Retiring Employees Gave 162 Combined Years of Service
Eileen Powers Director of Financial Aid + Director of Public Partnerships 45 YEARS OF SERVICE
With 45 years of service, Eileen Powers is one of Campbell Hall’s longest serving employees. She began teaching at Campbell Hall in 1973 as a Middle School Spanish teacher and continued in this role for twenty years. “It was love at first sight,” Eileen says of Campbell Hall. “There were a lot of happy memories in the classroom. When teaching middle school students, the relationship comes first, before learning before anything else.” This sense of developed trust is formed through a myriad of ways, both big and small. One morning before class began, Eileen’s students were seated at their desks which were arranged in a circle, improvising some rap songs. They suddenly began chanting, “Go Powers! Go Powers!” in a dance-circle invitation. As Eileen walked through the circle, she busted a quick dance move. The class erupted in cheers and laughter which lasted for several minutes. “Those moments of unbounded hilarity and the joy that being around young people brings,” Eileen says, “are some of my fondest Campbell Hall memories.” Eileen began working in the Admissions Office in 1984, interviewing prospective students and their families as the Assistant Director of Admissions, a position she held for twenty years. Almost immediately, then Headmaster Tom Clarke asked if she would take on the added responsibility of administering financial aid. There was no framework for Eileen to follow. No local independent school had a financial aid department at that time, so she set about learning as much as she could from resources she found. Once she was able to institutionalize a formal financial aid process at Campbell Hall, Eileen founded the Financial Aid Administrators’ Association (known as FA³), a professional 20 campbell hall magazine I SUMMER 2020
development organization dedicated to helping local independent schools achieve similar success. She headed the group for twenty years and during this time, the organization grew from 21 members to more than 450. She created a financial aid roadmap for other schools to follow and helped professionalize the field, one she inhabited for thirty-six years. Eventually she became chairman of the NAIS financial aid task force, the advisory group that guides financial aid methodology and policy for independent schools across the country. Eileen’s focus on providing students from a variety of backgrounds with expanded opportunities led to her establishing Campbell Hall’s public partnership programs. Since 2008, hundreds of students from Campbell Hall and local public schools have participated in relationship-building educational programs including the school’s signature programs, “Action!” and “CREW.” Students are enriched in this reciprocal venture, proving that we are, as the program’s tagline suggests, “Better together.” One of Eileen’s favorite places on campus is the TV studio because, as she notes: “Campbell Hall and L.A.’s Best students who are enrolled in the Action! summer program start the first day knowing nothing about the complex TV studio equipment. Within three days, they are running the control room and have made great new friends in the process. Watching this kind of growth is exceptionally rewarding.” Eileen found innovative ways to support Campbell Hall beyond the scope of her job. When the internet was in its infancy, Linda Savage, elementary science lab specialist, explained to Eileen