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BROOKS BULLETIN • FALL 2017

A TRAD ITI ON OF CARE

This fall, the Brooks campus witnessed the beginning stages of construction of the Center for the Arts. In October, Brooks students, faculty and staff were invited to sign a beam that will be used in the new building.

BOARD O F TRUSTE E S President Steven R. Gorham ’85, P’17, P’21 Andover, Mass.

Daniel J. Riccio P’17, P’20 Los Gatos, Calif.

Vice Presidents John R. Barker ’87, P’21 Wellesley, Mass.

Ashley Wightman Scott ’84, P’11, P’14 Manchester, Mass.

Whitney Romoser Savignano ’87 Manchester, Mass.

Juliane Gardner Spencer ’93 New York, N.Y.

Secretary Craig J. Ziady ’85, P’18, P’20 Winchester, Mass. Treasurer Valentine Hollingsworth III ’72, P’17 Dover, Mass. TRUSTE E S Pamela W. Albright P’10, P’16 Topsfield, Mass.

Belisario A. Rosas P’15, P’21 Andover, Mass.

Ramakrishna R. Sudireddy P’15 Andover, Mass. Isabella Speakman Timon ’92 Chadds Ford, Pa. Alessandro F. Uzielli ’85 Beverly Hills, Calif. ALUM N I T RU ST E E S Ronald P. Dixon ’06 Newmarket, N.H.

Cristina E. Antelo ’95 Washington, D.C.

Caroline E. Trustey ’13 Wenham, Mass.

W. J. Patrick Curley III ’69 New York, N.Y.

TRUSTE E S E M E R I T I William N. Booth ’67, P’05 Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Peter V. K. Doyle ’69 Sherborn, Mass. Anthony H. Everets ’93 New York, N.Y. Jonathan F. Gibbons ’92 Needham, Mass. Shawn Gorman ’84 Falmouth, Maine Paul L. Hallingby ’65 New York, N.Y. Robert W. Hughes P’16, P’19 Andover, Mass. Booth D. Kyle ’89 Seattle, Wash. Zachary S. Martin P’15, P’17 Wellesley, Mass. Brian McCabe P’18 Meredith, N.H. Timothy H. McCoy ’81, P’14, P’15, P’18 Boston, Mass. John R. Packard Jr. P’18, P’21 Head of School North Andover, Mass.

Henry M. Buhl ’48 New York, N.Y. Steve Forbes ’66, P’91 Bedminster, N.J. James G. Hellmuth P’78 Lawrence, N.Y. H. Anthony Ittleson ’56, P’84, P’86 Green Pond, S.C. Michael B. Keating ’58, P’97 Boston, Mass. Frank A. Kissel ’69, P’96, P’99 Far Hills, N.J. Peter A. Nadosy ’64 New York, N.Y. Peter W. Nash ’51, P’81, P’89 Nantucket, Mass. Cera B. Robbins P’85, P’90 New York, N.Y. Eleanor R. Seaman P’86, P’88, P’91, GP’18 Hobe Sound, Fla. David R. Williams III ’67 Beverly Farms, Mass.

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BU L L E T I N • FA L L 2 0 1 7

Head of School John R. Packard Jr. P’18, P’21

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Associate Head for External Affairs Jim Hamilton Director of Development Gage S. Dobbins Director of Alumni and Parent Events Erica Callahan P’19, P’20 Assistant Director of Alumni Programs Carly Churchill ’10

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Director of Admission and Financial Aid Bini W. Egertson P’12, P’15

Director of Communications and Marketing Dan Callahan P’19, P’20 Director of Publications Rebecca A. Binder Design Aldeia www.aldeia.design Alumni Communications Manager Emily Williams Assistant Director of Communications Jennifer O’Neill

Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome. Opinions expressed in the Bulletin are those of the authors and not necessarily of Brooks School. Correspondence concerning the Bulletin should be sent to Editor Rebecca A. Binder: mail Editor, Brooks Bulletin 1160 Great Pond Road North Andover, MA 01845 email rbinder@brooksschool.org phone (978) 725-6326 © 2017 Brooks School

FE AT U R ES

D E PA RT M E N TS

20 When Serendipity Saves the World

02 Message from the Head of School

Climate change will define our lives and the lives of future generations. Peter deMenocal ’78 is a beacon of hope: The renowned scientist has contributed to the body of research and fought to keep funding for future research alive.

03 News + Notes 43 Brooks Connections 50 Class Notes

28 This is Brooks: The Case for Financial Aid

Head of School John Packard breaks down why a robust financial aid budget is critical to the educational and economic future of Brooks. The Campaign for Brooks places a priority on increasing the amount of endowed dollars devoted to making the school’s tuition accessible.

36 To Do Something Different

What happens when young alumni eschew conventional career paths to do what they love? The Bulletin meets six young alumni who have found success, fulfillment and a way to give back to their communities by turning their passions into their jobs.

ON THE COVER: Mathias Tankersley ’19 awaits the start of the boys 1st soccer team’s match on October 20, 2017 under the lights on Anna K. Trustey Memorial Field. Brooks beat Belmont Hill School, 2-0. Almost a month later, Brooks — led by their legendary coach, Dusty Richard — won the New England Championship. Caring for Brooks goes beyond grabbing a flag and heading to the pitch, though: As the feature article beginning on page 28 asserts, the school’s ability to offer financial aid affects every aspect of life at the school today and will define the school’s economic fortunes in the future.

A MESSAGE FROM JOHN R. PACKARD JR. HEAD OF SCHOOL

Extending Our Reach As winter descends onto our 270-acre cam-

“ I feel a strong connection between the work we are doing in the moment to grow our financial aid budget and the good work so many Brooksians are engaged in with the less fortunate in mind.” 2

pus on the shores of Lake Cochichewick, we pivot in the direction of an exciting stretch in our year. The holiday spirit is alive and well at this time, with lights and seasonal decorations adorning Main Street and the large pine tree outside the Head of School’s residence. We all look forward to our Lessons & Carols service held the night before we break for winter vacation, after we have completed first semester final exams. We return in January to Winter Term and three weeks of a deeper dive into an area of interest in project-based and experiential ways. From there, we launch the second semester and push forward while beginning what is always a bittersweet final semester with the sixth form. While it is true that winter at Brooks School brings our broad and diverse community together routinely, every season has scores of moments that allow us to learn from and with one another in ways that matter to us and hold over time. A good part of what has allowed us to stretch and explore difference more meaningfully and substantively over the past number of years has been our commitment to growing our financial aid capacity and ability to reach the wide range of impressive students who visit our school every year. As this edition of the Bulletin will make clear, Brooks graduates have been moved in their lives by both the opportunity that was given to them as students here and the responsibility many have felt to pay it forward. I feel a strong connection between the work we are doing in the moment to grow our financial aid budget and the good work so many Brooksians are engaged in with the less fortunate in mind. I could make a strong case that there is no better measurement of a school’s worth than a

metric revealing the degree to which its graduates influence and enhance the lives of others. Frank Ashburn took to heart the oft-repeated phrase, “To whom much is given, much is to be expected.” To move the school forward with this sentiment squarely in mind feels right. While there are a number of ways in which I feel uniquely privileged as head of school at Brooks, the opportunity I have to straddle the school’s day-to-day life while also spending time with so many who attended Brooks at some earlier point in our existence is perhaps chief among them. As we work hard this year to finish well with The Campaign for Brooks, we do so with an aspiration of raising $10 million in new endowment for financial aid. We aim to build a community that learns from itself in ways that we intend and in ways that are serendipitous. I see and feel what the school is in the moment with more students attending Brooks on need-based financial aid than has ever been the case. I admire and appreciate what so many Brooks graduates have come to be in their lives. The combination tells me that we are realizing and living our mission fully. Countless communities all over the world are better places by virtue of the difference Brooks graduates have made in them. As we move forward intent on extending our reach in ways that enrich the student experience, we do so with great confidence that future editions of the Bulletin will flow with stories about the leadership and service to others that today’s students will deliver in the communities they will become a part of — an exciting thought. I wish you all a pleasant start to 2018 and hope to see you as the year takes hold.

B RO O KS BU L L E TI N

N EWS + N OT ES

NEWS + NOTES IN THIS SECTION 04 News from Campus 10 Campus Scene 16 Athlete Spotlight 18 Athletics News

In mid-October, the Brooks board of trustees met with the school prefects to hear about the prefects’ experiences as Brooks students. Over the course of the conversation, board secretary Craig Ziady ’85 cataloged these words and phrases, which the prefects listed as being characteristics of the school, and created this graphic. GRAPHIC: COURTESY OF CRAIG ZIADY ’85

NEWS + NOTES

I N T H E C LASS RO O M

Spider’s Soliloquy In a unique semester-long project, an artist uses the Robert Lehman Art Center gallery space to create room for Brooksians to have meaningful discussions around mental distress and substance abuse.

This year’s All-Community Read, “Never Let Me Go” by Nobel-Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, follows the lives of students at a fictional English boarding school where the students are bred for one purpose: to provide healthy internal organs for others. Social engagement artist and curator Peter Bruun believes the dystopian novel is more true-to-life than it might initially appear. He says the work illuminates the gap between the everyday lives of the book’s students, who act with normalcy, bravado, humor and the typical jockeying of high school social expectations, and their deep inner sense of inadequacy. Bruun’s interest in the effects that mental distress and the veil of expectations have on young people is deeply personal. Bruun’s daughter Elisif, a high-achieving student and talented artist, slid into substance abuse and died of a heroin overdose at age 24. Bruun believes that Elisif suffered in a way that is mirrored in “Never Let Me Go”: Although she appeared happy, healthy and in sight of her goals, she lived in a hidden world

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of discomfort and insecurity, one where substance abuse initially provided a balm, but then proved a problem. Bruun saw an avenue to use the All-Community Read as a way to help Brooks students open up in constructive dialogue about similar challenges they might face. He spent time over the fall semester on campus discussing the book and its themes with students. Bruun’s time at Brooks culminated in an

exhibit in the Lehman gallery, “Spider’s Soliloquy: Case Study of a Girl,” which showed Elisif’s paintings and drawings, and followed her descent into addiction and death. The exhibit’s opening reception, which was held on November 30, was memorable and effective: Bruun partnered with the student organization Students for Mental Health Awareness to stage a series of student performances that explored and shared issues of youthful vulnerability. The gallery was packed, suggesting a broad student interest in the conversation Bruun initiated. The student performances segued into an open and enthusiastic dialogue on how the Brooks community could most effectively lend its support to those who felt separate from it. The goal was to normalize conversations around a topic that many consider taboo, in the hopes of creating a healthier community. Lami Zhang ’19, a co-head of Students for Mental Health Awareness, is thrilled that the Brooks community engaged in a frank discussion of teenage mental distress and community support. “When Mr. Bruun first came to my English class, I went up to him afterwards and thanked him for doing this,” she says. “These are issues that we should talk about more. I think this is a great start. Students for Mental Health Awareness will continue to discuss

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“It had never occurred to us to wonder how we would feel, being seen like that, being the spiders.” KAZUO ISHIGURO, “NEVER LET ME GO”

This drawing, which was part of the “Spider’s Soliloquy” exhibit in the Lehman gallery, was completed 22 days before Elisif Bruun died of a heroin overdose in early 2014; it was the last work of art she ever made. In the self-portrait, Elisif wears headphones, which her father, social engagement artist and curator Peter Bruun, sees as an indicator that she still kept part of herself hidden even as she progressed in her recovery.

these issues, and we’ll continue to try to get the community involved.” Director of Psychological Counseling Judith Werner attended the Lehman event. She says these issues are “absolutely present in our community today.” Werner says that, even when students choose not to use her office’s extensive and readily available counseling services, the Brooks community is structured in a way that assists its members in finding help and support: She points, for example, to the close relationships between students and their advisors and other adults on campus. “This is a community that prides

FALL 2017

itself on that,” she says. “If you need an adult with whom you have a close relationship, that exists here, and that came across in the discussion Peter generated.” On the morning of the exhibit opening, Bruun spoke to the assembled students and faculty at Chapel. “I want to say something about … how important it is to talk aloud about what ails us, and to share our distress openly,” he said. “I want to explore what we as a community can do better and ought to do to make the world less judgmental and fearful, and more compassionate, understanding and safer for all.” Bruun shared his family’s

story, and Elisif’s story, through photos, video and voice recordings. “If you feel alone, I want you to know you’re not alone. If you feel ashamed, I want you to know there is no shame. If you’re fearful of being judged, then think about how we all might find greater freedom from judgment,” Bruun concluded at Chapel. “In sharing Elisif’s story, in speaking aloud about what too often is whispered in cryptic code … I hope to bring you some truths. What Elisif felt was not all that unusual, but Elisif’s fate need not be anyone in this room’s fate, and the best bet to getting us there is for each of us to feel safe enough to speak out loud in a community of greater compassion and fewer secrets.” Bruun was drawn to Brooks because, he says, he saw “the opportunity to inspire innovation and proactive leadership around these issues. I’ve had the opportunity to get to know students and develop something. I want the students to feel comfortable talking about depression and attraction to substances, be it in themselves or concern for another.”

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NEWS + NOTES

NEWS FRO M CAMPUS

AN UPDATED DRESS CODE

A new dress code maintains a sense of formality in the classroom while also allowing for a more inclusive community with room for individuality.

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Brooks instituted an updated dress code over the summer. The new dress code calls for “academic dress” on days when Chapel is not held, and “formal academic dress” on Chapel days. On “academic dress” days, Brooksians must abide by a list of clothing that is not acceptable (on the list, among other restrictions: T-shirts with graphics, logos or writing; sweatpants, yoga pants and athletic gear; hats or head coverings, unless worn for religious purposes; blue denim jeans). On “formal academic dress” days, the dress code calls for an added level of formality. Brooksians may wear: a dress; a skirt and dress blouse; dress pants with a button-down shirt and tie; or dress pants with a collared shirt, dress blouse or turtleneck, accompanied by a blazer or cardigan sweater. Saturdays are “Spirit Saturdays,” and Brooksians may dress casually provided that at least one piece of exposed clothing is green, black or Brooks-branded apparel. In a July 13 letter to current parents, Head of School John Packard gave five reasons for the dress code update. First, he noted that enforcing and adhering to the previous dress code had become more difficult as style and fashion trends had changed. Second, as dress codes have evolved in professional offices, the case for dressing in a certain way to prepare for certain vocations in life has weakened. Third, a gender-neutral approach to the dress code better supports the school’s diversity and inclusivity efforts. Fourth, the revised dress code reflects the community’s desire to maintain a standard of academic dress. Fifth, the dress code inculcates in students the importance of dressing in ways that are purposeful and appropriate for different occasions. “I think it’s going well,” Associate Head for Student Affairs Andrea Heinze says. “I think kids appreciate the opportunity to be a little more relaxed on some days. That makes them a little more willing to participate in the more formal days, and it adds a sort of reverence to the more formal days.”

A group of Brooks students, along with canine pal Nixon, participated in the 2017 Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Andover, Mass., in September through the school’s community service program.

Connecting with our Community Eighteen Brooks students participated in the three-mile 2017 Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Andover, Mass., in September. The group raised close to $2,000 from the Brooks community — including parents and alumni — to benefit the care, support and research efforts of the Alzheimer’s Association. Director of Community Service Ashley Johnston reports that the walk was a great way to kick off the community service program’s slate. “It was neat because we had a wide range of kids participate,” Johnston says. “Our senior prefect was there, new students were there, and I think for a lot of the kids, this was the first major charity event they’d been to. It was a moving experience for them to see how large and well-organized it was, and how important this issue is to so many people.” Johnston hopes to facilitate a major community service event every month, in order to give students who are not signed up for community service as their afternoon activity a chance to participate and “connect to our community.” The community service program also gave Brooksians a chance to participate in the Lazarus House Ministries’s Hike for Hope in October, hosted an on-campus blood drive in November and hosted a drive for Toys for Tots in December in conjunction with the school’s Chapel program. It also organized fundraisers throughout the fall, including one dedicated to hurricane relief for Puerto Rico.

B RO O KS BUL L E TI N

FAL L PLAY

N EWS + N OT ES

The Campus is Our Classroom While the Center for the Arts is under construction, the Brooks arts department has made use of alternative spaces around campus with great results. The Center for the Arts, which is scheduled to open in 2018, promises to house the Brooks arts department in an exceptional facility that will serve the school well into the future. In the meantime, department chair Rob Lazar and his colleagues have spent the fall holding visual, musical and performing arts classes in a variety of campus spaces. For example, visual arts classes are held in science classrooms, and music ensembles rehearse in the Dalsemer Room. Lazar says that this is educational: Students enjoy the fresh look at the campus they know, and have learned how to be flexible and allow new spaces to spark their creativity. “These temporary homes provide us some opportunities that normally, we don’t think about,” Lazar says. “We have proximity to each other in a way that we didn’t have before. We also have proximity to other faculty members, which is nice.” And, Lazar asserts, asking students to be flexible is an educational experience for them. For example, an acting class momentarily thrown by music from a music class in the next room learns how to absorb distraction. “In a sense, we’re helping to create a more real-world scenario for them,” Lazar says.

The fall play “Radium Girls” took advantage of the Science Center atrium.

FALL 2017

This theme of treating available spaces on campus as an opportunity is reflected well in the fall play, “Radium Girls,” which enjoyed a three-day run at Brooks in November. The piece follows a group of young girls who worked in a watch factory in the years surrounding World War I, painting the dials of watches with paint that contained radium. It shows the group discovering the adverse affects of radium and doing battle with their employer to make them whole. It also follows the journey of an owner of the company who comes to grips with the idea that the company has harmed its workers. “Radium Girls” was staged in the lower level of the Science Atrium. “This show is flexible, is really actor-focused and has minimal tech,” Lazar says. “There’s a scientific theme to it, so having it in the Science Center works. It’s nice because the environment — the hallways, the staircase — become characters in the play, and the actors can work off the environment in ways they couldn’t on a flat stage.”

NEWS + NOTES

NEWS FRO M CAMPUS

Pat Freiermuth ’18 with two of his young charges last summer at Brooks School Day Camp.

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You’re a member of Brooks’s Community Activities Board. Why is that meaningful to you? The Community Activities Board is a student group that plans weekend activities here at Brooks. I’m a day student, and when I started at Brooks as a fourth-former, I was hesitant to come back on the weekends. As a fifth-former, I started to get more familiar with the routines here, and as a sixth-former, I wanted to be the day student who made other day students feel included and encouraged to come back to campus for weekend activities. I think of the whole-school aspect of it: Brooks is much more than just academics. You have to make personal connections outside the Classroom Building, and weekend activities help with getting to know people.

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Fast 5 // Q+A Pat Freiermuth ’18 is used to the spotlight: He’s a football force, an imposing tight end who has committed to play at Pennsylvania State University after he graduates from Brooks. There’s not much that’s been left unsaid about Freiermuth’s athletic career to date; so, the Bulletin sat down to ask the 6-foot-5 inch, 245-pounder about his life at Brooks off the field.

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You also spent time here over the summer as a counselor at the Brooks School Day Camp. Did you enjoy that experience? I was a counselor for a group of 5-year olds last summer, one of the youngest groups. I like working with kids. I’ve always been good at that: I know how to approach kids at their level, be there for them and show them the ropes. Kids are playful, and so am I, so I connect with them well. Last January, I took the Winter Term course “Brooks Goes to Preschool.” We worked with the preschool class in the early education program at the YWCA in Lawrence, Mass. Working with those kids, many of whom come from low-income households, was interesting.

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You had a unique afternoon activity last spring. What did you learn? I worked for [Director of Athletics Bobbie] Crump-Burbank last spring as my afternoon activity. I worked on field setup, I worked in the equipment room, I helped with the laundry, and I was able to watch athletics operations, like planning the team busses

B RO O KS BU L L E TI N

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and transportation for away games. It was really interesting to see how that all works. It’s actually pretty difficult. I think people take it for granted — you just get on your team bus — and don’t realize the system it takes to get there. It was a cool experience. I have a couple of career paths in mind, but if I ever get the opportunity to coach in college or work in college recruiting, I’ll jump on it. I want to stay around the game of football as long as I possibly can.

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Are you concerned about the transition from playing football at Brooks to playing football at Penn State? Here at Brooks, we might play in front of a few hundred people. It’s going to be different, and I definitely took that into consideration. But, after talking to my parents and my family, it was hard to pass up an opportunity to play in front of 107,000 people, which is the capacity of the stadium at Penn State. It’s going to be a change, but a good change. Before games, I like to keep to myself. I put my headphones in and listen to music, and I always say a prayer in the locker room. Then, I also always give [Head Athletic Trainer Peter] King a fist-bump before the game. I don’t know who I’m going to do that with at Penn State!

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What’s something most people don’t know about you? I like to write. I have strong opinions about things, like politics. I don’t like to put my thoughts out on social media, though: You can offend a lot of people very easily on social media, and I try to be careful about that. I write my thoughts down on paper instead, and I let them go from there. Writing gives me an emotional release, and it lets me get my feelings out without backlash.

FALL 2017

OVERHEARD ON CAMPUS

“Dough-re-mi, baby … it’s all about the profit!” The play on words of an elated fourth-former who successfully sold cinnamon during a Silk Road simulation in history class. Faculty Abby Perelman set up the simulation to encourage her students to engage deeply with what they learn. “When students have the chance to take ownership of these historical moments, they often end up developing empathy for the people of the past,” she explains.

A Bittersweet Transition Associate Head for External Affairs Jim Hamilton has been named the 54th head of school of Berwick Academy, effective July 1, 2018. Brooks and Berwick announced Hamilton’s appointment on November 7, 2017. Hamilton, his wife – Chair of the Classical and World Languages Department and Learning Center faculty Lucy Hamilton – their three children and their dog will move to Berwick Academy this summer. In an email to Brooks students, faculty and staff, Head of School John Packard praised Berwick Academy’s choice and the Hamilton family’s tenure at Brooks. Jim, Mr. Packard noted, “has led and added tremendously to our work with our board of trustees, alumni, alumnae, parents and prospective families in his role.” Lucy, Mr. Packard continued, provided leadership and direction to the classical and world languages department “while also serving in and supporting the critically important work” of the Learning Center. “While this news leaves me excited for [the Hamiltons] and all that is ahead of them,” Mr. Packard concluded, “we know well that Brooks School will be losing two extraordinary colleagues and one wonderful family.” In a letter to the Berwick community, Hamilton said that he was “honored, humbled and incredibly excited.” He cited Berwick’s academic culture, core values and larger community as “compelling draws for us.”

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NEWS + NOTES

CAMPUS SCMENE NEWS FRO CAMPUS

The Brooks boys 1st soccer team won the NEPSAC Class B boys soccer title on November 19, 2017, with a comeback 3-2 win over powerhouse and previous back-toback New England champions South Kent School. With the win, the undefeated squad sent its 40-year head coach Dusty Richard, who retired from coaching after the fall season, out a champion. Richard — who has been known to generations of Brooks students as “Dusty” — has coached the Brooks team to nine ISL-championship Gunmere Cups and five New England championships. His influence on his players, though, goes far beyond his contribution to the school’s win-loss column. Dusty built teams, built a program and built a brotherhood that transcends the high school soccer games it was based in. “What has sustained us over all these years has been this tradition and this culture that the players have built,” Richard says. “What astounds me every year is how lovingly, how assiduously they pass it down. And they all tend to this culture, and it connects them to each other. Somewhere those traditions began, and it wasn’t with me — it was with our program alumni. They passed them down, and they’re still there. Our alumni care about the kids, and the kids want to be a part of something that’s much bigger than the group. They’re playing for the people that began this stuff.”

N EWS + N OT ES

NEWS + NOTES

NEWS FRO M CAMPUS

Welcome New Faculty A fresh crop of teachers brings a variety of experience, interests and personalities — and an alumna — to the Brooks faculty. A veteran educator, world languages faculty PETER NEISSA has been teaching at private preparatory schools and universities for 30 years. He spent eight years teaching at Phillips Academy, where he served as Spanish department chair and the head of the world language division. He was awarded an instructorship of Spanish on the 1928 Alfred Ernest Stearns Foundation fellowship before becoming the head of the upper school at an independent school in Chicago. He has published three books: two about the Colombian drug trade and one on the language of dictatorship. PATRICK HITSCHLER enters Brooks as a member of the English and arts departments. He will also help in the communications office and act as the head wrestling coach, a soccer coach and a theater director. Hitschler joins the Brooks community after spending the last two years at Trinity-Pawling School, a boarding school in Pawling, N.Y., where he was the theater director and a member of the English and arts faculty, as well as the assistant wrestling, soccer and track coach. Hitschler graduated from Franklin & Marshall College, where he majored in theater and film with a minor in philosophy. ABBY PERELMAN joins the history department. At Tufts University, Perelman majored in history, focusing on African history, and coxed the women’s varsity crew. Most recently, she taught history, served as a house counselor and coached girls crew at Phillips Academy. An Appalachian native, world languages faculty SPENCER AYSCUE attended Davidson College before moving to Madrid, where he taught English at a secondary school. After a year in Madrid, Ayscue moved back stateside and worked across town at Phillips Academy, living in the dorm, teaching Spanish, and coaching soccer and Ultimate Frisbee.

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History faculty JOANNA MCDONOUGH attended Pingree School before graduating from Mount Holyoke College. At Mount Holyoke, McDonough majored in history and minored in political science. She was also a four-year member and captain of the basketball team, receiving recognition as a Seven Sisters Scholar Athlete and a NEWMAC All-Academic Scholar Athlete. McDonough continued her education at Brown University, where she received an M.A.T. degree in history/social studies education. Her previous position was at Miss Porter’s School, where she served as history department chair, head cross-country coach, and head track and field coach. BECCA CLAY enters her seventh year of teaching high school science. Previously, she taught for four years at Norwich Free Academy in Norwich, Conn., and two years at Fitch Senior High School in Groton, Conn. Clay received her undergraduate degree in cognitive neuroscience from Brown University and her master’s degree in education from the University of New Haven. World languages and history faculty REID WYATT has taught Chinese and history at the middle school, high school and college levels. He arrives at Brooks off a stint of teaching, coaching and living in a dorm at the Canterbury School. He presented on Chinese teaching strategies at the national ACTFL convention in Boston in 2016, and he traveled the Silk Road in China for three weeks this summer. Science faculty PETER MOCCIA studied chemistry at the University of Connecticut. After college, he was certified in physics and chemistry, and taught at a high-need school in Providence as part of the Rhode Island Teaching Fellows program. He spent the last four years teaching AP Chemistry and physics at Central Catholic High School. Learning Specialist KARINA MOLTZ earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Bates College before receiving her master’s degree in general and

special education from Hunter College. She began her career as a teacher at The Gateway School in New York, an independent school for students with language-based learning disabilities. Moltz held many roles at Gateway, most recently as the director of the lower school. Academic Tutor SARA PARKER ’91 attended Bowdoin College and received her master’s in speech language pathology from Boston University. She lives on the Phillips Academy campus with her husband, Tedd, who is on the faculty there, and their children. Her experience includes time at Brewster Academy, where she worked in residential life and coached lacrosse, seven summers as the director of the girls’ campus at Wolfeboro: The Summer Boarding School in Wolfeboro, N.H., and at the Community School of Naples in Florida, where she founded the girls lacrosse program. Born in Versailles, France, world languages faculty CHRYSTEL PIT came to the United States in order to pursue a doctorate in American history. After receiving her doctorate from the University of Arizona, she taught at the college level before teaching at Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School and Cushing Academy. Dance instructor AMY XOTYENI owns Izizwe Dance Studio in North Andover. Xotyeni has been teaching and choreographing for the past six years. She has trained with Boston Ballet, Burklyn Ballet Theatre, The HARTT School of Dance, iKapa Dance Theatre and at Bridgewater State University. Her choreography has been showcased at several events and festivals, including the American College Dance Festival. Most recently, she has launched international dance exchange programs for underprivileged youth in South Africa and Boston.

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N EWS + N OT ES

Parents Weekend Summit In the final year of The Campaign for Brooks, the school hosted a Summit for current parents.

“Winged Victory,” by Gordon D. Chase.

In the Lehman A gallery slate shows the depth and breadth of creativity. The Robert Lehman Art Center hosted three exhibits this fall. Brooks arts faculty and photographer Tabitha Sherrell and her mother, award-winning photographer June Jacobsen, kicked off the year with their exhibit “Look Twice.” The collaboration allowed viewers to experience a variety of settings through the artistic lens. In October, Gordon D. Chase’s “The Insanity of Violence” took up residence in the space. Chase’s striking sculpture and drawings interpret the psychology of violence and the isolation of the “other,” and challenge the viewer to understand “bystander mentality” and the assumptions we make about each other. In November, activist, artist and addiction specialist Peter Bruun used the space to bring together a semester-long effort that involved Brooks students, faculty and staff, and that explored and communicated themes of pain, isolation and alienation. Bruun’s work helped the Brooks community engage in valuable and necessary discussion, in and out of the classroom. For more on Bruun’s time on campus, please read the story that begins on page 4.

Parents Weekend is always bustling at Brooks, but this year, parents were able to go beyond visiting classes, meeting faculty and watching games. Brooks also hosted a half-day Summit to brief parents on the accomplishments, goals and philosophy of The Campaign for Brooks. The day began with a welcome and introduction hosted by Brooks board president Steve Gorham ’85 and Head of School John Packard. From there, the large group split into three smaller breakout sessions, where participants discussed community, the Center for the Arts construction, and the importance of financial aid to the school’s present and future. The event closed with a productive large-group discussion on takeaways from the morning. Among them, parents observed the “real sense of community” at the school, which is reflected and encouraged in recent campus construction; the ways in which the Brooks faculty educate, support and prepare their students; and the potential of financial aid to allow students who would add positively to the Brooks community to attend the school. For more information on The Campaign for Brooks, please visit www.thecampaignforbrooks.org, or contact Director of Development Gage Dobbins at (978) 725-6288 or gdobbins@brooksschool.org.

Current Brooks parents participated eagerly in this breakout session, which was part of the larger Summit held over Parents Weekend.

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NEWS FRO M CAMPUS

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

The board of trustees convened on campus in October. Board members took a moment to pose for this photo in the school’s Remembrance Garden. Back row, left to right: Booth D. Kyle ’89, Jonathan F. Gibbons ’92, Shawn Gorman ’84, Zachary S. Martin ’81, Anthony H. Everets ’93, W. J. Patrick Curley III ’69, Daniel J. Riccio; Middle row, left to right: Ramakrishna R. Sudireddy, Robert W. Hughes, Alumni Trustee Ronald P. Dixon ’06, board secretary Craig J. Ziady ’85, Isabella Speakman Timon ’92, Paul L. Hallingby ’65, board vice president Whitney Romoser Savignano ’87, board vice president John R. Barker ’87, Alessandro F. Uzielli ’85; Front row, left to right: Brian McCabe, Juliane Gardner Spencer ’93, Timothy H. McCoy ’81, board president Steven R. Gorham ’85, Head of School John R. Packard Jr., Alumni Trustee Caroline Trustey ’13, Cristina E. Antelo ’95, Peter V. K. Doyle ’69. Not pictured: Pamela W. Albright, board treasurer Valentine Hollingsworth III ’72, Belisario A. Rosas, Ashley Wightman Scott ’84.

Web Win The redesigned Brooks website earned the Best School Website award in the Web Marketing Association’s annual WebAward Competition this fall. Since 1997, the WebAwards have been recognized as the premier award recognition program for Web developers and advertising agencies. Best websites are selected using seven criteria: design; ease of use; copywriting; interactivity; use of technology; innovation; and content. Check the award-winner out at www.brooksschool.org.

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POWER OUTAGE This is an artist’s depiction of the Brooks campus on the night of October 29, 2017, following the loss of electricity during a fierce storm with sustained winds. According to local media, approximately 320,000 properties in Massachusetts were affected. The electricity was not restored at school until the morning of November 1, 2017. The sudden lack of electricity forced Brooks to cancel classes and afternoon activities, close the campus and evacuate all boarding students from the dormitories on October 30. School did not fully reopen until November 2, 2017. Although anecdotal reports suggest that our students largely enjoyed this “unplanned School Holiday,” it was a relief and a pleasure to reconvene as a school in Ashburn Chapel, and to resume our normal schedule and routines on the morning of November 2. We would like to thank our local parents, many of whom graciously and generously took in our boarding students during the closure. You demonstrated the depth and breadth of the Brooks community, and we are grateful for your care, your support and your flexibility.

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HI, PARENTS! 03

On Parents Weekend, Brooks students, faculty and staff welcomed current parents to campus. Parents deciphered equations with their children in math class, they cheered on Brooks teams, and they took a moment to enjoy a beautiful campus on a beautiful fall day. 01 From left to right: Martrell Stevens ’21, mother LaKeesha Rucker and Wil Stevens ’19 paused for a photo. 02 Mathematics faculty Ali Mattison (right) checks in on Connor Breen ’18 (left) and his mother during class. 03 Olu Oladitan ’20 walks with his mother up Main Street. 04 Fifth-former Emily Choe (right) with ByeongSeon Choe, her father. 05 Giuls Istanbullu ’18 (left) and her mother listen closely in class. 06 Fifth-former Vicky Haghighi (right) escorts her mother through the portico and into the Classroom Building.

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NEWS + NOTES

NEWS AT H L E FRO T E SM POT CAMPUS LI G H T

Sophie Bird ’18 An international student finds a home for herself at Brooks, and, while on her journey, she helps make Brooks a home for others. Sophie Bird ’18 doesn’t often get noticed in the crowd of the student body at Brooks: She’s quiet, calls herself “pretty introverted,” and only hints at her booming internal personality through her round laugh and warm sense of humor. Still, make no mistake: The German-born international Brooksian is a standout student whose loud impact belies her quiet presence.

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Bird has grown into her niche at Brooks: She’s a school prefect, a Chapel prefect and a dorm prefect in Gardner, which houses all the third-form boarding girls this year. She’s also a co-head of Women’s Incorporated, a student organization that provides a venue for female-identifying students to discuss and learn about issues surrounding gender and feminism. And, she’s a co-captain of the girls 1st cross-country team. Bird says that she’s “changed a lot” since she arrived in North Andover as a third-former. Although her parents are American and she has relatives who live in the area, Bird spent her childhood in Munich. As a new student, she felt very concerned with how she portrayed herself as she tried to fit in to a new school, a new country and a new culture. “I think I’ve changed the most socially,” she says. “I tried to fit in with the main flow of the kids at Brooks. It’s taxing, constantly trying to fit in. When you live here, you’re here all the time and you can’t really pretend to be someone you’re not. Once I realized that, I started to feel more comfortable at Brooks, and I realized the opportunities and space the school gives you to explore.” That sense of being a free spirit, of exploring new things, of not hewing to traditional notions of popularity and fitting in carries Bird through Brooks. She says she has no defined group of friends, instead jumping from group to group. (“I do have one best friend,” she acknowledges, “and we do everything together.”) She finds herself inspired by the teaching methods of English faculty Mel Graham. “He’s a very out-of-thebox thinker,” she says. “He inspires me to really think about the big questions in the world. He wants you to think about the weird things, and I appreciate that.” She’s grown into herself by using Brooks to explore who she is, instead of accepting the boundaries of the person she may have been expected to be. As a result, Bird has become a leader on campus. She’s used her experiences to help other students find their own space to explore at Brooks, whether that space is as a resident of a dorm, as a member of a gender or as an athlete on a team. Bird is a dorm prefect in Gardner. This is a special assignment this year at Brooks: Bird is only one of seven sixth-form girls who live with and mentor the third-form boarding girls, all of whom live in the same dormitory. She took the position because she wanted to be a resource for the newest Brooksians as they navigated the same pressures to fit in that she did. “It’s exciting to be around these new students,” she

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says. “When I watch them go through what I went through three years ago, I remember what it was like to be new, and to have to adapt, and to be so far from home. You have to adjust, and it’s hard. I’ve been through it, so I get it.” The student organization Women’s Incorporated, of which Bird is co-head, also provides room for Brooks students to explore their own boundaries. The group of students meets to “talk about what’s going on in school and in the world and whatever issues we’re having as women,” Bird explains. “It’s a safe space for everyone to get out what they need to that they don’t feel they can say to anyone else. It’s nice to have a room where, even if we disagree at times, we have the space to say whatever we’re thinking.” Finally, Bird provides space for Brooksians to pursue their interests by captaining the girls 1st cross-country team. “I’m not a very good runner,” she says readily, “but I really love cross-country.” Bird came to Brooks having run at her previous school; she expected to be an immediate force for the Brooks team. Instead, she found it difficult to adjust. “I got here and I thought I’d just be super,” she laughs. “But then, I just sort of declined.” Now, Bird says, she runs for the joy of running, for the joy of finding her way. “It’s not that I don’t care as much,” she says, “it’s just that I’ve learned that I have much more fun when I take a deep breath and enjoy it. I still do my best, but now I run more for the team.” As a captain, Bird sees herself as the leader of a group of eclectic teammates. This fits into her niche on campus as the girl who floats from social group to social group, who creates spaces for people to explore empowering ideas, and who is inspired by teachers who prompt her to open her mind and consider second and third questions. “We’re a team where people who don’t have a home on other teams can find a home,” she explains. “It’s a funky dynamic. We’re kids from all these random friend groups across the school and we’re all together doing this weird sport. Everyone’s happy at practice. Everyone does their best, and we all also know how to just chill.” Bird loves to run, and she loves to run at and for Brooks, and this shines through when she talks about the cross-country course on campus. She describes in detail the section of the course that runs along the fire trail and follows the border of Lake Cochichewick. “I love running on the fire trail,” she says. “That stretch right by the lake, in the fall when the leaves are turning. It’s so pretty. I’m in heaven. It’s beautiful.”

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NEWS FRO CAMPUS AT HLET I CSMNEWS

Postseason Excellence Three Brooks teams fought for postseason berths this fall. Field hockey made waves in the ISL, football won its second bowl game in three years and boys soccer capped a historic season with a New England Championship. BOYS SOCCER REACHES GLORY

Following last year’s ISL champion-

ship, rampage through the NEPSAC Class B tournament and appearance in the New England Championship game, there was only one thing left for the boys 1st soccer team to prove — and prove it they did. The squad stormed through an undefeated 12-0-5 regular season record and dominated Groton School and Suffield Academy in the postseason tournament before landing right where they had finished last year:

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facing top-ranked, heavy favorite and defending champion South Kent School in the NEPSAC Class B championship game. Brooks was down 2-0 late in the second half due to a South Kent penalty kick and a goal from South Kent star rookie Joshua Bolma. But, Brooks mounted a gritty comeback in the last 20 minutes to take the underdog win, the championship and the history, 3-2. Justin Verissimo ’18 found daylight with the squad’s first goal of the day. Next, sixth-form captain Andrew

Stevens took advantage of a South Kent miscue: He intercepted a pass and quickly scored Brooks’s second goal. With two minutes left, Jacob Iwowo ’18 sealed the deal when he found the back of the net off a cross from Stevens. “Our victory in the last game was purely a result of team over talent,” head coach Dusty Richard says. “Our kids care more about Brooks soccer than they do about any of the clubs they play on, and that’s just not the case almost anywhere else. My philosophy is that if you have

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<< The 1st football team took down New Hampton School in the Ken O’Keefe Bowl, which marked the squad’s third bowl appearance and second bowl win in the last four years.

that 1-1 game, you’re going to win most of the time because you care about it more and you’ve given up more than the other team has, and that’s what happened with South Kent. We were so overmatched, and yet we hung in there.” The Brooks side was relentless through the regular season: Brooks tied Milton Academy, which spoiled its undefeated bid last year, late in the season, and then wrapped up the Gunmere Cup and the ISL title in a 5-0 drubbing of Tabor Academy on the last day of the regular season. Over the course of the regular season, the squad scored 38 goals while only allowing five. Sixth-form goalkeeper Christian Garner notched 13 shutouts behind the stellar defense, a new school record. Brooks accomplished this despite a number of injuries and illnesses this year. But, Richard notes, reserve players stepped into high-profile roles, the team hung together as a group and the squad found ways to win. “Yes, this year’s team was very talented, but what’s amazing is that the sickness and injuries were unprecedented in my 40 years,” Richard says. “I’ve never had so many central players miss so many games. What was great about it, though, was that everyone made contributions. At the end, we were an incredibly strong team together.”

FOOTBALL GOES BOWLING

Following a 6-2 regular season record, the 1st football team made its way north on a frigid November night to take on New Hampton School in the Ken O’Keefe Bowl. Brooks — which had the benefit of having played in bowl games in three of the last four years — was

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able to come away with the 24-14 win that featured a one-yard touchdown run by Jay Cromwell ’18 and a huge 44-yard pass that tight end and Pennsylvania State University commit Pat Freiermuth ’18 plucked out of the air in the end zone. New Hampton shot back with a 90-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, but Brooks led wire to wire and never looked back. Head coach Pat Foley calls the season a testament to the squad’s sixth-formers. “It’s obviously a really talented group of kids, but the best part was how much fun they had playing football,” he says. “They knew when it was time to be serious, but they really enjoyed being around each other.” Sixth-form quarterback Seamus Lambert led the Brooks passing game: He threw for 70 completions on 92 attempts for 1,033 yards and 13 touchdowns. Lambert’s favorite targets were Freiermuth (548 receiving yards) and Terrell Brown ’18 (325 receiving yards). Brooks had a balanced offense this year: Cromwell rumbled for 376 rushing yards, followed by Lambert himself (286 yards), Freiermuth (200) and Ben Gill ’19 (175 yards). The Brooks defense also looked sharp: Fifth-former Owen Borek led the team with seven sacks, and also notched 41 tackles, second only to Freiermuth’s 44. Nick Fulgione ’19 also found 38 tackles of his own. Foley says his team “really took advantage of getting another week. We wanted to make sure that we enjoyed the week, but you could tell early on how focused they were on making the most of the opportunity. There’s no better feeling than winning your last game.”

Millie Brady ’18 and the 1st field hockey team played their way into the NEPSAC tournament for the sixth time in seven years.

FIELD HOCKEY STAYS STRONG

The 1st field hockey team made another showing in the NEPSAC tournament this year. This year marked the sixth year in the last seven that the squad has seen postseason action. Despite losing a large contingent of players to graduation since last season, Brooks used athleticism, a deep roster and a strong sixth-form class to put together a 9-7-2 record and a bid to the New England Championship tournament. Head coach Ali Mattison is optimistic for next year’s campaign. Twelve members of the class of 2019 are on the team, including leading goal scorer, assists leader, points leader and All-ISL selection Caroline Yonce.

W MORE ONLINE: Please visit the Brooks athletics website at www.brooksschool. org/athletics for more information on your favorite Brooks team, including schedules, game recaps and up-to-date news.

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When Serendipity Saves the World

Peter deMenocal ’78 found his future though a chance meeting. Now, he’s fighting to save all of our futures. The renowned climate scientist and previous Distinguished Brooksian award recipient focuses his research on the rapid pace of climate change in paleolithic North Africa, and the lesson, he says, is clear: Our modern climate is changing, it’s changing more quickly than we realize, and humans have contributed to that change. But, there’s still time: deMenocal recently launched an effort to increase private funding for research in the face of federal budget cuts, and he believes the tide may turn soon. BRO OKS BUL L E TI N

ST O RY BY R E BECCA A . BI ND E R

A LL P H OT O G R A P H Y CO U RT ESY O F P ET E R D E M E N O CA L â&#x20AC;&#x2122; 78

Climate scientist Peter deMenocal â&#x20AC;&#x2122;78 founded the Center for Climate and Life at Columbia University in an attempt to replace dwindling federal research funds with funds from private donors.

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19 years old, Peter deMenocal ’78 signed up for the fight of his life — the fight, really, of all of our lives — and he didn’t even know it. The deMenocal who found his future that summer day was a self-described “rumpled” college student, an art major at St. Lawrence University, hitchhiking his way toward a friend on Cape Cod. He thumbed a ride toward Falmouth, Mass., and, some miles later, parted ways with the driver just outside town. That deMenocal, who was about to discover his life’s work, stumble into his academic passion and set his course as a tireless advocate for the future of the world as we know it: That deMenocal simply needed a place to wash off the dirt from the road.

That deMenocal watched his ride drive away. He pivoted, turned from the road, started up a long driveway and ducked into the first building he saw in search of a restroom. “I was shaking water off my hands,” deMenocal says, “and then this big bear paw of a hand landed on my shoulder and this voice goes, ‘Can I help you?’” The bear paw of a hand clapping down on him: That’s when that deMenocal became this deMenocal. Of all the infinite number of locations at which his hitchhiked ride could have ended, it had ended right in front of the entrance to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The building deMenocal ducked into was the Clark Building, one of the laboratories at the Institute. The bear paw belonged to Dr. Charles Hollister, a marine geologist who pioneered knowledge of ocean bottom currents and deep-sea storms. Dr. Hollister lived a life of adventure — his research took him across the globe and into long stays on submarines — and he pulled deMenocal into his office to hold court. “He just spun this story of his life,” deMenocal remembers. “‘I travel around the world, I spend my life at sea, I work with these great scientists, I come up with these great ideas.’ I walked out of there knowing exactly what I wanted to do.” deMenocal showed an early love of the coastal environment and being at sea. In fact, his application for admission to Brooks included a stirring, impassioned essay written in scrawling, teenage-boy handwriting advocating the protection of whales from overfishing. His family, deMenocal says, was deeply entrenched in finance, and as early as his years at Brooks, he was looking for an alternative. He found art. “I really wanted to carve out a different future for myself, something that was distinct,” he says. “Early on in college, though, my passion for the arts was tempered by the reality of employment options in the arts, so I looked for something else. When I discovered science, it was an eye-opening experience: I felt like somebody had shown me door number three, and it was a perfect universe.”

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Peter deMenocal ’78 in Morocco. His research centers around North Africa’s sudden shift from lush, vegetated climate to the Sahara Desert 5,000 years ago. Although the shift itself can be explained by a slight wobble in the Earth’s orbit, the rapid pace at which that change occurred is an example of the accelerated feedback systems that speed climate change.

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“When I discovered science, it was an eye-opening experience: I felt like somebody had shown me door number three, and it was a perfect universe.” PETER DEMENOCAL ’78

Dr. Hollister showed deMenocal his future, and he also showed him a book. “It was called ‘The Propagation of Seismic Waves in Elastic Media,’” deMenocal says. (This translates to, he explains, “how earthquakes happen, why they move around the Earth the way they do, and how you can use sound waves to probe subterranean layers to search for oil.”) “It was nothing but differential equations. I sat on the beach all summer and read differential equations,” deMenocal says. “I loved the challenge, and I loved the idea that this was what I was aspiring to.” The deMenocal that stumbled onto Woods Hole went on to graduate college with a degree in geology, before receiving his master’s degree in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island and his doctorate in geology from Columbia University. He’s now a highly respected voice in climate science.

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He’s based at Columbia’s LamontDoherty Earth Observatory, one of the world’s leading research centers developing fundamental knowledge about the origin, evolution and future of the natural world. He’s also becoming a standard-bearer for the scientific community’s ability to continue this research while funding decreases: deMenocal is the founding director of the Center for Climate and Life at Columbia, a privately funded group of over 115 scientists that he calls “a Manhattan Project for climate change.” He lives a life of adventure (ask him about the time his research ship narrowly evaded Somali pirates under cover of darkness). He lives a life of academic drive and of consequence. He lives a life in which our world is in clear and irrefutable danger, on the precipice of exponential and irreversible decline, and he’s one of our best bets to save it.

The Past These days, deMenocal focuses his research on North Africa, and on the rapid transformation of lush grasslands to what is today’s 3.6 million square-mile Sahara Desert. deMenocal explains that the Sahara Desert, which is larger than the United States, is new: It only became the desert it is today between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago. Before that, North Africa was what he calls “a virtual Eden. It was completely vegetated. It had large lakes, there were people living there, there were elephants, crocodiles, hippopotamuses — it was a completely different ecosystem.” The difference between now and then, deMenocal says, is a wobble in the Earth’s north-south axis. The Earth spins like a top that’s about to fall over, with each cycle taking 26,000 years to complete. That translated to North Africa seeing

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THE SCIENCE OF SEDIMENT

deMenocal and his research team discovered that the paleolithic shift from a lush North Africa to a dry Sahara was much more rapid than previously thought by analyzing ocean sediment off the coast of Somalia. Ocean sediment is dirt and particle runoff from land that gets carried into the ocean and settles on the ocean floor. This method extracts layers of sediment from the ocean floor, dates them, and then examines the chemical makeup of marine organisms and plant matter trapped in each layer of sediment to determine how environmental conditions in the area have changed over time. The crew collects the layers of sediment using a piston corer, a long, skinny, hollow cylinder that can measure 300 feet long. From the ocean surface, the piston corer is lowered into water that can reach 2 1/2 miles deep. The piston corer buries itself in the ocean floor, and when the crew brings it back up, its hollow center contains layers of sediment. The top layer of sediment accumulated in the days just prior to the piston corer’s descent. The bottom layer of sediment, though, can be up to one million years old. Researchers use radiocarbon dating, magnetic reversals and other dating methods to determine the age of each layer. deMenocal looks for two components of the sediment: First, he looks at the exoskeletons or fossils of plankton. The chemical makeup of these shells can reveal changes in ocean temperature, salinity levels and carbon dioxide levels. Second, he isolates molecules of plant matter that were carried into the ocean from land. Plants have a thin layer of wax on the outside of their leaves, and that wax is like gold to researchers. The wax is derived from the vegetation on the land the leaf came from. An analysis of the wax’s chemistry reveals a wealth of information about that area’s past climate, vegetation and rainfall. Today, this method is used primarily by paleoclimatologists, climate scientists who research historical changes in climate over the course of geological time. The use of piston coring, though, originated in the fossil fuel industry: An examination of the plant waxes contained in the sediment could help prospectors source the origin of the organic matter contained in the sediment, which helped them predict whether oil they could extract from that area would be of high quality.

around 7 percent more sunlight in the summer, and 7 percent less sunlight in the winter, than it does today. The extra summer sunlight increased the intensity of the monsoon season, causing the rains to be stronger. “This transition in climate should be very gradual and take thousands of years because it’s tied to gradual changes in the Earth’s orbit,” deMenocal says. “But what we discovered, the contribution I made, is that the transition from wet to dry around 5,000 years ago only took a couple of centuries. That was shocking.”

Scientists are learning what deMenocal believes is one of the largest takeaways for climate studies. “The climate system has a lot of feedback processes that accelerate initial changes,” he says. “That’s why we’re so concerned about global warming. We’re already seeing this transition to a new normal, and our concern is that this other feedback will kick in and make that transition much more abrupt and much more dramatic.” deMenocal points to another example of this accelerated climate feedback. The Earth has lost half of its Arctic sea ice since he was

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a student at Brooks. “That’s the canary in the coal mine for the planet,” he says. “Around the time when I retire is when I expect us to have the first completely sea ice-free summer in the Arctic. And when that happens, you replace an ice-covered, bright North Pole with open ocean. Open ocean is dark, so it absorbs more heat. That heat will accelerate the melting. At that point, Greenland will start to melt, and then the permafrost will start to melt, which will trigger a lot of other events.” The lost Arctic sea ice has already had a marked effect on the weather, he continues. “When the ocean accumulates heat year after year, it just gets warmer. We see the impact of that already, for example, in the hurricanes we just had. Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Maria; a characteristic of all three is that they went from being a tropical storm to being a Category 4 or 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours. That rapid intensification is a hallmark of global warming.” The discovery that the North African climate transition occurred over a period of time as short as few hundred years has implications for how and where we live today, deMenocal says. He points out that people lived in the lush North African landscape prior to its desertification. Then, suddenly, over the course of only several generations, as their resource-rich home became the Sahara Desert, those people left (“evacuated,” deMenocal says). “If you want to know how climate affects people, this is the textbook example,” he says. He also points to the current civil war in Syria, which he says was exacerbated by a fiveyear drought that preceded the civil unrest. He then describes the settling of the banks of the Nile River and the rise of Pharaonic culture

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in Egypt following the transformation of North Africa to desert. “Changes in the environment basically push people around,” he says. “Sometimes this results in something good, but sometimes it results in something really bad, which is what’s happening today. There are more than seven billion people in the world, way too many people for the resources that we have, and if people get pushed out of their home, they’re not happy about it.”

The Present Climate scientists have long suspected fossil fuel as the source of climate change. The combustion of coal, natural gas, oil and other fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas, into the atmosphere. In 2015, the United States ranked second in the world in total carbon emissions, trailing only China. When asked whether he believes that these carbon emissions contribute to climate change, deMenocal seems to bristle. “Absolutely. But it’s not a belief system. One doesn’t believe in gravity; one understands the evidence for it, and it makes sense at a very deep level.” Every prediction on climate change deMenocal learned in graduate school has come true. “I remember being a student and thinking that it can’t be this bad. And, it’s been that bad and then some. That’s the big realization to me: You study and you have this understanding of what the future might look like and it seems impossibly too long in the future. But now that I’ve gotten older, to see it all unfold is maddening, actually.” What deMenocal witnessed over the past 25 years was maddening. What he knows about the next 25, though, is “almost horrifying.”

“Climate change happens sufficiently slowly on a day-to-day basis that it’s hard to be concerned about it. The analogy that’s been used in the past is a frog in a pot of water that’s slowly boiling. Initially it feels comfortable, then it gets a little bit warm, and then before you know it, you’re dead.” PETER DEMENOCAL ’78

“Climate change happens sufficiently slowly on a day-to-day basis that it’s hard to be concerned about it,” he says. “The analogy that’s been used in the past is a frog in a pot of water that’s slowly boiling. Initially it feels comfortable, then it gets a little bit warm, and then before you know it, you’re dead.” Over the next 25 years, according to deMenocal, the warming of the Earth will accelerate. The amount of carbon emissions is increasing, but also, the heating that results from previous carbon emissions is just now coming to fruition. “The warming that we’ve already seen will just get more extreme,” he says. “Nineteen out of the past 20

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“In order to prepare for the future, you need to know what the future looks like. To know you could make a difference and not be able to because you’re being muzzled is unacceptable.” PETER DEMENOCAL ’78

years have been the warmest years recorded over the last 145 years. We expect that every year from now going forward will be in the top five or 10.”

The Money Exacerbating these existential problems of survival is a fiscal reality: The percentage of the federal budget that funds research and development has decreased slowly since its peak at the height of the Cold War. According to deMenocal, the federal government’s support of research like that conducted at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has dwindled sharply in the last two years. “At Columbia, we have the world’s largest collection of climate scientists,” he says. “We focus on understanding how climate and the oceans are changing in response to the future of carbon emissions and what’s at stake. And 85 percent of those scientists, their existence, their ability to do their work, is dependent on federal support.”

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“The nation is in a really desperate situation in this regard,” deMenocal asserts. “Scientific discovery and engineering, and the monetization of that knowledge into products, has funded or supported the economic growth of this country since World War II. I appreciate the need to have a balanced budget, but you’re killing the goose with the golden eggs.” In order to try to make up the budget shortfall, Columbia launched a new research initiative in 2015. The Center for Climate and Life, of which deMenocal is founding director, solicits private foundational and philanthropic support for research. This is a growing trend: Although philanthropy has always helped to fund scientific research, leaders like deMenocal more frequently rely on private donors as government funding decreases. In turn, philanthropists have increasingly stepped forward to fund these initiatives. The center focuses its attention on the effect climate change will have on the next few decades. It seeks to understand the effect climate change has on essential resources — food, water and shelter — and on how to develop sustainable energy solutions. The center’s goal is to raise $200 million in endowed funds, from which it could distribute $10 million annually to fund research. “It feels great,” deMenocal says. “It’s a way to fight back.” There’s another aspect to this new wave of climate science’s determination to continue its research in the face of debilitating odds. deMenocal has led a charge to form a consortium between Columbia’s Center for Climate and Life and other research institutions that have a stable of scientists comparable to Columbia’s. He’s joined with three other universities — Harvard University, Princeton University

and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — to form a consortium called “Shared Mission: Earth.” The consortium will focus on what deMenocal calls “superproblems.” For example, he explains, humans get 20 percent of their protein from the oceans, so the consortium will research how climate affects ocean productivity. “In order to prepare for the future, you need to know what the future looks like,” he says. “Climate impacts on agricultural yield, on water resources, on coastal assets, sea level rise and storm surges: These are all knowable things. Because the funding is being shut down, they’re not going to be knowable, and that’s just a plain tragedy. To know you could make a difference and not be able to because you’re being muzzled is unacceptable.”

The Future Despite the melting Arctic sea ice; the painful truth of 25-year old climate predictions; the accelerating pace of climate change; the vicious cycle of carbon emission; and the continuous loss of funding to research the causes of, effects of and solutions to climate change, deMenocal refuses to give in. In fact, he sees indications of hope, of having turned a critical corner in our collective journey. First, deMenocal points out, there’s an increasing economic incentive to adopt and invest in renewable energy sources — solar and wind energy — over traditional energy sources based in fossil fuels. Renewable energy has passed grid parity: It’s now less expensive to generate a watt of electricity through renewables than through fossil fuels. The cost of renewable energy sources has plummeted in the last decade. The price of solar panels dropped 75 percent between 2009 and 2014, and the cost of

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wind energy dropped by almost two-thirds in the last decade. Pure economic pressure, deMenocal says, will take over where moral and scientific arguments may have previously fallen short. Second, deMenocal predicts that soon, many of the world’s developed nations will shift their vehicle fleets to electric-powered vehicles. He noticed this phenomenon on a recent trip to Shanghai, where most of the motorcycles he came across were electric. “Once China decides to buy only electric vehicles, that’s the death of the internal combustion engine as the focus of auto engineering,” he says. “We can fight between ourselves here in this country, but if we don’t change, we’ll be this lone manufacturer of internal combustion engines. We’ll be selling products that have no relevance. Unless we change, we’re basically relegating the next generation of Americans to selling the equivalent of buggy whips.” Third, deMenocal references the mounting and increasingly routine cost to American taxpayers of not taking steps to address climate change. He points out that the damage from Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria, all of which made landfall in the United States last summer, carries a price tag north of $200 billion. “Most of those are uninsured losses,” he says. “There’s an economic cost to climate change that acts as a tax on every American regardless of whether they believe in climate change. One of those hurricanes is going to hit us every year, on average, and pretty soon, it’s going to start to hurt.” deMenocal is hopeful, but make no mistake: He’s also angry. “I mean, I’m mad,” he says. “My life might be passable, but my children’s lives are going to be really hard. We’re going to deal with climate change, though, and

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Peter deMenocal ’78 found his passion in climate research in part, he says, because of its sense of adventure. He was inspired to pursue science following a chance meeting at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

we’re going to adopt a renewables approach because it just makes economic sense. What’s going to get it done is embracing new technologies. There’s so much of a new economy to be realized out of this, and whoever gets there first will win.”

What if, back when he was a rumpled college student on summer break, deMenocal had hitched a ride from a different car? What if the driver of the car that stopped for him hadn’t chosen that

particular slab of road, the slab in front of one of the most renowned marine research institutions in the world, on which to let deMenocal off? What if that deMenocal had stayed in the passenger seat as the car blithely drove past Woods Hole, headed into town and sidestepped his future? What would that deMenocal have become? He pauses. “I don’t even want to think about it,” this deMenocal says. “It wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as what I picked, though. The power of serendipity is underrated.”

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THIS IS

BROOKS THE CASE FOR

Financial Aid BY R E BECCA A . BI ND E R

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If you’re reading this, you CARE about

BROOKS —what it’s been, what it is today, and

W H AT I T COULD BE A ND SH OU LD B E IN T HE FUT URE.

If you want to help Brooks achieve its MISSION in an evolving world; if you want to help Brooks continue to ENROLL and

graduate inspired students; if you want Brooks to remain

GIVE

FINANCIALLY STABLE in a changing economy, then

TO T HE CA MPA I GN FO R B RO O KS to help secure $10 million in endowment restricted to

funding financial aid. Read on to hear Head of School John Packard’s case for

why FINANCIAL AID is critical to EVERY ASPECT of the school’s economic and educational FUTURE. FALL 2017

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W

hen you’re talking about financial aid, you’re talking about the strength of the entire Brooks community: the different life experiences that are shared across desks in the Classroom Building and tables in Wilder Dining Hall; the vast array of hometowns, home countries and homes that students on the cusp of adulthood hail from; the chance for students to room with someone who grew up, it seems, in a different world; the forging of a community and of individuals within that community by the fire of difference, of diversity, of the respectful and empathetic exchange of ideas.

Over the last five years, high-need financial aid students at Brooks have enrolled at the following competitive colleges: Amherst College Barnard College Boston College Boston University Bowdoin College Brown University Columbia University Connecticut College Franklin and Marshall College The George Washington University Harvard University Lehigh University Syracuse University Trinity College The University of Chicago University of Massachusetts The University of Vermont Villanova University College of William and Mary Williams College

IVY

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When you’re talking about financial aid, you’re also talking about hope: giving students an opportunity, a chance to excel and succeed; an invitation to attend a school that can change fortunes, change circumstances, change lives, lengthen horizons. You’re talking about dreams, determination and light. And, when you’re talking about financial aid, you’re talking about money: gifts and donations; institutional budgets; endowed funds and the draw off of those endowed funds. Balance sheets, economic projections and the notion that, by making it possible for fewer students to pay full tuition, you’re ensuring the long-term economic fortunes of the school. So, when you’re talking about financial aid, you’re talking, really, about Brooks: about its finances, its budget sheet and its calculations; about the spark and the energy you see in its students; and about its community, its larger whole, the loud, passionate, sometimes messy but always devoted family that populates the campus. The text of this feature will tell you about all of these things. It will calculate numbers, budget priorities and endowment draws. It will tell you about the vibrant contributions that financial aid recipients make to the school. And, it will remind you that the entire community — not just financial aid recipients — benefits greatly from their attendance at Brooks. But the text of this feature isn’t the real story of this feature. Numbers can’t tell you about the alumna who attended Brooks on a full scholarship who celebrates March 10 — the day she received her Brooks acceptance letter in the mail more than two decades ago — as a joyous anniversary each year. Reciting statistics about the disproportionate number of financial aid recipients who become stars at Brooks can’t tell you about the boy who came here with almost nothing and who left here holding an Ivy League admission letter. Telling you about the value of difference and empathy can’t tell you about the close friendship between the girl who has always taken advantage of every opportunity and the girl who has always fought for every opportunity, and the life-altering understanding that flows between those giggles as they walk together through the Link. The world is changing; the nation is changing; the economy is changing; but this place of stability, of hope, of learning, of enlightenment — this has always been Brooks. This is why we’re important, this is why we’re needed, and this is why we need you now.

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You’re Talking About COMMUNITY

“It’s not accurate to say that financial aid is only for financial aid students,” Head of School John Packard says. “It’s for the school, and it’s for the whole experience we have here together as a school.” This point is important: Mr. Packard firmly believes that there is irreplaceable value in, as he says, the experiences that kids have here by virtue of living and going to school with people who didn’t grow up down the street from them. One of Mr. Packard’s oft-repeated lines is that the base of what a school needs is invested teachers and inquisitive students. That’s what Brooks has always been: Alumni speak fondly of favorite faculty, of best friends, of time spent excitedly exploring a subject together. “If you believe as I do that the greatest strength of a school is the human capital of a school — eager teachers and interested kids who are in step more often than not and who are trying to make great things happen — then it stands to reason that if you increase your reach to kids through financial aid, you’re going to get more good matches,” he says. “Financial aid permits you to build a student body that is capable of learning from itself in unscripted ways between the lines, in how they live here. That’s the magic of it.” The magic that Mr. Packard describes is a vibrant campus, where students who hail from increasingly different backgrounds come together to learn — from teachers and from each other — inside and outside of the classroom. In class, students debate ideas, philosophies and theories that might, in a different population, be held up as truths. Outside the classroom, students live together, eat together and pursue their extracurricular interests together, which helps them learn from each other’s diverse experiences while also realizing the similarities that course through them. “If every student in the school had to pay full tuition,” Mr. Packard says, “it wouldn’t be the same school. It would be a far lesser place, measurably and in ways that we feel.” “This creates challenge, and sticky points, and tension at times,” Mr. Packard continues. “I think that here, we can live in that tension, teach in that tension and learn in that tension. An absence of financial aid, and by extension an absence of critical mass of a range of traditionally disadvantaged groups at school, eliminates the likelihood of that being in play. You don’t get tested, and you don’t learn if you’re not tested. Financial aid gives us a greater chance to achieve what we aspire to do here. It gives us a greater chance of

“Financial aid permits you to build a student body that is capable of learning from itself in unscripted ways between the lines, in how they live here. That’s the magic of it.” H E AD OF SCH OOL JOH N PACK AR D

having a human community that has more lived experience in it.” That variety of lived experience is important, Mr. Packard continues, not just because it allows students to test their theories and consider other circumstances in high school. It’s also valuable because it allows Brooks students — from families of all income levels — to become Brooks alumni who understand how to exist in our rapidly shrinking world. “Our kids are increasingly likely to enter into a world that will be more national, more international, more global, in terms of where and how they work, the communities they live in, and more,” Mr. Packard says. “The likelihood is that these factors are going to expand even more over time. A strong, robust commitment to financial aid positions our kids to be more effective leaders and citizens in the communities they’re going to be a part of. We lead them, I would argue, to more meaning and more potential for contribution to those communities later in their lives.”

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You’re Talking About HOPE

Increased financial aid, of course, doesn’t only benefit the Brooks community as a whole. It also has a profound effect on its recipients. Consider it: Children from modest backgrounds who work hard, who show determination, who keep going, are able to come to Brooks, a school where they can pave their own paths to success by digging into the school’s resources, advantages and connections. Mr. Packard calls this a process

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This year’s formal all-school photo. This year, 107 students receive financial aid in order to access a Brooks education. Increasing the endowment restricted to financial aid by $10 million will allow Brooks to offer financial aid to 10 more students a year and one in three students annually.

of a student “pivoting in a direction that they wouldn’t have imagined.” He lists examples of students who turned the opportunity they had here into the realIn 2015 ization of a life that may previously have seemed out of reach. “I guess I would say, it’s just right. It’s the right thing to do.” of students In addition to appealing to a moral nominated by sense of right, Mr. Packard points out that the faculty for students who receive financial aid go on, in Y E A R-E ND percentages that are far greater than their P R I Z E S were recipients of numbers in the student body, to become financial aid. leaders on campus: They serve as school prefects; they are elected team captains; they dig in to life at Brooks, and they lift their classmates up with them. This isn’t a surprise, though, given that the pool of applicants who qualify for financial aid is very competitive: In 2017, the school admitted only 13.4 percent of applicants who qualify for financial aid; the overall acceptance rate was 26.6 percent. Mr. Packard explains that an increase in available financial aid can also help increase the number of students who are able to pay full tuition. “If you look at schools that have the largest financial aid budgets, they’re also the most selective schools,” he says. “In that

48%

32

full-pay market, a strong financial aid budget draws more full-pay kids because it increases the strength of the school and the perception of the school.”

You’re Talking About MONEY

Over the stretch of Mr. Packard’s tenure as head of school, Brooks has increased its financial aid budget significantly. This focus on increasing the accessibility of a Brooks education arose in part because the school and the school’s board of trustees support Mr. Packard’s personal commitment to ensuring that the Brooks community remains vibrant and fulfills its mission. But also, Mr. Packard argues, the school’s financial aid budget looms as a critical aspect of Brooks’s overall ability to maintain itself financially as the institution it has always been — especially as the nation’s economy evolves and the cost of tuition becomes unreachable for increasing numbers of families. “It’s just good business,” he says. “If you think about the sustainability of a highly expensive education in a dwindling domestic market of people who can afford that education, and you want to be able to work with kids with whom you think you can deliver on your mission, then you have to be able to access them. The fact is, only a tiny fraction of people in this country can

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Why? E SCAL ATING COST O F TUITIO N With anticipated increases in our annual boarding tuition, our tuition will reach $70 K in four short years. Fewer and fewer people can afford us.

W HO C A N AF FO RD TO PAY F UL L T U I T I O N ? * Median Tuition $50,886 Full-Pay Income $257,275 % Of U.S. Families

3.1%

*NAIS Statistic, based on 9th grade in a seven-day boarding school.

$69,957

$59,800

FY2018

afford to go to Brooks School, and that number will continue to decrease. There’s a whole host of people who can’t afford our tuition, and with whom we would be able to do great work.” Mr. Packard took the reins as head of school in the fall of 2008. Almost immediately after he began his tenure, the school faced a massive challenge: The 2008 financial crisis reared its head in September 2008, and almost overnight, a double-digit number of Brooks students whose families could previously afford tuition suddenly found themselves unable to. A number of restricted gifts, Mr. Packard says, were given that year to allow those families to remain at Brooks, but Mr. Packard regards that instance as indicative of a larger shortcoming. Prior to being named head of school, Mr. Packard had served Brooks as assistant director of admission, and he had witnessed the financial limits the school bumped up against when trying to reach and enroll promising students. In the wake of the financial crisis, the school needed to make tough decisions about its priorities and set hard budget priorities moving forward. “We were in a mode where we could recognize enrollment vulnerability on some level,” Mr. Packard says. “It was at that point that we identified increasing and making our financial aid funds more dependable as our number one goal.” Here, Mr. Packard distinguishes between the terms “financial aid budget” and

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>>

FY2022

How? Helping Brooks gain 10–11 ADDITIONAL FINANCIAL AID STUDENTS will get us to our near-term goal of

Who? TUR NIN G AWAY G R E AT ST U D E N T S We are seeing very strong financial aid applicants that we can’t afford to admit because of our limited budget. Our financial aid students O UT-PE R FO R M in almost every way. Between 2011–15 our financial aid students represented

33% 23% $10 48.6% of the student body receiving financial aid.

MILLION ENDOWMENT will add an additional

$450,000 to the financial aid budget.

of the student body. During that period

of the school PREFECTS received financial aid and

49%

were team CAPTAINS.

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“If you want to help the school be elastic and have choices in its future, then help us ensure that we can continue to enroll great kids. There is no greater gift than that.” HEAD OF SCHOOL JOHN PAC K AR D

“endowment draw.” The school’s financial aid budget is, simply, the amount of money that the school allocates toward financial aid each year. That money comes from a variety of sources, including: the operating budget; one-time donations to the school; and endowment draw (a draw off of the investment returns on the school’s endowment). In the stretch between his first and second year as head, Mr. Packard says, the school increased its financial aid budget by 16 percent. The school’s commitment continued to bear fruit: Even as the country struggled to regain its economic footing, P E E R SCHO O L S the total financial aid budget at Brooks (on average) have increased nearly 40 percent — from $2.6 million to $3.6 million — between 2010 and 2015. At the same time, the school only of students increased the portion of the endowment on financial aid. draw given to financial aid by $100,000 — from $1.2 million to $1.3 million — in the Brooks has same time period. These early successes set in motion a drive that Mr. Packard calls an institutional priority. Currently, the financial of students aid budget sits at $4.5 million. Brooks has on financial aid. achieved this, in part, because the school has prioritized financial aid over other budgetary concerns. Increased financial aid support would allow Brooks to support other institutional priorities at higher levels. The average award to Brooks students is $41,870; the typical student who is granted financial aid is changing, and increasingly includes the demographic

33% 30%

34

that Mr. Packard describes as “the growing percentage of people who are doing pretty well, who are upper middle class, who have three kids, and who can’t afford Brooks.” In Mr. Packard’s first year as head, 78 students received financial aid; this year, 107 students received aid. Those additional 30 Brooks students are critical: “If you care about Brooks, and about Brooks being Brooks in the way that we and you would like it to be, then you should support financial aid,” Mr. Packard says, explaining that a lack of financial aid support will ultimately threaten the school’s ability to enroll students. Currently, the endowment restricted for financial aid is $27 million. Through The Campaign for Brooks, the school hopes to increase this number to $37 million. Assuming a 4.5 percent rate of return, the draw off of this additional $10 million will increase the annual financial aid budget by $450,000. This will allow Brooks to enroll an additional 10 or 11 financial aid students each year, and will move the school to its near-term goal of having a student body in which one in three students receives financial aid. It’s important that this additional $450,000 a year comes from endowed funds, Mr. Packard says, because endowed funds are more permanent than non-endowed gifts: The school can work confidently in its admission acceptances and budget planning, knowing that the endowed funds will be there to support its financial aid budget. “We could just keep making it work, and in some respects, we probably will,” he says. “But an endowed gift is there in perpetuity if it’s managed well, and ours is. You know that you have a scholarship that’s just going to be there, year after year. And hopefully, if you manage that money well, the value and impact of that scholarship exceeds tuition increases and you stay slightly ahead of the curve.” Mr. Packard wants a Brooks in 10 years that, he says, “has choices. It’s hard to predict what some of those choices might be, and what we’ll look like. What we know now is that there will not be more people who can afford to go to Brooks than is the case now. It’s likely there will be fewer. It would be a real enrollment challenge for the school in 10 years if, all of a sudden, you had to find another 15 kids who could pay full tuition in a declining full-pay boarding market. And that’s the brass tacks, the rubber hitting the road: If you want to help the school be elastic and have choices in its future, then help us ensure that we can continue to enroll great kids. There is no greater gift than that. If you can’t have people whom you think will give to and draw from this place, then the rest of it is sort of left to not serve its purpose.”

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BROOKS

THE CAMPAIGN FOR BROOKS is a $60 million effort that has significantly and fundamentally improved the present and the future of the school. Campus improvements abound: A renovated Ashburn Chapel allows our community to gather and spend reflective time together; a lit, spacious turf field allows our community to gather and cheer each other on; roads that reroute traffic through campus maintain a car-free Main Street; and, the Center for the Arts is under construction. Now in its last year, the campaign needs you to complete another initiative: By helping Brooks establish an additional $10 million in restricted financial aid endowment, you will ensure that future Brooks students will be as vibrant as the buildings and campus they will occupy. For more information, please visit our campaign website at www. thecampaignforbrooks.org, or contact Director of Development Gage Dobbins at gdobbins@brooksschoool.org or (978) 725-6288.

TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT

6 ENTREPRENEURSHIP

B Y

R E B E C C A

A .

B I N D E R

Brooks has always provided its students with a solid educational foundation in traditional subject areas. In recent years, though, increasing numbers of Brooksians have eschewed traditional career paths to strike out on their own, bolstered by the rise of the Internet and the long commercial reach it provides. Here, the Bulletin highlights six of these young alumni, and asks how Brooks influenced their imaginative career paths.

ALL PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE SUBJECTS

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B R O O K S I A N S 37 Taylor MacGillivary ’09 38 Caity Flanagan ’09 39 Roz Mays ’02 40 Anna Lisa Falzone Grieve ’11 and Porter Grieve ’11 42 Greer Simpkins ’05

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BREAKING TABOOS When Taylor MacGillivary ’09 and two of his friends recorded the first episode of their podcast, “Sickboy,” at the public library in their hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, they weren’t trying to create a listener hit. But, two years later, the podcast, which uses humor and empathy to give people living with serious — often terminal — disease a warm, often humorous space to share their stories, is racking up the downloads as it fills a niche in our collective conversation.

Taylor MacGillivary ’09

The typical conversation about disease and death doesn’t open with electric guitar riffs and peals of laughter, but the “Sickboy” podcast isn’t the typical conversation about disease and death. This is a relief, co-host Taylor MacGillivary ’09 explains: The podcast’s format — MacGillivary and his two co-hosts, along with a guest living with a disease — allows the group to “normalize challenging conversations. We sit down with someone and talk about illness in a really raw, frank and open way, and we use comedy and laughter and joking around as a way to make that kind of conversation more accessible to the average person.” The impetus for the podcast was the conversation that developed between best friends MacGillivary and his co-hosts, Jeremie Saunders and Brian Stever. Saunders lives with cystic fibrosis, a genetic lung disease that results in early death, and the trio was struck with the way in which they used comedy as therapy. “We took that idea and put it into our show,” MacGillivary says, explaining that they try to extend the conversation they have with Jeremie about his illness to other people. “We’re trying to bridge the gap in conversation between people who are sick and people who aren’t,” he continues, “so that people who are sick can feel more comfortable being open about it and talking about it, and so that people who aren’t sick don’t clam up and get awkward when someone in their life has an illness.” The public has welcomed the podcast, which MacGillivary notes is a conversation about a topic — death and disease — that affects listeners across all demographics. When “Sickboy” was introduced, it earned 25,000 downloads in 90 days, and was named one of iTunes’s best Canadian podcasts of 2015. MacGillivary reports that, despite the challenges of monetizing a product that users can acquire for free, the trio is on the cusp of making the podcast profitable. “We definitely have aspirations for it over the next year or so, to capitalize on it and make it more of a career and something that pays a salary,” he says. MacGillivary has a gift for conversation: He makes thoughtful points; he listens to the perspectives of others; and he radiates a sense of empathy and warmth in his hosting duties. This, he says, is a credit to his time at Brooks. “I really started to put a lot of stock into academics at Brooks,” he says. “I started to value intellect and debate and conversation. Brooks taught me to think for myself, and Brooks helped me learn how to discern and debate, and how to see different sides of the same idea and be able to converse about them.”

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Caity Flanagan ’09 says that she’s always felt a connection with nature, a love that was nurtured during her time spent living on the Brooks campus. Flanagan has pursued her love of the land and turned it into an unfolding career as a healer and naturalist.

Caity Flanagan ’09

A MODERN-DAY MEDICINE WOMAN

Modern-day medicine woman. Shamanic healer. Somatic life coach. Holistic herbalist. Writer and poet. Doula. Caity Flanagan ’09 embraces the power of the elements, and she’s grown a career on guiding clients through their wellness journeys. She currently lives in Costa Rica, where she devotes herself to healing and to her writing, but she keeps herself busy: Flanagan travels extensively throughout the United States and the world to educate, present on her calling and meet with clients. Flanagan became interested in working with plants and healing work early on. She took a summer job on a farm at age 13, and from there, made stops at farms in Pennsylvania, New York State and, locally, at Paisley Farm in Boxboro, Mass., and briefly had her own farm operation before transitioning into healing. “I just kind of fell in love with farming,” she says. “I remember being 14 years old and thinking that I never want to have a job that’s indoors. That’s stuck with me since then. I got to know working with the land very well, I discovered herbal medicine and then I went on to formally study herbal medicine. All the work I do is very nature-based, and a lot of that language between body and nature gets looped in together.” Flanagan has expanded her practice: In addition to her private practice, she is the creator of “The Wild Calling,” which she describes as a “nine-month mystery school and deep initiation into the divine feminine,” and she also runs a somatic coaching intensive and a collective womb-healing circle. Flanagan says that her practice is successful. “It’s definitely evolving,” she says. “I’m growing my practice and shifting what I’m teaching and teaching in new places, and I’m grateful for it.” Flanagan enrolled at Brooks to take advantage of the Exchange Program (she traveled to Botswana, where her interest in health and wellness grew as she researched and observed HIV/AIDS clinics), but she also credits Brooks with stoking her sense of independence, creativity and work ethic. “Brooks is a very rigorous place,” she says. “I developed a very good sense of just how to work hard when I need to.”

“KICKASS” TRAINER + POLE DIVA

Roz Mays ’02

“Never in a thousand years did I think I’d be in the Bulletin for pole dancing!” Roz Mays ’02 exclaims. Mays sells herself short: The New York-based certified personal trainer specializes in teaching small group fitness classes, including instruction in pole dancing, to clients who feel alienated in traditional gyms and exercise settings. Roz Mays ’02 has a bone to pick with conventional depictions of athleticism. “When you see the word ‘athlete,’ if you’re not Serena or LeBron, you feel like you don’t really count,” she says. “More, if you don’t look like either one of them, then you really feel like you don’t count. But the truth is, you do count. The contributions that nontraditional athletes bring are different from the contributions that Serena or LeBron bring to the world. But that doesn’t make them less valuable, and I want people to understand that.” Someone who needs evidence of Mays’s point should look no further than Mays herself. After playing three sports at Brooks and trying to adhere to more familiar notions of athleticism and exercise, Mays tried a pole-dancing class at her gym: She fell in love with the sport, ditched the treadmill, and since then, has blazed a trail for athletes who seek a different experience. “One thing I love about pole is, it’s rooted in dance,” Mays explains. “I have a Beyoncé complex; I have this fantasy that she’ll call me up and ask me to be a backup dancer tomorrow, so I have to be ready at all times. And, pole was my introduction to strength training. With pole, it’s like, you don’t have to run; you just have to lift your [hips] above your head. And even though that’s probably harder than trying to learn to run properly, it was a lot more fun.” Pole dancing started as a hobby for Mays, but it quickly turned into a career. Part of this transition was forced: As Mays continued to gain notoriety, she would lose jobs when videos and images of her dancing surfaced online. Finally, Mays resolved that, if it came down to it, she would give up her desk job for her passion. “I made that decision with myself long before I had to make it with someone else,” she says. “The reality of pole dancing is so different from what people think it is. People walk out of class feeling strong, and in a much better place physically and mentally. It’s all worth it.” Mays emphasizes that Brooks, despite its graduates’ tendencies to pursue straight-laced careers, inspired her strong sense of self. “The first year or two that I was doing this full time, I carried around a lot of guilt,” she says. “My friends from Brooks, they were getting doctorates, they were getting MBAs, they were doing really ‘normal’ stuff on a path that makes sense. People don’t look at you crazy when you say you’re an investment banker. But,” she continues, “Brooks gave me a space to be myself, and to be myself unapologetically. That’s what I’m doing now, and Brooks is a large part of the reason why I’m not afraid to be out there.”

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Anna Lisa Falzone Grieve â&#x20AC;&#x2122;11

AN ETHICAL BRAND After getting married last summer, Anna Lisa Falzone Grieve ’11 and Porter Grieve ’11 are off on a trip around the world. This isn’t a typical honeymoon, though: This is an epic business trip. The pair is traveling the world indefinitely. They’re each armed with one suitcase, packed full of clothing from what they call “ethical brands.” As they travel the world, partnering with ethical clothing and hotel brands along the way, they use their blog (www.recesscity.com) and large Instagram platform to promote a conscious lifestyle over a consumerist one. The Bulletin caught up with the pair over email as they traveled through the Mediterranean.

industry has on our planet and the people who inhabit it. After seeing that, it clicked for us. We only work with brands that we’re passionate about. We have two criteria: First, they need to maintain sustainable and ethical standards (they can trace their supply chain, are 100 percent sweatshop-free and deal with their production and waste in an environmentally responsible manner); second, they need to have design we can appreciate and that we’d like to wear. You really have to dig around to find ethical brands that retain a style that would attract a larger scope of consumers, and that’s been part of the fun for us. It’s kind of like digging for treasure: When we find a new brand that we know we would wear and our friends would wear and

How did Recess City start? Anna: I studied English literature at Trinity College Dublin for three years, and I also spent a year living in Switzerland. During my time living in Europe, I was traveling a lot and my love for photography and documentation brought the idea of a blog around. I put together a wimpy website, and would take some photos on my iPhone and record my time at this place or that place. When I graduated I had about 10,000 followers, and when I moved back to Boston to be with Porter it started to blossom. We realized that Instagram and blogging could be more than just a hobby, and that we’d created a platform of people in tune with our style, and that there was an opportunity there to use that audience to serve a purpose bigger than just calling attention to ourselves. For us, that’s ethical fashion and eco-travel. It’s a passion we both live and breathe, and it’s a niche that has pretty much gone unfilled in the blogging sphere. Your ethos of seeking out “ethical brands,” promoting them and helping them get attention as we begin to think more about where our clothes and goods come from is intriguing. Why is this important to you, and how do you find and connect with these brands? Porter: When we began introducing more style content, it didn’t quite feel right to just promote any brand that would give us money or exposure, as generally neither Anna nor I felt passionate about what we were doing. Anna struggled with writing posts for brands that had sent us clothing or provided payment, but which lacked an interesting backstory or the kind of moral agenda that aligned with our own belief systems. For me, things changed when we watched the documentary “The True Cost.” I couldn’t believe the negative impact that the fashion

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has definitely helped us grow. It’s certainly hard work every day. Our financial goal for the first three months of our travel was to be able to match Porter’s income over the same period at the corporate job he formerly had, combined with the money I was bringing in solely from Recess City. We’re more than on target to do so, which has been a big relief and very encouraging. Right now, we aren’t focused on maximizing our profit through brands, because to do so we would have to increase the number of brands we work with. Instead, we want to establish credibility as ethical bloggers and increase our value to the small number of brands we do work with.

Porter Grieve ’11

actually shows moral integrity, it’s encouraging and exciting and we want more people to know about that brand. We limit the brands we work with to a small handful. This allows us to form longer-term partnerships, and allows our audience to feel less like we just want them to buy whatever we’re promoting and more like we want them to learn about ethical companies. How is Recess City growing financially? Are you making a profit? Anna: We aggressively saved money for eight months in order to be able to take this trip and kick-start the business. Traveling full time, being in beautiful locations and being able to devote every day to creating photographic content for hotels and brands

What did you learn at Brooks that has translated to your work with Recess City? Porter: The culture at Brooks offers students chances to take leadership roles at a very young age. I think that is the most important thing Brooks gives students to prepare them to, down the line, start a business or be entrepreneurs. The ability to connect with people and communicate clearly and effectively is becoming increasingly important in the digital age, especially when trying to start a business and sell yourself to potential clients.

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As a student at Parsons School of Design, fashion designer Greer Simpkins ’05 learned that, as she says, “good design solves problems.” Simpkins has built a successful career on this premise: Her women’s lingerie line, Hello Beautiful, brings simple, elegant, 100 percent cotton, American-made pieces cut in the European style to the American market, and business is booming.

Greer Simpkins ’05

DESIGNING BEAUTIFUL BASICS

PHOTO: RYAN CONATY

When Greer Simpkins ’05 launched her lingerie line, Hello Beautiful, in December 2014, she had only one product: Her signature panty is a white, American-made cotton piece that Simpkins calls “a throwback style that just kind of stopped being available to women on the market.” Five months later, Simpkins was featured in the New York Times’s Styles section. The New York Times piece gave Simpkins’s business a boost, and she hasn’t looked back since. “Suddenly, I had a whole base of customers,” she says. “It was almost like a movement that was about what my product represents other than being just a good pair of underwear. How do women make decisions for themselves? Politically, how do women choose where and how things are made, and what they’re made of? I guess I sort of tapped in to some kind of larger movement that’s about making thoughtful choices.” Now, Simpkins has expanded her line to accommodate the “overwhelming response.” Currently, Hello Beautiful includes white and black cotton pieces, additional bra and panty styles, and other basics. She operates out of her home in Cambridge, Mass., manufactures her pieces in New York City, and plans to grow slowly as she maintains her personal connection to her customers — who include, she says, several Brooksians. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s working,” she says. “I feel great that I’ve been able to design my dream job for myself. It feels like my American dream.” Simpkins fostered her interest in fashion and design at Brooks. Pieter Burgess, wife of former faculty Tom Burgess, took Simpkins under her wing: Mrs. Burgess asked Simpkins to help her costume the school’s theater productions, spent time with her in the Burgess’s home sewing room, and, Simpkins says, “went the extra mile, and had the patience and kindness to spend time with me and encourage me. When I graduated, Mrs. Burgess gifted me a pair of Fiskars scissors with my name on them. I still have those scissors!” Simpkins also points to another aspect of her Brooks education: The school, she says, fosters a sense of independence and encourages its students to pursue their interests. “At Brooks, you design your own life,” she says. “You design your interests. I took Ancient Greek as a sixth-former, and as part of the class, I was able to design a dress that was an interpretation of Greek style for the modern woman. I applaud Brooks for letting its students be who they are and come into their own.”

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BROOKS CONNECTIONS IN THIS SECTION 44 Alumni News 50 Class Notes 86 In Memoriam

Evening study hall at Brooks in the 1950s.

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PH OTO COU RTESY OF B EEJ DAS â&#x20AC;&#x2122;91

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Making A Run

A Brooksian declares his candidacy for the United States House of Representatives, inspired by his time at Brooks and in the hopes of assisting the district immediately adjacent to the school. In late September, Abhijit “Beej” Das ’91, president and CEO of Troca Hotels, announced his candidacy for United States Congress. He’s running as a Democrat in Massachusetts’s 3rd district. He says that he has “strong views on the fundamental issues — I’m a true Democrat in that way — but I’m also bringing the perspective of a businessman who has operated businesses and employed people. I have the progressive businessperson perspective, which is a little bit different than what we see in Washington on a regular basis.” Geographically, the Massachusetts district Das seeks to represent is sprawling: The upside-down triangleshaped district begins in Haverhill and follows the New Hampshire border to Winchendon; from there, it doubles back on itself to include Gardner, Fitchburg and Leominster, before reaching down to Marlborough and then ascending northeast again through Concord, Carlisle and a part of Andover. It’s a diverse district, and Das seems excited for the opportunities it presents. “In the district, you have wealthy suburban and rural communities that are looking at issues such as development, taxation, and general issues of safety and security,” he says. “On the other side, you have places like Lawrence and Haverhill, which have seen a breakdown in economic and educational opportunity that I think has in many ways hurt the entire region. While we look at and take care of the needs of the communities in the district that are already doing well, we must assist those communities that need additional development and

educational opportunities. Supporting that development is my number one goal.” Das says that he’s uniquely qualified to hold a seat in Congress. He attended Middlebury College and then the University of Michigan Law School, where he focused on constitutional law before clerking for the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. He then worked in venture capital and private equity before moving to hospitality: Das served as senior director of development in South Asia for Hilton Worldwide before returning to the United States to found Boston East India Hotels. Troca Hotels, Das’s current company, develops, owns and operates boutique and lifestyle hotels, restaurants and yachts in the region. “The one thing that comes out is that I have a really varied background on the experience side,” Das says. Das believes that bringing opportunity to the district requires him to work on a bipartisan basis, and to be able to work with “whomever is in leadership, and whomever is on the other side.” This optimism began at Brooks. “When I got to Brooks, I remember feeling that there was a community even amongst people of very different backgrounds,” he says. “You can have intellectually differing perspectives, but you can do so with compassion. Today in the American political landscape, we don’t care about anybody’s feelings. That additional bit of care ends up creating deeper and stronger roots, and I think for me, that’s where Brooks was an eye-opener.”

CA L L FO R ALU MNI AWA RD NO MINATIO NS We’re already planning for Alumni Weekend, which will take place May 11 – May 12, 2018. A highlight of the weekend is the awarding of three alumni awards: the Distinguished Brooksian award, the Alumni Bowl award and the Alumni Shield award. Descriptions of each award follow. If you’d like to nominate a member of a Brooks alumni class year ending in 3 or 8 for one of these awards, please contact Assistant Director of Alumni Programs Carly Churchill ’10 at cchurchill@brooksschool.org or (978) 725-6286 by February 1, 2018.

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The Distinguished Brooksian award honors a member of the Brooks community whose life and contributions to society exemplify the nobility of character and usefulness to humanity embodied in the spirit of the school.

The Alumni Bowl award, given by the Brooks School Alumni Board, recognizes dedicated and thoughtful service to this school.

The Alumni Shield award recognizes an alumna or alumnus who graduated from Brooks less than 25 years ago and has made significant contributions in the field of his or her endeavor.

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A Quiet (But Loud) Journey Will Denson ’69 has quietly amassed a remarkable statistic: He’s attended more than 4,000 concerts since leaving Brooks. This averages out to more than 80 concerts a year, or more than one concert a week, every week, for almost 50 years.

LEAVE YOUR MARK:

Giving Day Save the date — Giving Day 2018 is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, February 13, 2018. On Giving Day, we ask Brooks alumni to give in support of the Brooks Fund. We want to accrue a gift for each student currently enrolled at Brooks. We also want to accrue more gifts than our competition, The Governor’s Academy. Last year, we succeeded, and the Brooks flag flew on the Govs campus for one beautiful, glorious day (pictured above). We hope you can help us repeat our victory again this year — Go Brooks!

Nicole Mallen Jackson ’95 (left) and Emily French Breakey ’03 on the Brooks campus in October 2017.

Two Brooksians Come Home The Brooks alumni and development team welcomed two alumnae back into the fold this fall. Emily French Breakey ’03 returns to Brooks as leadership gifts officer following a stint in the development office at The Governor’s Academy. Nicole Mallen Jackson ’95 comes back to campus temporarily as parent and alumni assistant. Jackson also assists the Brooks Together effort, a year-opening current parent drive in support of the Brooks Fund.

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“So, it’s my fourth form, and I remember The Animals’s ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’ was playing on our record player. All of us in the dorm would bring our different records back to school and we’d listen together,” Will Denson ’69 says. “The British Invasion, the California Surf Sound, we all liked the Rolling Stones, we listened to everything. That was huge in getting me started with music.” Denson has likely seen more live music than almost anyone on the planet. He saw his first show during his last year at Brooks. “I went alone to The Singer Bowl and saw Vanilla Fudge, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart and Alvin Lee fronting Ten Years After. I was a huge fan of Ten Years After. They played ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ and I was flying.” He laughs, “I got a later start than my contemporaries, but I kept going.” Since then, Denson has stood in crowds all over the country and the world. He has an encyclopedic memory of concerts he’s seen. If you get him going, he’ll tell you who opened for Led Zeppelin in New York on July 13, 1969. (Of course he was there, and it was B. B. King.) Denson’s pursuit has evolved with the culture. “I started in the late 1960s, but there is a flow to it,” he explains. “For example, it flowed into the jam bands of the 1990s, which I really like. I saw Phish for free at Colorado College, where I studied after Brooks, because the opening act walked into a bookstore where my friends and I were. We raced up to the school and caught the end of the show.” Denson has kept ticket stubs and playbills from many of the shows he’s seen and even remembers the ones he missed — including Woodstock. Denson had tickets to the festival, but didn’t make the trip when his date’s parents wouldn’t let her accompany him. Despite the fact that he may be one of the most experienced concert-goers in the world, Denson has no interest in speaking with Guinness World Records, which currently catalogs several, related world bests. “I’ve never considered going for a world record. I’m catching my music, and that’s it,” he says. “I don’t know if there’s competition. It’s always been about the energy of the music, the concert, the scene and the drive I get from it. I just go out and enjoy what I listen to, and it really started with that record player in my dorm.” — Contributing Writer Nick Kafker

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A K N OCKOU T A LU M NI EVEN T A. J. Rich ’01 invited Brooks alumni to step into the ring this fall. Rich owns EverybodyFights, a group of boxing gyms in

One of the Greats A Brooksian turned heads on the international women’s lacrosse scene this summer.

Boston and New York. He hosted free boxing classes for Brooks alumni in November and December. “We wanted to bring back the history of boxing gyms, which is really focused around being a community center,” Rich, who partnered with childhood friend George Foreman III, the son of the famed boxer George Foreman, says. “Somewhere along the way, we think that got lost, and we wanted to bring that back and make boxing approachable for everyone.” Rich was proud to host Brooks alumni at his gyms. “Everyone has so much going on, and there’s limited time where we can connect,” he says. “This was a great opportunity, and I hope it’s something we can do regularly with Brooks and that people will look forward to.” For more information on and to register for upcomimg alumni events, please visit the Alumni tab on the Brooks website at www. brooksschool.org.

Have you recently published a book? Has your album just dropped? Tell us about it. We want to hear about your creative successes, and we want to highlight your work in an upcoming issue of the Bulletin. To have your work considered for inclusion in a future installment of Brooks Works, please send a review copy to:

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Editor, Brooks Bulletin 1160 Great Pond Road North Andover, MA 01845

The magazine does not purchase the materials listed in Brooks Works. The materials we receive will be donated to the Luce Library or another appropriate outlet. The Bulletin reserves the right to reject works that, in the judgment of the editorial staff, do not promote the mission or values of Brooks School or the Bulletin.

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Jen Russell ’06 has come a long way since her days wielding a lacrosse stick at Brooks, but the veteran member of the United States women’s national lacrosse team still calls her four years on campus “some of my favorite years.” Russell has brought home enough hardware to build a house: The two-time firstteam All-America selection at Brooks went on to star for the University of North Carolina, where she picked up two NCAA Division I first-team All-America nods and a bid for the esteemed Tewaaraton Trophy. Since joining the national team in 2008, Russell has played in two Federation Jen Russell ’06. of International Lacrosse Women’s World Cup tournaments, which convene every four years. This summer, Russell and the U.S. women headed to Guildford, England, where they won the 2017 World Cup tournament. Russell also nabbed one of only 12 spots on the tournament’s All-World team. “It’s a huge honor,” Russell says of her All-World team recognition. “I didn’t expect it, but I was really happy to be associated with that caliber of player.” Russell is speaking modestly; she was also honored in September by the burgeoning Women’s Professional Lacrosse League, which named her one of 80 women’s lacrosse legends. Russell sees the emergence of women’s professional lacrosse as an “important step” for the sport. “It’s important for young players to have female role models in the sport,” she says. “This gets the women’s game out there more and exposes young players to the highest level of play and leadership.” The type of person Russell is on the field is, she says, heavily influenced by her time on Great Pond Road. “Brooks influenced me as a person and as a player,” she says. “I learned a lot from my coaches, my teammates and my teachers, and I’m really grateful.”

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REGIONAL RECEPTION Brooksians, including alumni, parents, faculty and friends of the school, flocked to Doyle in New York in November for a reception. The gathering included hors d’oeuvres, cocktails and remarks by Head of School John Packard P’18, P’21.

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01 The venue, Doyle, is an event space associated with William Doyle Galleries, Inc., the worldwide auction house for jewelry, fine art and furniture. Guests enjoyed perusing the artwork and pieces that decorated the space. 02 The event provided space for many happy reunions, including the one shown here between Felicia Hercules ’02 (facing) and Admission Office Administrative Assistant Sheila Konovalchik P’14, P’17. 03 Todd Rogers P’19 (center) catches up with Associate Head for Student Affairs Andrea Heinze P’19 (left) and Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Bini Egertson P’12, P’15 (right). 04 New graduates Joon Lee ’17 (left) and Jared Day ’17 enjoyed a night reconnecting with Brooks faculty and connecting with fellow alumni. 05 Young alumni made their presence known at the reception. Here, Erinn Lee ’16 (center) says hello to other young Brooksians. 06 Peter Jones ’56 (left) and Patrick Curley ’69 were in attendance at the reception, which included Brooksians of all eras. 07 Ali Palacios ’11 (right) and guest Luke Tkach. 08 Charlie Ruprecht ’90 (left) with Assistant Director of Admission Kenya Jones (right). 09 Head of School John Packard P’18, P21 addressed the crowd. 10 Kelsey Domoracki ’11 (center). 11 Frank Cannava ’94 (right) chats with Associate Head for Academic Affairs Lance Latham P’17. 12 The event featured a signature cocktail: The Diffy Fizz, which was named after deForest “Diffy” Mellen ’32. Mellen was the first student to arrive on campus in 1927, the school’s inaugural year. Mellen mistakenly arrived two days early, and stayed with founding headmaster Frank D. Ashburn until his dormitory opened.

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PARTING SHOT

A butterfly enjoys one of the last warm days of fall 2017 at Brooksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on-campus organic farm.

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Field Day, a mid-September annual event at Brooks, gives current students a chance to reacquaint themselves with the school by splitting up into dorm teams and doing battle for year-long bragging rights. The tug-o-war is the featured event of the day: The entire student body gathers to watch the Brooksians pull together for their dorms, for Brooks and for each other. We also need you to pull for us by supporting the Brooks Fund. The Brooks Fund provides nearly 10 percent of the school’s annual operating budget, and your gift will have an immediate impact on the day-to-day experience our students have here. Pull for Brooks: We need your support to get over the line.

B ROOKS SCH OOL BROOKS FUND

Three easy ways to give: Credit Card — Check — Stock. Visit www.brooksschool.org to make your gift.

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M A R K YO U R C A L E N DA R S ! Alumni Weekend 2018 will take place May 11 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 12, 2018. We invite all Brooks alumni, and particularly those in class years ending in 3 or 8, to return to the shores of Lake Cochichewick for a weekend full of reminiscing, reuniting and reconnecting with the campus and the school. For more information and to register, please visit the Alumni tab on the Brooks website at www.brooksschool.org.