experiments like the ones my partner and I did."

Camrinn wasn’t working on inefficient photovoltaics, which provide direct electrical current from sunlight. It has limits to its use, the most obvious being that sunshine isn’t a constant. His work was focused instead on the next generation of solar technology. He was helping to find ways to make artificial photosynthesis a reality. Dr. Lakshmi explains, “We recognize that an understanding of the fundamental chemistry of biological solar energy conversion in nature is required to successfully achieve the goal of creating highly efficient and cost-effective bio-inspired solutions for solar fuels production.” For scientists, she says, the first priority is to “...map out the step-by-step process that nature's perfect green machines go through to convert solar rays into life-sustaining energy.” It’s the inner mechanisms of Photosystem II that have remained a mystery to scientists thus far because of the limits of conventional methodologies. Camrinn had to draw upon three fields of science to do his lab work: chemistry, biology, physics, and materials science. He was working at the molecular level and was focused on developing methods to directly investigate the mechanism.

The Department of Energy provides an explanation of how this new technology will work: “Taking inspiration from the

way a leaf uses sunlight and its own specialized membranes and molecules to transform water and carbon dioxide into fuel, researchers aim to develop earth abundant materials that produce fuel.

These materials would work like multilayer high-performance fabrics. An upper membrane would absorb light, CO2, and water and would allow oxygen to escape.

Customized catalysts embedded in an inner membrane would catalyze reactions that produce the desired fuel. And the base layer would wick fuel away, directing it to collectors.” ( H T T P : / / S C I E N C E . E N E R G Y .

GOV/~/MEDIA/BES/PDF/HUBS/JCAP_BROCH URE_72DPI.PDF)

Camrinn came away from the experience well versed in cutting-edge solar

technologies. His 21-page research paper followed the protocol for scientific publications, containing an abstract of the experiment, a detailed explanation of the process, the results, a discussion of those results, and future implications. He credits Professor Lakshmi with having a knack for explaining complex processes in simple but complete ways. He also thanks the supporters of the Grainger Initiative for Excellence in Mathematics and the Sciences for making this experience possible. Looking back upon his findings, his lab experiments at RPI, working with Dr. Lakshmi, and the Seimens competition, Camrinn said: “Some of the most important advances in science can come in small steps.”

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ANNOUNCEMENT

Three New Named Chairs on the Faculty HEAD OF SCHOOL MALCOLM MCKENZIE HAS ANNOUNCED THE APPOINTMENT OF THREE FACULTY MEMBERS TO PERMANENT CHAIRS, AS A RESULT OF RETIREMENTS IN THE 2010-11 SCHOOL YEAR. THE EDGAR M. CULLMAN ’36 CHAIR MOVED FROM WALTER DEMELLE TO CHARLES NOYES ’78; THE EDWARD TINKER CHAIR WENT FROM ROBERT HAIKO TO VIRGINIA FAUS; AND THE HUBER BUEHLER CHAIR MOVED FROM SARAH TAMES TO THOMAS TRETHAWAY ’75.

A member of the faculty since 1986, Noyes was graduated from Middlebury College (B.A.) and Rhode Island School of Design (M.A.E.). He is head of the Visual and Performing Arts Department and instructor in art. Founder of the Fairfield Farms Environment and Adventure Team, he has played an important role in the development of co-curricular activities at the Hotchkiss Farm. Starting in July, Charlie Noyes will take on a new half-time role as the Farm Curriculum Coordinator.

He will continue to teach two courses in Visual Art and will continue to work in the arts, but will step down as one of the two heads of the department.

In his new capacity Charlie will work closely with all academic departments to help plan and implement various curricular initiatives and to initiate a broad range of meaningful curricular farmbased learning experiences for students and faculty.

Huber Buehler Chair holder Tom Trethaway earned his A.B. degree from Dartmouth College in history in 1979 and his M.A.L.S. from Dartmouth in 1988.

He taught history and English at The Harvey School before joining the Hotchkiss faculty in 1982 as instructor in history and English. He has taught Chinese and Japanese history, American history (including AP), European history, American Literature survey, and Contemporary American Fiction elective.

Since 2009 he has served as co-head of the

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Humanities and Social Sciences Department, overseeing a 17-person academic department that includes the disciplines of history, geography, economics, religion, and philosophy.

In addition to teaching, Trethaway has served as a class dean and held posts in the Admission and Development offices. He currently is the head coach of Girls Varsity Swimming and coaches Boys JV Soccer.

Edward Tinker Chair holder Virginia Tyson Faus joined the Hotchkiss faculty in 1987. Before coming to Hotchkiss, she taught at the Tilton School and at Balmoral State High School in Brisbane, Queensland. A graduate of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, with a major in chemistry, Faus earned a Master of Natural Science with course work in calculus, physics, biology, and chemistry from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

She has completed summer study programs and workshops at the University of Maine at Orono and at Wesleyan University, as well as a number of lab safety workshops.

At Hotchkiss she has taught chemistry and introductory physical science and served as co-head of the Science Department. Faus created and executed several curriculum projects and compiled lab manuals for chemistry and Science 250 that are used throughout the department. She also works for the Office of Admission as a faculty interviewer.

Shown, from TOP: Thomas Trethaway, Virginia Faus, and Charles Noyes

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MORE ON THESE IMAGES IS AT: EARTHOBSERVATORY.NASA.GOV/IOTD/VIEW.PHP?ID=7314

Speaking at Reunion this June on “The State of Space” will be two alumni who have lots to say on the topic: K E V I N B A I N E S ’ 7 2 , Principal Research Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Senior Scientist with the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and T O N Y P O E ’ 8 7 , Manager, Air and Space Sales, Virtuoso, Ltd. Virtuoso® is the industry’s leading luxury travel network, comprising approximately 330 agencies with more than 7,200 elite travel specialists in 20 countries (website: www.virtuoso.com).

Our alumni experts will discuss the trajectory of government space initiatives and the burgeoning private space travel industry. Is there overlap? You bet.

“NASA is in transition,” notes Baines, “from the Shuttle era of frequent manned space flights and robotic missions to the planets to the next era of notably less frequent but bolder missions to asteroids and other destinations.”

In contrast to the winding-down of frequent NASA-funded space missions, the private sector is stepping up to fill what might be called the “astronaut flight gap.” In fact, in the near future, almost anyone could experience space, becoming a bona fide astronaut.

“We are truly at a turning point where commercial space is becoming viable,” says Poe. “Capital is flowing, and systems are being developed at record speeds.”

Within two-to-three years, private flights to space carrying passenger astronauts are expected to become commonplace.

Baines says that while he has not pursued the space flights himself, several of his colleagues have. He notes, “Alan Stern, the Principal Investigator of the New Horizons Mission to Pluto (on which I am a science team member) has secured several seats already on Virgin Galactic and also the Lynx system of one of its competitors to conduct ultraviolet studies of Earth’s atmosphere.”

So, fasten your seat belts for a most interesting discussion of the future of space travel and the many questions that will be resolved before you make that first trip! You’ll find information on this discussion and many more events in Reunion 2012, June 15-17, at

A GIFT OF ART FROM THE EMILIO SANCHEZ FOUNDATION THE SCHOOL’S ART COLLECTION RECEIVED A GIFT OF 70 LITHOGRAPHS FROM THE EMILIO SANCHEZ FOUNDATION. THE PRINTS ARE THE WORK OF 20TH-CENTURY CUBAN-AMERICAN ARTIST EMILIO SANCHEZ AND CAME TO THE SCHOOL VIA ERIK STAPPER ’53. ERIK IS THE SOLE TRUSTEE FOR THE EMILIO SANCHEZ

FOUNDATION,

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IMAGE COURTESY OF THE EMILIO SANCHEZ FOUNDATION

REUNION 2012 PREVIEW: ARE YOU READY FOR SPACE TRAVEL?

CAROLINE REILLY NAMED TO HEAD ALUMNI RELATIONS CAROLINE SALLEE REILLY ’87

has been appointed director of alumni relations. She succeeds Sara Eddy ’78, who is now at Bates College as director of donor programs.

Reilly had been serving as the associate director of alumni and parent programs, with responsibility for planning and implementing on- and off-campus events. These included Reunion, career networking and affinity events, webcasts, and alumni recognition programs. She began in this post in 2009, returning to her alma mater after working in advertising and marketing, and small business management for 18 years.

Reilly earned a B.S. degree in Advertising from the University of Colorado School of Journalism in 1991 and joined Ogilvy & Mather in New York as a media planner that same year. She moved from there to Karlitz & Company, a marketing agency where she was account manager, working on culinary, experiential, and luxury campaigns. She left New York in 1998 to work in Nantucket, where she founded ACKtivities, a firm that specialized in non-profit event marketing and covered all aspects of small business planning and management.

Her father, John Sallee, is a member of the Class of 1963.

HOTCHKISS.ORG/DOCUMENTS/12_REUNIONPRELIMSCHED.PDF.

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John Pillsbury Snyder ’09: Titanic Survivor

BY DIVYA SYMMERS

One hundred years ago, on April 15, headlines around the world began erupting with the first horrific reports that the unsinkable

Titanic had gone down in the middle of the North Atlantic the night before.

On its maiden voyage from England to New York, the 883-foot White Star Line vessel – the largest, grandest ship in the world – departed from Southampton at noon on April 10, fitted with the latest in luxury appointments and carrying millionaire stalwarts of American society as well as (after a stop in Queenstown, today’s Cobh) a full steerage complement of immigrants from Ireland and elsewhere.

More than 1500 of them – rich and poor, men and women, captain, crew and passengers – went down with the ship after it collided with an iceberg, hundreds dying painfully from exposure in the icy sea as lifeboats floated achingly close by.

Just over 700 survived and reached New York on board the Carpathia, some in the same clothes in which they’d departed the doomed ship, others huddled under borrowed blankets. Among them were John Pillsbury Snyder, Hotchkiss Class of 1909, and his wife, Nelle Stevenson Snyder. “Dear Father,” he wrote several days later, in a letter that was recently sold at auction. “Here we are again both safe and sound – thankful and glad to be home. You perhaps have not heard of the way we reached safety. I can’t tell you all about it…because that would take a very long time and would fill a book.”

Snyd, as he was known to classmates, cut an

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ABOVE: A 1926 portrait of John Snyder

imposing swath at the School. “He sits high in all the people’s hearts,” read the caption beneath his senior photograph in the 1909 Misch. Older than his fellow students, he stood out for his accomplishments, serving as prep class president that spring. By his upper mid year he was captain of both the football and the baseball teams, and by senior year his

list of achievements included “Class President in Fall Term, President of Olympian Society, Cheering Staff, Championship Class Hockey Team, Manager of Musical Association, Ivy Orato, Baseball Squad.”

Back in Minneapolis, he attended the University of Minnesota for two years and in 1911 opened an imported car business called Snyder’s Garage. On January 22, 1912, not long after his 24th birthday, he married 20year-old Nelle Stevenson. The couple embarked on a honeymoon tour of Europe, including Italy, where he visited Fiat factories with the intention of opening his own franchise. By all accounts, it was an enjoyable trip: One of his letters in the auction collection, written on Titanic stationery, was a thank you to a cigar store in London which apparently sent him an especially fine selection.

As the apotheosis of the Gilded Age, Titanic offered first-class passengers plenty of places to enjoy a quiet cigar, from trellised verandas to sumptuously appointed smoking rooms; even an ersatz Parisian cafe. There were Turkish Baths, swimming pools, a squash court, various lounges (including one for ladies’ maids), writing rooms, libraries, and a gymnasium. The iconic grand staircase, so prominently featured in the movie versions of the tragedy, was crowned by a great bronze clock and glass-topped dome. On the

IMAGES COURTESY OF PHILIP WEISS AUCTIONS

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LEFT: Some of the Snyder memorabilia recently sold at auction

evening of April 14, John and Nelle would have dined in the vast, 500-seat, white-panelled first-class dining room where they were served a 10-course meal ranging from oysters to filet mignon to pâté de foie gras to chocolate éclairs.

The young couple was asleep in their stateroom when the boat hit an iceberg, which they felt as an inexplicable bump, and going out to the corridor three times to see what was happening, they finally dressed and went up to the top deck. After an officer told them to go back and put on their lifebelts, they returned to find the lifeboats getting ready.

Not many people were on the deck at that point or eager to get into them – the myth of the Titanic’s invincibility was pervasive and the idea of swinging down a great height in an open boat to a black and icy sea desperately unappealing.

As Snyder wrote his father, “they thought it much safer to stay on the big boat than try the lifeboats.” Later he told reporters, “The women, after looking over the rail

into the water, refused to change their seeming safe position for the more precarious one in a lifeboat. An officer pleaded then ordered them into the boat. But still they refused to go.”

Someone – perhaps Captain E.J. Smith, perhaps the first officer – called out to put the honeymooners on board. And so the Snyders, Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson Bishop of Michigan, and a newlywed French couple S p r i n g

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were assisted into Lifeboat 7, the first to be launched. Others on board included Blanche and William Greenfield, a mother and son from Brooklyn, and two young American women who were traveling with a tiny Pomeranian, one of their mothers, and a Cornell graduate named Gilbert Tucker – a total of 26 or 28 people, according to differing reports, in a boat designed to carry 65, although five more were later transferred from an adjacent vessel.

“When we had rowed some distance sway…we realized…that the finest boat in the world was doomed – We hit between 11:40 & 11:50,” Snyder wrote to his father, “and the Titanic sunk at 2:22 in the morning.”

For at least an hour after the ship’s lights blinked out and the stern finally slipped beneath the dark still ocean, those in the ship’s 18 lifeboats, rowing to stay warm, heard what they variously described as heavy moaning, a high and terrible keening, and anguished screams from those in the water. “Those shrieks pursued us and haunted us as we pulled away in the night,” stated a cable sent to the French newspaper Matin by three passengers who were also in Lifeboat 7, a trio of Frenchmen who had been playing bridge in a first-class lounge when “a crunching mass of ice packed up against the portholes.”

It was bitterly cold, and the boat was leaking (Nelle helped bail with her best winter hat), but thankfully both Snyders had had the foresight to put on as much clothing as possible, adding layers that included winter shoes and coats. Lifeboat 7 reached the Carpathia at about 5:30 that morning, wrote John Snyder, adding “You can’t imagine how we felt and I am sure the Lord had his guiding hand on Nelle’s and my hand.”

Reaching New York three nights later, on April 18, they were greeted at the Cunard Pier by an almost hysterical crowd of 30,000, hundreds hoping that missing family members were among those rescued. It must have been overwhelming for the young couple.

“Uncle Ed, Mabel & Charlie Williams, Aunt Ethel [and] Uncle Victor all met us in New York,” Snyder wrote in evident relief from a New York hotel room. “Many of my old

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RIGHT: The 1909 Misch

Hotchkiss classmates were also there.” He closed with, “I hope you get this letter and I sure will be glad to see you home. Home looks mighty good to me.”

In the days, weeks, and months that followed, the nation seemed in a state of shock, stunned by the enormity of the tragedy.

Churches were packed. Speeches and sermons were made. Hearings were held, first in New York and then in Washington. Clergy and politicians decried the excessive pursuit of luxury that – along with demonstrably poor seamanship – they believed was at the root of the disaster. Much was made of the heroism and self-sacrifice displayed by gallant first-class gentlemen in evening dress who declined seats in the tragically few lifeboats and retired to the salon for snifters of brandy.

This chivalrous mythology would also pursue the men who had the good, or ill, fortune to survive: Among the Snyders’ fellow passengers from Lifeboat 7, Dickinson Bishop and his wife, Helen, returned to Michigan only to be unfairly plagued by rumors that he’d snuck onto a lifeboat in women’s clothing. The couple divorced in 1916. Others – including Mrs.

Greenfield – never forgot what they’d seen and heard that night and remained haunted for the rest of their lives. (One passenger found himself horribly reminded of it by the roar of the crowd at a baseball game.)

In later years, John Snyder, like many other survivors, declined to talk about his ordeal.

After giving an initial interview to the Minneapolis Tribune, he settled back into hometown life and – except during World War I, when he joined the army as an infantry major – the Snyders lived quietly in the pleasant suburb of Wayzata, raising two sons and a daughter in a large, comfortable house.

In 1926, he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives and served one term, following in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, John S. Pillsbury, the state’s eighth governor, and his father, Fred B. Snyder, also a state representative and regent of the University of Minnesota. He became an officer at a state bank and later served as a director for several iron-ore mining concerns. Snyder’s Garage, his high-end automotive business, thrived on Minneapolis’s South Tenth Street for 43 years, finally closing in 1955.

When he died in 1959 at 71 – of a heart attack on the 17th green of the Woodhill Country Club – a front-page obituary not only mentioned that he and Nelle were Titanic survivors, but that he once bowled a perfect 300 at the Minneapolis Athletic Club.

John and Nelle Snyder only went to Europe twice, he told an interviewer in 1955.

The first time, for their honeymoon, was fine until the return trip – and Nelle, he noted ruefully, never wanted to sail on the oversized Titanic in the first place. He convinced her to travel overseas a second time in 1938, but that trip was cut short when they ran into Hitler’s troops on the road to Vienna. “We just didn’t seem to plan our visits right,” he said.

NOTE: FOR THOSE WHO KNOW PHIL PILLSBURY ’53 AND HENRY PILLSBURY '54, JOHN SNYDER'S GRANDFATHER AND THEIR GREAT-GREAT GRANDFATHER WERE BROTHERS.

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Hotchkiss Alumni in Print The Bowl of Light: Ancestral Wisdom from a Hawaiian Shaman

BY HANK WESSELMAN ’59 SOUNDS TRUE MAY 2011

A paleoanthropologist with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a resident of Hawaii,Wesselman is the author of numerous scientific publications as well as seven books on shamanism. His latest book investigates the cosmology of ancient Polynesia through a series of philosophical discourses with a great Kahuna elder, Hale Makua, which touch on ancestral wisdom, our own divine natures, rituals for communing with nature, and more. The result is a “fascinating tribute to the life and teachings of a great Hawaiian spiritual warrior.”

Hoosier Life & Casualty: A Novel

BY IAN WOOLLEN ’75 CASPERIAN BOOKS DECEMBER 2009

This, Woollen’s second novel – his first, Stakeout on Millennium Drive, won the 2006 Best Books of Indiana Fiction Award – has been praised as “entertaining, imaginative, and very human.” Like his first, it, too, is set in his home state, where a brief joyride in a borrowed truck leads the main character, Elvis Scurvine, on a month-long rollercoaster of an adventure with “the woman he never wanted to meet.” Her unorthodox views on health insurance, along with a failed jailbreak, a pair of Civil War re-enactors, and a pharmaceutical experiment gone awry, add to the heat in the “Crossroads of America.”

Conceiving Citizens: Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran

BY FIROOZEH KASHANI-SABET ’85 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, USA; 2011

The director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on various aspects of Middle Eastern history –including ethnic and political conflicts and gender and women’s issues – Dr. Kashani-Sabet offers a meticulously researched look at Iranian politics and society through the history of women’s health and sexuality. Exploring the lives of Iranian women under successive regimes of the past two centuries, she sources rare archival materials to describe how national hygiene campaigns cast mothers as the custodians of a healthy civilization and put women at the center of nationalist debates. Dr. Kashani-Sabet “argues persuasively that starting in the 19th century a series of issues brought maternalism to the heart of modern Iranian thought, concepts of nationhood, and tasks of a modern government.”

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A CONVERSATION with Dean of Faculty Kevin Hicks and Dean of Academic Life Tom Woelper Hotchkiss To begin, perhaps we should describe the Magazine: curricular review process. …

Woelper: In September of 2002, Head of School Skip Mattoon instructed the Curriculum Review Committee to be both innovative and pragmatic as it developed a set of recommendations that reaffirmed or recommended the adoption of practices appropriate for Hotchkiss. At that time, it had been at least a generation since the last systematic review of the School’s program, and the curriculum had grown organically and in places haphazardly to about 230 courses. The Curriculum Review Committee strived to create a more coherent, intentional Hotchkiss diploma.

In December of 2005, the Curriculum Review Committee submitted its report to the Head of School, and since then most of the recommendations, including Prep and Lower Mid Humanities and the Science Core, have been implemented.

The Curriculum Review Committee understood that curricular review needed to be ongoing and saw its recommendations as a launching pad, not an end point. As such, the work of that Committee feeds the work of the Hotchkiss Plan and our current conversations.

HM: Was the concept of core competencies the starting point in the discussions of the curriculum?

Woelper: We began with the question, “What should students know and be able to do when they graduate?” The highly elective nature of the Hotchkiss program is part of its strength, so we wanted to preserve that flexibility. At the same time, we wanted to build the elective program on a more coherent foundation of content and skills. That’s why we designed more integrated ninth- and tenth-grade programs and developed core

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competencies in science, humanities, and elsewhere. This allows teachers in elective courses to build on the knowledge and skills that students develop in foundation courses.

The science core has been in place for three or four years now, and our first Humanities Program students will graduate this year. We have seen these students become more self-possessed and grow in their confidence working with others, especially in a classroom setting.

It is important to comment, too, that the curriculum review’s focus on the science core has been enhanced by the Grainger Initiative for Excellence in Math & Science, which has led to interesting work in the math and science departments.

There is a spirit of possibility, of imagining how things could be, in a way that is exciting and productive.

HM: The Humans and Water series of courses is an exciting development. How did that come about?

Woelper: That concept began with Malcolm, when he first became head of school. In talks about the curriculum, he suggested the idea of interdisciplinary courses that addressed authentic world challenges – global and environmental – that are in line with the School’s mission.

Access to clean water is inherently an interdisciplinary issue.

Elements of this topic are found in our current geography, environmental science, stream ecology, limnology and comparative government and politics courses. This provides us with the opportunity to bring together students in these classes in productive discussion and have them engage around a common topic with different expertise and experience.

We have just identified our first guest lecturer. So we’re starting modestly and thinking about future topics that will bring coherence to the lecture series.

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Top and above: Kevin Hicks, left, and Tom Woelper met with Hotchkiss Magazine editor Roberta Jenckes to talk about the newly refreshed Hotchkiss curriculum. Kevin joined Hotchkiss in 2010 as Associate Head of School and Dean of Faculty, and Tom Woelper joined the faculty in 2000. He teaches history in addition to serving as Assistant Head of School and Dean of Academic Life.

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HM: This brings up the subject of all-school lectures. Do you see them as being a part of the curriculum?

Hicks: We want to make sure that all-school lectures are connected to our work, and that – whenever possible – lecturers interact with our students beyond their performance. Some have suggested that we plan all-school lectures on Friday nights in advance of no-class Saturdays, and use Saturday for discussion within the advisory groups. We would also like for such visitors to be interviewed by an appropriate faculty member for a podcast presentation on the Hotchkiss website, so that alumni and others continue to view the School as a site for intellectual engagement.

HM: What has been the effect of laptops in the classroom?

Woelper: The School’s Information Technology strategic plan calls for faculty and students to have “ubiquitous and equitable access to technology.” Presently, we are meeting this charge by providing students and faculty with MacBooks.

Students and faculty now use the same hardware and software, which opens up possibilities that didn’t exist before. In the future, we may meet this charge by providing students and

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faculty with mobile devices, such as iPads. Technology helps us to achieve some of our teaching goals, such as placing students in the center of the learning process, which is crucial to developing lifelong learners.

Hicks: The most significant broad effect is social: students appreciate that there is no material hierarchy being played out, at least in the classroom, surrounding who owns which device. That’s more important than you might think.

I think we need to think more deeply about how the laptops complicate classroom management. Are there moments when the laptop needs to be closed up so that we can have a different sort of engagement with the material, and one another? Of course. It’s important that such transitions be neat, elegant, and smooth.

The School has been disciplined in evaluating educational technology in terms of our educational goals – in matching the tool to the job. A pencil is technology; so is an application on a smart phone. We want to make sure our technology helps us more efficiently and successfully promote student learning – not simply become an end in and of itself.

HM: Do you think alumni who looked at our curricular offer-

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Curriculum MATTERS ings today would recognize the Hotchkiss where they studied?

Hicks: When alumni visit, they connect with our students’ enthusiasm and our teachers’ commitment to their craft.

As far as the actual program of study – no …there’s little relation to the Hotchkiss of old. But there’s nothing unique about that. All schools over the same period of time have expanded their academic programs. Ungoverned, such growth in complexity can produce a curriculum that’s “all toppings and no pizza.” There can be a lot of courses, in other words, but they don’t cohere as “an education.” At Hotchkiss, we’re committed to sustaining the vibrancy and innovation of our curriculum without sacrificing the coherence of more traditionally organized programs of study. Hotchkiss graduates should be able to explain what they learned here – and how they learned it – accurately, passionately, and substantively.

HM: And the advising program is a most important part …

Hicks: It is a cornerstone of our culture. Tom, as Dean of Academic Life, and Jen Craig, the Dean of Residential Life, have made huge progress in the past year in advancing that cause here. They have been working to standardize the expectations for advisors in terms of relating with students and helping guide them through their program of study, as well as being able to address all of the customary matters in which an advisor is expected to help a student.

Woelper: At the same time, nurturing and mentoring students will remain hallmarks of the advising relationship as we strive to make advising more consistent from advisor to advisor. In addition to advisors’ having individual relationships with advisees, we’re thinking about advisories as collective groups. When we changed the daily schedule several years ago, we created a period once a week for advisory groups, which is needed to create a group identity for an occasion like an advisory dinner, such as we had on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In faculty meetings every week now, Jen Craig and I have an “advisory minute” when we focus on what’s going on currently in the student’s life. We look at the seasonal nature of the student’s life to make sure all advisors are having consistent, timely conversations with their advisees.

Teaching is not an individual practice; it needs to be part of a collaborative endeavor. For that to be so, faculty need to have a common vocabulary when, for example, a mentor observes a mentee in a classroom, when colleagues discuss assessment practices, or when the faculty as a whole discuss what teaching practices they want to identify with Hotchkiss. These have been really interesting discussions.

Hicks: These efforts have been well received. What teacher doesn’t want to teach more effectively and memorably, and engage students in lively discussion?

…Nurturing and mentoring students will remain hallmarks of the advising relationship as we strive to make advising more consistent from advisor to advisor. – Tom Woelper This year several departments have taken professional days to give their full attention to important matters of teaching and learning. The feedback has been positive. The members of those departments report that their collaborations have been valuable.

HM: In a way, it models what you want to see in students, what you hope they will achieve. ….

Hicks: That’s true.

Woelper: I was thinking exactly the same thing. The curriculum should work differently now than it did 50 years ago.

Collaboration today is an essential skill that needs to be developed for citizenship, work, and family. We as faculty need to model that in our own learning and growth; that’s a powerful way to teach our students.

HM: What are the measurements we use to determine success?

How do you know that you are succeeding?

Woelper: This is something we are focusing on right now.

Many schools don’t have the handle on measurement that they should. They tend to default to SAT scores or AP scores, which are often poor markers of teaching and learning. We want to keep looking at student work. We have to identify what we want students to know and be able to do in different disciplines.

Hicks: It’s easy to rely on anecdotes, and to point to what your best students do as an outer marker of the School’s success. There’s a role for anecdotes, but you’ve got to construct a system by which you can accurately, consistently, and coherently measure whether you are actually doing what you believe you are doing.

Our first step has been to ask probing but essentially simple questions: what are we trying to do? How are we trying to do it? How do we know if we’re successful? On the department and individual level, we’ve asked a related question: What do you value?

We want to preserve self-expression in teaching and yet make

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…Part of our mission is to cultivate an enthusiasm for lifelong learning. We need to be deeply thoughtful about and committed to that goal. – Kevin Hicks sure that our teachers and students are authentically inhabiting one school. Tom has been leading a discussion among heads of departments to achieve clarity about “mission.” These mission statements must have utility as instruments of departmental governance, so they must be specific. Sometimes, that need for specificity necessitates that departments hash things out in tough-minded ways. Some departments have to struggle mightily with – and find ways to creatively overcome – embedded disciplinary differences that are significant.

This challenge is, of course, no different than the one we’ve

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chosen to meet here as a community. In striving to be a school where students are truly respectful of others – where your race, class, gender, sexual identity, or national origin don’t keep you from being a Bearcat or grant you a special purchase on being a Bearcat – we’re striving as adults to model for our students, as often as possible, the kind of engagement with the world that we wish for our students to emulate.

On a related note, part of our mission is to cultivate an enthusiasm for lifelong learning. We need to be deeply thoughtful about and committed to that goal. What are we doing within our structure to enable students to be successful without our structure? What are you doing as a teacher of AP Government?

What are you doing as a teacher of American literature? We aspire to act in concert with our mission. Any claim we make about student outcomes must be verified by what’s happening in our classrooms. Let’s look at our syllabi. Let’s look at our assignments and tests. Let’s look at the real work being done by our teachers and students in our classrooms and labs, and ask ourselves the question – “What do we see when we look at these things? What do these things demonstrate?”

We embrace and accept that there is forever a gap between what we mean to do and what we manage to do. Healthy organizations, like healthy people, wake up every day committed to minding the gap.

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Curriculum MATTERS

THE EDSEL FORD MEMORIAL LIBRARY Reimagining Learning and Discovery, with Students for Guidance • By Barbara Doyle-Wilch, Director of the Edsel Ford Memorial Library

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ince my warm welcome to The Hotchkiss School in August, I have been engaged with the Edsel Ford Memorial Library staff in rethinking what the library could be or should become to be relevant to learners of the future. One of our first exercises was to articulate how we envisioned the library would be described by the tour guides who, while walking backwards with families of prospective students, would use the library as one of the key selling points that would set Hotchkiss apart from other prestigious schools. We selected adjectives to create this picture, and thus our tour was begun: “The Edsel Ford Memorial library is a place for discovery, which is lively, dynamic, essential, accessible, and scholarly.

But above all, we are HOTCHKISS BLUE!” Our work continued as we began to conceive ways to emphasize aspects of this statement and to build on the rich collections and beautiful spaces that have defined the Edsel Ford Memorial Library.

In order to emphasize that the library is a place for discovery, we began to think about how to best engage students with the joy of investigation. We had to find new ways of working with students in the experience of research by first setting aside the lecture about how to use a library and replacing it with a partnership in the hunt for good information. So we now have a team of library staff members who work with the classes in small groups of three or four, enabling the students to discuss their findings and learn how to cite these resources appropriately for the assignment. We are already finding that through this library experience the students are learning in one class period what had previously taken two or three class periods.

One of the most difficult parts of doing research is refining your research topic, sometimes narrowing it and sometimes

expanding it. Most students have difficulty understanding that it takes a lot of research and reading about a subject to find the right topic and especially one that triggers your personal interest. I loved hearing Associate Director of the Library David Ward tell a student, “That might be a good topic if you intend to be here at Hotchkiss for the next ten years!” Working closely with the students has given all of the library staff a better connection with them, and I believe the students are developing more comfort with asking a librarian for assistance. According to one student I spoke with, students are reluctant to ask “the lady who takes our money” for help in their research. Our goal is to create positive relationships between a librarian and a student that will last throughout the student’s tenure.

Deep involvement with Humanities classes for Preps and Lower Mids has brought much liveliness to the library; often

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Collaborating with the teaching faculty to design library expreiences that are integrated into the classes has been very rewarding.

– Barbara Doyle-Wilch we have had four or more classes working with their teachers and the library staff. Collaborating with the teaching faculty to design library experiences that are integrated into the classes has been very rewarding. We have also discovered that getting out of the library and into the class is possible and even important in establishing the partnership of teacher and librarian.

We also wanted the space to be lively with art, believing that art is like a book – you may not resonate with the style or the content, but the experience is important. Curator of Special Collections Joan Baldwin has been filling our spaces with beautiful and thoughtful art from the School’s permanent collections as well as student work. In the fall, we created a brochure describing the art in the library and highlighting some stu-

dents’ work. Another project grew out of our need to find a table for chess in the library as well as our recycling of out-ofdate reference books. At the suggestion of Technical Services Librarian Pamela Simon, we asked Brad Faus’s art class to design a table made from books. After the students created some designs for a competition, the students in Jesse Young’s 350 Physics class reviewed the designs for equilibrium, tension, compression, torque, and pressure. The design students made a presentation about their table to the library staff, who selected the winning design and a runner-up. We hope to have the winning design made this spring. Great fun and great designs!

We live in a very dynamic world of information and resources. In order to continue the strong history of superb collections that former Director Walter DeMelle built, we have designed the liaison program. Each library staff member is appointed to work with a department to select materials that will support or complement the work of that department. The liaisons are the conduits between the library, the teaching faculty, and the selection process. They have been busy identifying outdated materials in reference for de-accessioning, replacing selected VHS tapes with DVD or streaming video and finding appropriate digital resources that would be beneficial to the study and teaching. Kim Gnerre, collection development and digital resources librarian, is coordinating the liaisons and providing tools for them to use in the acquisition process.

Looking for ways to engage students is necessarily dynamic.

Above: Librarian Kim Gnerre advises students on research. Opposite Top: Instructors Nate Seidenberg and Merrilee Mardon work in the library with students in their Latin American Studies class. Opposite Bottom: Shared laptop learning happens everywhere on campus.

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Curriculum MATTERS We had an extraordinary exhibit in the Luke Foyer on WWI that dovetailed with Humanities 250 history classes. The students were very interested in learning about Hotchkiss graduates who served during the war, as well as what the campus looked like at that time. For this exhibit, we also collaborated with archivists from Northfield-Mount Hermon, ChoateRosemary Hall, and Miss Porter’s; their collections provided the exhibit with documents, artifacts, and photographs depicting the experience of prep school girls during the Great War. The exhibit was highlighted by an early evening of WWI poetry readings by students in Poet-in-Residence Susan Kinsolving’s class, and WWI songs performed in the library by the Blue Notes, led by Choral Director Laurie Ellington ’83.

Joining forces with the Hotchkiss Information Technology Services, we created a student advisory group. Director of I.T. Services Jon Ostendorf and I met with the group of ten students over dinner and discussed how the library and I.T. worked for them. The students informed us on how they found information, how they did their research, what they like to do electronically, and how well our two areas, the library and I.T., were responding to their needs. Out of that first meeting, we began to rethink our physical spaces to find comfortable group workplaces and places to develop and practice presentations; from this process we created a multimedia lab that provides students with the sophisticated tools they need for the creation of new media. The advisory group is meeting again in late February to discuss the usefulness of the library website – especially, how easy (or not) it is to find information – and I suspect, a wide range of other ideas.

Teaching students how to use print and digital resources effectively and reliably is essential. Now that our students have access to the world of information via the Internet, the librarian’s job has changed from acquiring books to teaching students how to evaluate information. In days past the library was a filter in this process by buying only the best of what was published.

Today, students must be taught how to evaluate information and sources. For the staff, the shift from “back room” jobs of processing orders, shelf preparation, and book repair to working with students and faculty requires new skills and knowledge.

Accessible and scholarly are reflected in everything we are doing or planning. I believe strongly that Hotchkiss students require the opportunity to learn by using the best of resources.

One of our current programs is working with faculty members to integrate the use of primary resources in their teaching – Hotchkiss historical documents, artifacts, rare books, or art from the permanent collection. For the students this introduces a totally different way to experience and understand history.

Our new department called Archives and Special Collections, headed by Peter Rawson and Joan Baldwin, has moved to the mezzanine of the library in order to accommodate classes. They are also developing a long-range plan for maintaining and

developing these wonderful resources for our students.

But above all, we are BLUE! We are building on the distinguished history of the Edsel Ford Memorial Library (thank you, Mr. DeMelle, and others) and the outstanding teaching faculty as well as the generosity of the Ford family. The library memorial gift was made in 1952 by Mrs. Edsel Ford and her sons Henry ’36, Benson ’38, and William Clay ’43, and the library’s renovations in 2009 were made possible by Mr. and Mrs. William Clay Ford ’43, P’75,’79, GP’10. And, oh yes, in the spring you may come upon a group of students in blue shirts roving the library to help other students find materials, resolve computer problems, or assist with difficult academic questions. The idea for the “StuLibs” came from the student advisory group and is being organized by Faris Mourad ’13 in an effort to enhance the Edsel Ford Memorial Library experience! Never a dull moment – and I like it that way!

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THE OTHER CLASSROOM: VISITORS WHO INSPIRE Bret Anthony Johnston, Harvard Director of Creative Writing and Henry Klimowicz, Artist-in-Residence • By Divya Symmers Bret A. Johnston “What do skateboards, Corpus Christi, snakes, and Harvard have in common?” asked Hotchkiss Poet-in Residence Susan Kinsolving in a school-wide email, inviting staff, faculty, and students to Bret Anthony Johnston’s reading on December 1.

“You won’t be bored,” she added.

Johnston, who’s been teaching writing at Harvard for the past six years and is currently director of the university’s creative writing program, is slight and dark-haired with a puckish grin, black-rimmed glasses, and a sly, droll delivery that gives him the air of a kindly Brooklyn hipster.

He was anything but boring.

Every seat in the Faculty Room was filled by the time he was introduced by Ian McClure ’13, at a little past 7 p.m. Ian, a fellow Texan, pointed out that Johnston has been named one of Harvard’s top eight hottest brainiacs, and that his piece about skateboard legend Danny Way was included in the Best American Sports Writing 2011, edited by Jane Leavy.

He’s also the author of Corpus Christi: Stories, cited as best book of the year by The Independent of London and The Irish Times, as well as Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, both published by Random House. He has been awarded the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and

Above: Award-winning writer Bret Anthony Johnston enthralled students with his teaching. Opposite: Artist-in-residence Henry Klimowicz walks students through his Tremaine Gallery show.

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they were fellow teachers at the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program.

“What struck me was how much he stressed writing as a tedious, painstaking, labor-intensive process,” said Instructor in English Sam Prouty. Johnston was “humorous and charming, but the message was clear: follow your passion and work your tail off.”

Senior Claire Shope ’12 was “completely enthralled” by Johnston’s teaching style. “As Mr. Prouty said, he told us being a writer is hard – really hard – yet somehow he left me with an itch to write, not just my assignments but also outside of the classroom and beyond Hotchkiss.”

Before leaving, Johnston confessed that he still skateboards “more than my bosses at Harvard would prefer.” But skateboarding and writing aren’t that different, he pointed out. “You can’t walk around a place like Hotchkiss and not notice the pitch of certain handrails or if there’s enough runway to get to a handrail. It’s just a way that I look at the world; I can’t turn it off. It’s the same thing with writers. You’re always looking at things and trying to find that perfect detail to use in a story or a poem or an essay – something that’s going to, in just a couple of words, open up the world.”

Henry Klimowicz “I wanted to dance in it,” a student wrote in The Tremaine Gallery’s visitor book, shortly after Henry Klimowicz’s luminous show of cardboard-based sculpture opened in January.

The well-known area artist, who lives in neighboring Millerton,

Photos by Alan Murphy, except as noted

The Southern Review’s Annual Short Fiction Award, among other honors. In 2006, he received a National Book Award for writers under 35.

When he takes the mic, he explains that he took four years off between high school in his hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Miami University in Ohio, to skateboard. Later, in answer to a student question, he confessed that yes, he wore his hair in long dreadlocks for a very long time. He always loved language and literature, but he didn’t realize what a writer was until he was 21 or 22 and was invited to a reading by author Robert Stone. “I went in loving to read, and an hour later came out wanting to be a writer.” He’s been doing it ever since.

“Your high school experience, the Hotchkiss experience, is so profoundly different than my high school experience. I know that many of you get to work with really serious writers and thinkers. I’ve already met some of them – Sam Prouty and Chris Burchfield and certainly Susan Kinsolving. You guys already have it– you know what a writer is.”

If you want to write, his advice – not so surprising for a skateboarder – sounds like the classic Nike ad: just do it. Don’t wait for inspiration. Don’t wait for the muse (“I don’t believe in the muse,” he says. “I don’t believe in writer’s block, either, but that’s another story.”)

Character is important, of course. So is place. Structure is something easily learned (“It’s like a magic trick, and who doesn’t like magic?”). But the most important thing is showing up and doing the work. Sometimes it takes more than 20 drafts.

One story took him ten years. The secret, he says, is never giving up. “If you want to be a writer, be a writer. Do the work the same way you would do it if you’re going to be an architect. The same way you would do the work if you’re cooking French fries at McDonald’s. There won’t be any French fries to sell if you don’t make them.”

When he reads part of one of his stories, Soldier of Fortune, it sounds familiar to at least one listener, who realizes it’s featured in the Best American Short Stories 2011 edited by Geraldine Brooks (who spoke at the School several years ago, after her novel, March, was an all-School read). It’s a harrowing narrative that captures the emotions of adolescence in dramatic detail.

But he stops just before the end, the point at which the narrator discovers what the reader has suspected all along.

“I think the secret to writing fiction is really simple: think up people that you love and then put them in the worst situation that you can imagine,” he says later. “If you really love your characters and you put them in the worst situation you can imagine, a story will come out of it.”

He visited several Hotchkiss English classes the next day, including Susan Kinsolving’s Creative Writing class. “The students were smiling; their eyes fixed on his blackboard diagrams of ‘narrative structure’ with images of a clothesline and a boomerang,” reported Kinsolving, who met Johnston when

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Photo: Henry Klimowicz

NY, was also the School’s artist-in-residence for more than a week, working with a range of students, from seniors with independent study projects to preps in Humanities Art and lower mids, upper mids, and seniors taking Architecture or Foundation Design courses.

The advantages of having a working artist on campus, said Instructor in Art Brad Faus, included “being able to follow his lead not only from the show but also to receive immediate feedback from him on process, technique, and aspects of the material that they may need to troubleshoot and learn more about.”

For Terri Moore, Instructor in Art and co-director of The Tremaine Gallery, who invited Klimowicz to exhibit at Hotchkiss, it was “having him relate to the students directly and having them respond to the process of working with him.”

On the second day of his residency, Klimowicz was surrounded by members of Charlie Noyes’s Humanities Art class, all earnestly cutting strips of cardboard and manipulating the strips into small intricate shapes. When asked if they were trying to copy the work they’d seen in the gallery show or going in their own direction, the students made it clear that, thanks to encouragement from the artist and their Hotchkiss teachers, they were definitely on their own artistic journeys.

-Top: A student thinks about his design. Above: Klimowicz’s “Burghers of Calais” in the Tremaine Gallery exhibit; Opposite: “Found art” in the strips of cardboard, young artist working on her design, and a work by Klimowicz in the rotunda

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Curriculum MATTERS

“Everything in the show is really cool to look at and gives you ideas, but you have your own twist, too,” said Carly Craig ’15.

After attending a gallery talk with the class a few days later, Ciara Fanlo ’15 noted: “It was interesting to hear Mr. Klimowicz elaborate on the inspiration for his pieces and how he made them.

Because he doesn’t really think of what he’s going to do before he does it. He kind of repeats a shape like this circle, and then he lets the piece develop itself.”

“One of the things that we were trying to get across was this idea that they didn’t have to know where they were going,” said Klimowicz. “And for these kids, in particular, they really want to know where they’re going because they want to do well with it.

So they had to let go and let it just flow into what it was going to be. And I think you can bring that kind of not worrying so much about what the end result will be, that kind of trusting your gut instinct, into other things you do in life.”

Klimowicz’s critically acclaimed show filled The Tremaine Gallery space with astounding shapes and textures, each piece playing off the other to create a transcendent world that immersed viewers in cellular-level textures and fractal-like forms, many repeated on a monumental scale.

He created at least two sculptures for specific Hotchkiss environments, and the term “site-specific” became familiar to students after they finished creating cardboard-based sculpture of their own, both collaboratively and as individuals. “They had to go around and look at the School and see it architecturally in order to find interesting places to put their work.

And in that process they saw their own piece change. There’s a kid whose work is hanging in the ground floor atrium who said, ‘This morning I hated it and now I love it,’ ” Klimowicz pointed out, and laughed. “It’s the same piece, but the concept changed, and his sense of its being worthy also changed. And that’s pretty neat.”

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TRUE BLUE

se rv i c e , l o y a lty, a n d lo ve

Celebrating Robert Hawkins, an extraordinary teacher ‘Profoundly devoted to a calling and a place’

R

BY ROBERTA JENCKES

Robert J. Hawkins, 88, died on January 9 at Noble Horizons in Salisbury.

“The Hawk,” as he was known affectionately on campus,

taught at Hotchkiss from 1945 until his retirement in 1988.

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Hawkins was one of Hotchkiss’s most respected masters, remembered by uncounted alumni for his high expectations of his students, his strict yet fair discipline, and his behind-the-scenes efforts to help struggling students. Part of his teaching legacy is that even 30 or 40 years after graduation, many alumni can provide without prompting grammar rules learned at Hotchkiss, often in “The Hawk’s” class.

“He was very much an old-school schoolmaster in the sense that he believed very strongly in the discipline of learning,” said Francis “Fay” Vincent ’56 of his mentor and friend. “He was a great man, and I loved him.

He had a total commitment to excellence and the pursuit of clarity. It’s a wonderful art, and no one at Hotchkiss ever stood higher, in my book, than Bob in his commitment to a superb paragraph.”

Born in South Dakota in April 1923, Robert James Hawkins completed grade school and high school in Highmore, SD, before beginning his studies at Trinity College in Hartford. At Trinity he excelled in English, French, and Italian; he received honors in both English and Romance Languages at his graduation in 1945. In recommending him to Hotchkiss, one of his Trinity profes-

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OPPOSITE: Proofreading materials RIGHT: Harris House garden, and, in the classroom, circa 1970s BELOW: A much-loved book

by Mr. Hawkins

sors wrote, “Mr. Hawkins is a young man of fine character, excellent background, and of much more than average ability.” Another Trinity professor described him as “a delightful and amusing young man, modest and well-behaved, with a lot of humor.”

Hawkins began teaching at Hotchkiss in the fall of 1945. At first he taught both English and French. But on his return from a fellowship in 1947-1948 at the University of Edinburgh, he taught only English, except for occasional fill-in courses in French. For an impressive 41 years, he gave his considerable energy and talents to the English department.

He held the Independence Foundation Chair #2 from 1982 until his retirement in 1988. He was the author of Preface to Poetry (New York, Basic Books), published in 1965. In 1979, he published The Kent Family Chronicles Encyclopedia: With Condensations of the John Jakes Novels and Essays about America from 1770-1877. He assisted in the 1964 publication, Landowska on Music, collected, edited, and translated by Denise Restout.

John N. “Jack” Conyngham ’44, P’75,’78 remembered in a Hotchkiss Magazine article how much Hawkins worked behind the scenes to help struggling students. “I don’t think too

many people know how many students he helped get through Hotchkiss by tutoring and encouraging them. They probably wouldn’t have made it otherwise,” Conyngham said, adding that Mr. Hawkins “is tough, but he has a soft side that’s like butter.” Conyngham was the initiator behind the founding of The Robert Hawkins Fund at Hotchkiss (a faculty travel fund for study and enrichment).

Hawkins lived on campus for most of his career at Hotchkiss, overseeing dormitories.

Fay Vincent was one of the students on his corridor. “We liked him very much,” Vincent remembers. “He was a friend, not just someone who was running a corridor. His apartment was a place where you could wander in; he always had wonderful classical music on, and you could talk with him about anything.”

Erin Reid P’01,’05, associate director of stewardship and special projects, remembers enjoyable conversations with Hawkins during the years after his retirement when he did proofreading for the Development Office.

“He came in very early in the mornings, and we would spend a few minutes chatting upon my arrival to work,” she says. “On one of those mornings, he told me about the last thing Mr. Van Santvoord [former Headmaster George Van Santvoord ’08] said

to him. It was, ‘What do you think of splitting infinitives?’ Mr. Hawkins said, ‘I try not to think of it often!’”

Although he retired in 1988, Hawkins remained close to Hotchkiss, both physically and emotionally. His home in Lakeville was a magnet for alumni, and he often played host to them and faculty members, serving up fabulous meals and lively conversation.

An expert and generous cook who taught others how to make his more challenging dishes, Hawkins ate with students in the school dining hall for decades. In a 2001 article in the Hotchkiss Magazine, he observed delicately that the food served “wasn’t always Epicurean fare.”

After retirement he enjoyed attending All Saints of America Orthodox Christian Church in Salisbury, and especially its music and ritual.

A lifelong lover of classical music, Hawkins was also an avid birder and studied wildflowers.

Beyond the tributes of generations of alumni who studied with him (as seen in quotes accompanying this article and in the Class Notes section), many honors to Hawkins are in place at Hotchkiss. The Robert Hawkins Fund allows Hotchkiss faculty to enhance their teaching skills by studying, traveling abroad, and otherwise enrichS p r i n g

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TRUE BLUE

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RIGHT: Mr. Hawkins with a student, circa 1969

ing their professional lives. The Class of 1949, which named Hawkins an honorary member, allocated a percentage of its 50th reunion donations to the fund. Some former students presented the School with a gift, a painting by Catherine M. Porter, “Portrait: Robert Hawkins - Master in English 1945-1988.” The portrait hangs in the Main Building hallway outside the Admission Office.

Robert Hawkins is survived by his sister, Helen Lynch of Kent, WA, and five nephews and one niece. They are: Dean (“Skip”) Cline of Tega Cay, SC; Ward Cline of Sioux Falls, SD; Lynn Braman of Rapid City, SD; Jeff Stingley of Sioux Falls, SD; Jim Lynch of La Conner, WA; and Ed Lynch of Kent, WA. He was predeceased by his parents, Francis “Frank” and Lunetta Hawkins, and two sisters, Dorothy June and Betty.

The interment ceremony in Town Hill Cemetery on campus in January was private.

A memorial service will be held at Hotchkiss at noon on Sunday, June 17.

Memorial gifts may be made to The Robert Hawkins Fund at Hotchkiss, (faculty travel fund for study and enrichment) or the Faculty Scholarship Fund (endowed fund for student scholarships).

Recollections, tributes, and anecdotes about Robert Hawkins arrived by the dozens after his death in January.

Here are excerpts from some of the many received in e-mails and published on the Hotchkiss website and Hotchkiss Class pages on Facebook.

Tom Costikyan ’47 Bob, in his second year at Hotchkiss, was our master in West dorm over the classrooms. We loved him, and he appreciated our group, much better behaved than ’46. Over the following years we remained good friends. We learned his cooking expertise extended to

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mushrooms that he picked wild, knowing which were poisonous. Too bad today’s journalists never were exposed to his writing instruction!

Buddy Watt ’55 Mr. Hawkins was very supportive to me and a classmate when we first arrived at Hotchkiss. Two young boys raised by widowed mothers were encouraged dramatically by this Master. … I had the privilege of observing one of his classes attended by our daughter – Jodie Watt ’86. I didn’t get the least bit uneasy when he called upon her – bellowing her last name WATT– but I remember my trembling fear when he called

upon me years before as Mr. Watt. …”

Robert Hanson ’59, P’93 Throughout my business and professional career many colleagues and friends have commented upon my writing skills. Without fail, I tell them that these skills were honed under the tutelage of an outstanding teacher at The Hotchkiss School. …

Hank Wesselman ’59 As one of Mr. Hawkins’ former students I celebrate his shared wisdom daily as I look at the eight books I currently have in print. He was one of those worthies (along with a cluster of literary editors) who taught me how to

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write. In our days on the Hill, we feared him, and we loved him...

put on ice cream feeds.

Alan Yorker ’65 David B. Osborne ’60 I feel so blessed to have had a Hotchkiss education, and the cornerstone of that education was English. … Every great school has a few giants among its faculty; with Stearns, Milmine, Kellogg and Hawkins (and others), Hotchkiss had more than its share. Truly, Bob Hawkins was a great teacher.

Jeff Miller ’61 When it came to the “Memorable Teachers” section of the Class of ’61’s Misch II prepared in advance of our 50th reunion held last October, the Hawk was mentioned, with affection and respect, by practically everyone.

As others have said, the principles and lessons he pounded into us Prep year have stayed with me my whole career. I’ve never forgotten (if not always practiced) his metaphor for the dangers of speaking out if not prepared: “Don’t jump into an empty swimming pool.”

John Schenck ’61 He was rigorous, demanding, and totally fair. If you took English I from Bob Hawkins, for the rest of your life you heard his voice whenever you tried to write anything. He was an equal-opportunity tyrant, and we loved him for it. If he praised something you turned in, the sense of accomplishment was intoxicating. If he didn’t, you desperately tried to get it right the next time.

He made you want to learn. No teacher can do more.

John Kipp ’62 Mr. Hawkins gave me my first failing grade, for the first marking period of my Prep year, in the fall of 1958. I learned grammar quickly, and though my mind works better with numbers than letters, I will never forget, cannot forget, the rigorous grammatical rules he taught.

I did not know him well enough to like and appreciate him until Upper Middle year, when I was on his corridor. No other master

Robert Hawkins was a unique individual to my Prep eyes in the fall of 1961. I had little to no interest in reading or classic literature, but apparently a little, very little it seems, aptitude. … In his class I remember reading the part of Alice in Carroll’s classic, as my voice had not yet changed, and I had a slight thespian streak.

This ‘performance’ encouraged my participation in the Drama Club and in parts of various plays over the next three years. … I ultimately failed Prep English for the year, but due to his efforts behind the scenes, I was offered the chance to correct the mistake at Hotchkiss summer school. From that point on I was an honor student, going on to a fine Ivy League university. I credit him with stoking a nearly cold ember into a bright and warm passion for the written word and continued learning. …

Andy Dodge ’66 In 10 years as a journalist and for the past 30 years writing about real estate, I thank Bob Hawkins every time I close out an article. He was mean and picky, and my essays that I thought were so good came back with red marks all over them. He was tough to work for, but he knew how to get the best out of all of us.

Ed Swift ’69 To this day, whenever a newscaster (mis)pronounces “err” (which is almost always), I think of the Hawk saying: “To err is human, to air is canine.” … And, I will always remember the proper spelling of Shakespeare, because he told all Preps we would flunk the final exam if we misspelled the Bard’s last name, no exceptions.

Jack Campo ’72, P’04,’06,’10 The Hawk was far and away the most important teacher in my undistinguished academic career. Years later, when I was working as a young lawyer in Paris, the senior partner in that office (Herb Lobl ’49) was also a

Hotchkiss graduate. Over a wine-sodden lunch one day I told Herb about the Hawk’s impact on me, and he encouraged me to let him know. So I wrote a long letter of profound thanks to the Hawk, with great care lest I break any of the rules. He responded graciously, and I stopped by to see him on my next trip to Lakeville.

Rick Godley ’73 Having had the Hawk as my corridor master as an anxious freshman, I have myriad memories of his dorm inspections. Being a lover of phrase, he could not resist even this exercise to have some fun. Thus, one day, after being disappointed by the sloppiness of the room that John Reily and I shared, he scribed on his report card, “Is Cleanliness Reily next to Godleyness?” …

Dan Schechter ’78 … We all remember the fear and dread of his fierce red markings. The odd thing that I remember is what would happen when his eye would catch on the view out the window.

On one of those gorgeous fall days when the hills were aflame with color, he would sometimes look, pause, and then announce that the class would take a few moments as an “aesthetic break.” Surprised and grateful, the whole class would turn to look for a minute or two, then return to the work and the fear of the Hawk. He thus also taught us how to appreciate beauty in many of its forms, including Shakespeare, the view, or a great turn of phrase. Many are forever in debt to this very unusual man.

Deborah (Stapleton) Newlen ’83 I think of “The Hawk” most working days, since I am an English teacher. I even tell my students about him. While there is much I do consciously in a very different and far less severe style than his, my ability to do other parts of my work well is a direct result of my encounter with that severity. In the final analysis, it is not his severity nor grammatical precision that leaves the most lingering reverberation, but the fact that his life was so profoundly devoted to a calling and a place.

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SUSTAIN THE CORE VALUES OF THE SCHOOL AND MAINTAIN YOUR PERSONAL CONNECTION TO

HOTCHKISS WITH A RECURRING GIFT.

Visit www.hotchkiss.org/donate and check “I/We would like this to be a recurring gift’’ to contribute the amount of your choice on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.

Remember: At any time you may increase, decrease, or suspend your recurring gift.

Just contact our Gift Manager at varmontr@hotchkiss.org.

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THE BOARD

o f Go v e rn o r s

A MESSAGE TO ALUMNI f ro m t h e B o a rd o f G o v e r n o r s o f t h e A l u m n i A s s o c i a t i o n

By William Benedict ’70, P’08,’10 and Quinn Fionda ’91

HAVE YOU LOOKED INTO HOTCHKISS CAREER CONNECTIONS ONLINE? Hotchkiss Career Connections (HCC) Online is the School’s online network of Hotchkiss alumni who have volunteered to provide career advice to other alumni about the field in which they work. HCC Online is intended solely to assist in connecting alumni with one another to discuss careers, relocating, and/or their specific company or organization. Any registered user of Alumnet – the general online directory – has access to HCC Online and can search the network across various criteria (city, class year, company, industry, etc.).

Since HCC Online’s launch in 2009, it has primarily been used by alumni for networking rather than as a traditional job bank. This has proven helpful to those seeking to make a career start or change and rewarding to those willing to provide counsel and opportunities to fellow Hotchkiss alumni.

To increase HCC Online’s effectiveness, the Board of Governors encourages you to participate as an HCC volunteer – by being willing to talk with other alumni about your industry and potentially using it for your own career efforts. If you are already an HCC volunteer, thank you!

We may reach out to you soon to survey your experience to date. The Board of Governors is also currently reviewing HCC’s scope as well as its potential uses and benefits.

Please find the steps on how to register for HCC Online below:

Profile box to the right.

• The next screen will have a heading that says Hotchkiss Alumni Profile. Check the HCC box at the top.

I F YO U W I S H T O U S E H C C O N L I N E T O A S S I S T YO U I N A JOB SEARCH OR CAREER CHANGE:

• Choose the option for Alumni Directory on the left hand menu.

• At the screen with the heading Search the Directory, enter the criteria by which you want to search. When finished, click on the Search button at the bottom of the screen.

While HCC Online is available to all alumni, it may be especially useful to younger alumni, those who are beginning their careers or considering a career move early on, perhaps before having developed an extensive professional network. Many job opportunities come through personal contacts, so there are some things you may want to keep in mind when reaching out to alumni: • DON’T JUST ASK FOR A JOB — ASK FOR ADVICE AND G U I D A N C E . People generally like to give advice and are usually flattered to be asked.

• P E O P L E L I K E T O H E L P. Individuals who are further along in their careers almost always got there because someone helped them. Recognizing this may make them more receptive to helping you.

• S AY T H A N K YO U A N D F O L L O W U P.

L O G I N T O A L U M N E T ( I F YO U D O N ’ T K N O W YO U R U S E R N A M E A N D / O R PA S S W O R D , C A L L G A I L M A S S E Y I N T H E A L U M N I O F F I C E AT 8 6 0 4 3 5 - 3 7 1 4 O R E M A I L

Please also look for HCC Events throughout the year. The most recent HCC events were in Boston and Los Angeles.

GMASSEY@HOTCHKISS.ORG).

I F YO U W I S H T O PA R T I C I PAT E A S A V O L U N T E E R IN HCC ONLINE:

• Go to the Career Connections page • Go to the link for Business Contact Info in the Edit Your

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IT’S

MY t u rn

Hope on a String

B

BY CHRISTINA BECHHOLD ‘03

Bennett Rathbun ’03 and I were appointed co-managing editors of

The Record our senior year. We rotated responsibility for each issue, taking turns on late nights in our tiny office across from the Misch, fighting with

Pagemaker and writing last-minute features to fill the back page.

I remember well the sense of accomplishment when we walked through Main Building placing stacks of the printed paper in the mailroom, even if the top-fold photo was a little out of focus. Together, we learned how to plan and execute a project, manage a staff, and report on our community.

When we both ended up in New York after college, Bennett was always the best person to call when you wanted to know where to find good live music on a Saturday night or what indie band was worth crossing a bridge to hear; though working in management consulting at the time, he had a driving passion for music.

When he called me early last year to tell me he would devote himself full-time as co-founder and executive director of a new venture called Hope on a String (HOAS), the only surprising part was his request that I join the board. HOAS is a non-profit, grassroots organization that seeks to foster an environment of social transformation and economic development in Haiti through participation in music. Bennett traveled to Port-au-Prince after the earthquake and, with co-founder Pierre Imbert, resolved to confront Haiti’s complex socioeconomic challenges through an innovative developmental experiment: in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere dubbed the “republic of NGOs,” can you engage and empower communities through a cultural touchstone to help them drive their own transformation?

SATURDAY, JANUARY 14

We land in Port-au-Prince in the early afternoon. Four board members make the trip; this is our first opportunity to see HOAS on the

ground. Devin Stagg ’03, also a board member, was unable to make the trip. Pushing through the crowd to the parking lot, we find Cathy, our chief operations officer, and meet our local staff.

I’m introduced to Cassy, my homestay sister, and we pile into two waiting SUVs. I had seen pictures post-earthquake, but wasn’t sure what to expect as we drove into the capital. Exactly two years later, families sit in front of concrete storefronts selling a mishmash of wares – food, cleaning supplies, charcoal for cooking – next door to piles of rubble that have yet to be cleared. Across from the collapsed National Palace, a cramped tent city is home to thousands living under U.N. and USAID-branded tarps.

After enjoying a few Prestige beers on the back patio of our hotel, we meet the Barr Fellows, a group of esteemed non-profit directors from Boston finishing a week in the country. The Barr Foundation has been instrumental in helping Hope on a String grow, and the Foundation’s President, Barbara Hostetter ’77, is also a founding member of the HOAS team. We load onto their mini-bus and arrive at the home of a local Haitian family who invited us all for dinner. We are treated to a musical theater performance by a well-known local theater troupe, Haiti en Scène.

We aren’t served dinner until everyone has danced on stage with the performers and band.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15

We leave Port-au-Prince and head 35 miles west to Corail. The village is an ideal location for HOAS, both as co-founder Pierre’s hometown and a place removed from the dysfunctional capital. On the way, we pass the largest refugee camp in the country; thousands relocated here

following the earthquake, pitching tents on barren foothills.

Corail has a single dirt road as its main street, lined with cement block homes surrounded by cactus fences. Pierre’s sister makes us lunch – chicken, plantains, rice, black beans, and pikliz, a spicy coleslaw. Cassy takes me to drop my bag and show me her home. There are two rooms: Cassy and her aunt will share a bed in the first, and I have my own in the second. The wash stall and latrine are outside. There is no running water; two trucks come each morning, one with ice and one with potable water. There is a bucket for bathing, and her godmother will make my breakfast and dinner.

The Hope on a String Community Center is a short walk down the road. It’s an open, circular space, with a tin roof and some yard and cement walls surrounding it. Locals wander in and out, watching the dance class underway. When Shakira comes on the boom box, we bop around with some of the smaller children and break out hula hoops, which even some of the young boys are convinced to give a try.

The students put on a showcase for us in the evening after the daily town soccer game that finishes at sundown. The Center offers classes in music appreciation, guitar, percussion, recorder, voice, and dance, free of charge to the local community. To date, each six-to-eight week programming session has averaged 650 total enrolled participants, though frequent attendees hover around 50 percent due to a confluence of logistical and behavioral challenges that come with operating in Haiti. English language classes, adult literacy training, public speaking, and a leadership seminar were introduced in direct S p r i n g

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IT’S

MY t u rn RIGHT: Classmates Christina Bechhold and Bennett Rathbun visited organizations in Haiti for their work on behalf of Hope on a String.

response to community demand after HOAS’ launch in spring 2011. Electrical training was added in the fall, after a local electrician offered his expertise to the community as a skill-building initiative. Currently, Corail has no access to the national electric grid, and those who can afford it use generators or converters; Cassy’s home has one light in the main room and one on the porch that are turned on at night.

After just six months, it is clear that participants feel empowered, particularly a young diva about nine years old who wears her best red party dress to sing and play the recorder for her audience. It’s fantastic to see what the students and their instructors have already accomplished.

After the showcase, we walk a few doors down to the local nightspot, which is decked in Christmas lights. At the tables and chairs scattered across the dirt front yard, we drink Prestige and have another dance party with our staff and their friends. There’s clearly no room for the uncoordinated, or at least self-conscious, in Haitian culture: the dancing is celebrative and inclusive, and can go all night!

MONDAY, JANUARY 16

With the mid-morning heat ratcheting up, we head out on a group hike to visit the surrounding towns, the ruins of a former sugar mill, and the beach. Near the river, a group of women wash clothes next to an abandoned water project – a faith-based NGO installed a purification system but never came back to monitor, and the pump was eventually stolen. As the history of international intervention in Haiti indicates, there are many well-intentioned projects, but seemingly little in the way of sustained change.

Our homestay families make a pot-luck lunch: fried goat, rice, beans, and more pikliz.

We have fresh-squeezed juice on Pierre’s porch and meet with a local youth organization, Pi Love. They’re encouraged by the work HOAS is doing in Corail and want to launch their own projects. They show us their notebook with meeting minutes, and attendee names and ages written in neat block letters. Playing even some small part in inspiring young people to engage

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in their community is a huge victory here. While we caution that we are not an aid organization and can’t give them funding, we offer to help them organize and locate resources. We are focused on developing the tools Corail needs to power its own transformation.

We attempt a painting project at the Community Center, but are overtaken by four eager young boys and decide to hold a staff meeting instead. We discuss the challenges and new priorities encountered over the first six months: attendance, program evaluation, fundraising. There’s a clear sense of pride as Cassy and her fellow staff members discuss their ideas for the organization, an awareness of the influence HOAS is building and their role in driving our successes so far.

That night, I ask Cassy to share my hot chocolate dinner by flashlight. We talk about growing up in Corail and her university studies in Port-au-Prince. I’m struck by her resilience – I wonder if I would have her strength and maturity in the face of so many challenges.

We walk next door to the HOAS homebase; a twoubadou group (Haitian folk music) is setting up to perform. Bennett brings over a tray of fresh mangoes, so ripe and juicy they practically melt when you bite in. Locals pile into the front yard, and we all sway to the music as it floats through the pitch-black sky. Eddy, a board member, takes Cassy’s hand and turns the other side of the porch into a dance floor.

We partner up and dance song after song until late in the night.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 17

After a breakfast of fresh hardboiled eggs, bread and cheese, Cassy and I say goodbye. I give her two small bags of my favorite cookies as a thankyou to her and her family. We exchange email addresses and I promise to Facebook her as soon as I’m home. Yes, even Corail has Facebook!

Driving back to the capital, we’re stuck in traffic for hours. As we get closer to the city, we see people spilling out of the back of tap-taps, the only form of quasi-public transportation, cramming 25 people into the back of a pick-up truck with makeshift seats. Our driver, listening to the radio, tells us one crashed overnight and killed everyone on board.

I look at Bennett in the passenger seat and think how unbelievable I would have thought it had someone told me senior year that we’d end up working together to build strong communities and better lives in rural Haiti. Now I can’t imagine a more fitting use of our Hotchkiss education, pursuing lives of consequence and giving back to create a stronger global community.

HOPE ON A STRING IS A 501(C)3 ORGANIZATION WHICH IS WORKING TO BUILD COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT THROUGH PARTICIPATION IN MUSIC AND FACILITATING SUPPORT FOR COMMUNITY-DRIVEN INITIATIVES IN HAITI. TO L E A R N M O R E , V I S I T WWW.HOPEONASTRING.ORG.

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Board of Trustees Thomas C. Barry P’01,’03,’05 Katheryn Allen Berlandi ’88 Ian R. Desai ’00 Thomas J. Edelman ’69, P’06,’07 William R. Elfers ’67, Vice President

EMERITI

Kerry Bernstein Fauver ’92

Howard C. Bissell ’55, P’82 John R. Chandler, Jr. ’53, P’82,’85,’87, GP’10

Quinn Fionda ’91, Chair, Communications Committee

Frederick Frank ’50, P’12

Brenda G. Grassey ’80

David L. Luke III ’41

Edward J. Greenberg ’55, Vice President and Chair, Alumni Services Committee

Dr. Robert A. Oden, Jr. P’97 Francis T. Vincent, Jr. ’56, P’85

Lawrence Flinn, Jr. ’53 Diana Gomez ’76, P’11,’12

Alessandra H. Nicolas ’95

Sean M. Gorman ’72, Secretary

Nichole R. Phillips ’89

John P. Grube ’65, P’00

Daniel N. Pullman ’76, Ex Officio

Elizabeth Gardner Hines ’93

Thomas S. Quinn III ’71, P’15, Ex Officio

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet ’85 Eleanor Green Long ’76 Forrest E. Mars, Jr. ’49, P’77,’82 GP’09,’09,’11,’11,’14, Vice President Malcolm H. McKenzie P’10, Trustee Ex Officio Christopher H. Meledandri ’77, Vice President

Arthur W. White P’71,’74, GP’08,’11

Alumni Association Board of Governors Christopher M. Bechhold ’72, P’03, Vice President and Chair, Nominating Subcommittee for Membership

Philip W. Pillsbury, Jr. ’53, P’89,’91

Katheryn Allen Berlandi ’88, President

Thomas S. Quinn III ’71, P’15

Keith E. Bernard Jr. ’95, Chair, Alumni of Color Committee

Jane Sommers-Kelly ’81

Peter D. Scala ’01 Thomas R. Seidenstein ’91 Bryan A. Small ’03 George A. Takoudes ’87, Vice President

Lance K. Beizer ’56 William J. Benedict, Jr. ’70, P’08, ’10

Roger K. Smith ’78, P’08

Wendy Weil Rush ’80, P’07, Vice President and Chair, Nominating Committee

Christina M. Bechhold ’03

Kendra S. O’Donnell

Jean Weinberg Rose ’80, President

Hotchkiss REUNION

D. Roger B. Liddell ’63, P’98, Secretary Jennifer Appleyard Martin ’88, Chair, Gender Committee

John E. Ellis III ’74

For more information, please contact: Caroline Sallee Reilly ’87, Director of Alumni Relations, at (860) 435-3892 or creilly@hotchkiss.org.

You may also visit www.hotchkiss.org/alumni and click on Events & Reunions.

Douglas Campbell ’71, P’01 Charles A. Denault ’74, P’03, Ex Officio Patricia Barlerin Farman-Farmaian ’85

Marjo Talbott John L. Thornton ’72, P’10,’11, Officer-at-Large William B. Tyree ’81, P’14, Treasurer Daniel Wilner '03

June 15-17, 2012 Classes of 1932, 1937, 1942, 1947, 1952, 1957, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2002, 2007

October 26-28, 2012 Class of 1962 - 50th Reunion Class of 1967 - 45th Reunion Photo by Brian Wilcox