CA Magazine Spring 2016

spring 2016

C O N C O R D ACA D E M Y M AG A Z I N E

KNOCKING ON THE CELLULOID CEILING CA women speak out about Hollywood’s gender bias

Editor

Editorial Board

Contact us:

Heidi Koelz Associate Director of Communications

Ben Carmichael ’01 Director of Marketing and Communications

Design

John Drew P’15, ’19 Assistant Head and Academic Dean

Concord Academy Magazine 166 Main Street Concord, MA 01742 (978) 402-2200 magazine@concordacademy.org

Irene Chu ’76, P’20

Letters to the Editor Do you have thoughts on this issue?

We’d like to hear your suggestions and responses. Please write to us at magazine@concordacademy.org.

Hilary Wirtz Director of Development: Individual Giving and Campaign Planning Billie Julier Wyeth ’76 Director of Development: Stewardship and Donor Programs

© 2016 Concord Academy

Committed to being a school enriched by a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, Concord Academy does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, creed, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin in its hiring, admissions, educational and financial policies, or other school-administered programs. The school’s facilities are wheelchair-accessible.

Cole + Kiera

spring 2016

Contents 2 Message from the Head of School 4 Centennial Campaign 7 Campus News 12 Arts 14 Athletics 16 Faculty 20 Creative Types 22 Alumnae/i Profiles ► Kendall Tucker ‘10 ► Aldus Chapin ‘80 ► Laura Powers-Swigget ‘75

26 Alumnae/i Association F EATURES 27 Will the Revolution Be Printed?

CA engineers help us understand the 3D-printing hype, and the technology’s real promise

32 Knocking on the Celluloid Ceiling With the government investigating a dearth of female filmmakers, the Hollywood gender gap is getting national attention. Is there hope for real change?

42 In Memoriam Correction The story about campus enhancements along Main Street (page 42, fall 2015) misstated Concord Academy’s claim to property once “owned

by Henry David Thoreau.” Two houses now on the CA campus were once indeed home to the Thoreau family — first 166 Main Street (Aloian House) from 1826 until 1827, and thereafter 185 Main Street (Munroe House) — but Henry David Thoreau was only around 10 years old when his family moved.

On the cover: Rachel Morrison ’96. Photo by Jason Travis

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Message from the Head of School

Kristie Gillooly

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rom my window, I can see the CA Labs project taking shape across the Quad, the existing science building now hollowed out and the steel frame of the new wing standing beside it, wrapped in white plastic like a Christo work of art. It is the future that I’m looking at, though not just of science education at CA, but, I believe, of education as we know it here.

In this facility’s flexible classrooms, labs, and collaboration zones we will have spaces to support innovative teaching and student-centered learning, spaces that will also have the capacity to evolve as needs require. In no small way, CA Labs stands as a template for the future of the entire campus: a campus that preserves and builds upon our history, and a campus that will serve students now and for years to come. And, thanks to the relatively mild winter, I am happy to report that the CA Labs project is right on schedule and slated to open in September 2016.

Over the course of this summer, in addition to completing this vital facility, we will be making some much-needed improvements to CA’s J. Josephine Tucker Library, the Main School Lobby, and the entry courtyard, as well as the Quad itself (see page five), all of which will help us to move through and make use of our campus with greater ease and clarity of purpose. Our goal with these projects, as with every campus project, remains the same: to preserve the unique identity and culture of CA, while always striving to make the learning experience better year after year.

I am also happy to report that, since May 2014, when the Board of Trustees endorsed the first phase of initiatives for create + innovate: the Centennial Campaign for Concord Academy, we 2

have made extraordinary progress in garnering support for these ambitious plans. To date, we have raised more than $30 million—a record for the school. We are deeply grateful to the many alumnae/i, parents, parents of alumnae/i, and friends who have brought us nearly to our goal, and we are excited about what create + innovate will do for CA. I know well that our graduates care deeply about CA and want to be sure that we, today’s stewards of their school, strike the right balance between preservation and change. So I felt a measure of comfort and validation recently when an alumna, while visiting campus after some years away, was asked what it was like to be back.

She said simply, “It feels the same, but nicer.”

I hope that you will find your way back to campus sometime soon. Wonderful things are happening, and I would love for you to share in the excitement here at your CA. Sincerely,

Rick Hardy Head of School Dresden Endowed Chair

Ben Carmichael ’01

CHANGE IN THE AIR A dedicated construction crew worked throughout the spring semester to ready CA Labs to open in the next school year.

It was with joy that I read the name of Natica “Tica” Satterthwaite on the In Memoriam page (fall 2015).

She would have been so happy to be remembered

by CA. I missed Tica as a teacher, but I was fortunate to meet her 40 years ago, and she was my “other mother” until she died this past summer. She was a remarkable woman, always curious about life, full of stories, and happy to be faced with a challenge — like old age. She was a model of aging gracefully. I was honored to be with her when she passed.

Her property, Tidebrook, is open to the public. She and her husband Jim loved their acreage at the head of the harbor, planting 2,000 daffodils and tending their gardens. Anyone who visits Freeport, Maine, might enjoy taking a few moments out of the shopping frenzy to walk one of the paths in the woods, or follow the mown field down to the meditation bench by the water.

Thank you for remembering, Toni Russell Merrick ’62

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Letters to the Editor

MORE THAN 110 tons of steel have been

installed in the CA Labs science facility, which is nearing completion. Thanks to stretches of warm weather this winter, work has moved ahead rapidly. The flexible, state-of-the art setting for science and interdisciplinary exploration—a lead priority of create + innovate: The Centennial Campaign for Concord Academy—remains on budget and on schedule to open prior to the 2016–17 school year.

The ambitious timeline has confined the impact of construction on students and faculty to the spring 2016 semester. So that courses could continue uninterrupted, four fully accessible temporary classrooms were established on the West Gate tennis courts during the winter break. Science courses were held in these spaces, which were outfitted with lab setups, heat and air conditioning, restrooms, wireless access, whiteboards, SMART boards, projectors,

and emergency systems.

This summer, with the CA Labs exterior completed, interior work will begin from the basement up, with a finished building expected by mid-August. The steel framework for CA Labs was erected in the final week of December, and the outline of the building had already begun to take shape when classes resumed for the spring semester. Construction took place throughout the winter, in coordination with electrical, plumbing, and mechanical systems work in the existing science building, and reframing of the existing roof to comply with current seismic requirements.

In February, the concrete floor for the CA Labs roof was poured. From that height, the impressive view encompasses the Emerson Umbrella cupola to the south and Nashawtuc Hill to the north—and the new green roof promises to be a valuable vantage point in itself.

See the progress on CA Labs at www.concordacademy.org/CALabs-spring16.

CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

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SIGNING THE BEAM IN DECEMBER, CA community members stopped while crossing the Quad to sign one of the main steel beams that was later used in the frame of CA Labs.

With cupcakes and commemorative T-shirts, the traditional beam-signing event proved a festive break during the week leading up to first-semester exams — a chance for students, faculty, and staff to leave their mark on a piece of the school’s future.

Ben Carmichael ’01

CA LABS POISED FOR COMPLETION

BY SEPTEMBER

Allison Fraske

create innovate

Images courtesy of Dewing Schmid Kearns

Left: Concept for the new main entrance; Inset: Current entrance; Below: Concept for the library reading room, from the north, east, and south — a quiet space for study, distinct from new areas that will facilitate collaboration

IN MANAGING the construction of CA

Labs, Don Kingman, director of operations, had a bold idea. “What if we could enhance not just the science building, but the entire front door of our school?” he asked recently. “What if we could upgrade connected facilities simultaneously?” After a few months of research, and with the board’s support, that’s precisely what CA plans: a series of connected renovations that will improve the Quad, reconfigure the lobby of the Main School, and renew the library and improve traffic flow through that space.

The work will start with the Quad, now a staging area for construction equipment during the CA Labs renovation.

As resodding will already be necessary, Kingman plans to regrade the Quad to improve drainage while retaining its dimensions. Adding lighting in keeping with the historic district along the

walkways around the perimeter will improve visibility.

Considerable thought has been given to how the front of CA Labs will adjoin the Main School building and to how CA’s existing historic architectural vocabulary will combine with contemporary materials such as glass and steel. A reconfigured lobby will improve energy efficiency while visually defining the primary academic center on campus. CA plans to renovate the adjacent stone courtyard and steps to create a clear and welcoming entrance to the school, while allowing for handicap access and connecting to the granite and brick walkway that greets visitors at the Main Gate.

In turn, this Main School Lobby (see sidebar) will connect to the J. Josephine Tucker Library, which hasn’t been renovated since the 1980s. As part of this project, CA plans to retain the library’s

THE ART-SCIENCE LOBBY (ASL) was so named because, when the building was erected in 1964, it housed both arts and science classrooms. In 1992, the Math and Arts Center (MAC) was constructed, and the arts had a new home. The completion of CA Labs and the new courtyard will present an opportunity to begin referring to the space, more accurately, as the Main School Lobby (MSL).

existing footprint and historic rafters while improving pedestrian access, adding an office, and upgrading the furniture —as well as adding a study space with a view of the Chapel and Chapel lawn.

With each of these projects, the goal is the same: to preserve CA’s historic character while making a few strategic investments that increase opportunities for collaboration and quiet reflection alike— well in advance of the school’s centennial in 2022–23.

See a slideshow of the plans at www.concordacademy.org/entranceplans.

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INVESTING IN CA’S FRONT ENTRANCE AND LIBRARY

5/3/16 4:29 PM

Kristie Gillooly

create innovate

GLOBAL ONLINE ACADEMY AND BOUNDLESS CAMPUS BRING CA STUDENTS AND TEACHERS A TRULY GLOBAL CLASSROOM

CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

ONE DREARY day in January, Julia Kostro ’16 opened her computer to find her teacher had sent her and her classmates an assignment in the form of a video she recorded of herself walking down the streets of New Orleans. Beignet in hand, the adjunct professor at Tulane University peppered her video with NOLA pride.

Such is the kind of boundless-campus engagement afforded by Global Online Academy (GOA), an online learning environment in its first semester here at Concord Academy.

Fours seniors, along with two faculty members, have signed up for classes in game theory, macroeconomics, medical problem-solving, and psychology. “What I love about what is happening right now is that these are four really different kids taking four really different courses, and all four of them are having really good experiences,” said Jen Cardillo, a longtime CA faculty member who is co-coordinating 6

the GOA program. Founded as a coalition of some of the nation’s leading independent schools, GOA provides the intellectual rigor and excellent teaching that are hallmarks of its member schools.

There is one fundamental difference: Diversity is truly global. Will Harrington ’16 began his game theory course by Skypeing with his class partner, a student based hundreds of miles away. Through that conversation, they discovered they had numerous real-world connections—a conversation ensued that was facilitated by technology but grounded in real life.

Diversity, in this sense, takes on a vivid new dimension. Students understand one another not simply in the context of New England, say, but in the context of wherever they are video conferencing from. According to Cardillo, “students are so much more aware of different cultures, simply by seeing their peers in those locations while they’re talking.”

Julia echoed the sentiment, saying, “My favorite part about GOA is how social it is even though some people are from other parts of the country and even the world. I’ve gotten to know my teacher and classmates so well, and I’m so happy I’ve gotten the chance to take part in GOA.”

These six trailblazers are helping CA fulfill one the pillars of the Centennial Plan.

In combination with additional gifts to the Boundless Campus endowment initiative as part of create + innovate, the school will support collaborations with the outside community and enhance students’ global competencies in ways that will inform their experiences at CA and beyond—better preparing students to make a difference in the world by blurring the boundaries of the classroom. Stay tuned for more updates and stories of student experiences.

campus news Photos by Ben Carmichael ’01 and Heidi Koelz

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New Spring Session Surprises and Delights ome students built a container garden for the CA Labs roof deck. Others produced podcasts or virtual reality films, discovered beekeeping, took up yoga, or examined the mathematics of perspective drawing. Concord Academy’s inaugural Spring Session in March 2016 asked students to step outside their comfort zones during two intensive two-day classes. From lessons in artisanal baking to improvisational theater, home repair to game design, faculty offered nearly 60 specialized courses. The diversity of exploration gave an intense creative energy to the final week before spring break.

Several Spring Session classes took students off campus, to museums, restaurants, and bowling alleys — even to a Zen center for a one-day retreat. Faculty brought students to Symphony Hall for a Handel and Haydn Society dress rehearsal, to Mount Wachusett to learn about snowmaking, on a Cambridge-Boston bike trip to discuss the politics of urban cycling, and to the John Adams Courthouse for a crash course in the criminal justice system.

History teacher Kim Frederick, who organized Spring Session with fellow faculty members, reported on the deep engagement she observed. “I saw students taking on new challenges,” she said. “I saw faculty working hard at a new format and a new way of teaching.”

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1. Painting a mural 2. Making “bee pollen candy” for hives in New Hampshire 3. Game design 4. Editing a podcast 5. Learning to change a tire 6. The mathematics of perspective drawing

For Spring Session project highlights, visit www.concordacademy.org/springsession16.

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campus news

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he world stopped to watch Adele’s music video “Hello,” which was viewed 20 million times within 24 hours of its release and 100 million times in just five days — a Vevo record. Such immediate exposure is a promise of the rapidly developing digital media industry that Danielle Lee ’93, vice president of commercial marketing at Vevo, discussed when she returned to campus in December as this year’s Davidson Lecturer.

The music video and entertainment platform is driven as much by creating

Commencement Speaker Helen Hobbs ’70 CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

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oncord Academy will welcome as the 2016 Commencement speaker Helen Hobbs ’70, a professor and cardiology researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her discovery of a rare genetic mutation recently led to the development of a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs and won her a Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in November.

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communities around content as it is by serving advertisers. Brands are developing sophisticated “shoulder programming” such as related shows about artists. And content marketing, said Lee, is about “bringing fans closer to the artists they love.” For an online platform only six years old, Vevo’s scale is staggering. Its videos attract more than 12 billion monthly views, and its model of syndicating content with publishers across the Web has made videos watchable anywhere — and the Vevo brand synonymous

Winterfest

Ben Carmichael ’01

On Small Screens, Music Videos Are Bigger than Ever Davidson Lecturer Danielle Lee ’93

with the official music video.

Business Insider has named Lee one of the “30 most powerful women in mobile advertising.” She didn’t always have her sights set on this career, though. Looking back to her student days, Lee credits the perseverance, agility, integrity, and voice she developed at CA with allowing her to thrive in her complex and fast-changing industry.

Read the full story at www.concordacademy.org/davidson-lee.

Through a festival of food and fun, a student talent show, and a raffle, student-run Winterfest raised around $2,000 for financial aid in January.

Kristie Gillooly

Hall Fellow Sonia Lo ’84

“I

spend my every waking moment thinking about lettuce, and on alternate days, for variety’s sake, I think about kale, or spinach, or basil,” quipped Sonia Lo ’84, addressing the CA community in November as the 2015–16 Hall Fellow. Lo spoke of her evolution from financier to “box farmer” in humorous terms, but her alternative to the destabilized industrial food system in the United States — where the way most produce is grown contributes to pollution and unsustainable water use — proposes nothing less than an agricultural revolution.

As CEO of Fresh Box Farms, Lo is pioneering high-density, high-yield, pesticide- and GMO-free vertical hydroponic farming in indoor enclosures, with a fraction of the irrigation needs of conventional agriculture. At CA, she discussed the commitments to both biodiversity and efficiency that motivate her. She has bet big on the fledgling industry. Over the next five to 10 years, she predicted, half of the leafy greens grown in America will be grown indoors.

‘We like to believe that the U.S. supply chain is full of fresh, clean, reliable food. Because we live in an industrialized food system, it’s becoming less and less true.’

Read the full story at www.concordacademy.org/hall-lo.

Sonia Lo

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lumnae/i and parents of alumnae/i who returned to campus as speakers this year took in the view from the P.A.C. stage and shared their passions and career paths with students.

Rahn Dorsey ’89 Boston’s chief of education called education a critical policy space — and inherently justice work. “If you’re serious about being a mission-driven citizen, and making a difference, you’d be crazy not to get involved in education,” he said.

Photos by Ben Carmichael ’01

Read more at www.concordacademy.org/dorsey.

Mike Firestone ’01 “Our democracy demands engagement,” said this awardwinning manager of grassroots political campaigns for progressive female candidates.

Firestone directs strategic initiatives for Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.

Peter Blacklow ’87 As part of CA’s studentorganized Entrepreneur Speaker Series, the nationally recognized marketer and senior partner at the startup investment firm Boston Seed Capital convened a panel about the challenges of building new companies. “As important as innovation is, it’s actually doing something about it that’s a lot of work and a whole lot trickier,” Blacklow said.

Frances Jensen P’06 “Our society is very unsophisticated in the way that we think about teenagers, and we have to change that,” said the neuroscientist, who explained that we are just beginning to understand the dramatic difference in function Read more at www.concordacademy.org/blacklow. between teenage and adult brains.

Read more at www.concordacademy.org/jensen.

Read more at www.concordacademy.org/firestone.

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Alumnae/i and Parent Voices on Campus

campus news

Leaders in Prison Reform

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Photos by Ben Carmichael ’01

MLK Day Speaker Imani Perry ’90

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For the full story, visit www.concordacademy.org/mlk-perry.

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Molly D’Arcy ‘16

CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

n telling a too-perfect, and too-pristine story, we forget that greatness is in fact not achievable without fallibility,” Imani Perry ’90, a professor at Princeton’s Center for African American Studies, whose keynote speech in January set the tone for a day devoted to open-hearted and open-minded exploration of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Against the backdrop of recent incidents of violence and injustice in the United States, Perry offered a passionate, nuanced, and historically informed perspective on what it might mean to reclaim King’s story. “We forget that he was courageous, and not just saintly,” she said. “He wasn’t always right, nor was he always righteous.” But in telling King’s story in all its complexity, she suggested, we come to see sincerity — not perfection — as the goal of a righteous life.

Stressing the role of young people in the pursuit of a better society, Perry charged CA students to “move us out of the ways of the world that have distorted us, your elders, and push us into something kinder and more just.”

Following her speech, more than 30 workshops led by CA students, faculty, and staff addressed issues from body image to climate injustice, animal rights to the AIDS crisis, media representation to Islamophobia. Students leaned into discomfort, spoke candidly and respectfully, and listened intently.

ince 1980, the U.S. prison population has increased almost 800 percent. Roughly one out of every 100 U.S. adults is behind bars, minorities are disproportionately imprisoned, and federal facilities are over capacity. Despite the unprecedented scale of incarceration, prison life is largely hidden from view. Harry Breault ’16 first became interested in criminal justice reform after reading an op-ed in the New York Times about educational opportunities for inmates. He contacted its author, a convicted murderer at the Attica Correctional Facility, and their subsequent regular correspondence led Harry to become involved with Strong Returns, a grassroots organization run by millennials seeking prison reform. He recruited classmate June Sass ’16 to serve as his state cocaptain throughout the 2015–16 school year. June credited reading lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s memoir of his career representing death-row inmates, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, in Jen Cardillo’s English class with inspiring her to tackle the issue.

Harry and June presented a workshop for fellow students as part of CA’s MLK Day programming, and they organized a recent bipartisan public discussion in Newton, Mass., with former Governor Michael Dukakis and Essex County Sherriff Frank Cousins Jr. that addressed topics such as mandatory minimum sentencing, solitary confinement, education, and prevention of sexual assault in prison.

Harry learned from the town-hall meeting how divergent people’s views are regarding causes and solutions. “But it was good to hear that everyone agrees how big the problem is,” he said. “The more you learn about prison, the more you see the injustice in it.”

Agents of Change

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Poetry on the T

Film Festival Debuts

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icholas Ornstein ’17 was one of three winners of this fall’s Poetry on the T contest. His poem, “Station,” appeared on the Red Line in December 2015.

Station

by Nicholas Ornstein ’17 The old woman behind me Grasps the child’s hand while he Gazes at the man and his guitar Strumming his soul into the Singing strings.

The businessman beside me Jogs towards the train as the car Pulls out of the station, head lights Beaming like his eyes — and he is Sighing softly.

The train station all around me Hums with weary people; their minds Stuck in states of wonderings and they’re Waiting for their ride to back to their Shimm’ring somewheres.

t’s not often that CA students can be seen on the big screen while they’re still enrolled in high school. In February, MERGE, a psychological thriller about a group of detached teens tampering with nanotechnology, landed its world premiere at the Boston SciFi Film Festival, the longestrunning genre festival in the United States. Students developed and produced the film last year for Justin Bull’s Improvisational Film class. MERGE was judged alongside professional productions, both domestic and international, to gain entrance in the feature film category. The film had its international debut at Sci-Fi-London, the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film, which took place on May 2.

Watch the trailer at www.concordacademy.org/MERGE.

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n the year of the formation of an Inclusion Council at CA, four students — Quess Green ’16, Nadia Itani ’16, Grace Lin ’17, and Steven Rhodes ’17— represented Concord Academy at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Student Diversity Leadership Conference in December in Tampa, Fla. The Community and Equity Office (C&E) also sponsored faculty members Peter Boskey ’08 from the Visual Arts Department; Marie Myers, director of admissions; and Dora Hui ’07 from admissions to attend the concurrent NAIS People of Color Conference. Both conferences provided safe spaces for identity and leadership development, community building, and social justice education — and they proved transformative for attendees. “It showed me that I don’t need to find a place within someone else,” Grace wrote of her experience. “I am the place I need.”

C&E also sent three students to the Social Justice Leadership Institute at Phillips Andover Academy this year. Rafi Barron ’17, Cherilyn Lau ’18, and Vance White ’19 participated in a weekend of social justice training and empowerment. These energized agents of change have been partnering with C&E to enhance the equity, inclusivity, and multiculturalism of the CA community.

Photos by Ben Carmichael ’01

arts

The Performing Arts Department presented Into the Woods, a delightful mashup of several Grimm fairy tales with unforgettable lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim, in November 2015, followed by Henrik Ibsen’s classic domestic drama A Doll House in February 2016. Please visit our website for more about the cast and crew of these productions.

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Photos by Cole + Kiera

< Sculptures, photographs, paintings, and brilliantly colored quilts were showcased at the fall 2015 student art show.

1. Sarah Evantash ‘16 2. Rhea Manwani ‘16 3. Molly Lazarus ‘17

^ At the Holiday Music Concert, the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel rang with songs both festive and contemplative, from a Joplin waltz to a Bach bourrée, performed by several CA vocal groups and the Concord Academy Orchestra. Listen to selections online at www.concordacademy.org/ holidayconcert15.

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Photos by Ben Carmichael ’01

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Sam Barton ’17

athletics

Cole + Kiera

Cole + Kiera

Ben Carmichael ’01

Sue Johnson

CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

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Photos by Cole + Kiera

From the court to the course, from the field to the slope, the fall and winter seasons brought out the best in CA’s student-athletes. For highlights from the successful seasons of the boys’ varsity soccer, girls’ varsity volleyball, Alpine skiing, and cross-country teams, and all of CA’s dedicated competitors, visit www.concordacademy.org.

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faculty

Spanish teacher Carmen Welton is finishing her first year at Concord Academy after arriving from Buxton School in Williamstown, Mass. Whether in her classroom, coaching cross-country, advising, or mentoring the affinity group Alianza Latina, she values every opportunity she has to work with teenagers. She sat down with English Department Head Nick Hiebert for a conversation about the politics of language and life at CA.

When did you first consider teaching Spanish as a career?

I never thought about doing anything besides teaching, and Spanish felt like a natural discipline to focus on, both as a professional passion and because my family is from Mexico and we have a complicated connection to our heritage. Although my mom spoke Spanish almost exclusively until she was in her 20s, she never spoke to us in Spanish when we were children because of the stigma around her native language that she

perceived in the U.S. So a big piece of my mission as a Spanish teacher is to try to destigmatize this language.

Do you feel thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a benefit to learning a language even if you might not use it throughout your life?

Learning a language is about so much more than learning the vocabulary or the structures of another way of speaking. I think that learning another language opens up doors to different ways of seeing the world. When

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Carmen Welton on Language and Identity

Margaret Lampert

Other Ways of Being in the World

Carmen Welton

you have to pause to consider what you’re about to say within different frames of reference, all of a sudden it makes you more open-minded to how someone else might be perceiving reality. As a teacher, you’re not just helping your students communicate, you’re also helping them understand another person’s way of being in the world.

What have you found different about teaching at CA? I have struggled to create an immersive experience before, but here immersion is an expectation of the whole department; when you’re in a language class, you’re doing it in the language, and the students are pretty careful to respect

that. I’ve also been frustrated before by assessment. Here at CA, though, I felt that I was supported and was in fact challenged to pursue my own professional development. I was asked to think about what I wanted to try in my class that’s different. What could I do for my own teaching that would then obviously be good for the students? Somehow flipping that paradigm was a revelation and made me feel so excited in a way that I hadn’t felt since my first years teaching. I was excited to be asked by my peers and superiors to think critically about how and why I do what I do, and what could be different — not because something’s wrong but because there are so many ways to do it right.

What has your work with Alianza Latina been like?

It feels really important, how we’ve been trying to define our identity as a group but also our identities as individuals. I appreciate the awareness at CA of affinity and the need to talk about social justice gaps even in the most inclusive and open-minded environment.

In my own life, I’ve always had this dance to dance: I am of Mexican roots, but I am not a native speaker. That’s a complicated reality for many people who have grown up in the States, though it’s not one that people tend to recognize.

Students are having conversations on campus because there is a larger national conversation about the rights of immigrants to be in the United States or to work here. At CA, people are very cautious and thoughtful, and very intentional, and that’s great and welcome, but it also jars sharply with the national conversation.

And how does that play out in the classroom?

I think a lot about why I teach.

For me, it boils down to

wanting to help nurture individuals to be in the world in a way that is respectful, thoughtful, and conscientious. Teaching Spanish may often seem secondary to that, but to me it feels vital, because teaching a language teaches a perspective, a way of seeing the world that’s hopefully more intentional. In a way it doesn’t matter what your subject is, because hopefully what you’re teaching are these principles of kindness and support for each other, and generosity.

What are you excited for next year?

I’m just excited to keep doing it.

Every year in the fall, it feels so invigorating because you have a fresh group of people to continue this great work with — and I really do feel that, as corny as it sounds.

It’s not corny.

It’s not at all. It’s really very special. There’s something about the academic year rhythm.

I feel like it’s my lifeblood. It’s how I move through the world.

Allison Fraske

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What could I do for my own teaching that would then obviously be good for students?

Somehow flipping that paradigm was a revelation.’

NEW FACULTY IN 2015–16

From left to right: Jessica Kuh, Mathematics Teacher; Laurie Baker, Assistant Director of Athletics; Avery Bargar, Performing Arts Teacher, Theater; Sue Johnson, Director of Athletics; Ned Singh, Wilcox Fellow, Performing Arts; Kevin Parker, Wilcox Fellow, Community Life and Student Activities; Carmen Welton, Modern and Classical Languages Teacher, Spanish; Not pictured: Jonathan Golden, Assistant Librarian

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F A C U LT Y R E T I R E M E N T S

Kristie Gillooly

Deanna Douglas History Department

by Stephanie Manzella, History Department

CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

AFTER 21 YEARS of service at Concord Academy as a history teacher, advisor, and former head of college counseling, Deanna Douglas has retired. Throughout her tenure, she taught courses on eras and topics as diverse as early modern Europe, the history and culture of Japan, Jewish civilization, Europe in the 20th century, and U.S. protest movements. When she arrived at CA in 1978, Douglas felt as though she “had found the perfect place,” she once recalled in a chapel talk she delivered. “Teaching history, being head of what is now called the CCO, working with wonderful colleagues, and, if possible, even more wonderful students. Why would I ever leave?” she said. Though after nine years, following a sabbatical she used to explore rabbinic studies, she felt the lure of

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another calling. In 1987 she decided to leave to become a rabbi. Seventeen years later, Douglas returned to CA.

Douglas’ advisees considered her a mentor and even a “second mom.” At last year’s senior-faculty recognition dinner, a student spoke in honor of her 20th year of service to CA. Remembering the first writing assignment he handed in to her, he recalled what she had written on his paper: “You! I need more of you!” He reflected on that comment: “That’s when I realized that she wanted to hear from me as a person. She wanted to get to know me.”

Douglas’ students had the pleasure of getting know her as a person as well, and she keeps up with former advisees from many years ago. She will be missed.

Ben Carmichael â&#x20AC;&#x2122;01

Joan Kaufmann Science Department

CA IS BIDDING farewell to a charismatic teacher, Joan Kaufmann, who has taught chemistry to an entire generation of students. Famous for her zany style and memorable quips, Kaufmann has kept her students smiling all these years while simultaneously guiding them through the intricacies of stoichiometry and electron configurations.

Kaufmann, who holds an MBA from Wharton, joined CA after initially pursuing a career in health care consulting. The prospect of teaching teenagers, however, appealed to her more, so after getting her feet wet at a school in Atlanta, she made her way to Concord in 1998. Soon thereafter, Kaufmann designed her signature course in applied chemistry: The Chemistry of Cooking.

More than a foray into the culinary arts, this course uses

the power of chemistry to demystify the complexities of food science. Have you ever wondered about the roles of cream of tartar and sugar in whipping up a meringue?

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chemistry! Kaufmann glows with pride as she tells of a former student who has since made the science of puff pastry his passion. Love of learning does indeed come in all flavors.

While sad to leave the talented students who have kept her young all these years, Kaufmann does look forward to spending more time traveling, cooking, visiting family and friends, and indulging her love of interior design (done on a dime!). She and her husband, Patrick, plan to retire to Maine at the end of this year. We wish them many happy adventures in the years ahead.

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by George Larivee, Mathematics Department

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Have you published a book or released a film or CD in the last year? Please contact martha_kennedy@concordacademy.org and consider donating a copy to the J. Josephine Tucker Library’s collection of alumnae/i authors.

creativetypes

by Library Director Martha Kennedy

WICKED

SHORT

BOOK CLUB

----------------Feeling pressed for time? Faculty and staff have been meeting on campus to discuss these “wicked short” books: Claudia Rankine Citizen Rebecca Solnit Men Explain Things to Me Marjane Satrapi Persepolis

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OK

Vendela Vida The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty

Frances Denny ’03 Let Virtue Be Your Guide Radius Books, 2016

In the next issue: Karen Braucher Tobin ’71 • Laura Foley ’75 • David Michaelis ’75 20

Frances Denny ’03

Turning her lens on her own family, Frances Denny examines differing depictions of “feminine virtue” as observed among the generations of her female relatives as they navigate their familiar New England landscapes and domiciles.

Images from Let Virtue Be Your Guide were among Denny’s works featured at a recent solo exhibit at ClampArt Gallery in New York, as were several from her latest portfolio, Pink Crush, a visual examination of late-20th-century girl culture.

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FILMS

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M U LT I M E D I A

her conversational English course for Asian professionals. As their passion intensifies, she struggles mightily to make sense of her bifurcated life, jockeying between being a modern woman of independent means in Boston and one completely reliant on Toru in Osaka. She takes a headlong plunge into two relationships,

Anne S. Dowd ’74 and Susan Milbrath, editors Cosmology, Calendars, and Horizon-Based Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica University Press of Colorado, 2015 More than 40 years ago, noted astronomer Anthony Aveni changed the course of Mesoamerican studies when he realized the critical connection between the astronomical and anthropological aspects of preColumbian societies. Aveni’s call for collaboration led to the establishment of a new field, archaeoastronomy, and thus directed the next generation of researchers. The incorporation of cultural connections with celestial studies illuminated the daily lives, religious beliefs, and agricultural practices of the Maya, Olmec, and Aztec. This compilation by noted scholars honors Aveni’s work and reflects on how and where cities were built, how architectural orientations were determined, when crops were planted, and how these ancient peoples marked the passage of time.

Tracy Slater ’85 The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2015 Tracy Slater finds herself in a cultural conundrum when she falls for Toru, a Japanese businessman and student in

one with her new family and another with the country she has held at arm’s length. Love prevails, leading Slater on the path to a startling revelation: She’s becoming a shufu, a traditional Japanese housewife, and she discovers validation in taking on that role. The founder of the Four Stories literary series in Boston, Slater continues to bring authors and audiences together, most recently as part of the Tokyo International Literary Festival in March.

Duncan MacLeod ’86 5150: A Transfer Studio Squeeze Press, 2015 Against the backdrop of 1980s San Francisco, a young man chronicles his year of suspended belief. Following a disastrous start at an Ivy League college, Ethan begins a steady descent into a psychotic quagmire. His plan to return to California to eke out an independent life rapidly devolves into subsistence survival among the hustlers, junkies, and street people of the city’s Tenderloin

District. Following his arrest and subsequent transfer to a mental hospital, Ethan begins rebuilding his life in a group home. It is in this supportive environment that he’s finally able to crawl back from the depths of despair, taking slow and measured steps into a new reality. Readers will empathize with Ethan during his dark days of psychiatric treatment, related with surprising humor and transparency.

questions. No one knows how it all began, but within months, news of Moondust spreads rapidly through the boroughs.

Among the key figures are “the messenger,” who freely distributes samples and promises of enlightenment; the Brooklyn DJ who learns how to produce the drug; the aspiring reporter who strives to break the story; and a collection of dealers and others who want in on the action. In concise accounts, the players carry the narrative by turns in this fast-paced thriller of the early millennium. Alan Howard, writing under the pen name Alan Osi, is at work on Movement No. 2, a continuation of this, his first novel.

Alan Howard ’96 The Moondust Sonatas: Movement No. 1: A Hunter’s Moon Cleveland Writers Press, 2015 “Did you ever wish you could experience being with God?” Like disparate threads, loosely connected characters are drawn closer when a new drug infiltrates the New York party scene. The powerful hallucinant enables users to cross boundaries of time and space in which each unique experience leaves them pondering existential

NOTEWORTHY Imani Perry ’90, the HughesRogers professor of African American studies at Princeton University, delivered the keynote address at CA for this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Her books include Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Duke University Press, 2004) and More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (New York University Press, 2011). She’s currently at work on her next volume.

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BOOKS

Kendall Tucker Class of 2010

ALUM NAE I PRO FILES

by Nancy Shohet West ’84

T H I S

I S S U E

► Kendall Tucker Class of 2010 ► Aldus Chapin Class of 1980

Polis In Your Neighborhood

► Laura Powers-Swigget Class of 1975

An app is changing the map for political canvassers

CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

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he logistics of campaign organizing have long bothered Kendall Tucker ’10. A 2014 Columbia University graduate with a degree in political science, Tucker first managed a state senate campaign when she was only 19, and she held a seat on the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee while still in college. “The technology we were using on our campaigns was straight out of the 1990s,” she says. “Campaigners were drawing maps by hand, distributing them to canvassers, and then spending six hours every night inputting data after devoting a 12-hour day

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to campaigning. I wanted to do good and make change, but I felt the technology was too limited for this to be a fulfilling career path.”

In frustration, she left politics altogether for a position in management consulting. In that role, she found a creative partner in a like-minded individual, Steven Liss, despite his allegiance to a different political party. Like Tucker, he had left politics—in his case, to become a software developer. “We realized if we were able to fix political technology, it would help not just Democrats or Republicans, but

everyone,” Tucker says. “By empowering voters, we could keep people engaged working in the political space.”

And so the pair teamed up to make the political arena far friendlier for would-be campaign advocates. Tucker likens the difficulty of traditional political volunteering to hailing a cab, as compared with using the on-demand car service Uber. “Let’s say you’re in Massachusetts and you’ve decided you want to throw yourself into campaigning for Bernie Sanders. You’ll probably need to track down his Massachusetts website, find out when their volunteer trainings are held, and go into their office to attend one,” Tucker says. That leaves a lot of room for a would-be volunteer’s commitment to wane along the way. She and Liss decided to

address that problem by designing an app, called Polis, that creates a canvassing map based on location, provides speaking points, and allows volunteers to collect data for the campaign. “It will enable you to focus on your own neighborhood,” Tucker says.

Polis started as a “side project,” in Tucker’s words, but has since become a major undertaking. The team tested the first-generation app in June 2015 in seven races in Massachusetts. Every campaign that used it won, and also increased turnout by an average of 10 percent. Buoyed by this evidence of their product’s potential, Tucker and Liss moved to Washington. By early 2016, Polis had been commissioned for one presidential, five congressional, and one gubernatorial campaign, along with about

‘By empowering voters, we can keep people engaged.’

Kendall Tucker

20 smaller races. This spring, Polis joined the prestigious Techstars business accelerator’s Boston cohort and is now receiving mentorship and financial support, which bodes well for the company.

“It’s all about making advocacy easier for the average person,” Tucker says. With grassroots organizing for presidential campaigns well underway, she downplays the impact of advertising. “In this day and age, TV doesn’t really influence people, digital advertising is wildly expensive, mailers get ignored, and people don’t answer their phones,” Tucker says. “The tried-and-true method continues to be knocking on doors.

When you sign up for our app, within 10 minutes you are ready to hit the streets for your candidate.”

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Photos courtesy of Kendall Tucker ‘10

Left: The Polis team in Boston; Above: Kendall Tucker demonstrating the Polis app

Aldus Chapin Class of 1980

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Aldus Chapin (left) at a Charleston photo shoot for his catalog company

Simple rules and stringent standards set a struggling business aright

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Courtesy of Aldus Chapin ‘80

Bringing Back Chadwicks of Boston

uccessful executives often confess to hitting the wall at some point. To recover, some retreat to a cabin in the woods or a sailboat in the South Pacific. When Aldus Chapin ’80 faced career burnout, he had a decidedly different way of unwinding: He bought a foundering company.

But unlike the 30 or so he’d previously purchased and revived throughout a career of rebuilding businesses, he decided to stay with this one.

“Typically, a restructuring would last a few months to a year,” Chapin explains. “Then I’d put a new management team in place and remain on the board, but step away from daily operations. It became exhausting. I felt like a doctor who delivers babies but never actually raises children. I decided it was time to find a company, build it, and stay on.”

The business he has chosen to stay with, as CEO since 2012, is Distinctive Apparel, based in Randolph, Mass., which owns the apparel brands Chadwicks of Boston, Metrostyle, and Territory Ahead. Why this company? “It’s an interesting business, something I’ve never been in before,” Chapin says.

The acquisition also brought him back home to New England.

The revitalization of Chadwicks, once the largest mail-order retailer of women’s clothing in the United States, came after a succession of owners and a bankruptcy filing. Chapin has brought the 33-year-old catalog company back from the brink and into the digital age.

He credits Chadwicks’ revival to two principles: no fixed costs, and no new ideas. “So many businesses see trouble looming and get completely entangled in new products and ideas,” Chapin says. “But business at its core is pretty fundamental. Do the basics incredibly well and limit the things you do. Now, four years on, we can talk about new possibilities.

We can consider adding lines in athletic and leisure wear; we can invest in technology.”

Chapin has had stakes in companies as diverse as restaurant chains and manufacturers of Christmas ornaments and medical apparel. Just as he has found successful business practices to be universal, so has he found the mistakes companies make, from ignoring numbers to lacking consistent definitions.

“I would be amazed that senior people could have a different understanding about something as simple as the term ‘sales,’” he says. So seriously does Chapin take this problem that he starts every job by creating a glossary of in-house terminology.

He cautions business veterans and young college graduates alike not to be seduced by the notion of entrepreneurship as creating something new. “You can be an entrepreneur at any level if you find a new way to do things,” he says. “You can apply the spirit and energy of an entrepreneur to being an accountant or a corporate attorney. It boils down to being willing to take a few risks with the goal of finding a better way of doing things.”

Photos courtesy of Laura Powers-Swigget ’75

Laura Powers-Swigget Class of 1975

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aura Powers-Swiggett ’75 can recite her itinerary to the interior of Haiti by rote. “We fly into Port-au-Prince, drive to Mirebalais, spend the night in a hotel that sometimes has electricity and running water and other times does not, drive to a trailhead, hike to a river, cross the river in dugout canoes with donkeys swimming alongside us to help carry our belongings, disembark on the other side of the river, and walk into the village of Deslandes.”

Even though she’s made the trip six times now, Powers-Swiggett admits to some anxiety before each departure: “I get nervous, anticipating how rugged and emotionally difficult it can be. But once we land, I’m filled with excitement. I love the country of Haiti and its people, and I get so jazzed by the spirit and energy of the place.”

It was shortly after Haiti’s massive earthquake in early 2010 that members of Powers-Swiggett’s Episcopal parish in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., began discussing ways to provide aid. After much research, they formed a partnership with École St. Matthias, an Episcopal school in Deslandes, and began planning the first of what would become annual visits.

Figuring out their role in the relief effort has been perhaps the biggest challenge. “We set out to get to know our

In the Village of Deslandes Learning to help by partnering with Haitians

counterparts in Deslandes,” PowersSwiggett says. “We went initially to listen and learn, and to find sustainable ways to help. Our goal was to discern what we could do that would be mutually supportive, rather than creating a dependent relationship.” They take noted humanitarian and physician Paul Farmer’s concept of

“accompaniment,” or solidarity in cooperation with local communities, to heart.

Each year, Powers-Swiggett leads a group to visit villagers, play with schoolchildren, help with classes, and partner with school leaders to assess needs and define priorities. Fundraisers in New York have raised money for several projects, including a new classroom building with modern plumbing, which will be the school’s first.

A professional artist, Powers-Swiggett has

contributed art supplies and taught painting. On the most recent trip, in early 2016, her sister, Wendy Powers ’74, a historical musicologist, joined her; she taught some of the young people and adults in Deslandes to play recorders.

In addition to completing the classroom construction, the New York group is helping Deslandes villagers apply for a grant to install solar power and a water purification system. They have also helped families start raising goats.

Questions about exactly when and how to engage are ever-complicated, Powers-Swiggett admits. “But if we hadn’t focused so closely from the outset on forging a good relationship with our counterparts in Haiti, we wouldn’t have established accountability and trust, and we wouldn’t be so effective at complementing their capabilities,” she says. “We’ve learned to be very conscious of what our objectives are and how we can best help.”

The feeling of unity that PowersSwiggett sensed on her first visit has never left her. “Over the years we have developed real friendships,” she says. “There is a Creole expression used to say goodbye, N’ap tonn ou—‘We wait for you.’ That’s what we’re told every time we leave. We wait for them, too.”

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Above: Laura Powers-Swiggett with École St. Matthias children; Below: Wendy Powers teaching recorder at École St. Mattias

CONCORD ACADEMY ALUMNAE/I ASSOCIATION

What the CA Community Means

by Jamie Klickstein ’86, P’15, ’18, Alumnae/i Association president

While I’ve remained friends with many CA classmates — and teachers, too — I didn’t really connect with the school itself in a meaningful way until I started talking with prospective students on Saturday mornings as an admissions interviewer. That first interaction with a potential member of our community is incredibly energizing — so much possibility, so much to articulate in such a short time. How will a new student be formed by and inform the CA experience?

Recently, I was asked to sign a letter encouraging admitted applicants to join the CA community, and it got me thinking about what this community offers, not just for four years, but over a lifetime.

STUDENTS FOR LIFE I first saw an image of Goya’s painting The Third of May 1808, in Janet Eisendrath’s classroom in spring 1986. Anyone who had the pleasure of engaging with Janet in her classroom knows that the experience was magical. It has had lifelong impact for many of us. I remember her saying, “Someday you will see this painting in the Prado. When that happens it will be transformative.” While traveling for work in Europe, I often took the time to seek out paintings I first saw in Janet’s classroom. I would send her postcards of the artworks, reflecting on my first exposure years ago. She would always write back to me, and so began a decades-long exchange about how art informs our daily lives. I will miss these letters.

We all have our Janet Eisendraths: Any CA grad will immediately and reverently mention the name of an educator who had this impact. That connection is often lifelong— spanning decades of dialogue.

COMMUNITY FOR LIFE Recently, I learned of a young alumnus, interested in medicine, who used the Evertrue app to contact an alumna from the 1980s to ask if they could meet to discuss her career as a doctor. She offered instead to take him on rounds and has become a fantastic mentor. When we engage as alumnae/i, we are part of a virtuous cycle. The community is strengthened by our common experiences, our shared values, and our willingness to plow these back into the fertile soil that will nurture newly arriving 14-year-olds—eager, ready, and excited to share their thoughts and ideas.

The CA community is built by all of us. We all benefit from engaging. I invite each of you to continue to plug in, participate, and share your experiences. Together, what we create has ripples across the world.

The Third of May 1808, Francisco Goya (detail)

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CATalks • CAService • CANetworking • CAGives • CAReunion

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Courtesy of Local Motors

WILL THE REVOLUTION BE PRINTED? CA engineers help us understand the 3D-printing hype, and the technologyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s real promise

by Heidi Koelz

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‘WE’RE ABLE TO ITERATE AND EVOLVE AS FAST AS THE AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY.’

Alex Fiechter ’02 head of product development at Local Motors

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CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

t the Local Motors headquarters in Phoenix, you’ll find something missing from the car-manufacturing process: an assembly line. Instead, in the 40,000-square-foot microfactory and others like it popping up around the United States, facilities include maker-spaces for sharing equipment and “build floors” where customers can construct their own vehicles, one at a time. Designs are developed openly with in-house engineers and collaborators across the globe. And increasingly, cars are being made by 3D printers that extrude a compound of plastic and carbon fiber, layer by layer, to produce, say, a chassis or a body panel.

Alexis Fiechter ’02, head of product development at Local Motors and a self-proclaimed car guy since his time at CA, thinks the automotive industry is poised for a major shift. In comparing how these facilities

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operate with the Henry Ford model that has long defined American car manufacturing, the importance of direct digital manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing can’t be understated.

Fiechter was featured recently in Adweek as one of “10 digital innovators who are defining creativity in a tech-fueled world.” With the introduction of its LM3D series last year, Local Motors has become the world’s most prominent maker of 3D-printed cars. The company has been showcasing the first model in the series — the Swim, winner of a community design challenge — while pursuing federal safety certifications for future highway-ready versions.

The Swim proved that a new car could move from design to prototype in just over two months — a timeline previously unheard of in automotive production.

As a specialty manufacturer, Local Motors turned to direct digital manufacturing out of necessity. “We knew that if we wanted to stay local, we were always going to have to follow low-volume production runs, so we needed to set ourselves up to do that in the most economical way possible,” Fiechter says.

For custom products, the price of traditional manufacturing is prohibitive. A major component of conventional car production is the cost of tooling for each model; once that’s done, any changes entail another huge expenditure. The electrical architecture for mass-produced cars is equally static, which “really stifles innovation and continuous improvement,” Fiechter says. The cost of making changes also encourages BandAid solutions when problems crop up — the opposite of the Local Motor approach. “Flexibility is one of the main drivers that pushes us into trying to

make 3D printing productionready,” Fiechter says. “We’re able to iterate and evolve as fast as the available technology.”

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lso called additive manufacturing, 3D printing is the process of constructing three-dimensional objects from digital files. On-screen models are developed using computeraided design (CAD) software, then sent to printers as easily as one sends a document. The 3D printer lays down material in succession, and an object emerges. Unlike traditional manufacturing, in which a bolt, for example, is whittled down from a steel bar, the 3D-printing process is additive, like hand-building with clay. In their raw form, products are rarely beautiful — the material often has visible layers or rough edges. But the technology can produce complex forms, such as parts that move in relation

the ways companies pursue new possibilities.

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iechter’s friend and classmate Jake Ware ’02 has worked with his share of 3D printers. First at the dronedevelopment company CyPhy Works and now in the AeroAstro graduate program at MIT, he has used them for their original purpose of rapid prototyping — to quickly test parts that will eventually be replaced by components manufactured using other, generally better, methods.

Ware is bothered by news stories that encourage the public to believe we’ll all soon have 3D printers at home to create anything we desire: no more trips to the store, just stock up on

filament! “We’re miles from that,” he says. And more to the point, he’s not convinced it’s something we need.

The technology comes with downsides, such as the need for constant oversight. “If you don’t pay attention for a while, it might not fail outright, but it’s going to make a part that’s no good,” Ware says. Even the sophisticated machines in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab are notoriously finicky, requiring constant calibration and maintenance, susceptible to catastrophic failure, and apt to degrade with regular use.

For iterating and testing designs, though, machining using more traditional methods can be incredibly time-consuming and expensive. In contrast, prints are quick and cheap.

“Although simple machines don’t make great-looking parts, they can make a functional replacement in a hurry,” Ware says. With a government-project deadline just days away and no machine shop with an opening, being able to send a CAD file to a printer overnight can be a lifesaver. Printers can also create irregular shapes that classic machine tools like computer-

Courtesy of Yale OpenHand Project

numerical-controlled (CNC) mills or lathes can’t produce. “They have been game-changers for me in terms of rapid development of robotic systems and components,” Ware says. They pick up the pace of innovation.

At the GRAB Lab at Yale, where Connor McCann ’14 works, engineers are creating robotic and prosthetic hands that are almost entirely 3D-printed and customized for individuals. In his research position there, McCann is working on a new construction technique for reconfigurable trusses, which could create much higherstrength and lower-weight structures than conventional manufacturing allows. It’s similar to a method NASA is pursuing for construction in space, and the hope is that it could eventually be mass-produced.

Like Ware, McCann has found that some of his prototypes can be made only with a 3D printer. “That’s actually not great, because production can’t scale,” he says. “It can be difficult and time-consuming to print large quantities.”

The biggest impediment to widespread adoption of 3D printing, McCann suggests, could have less to do with what it’s possible to produce than with CAD software’s steep learning curve. Even with many open-development forums active online, the knowledge base required to create high-quality products still rests primarily with engineers.

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artly as a consequence of lessening costs for machines and materials, an impression has arisen that within a couple of decades the 3D printer may become the next microwave. But media coverage tends to conflate cutting-edge and

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to one another, like gear trains.

Combinations of conductive and insulative materials can be printed simultaneously for 3D electronics. In addition to plastic, the machines can print using finely ground powders to create titanium, resin, silver, and glass.

The automotive industry is hardly the first to adopt the technology. Medical implants, jewelry, and even parts for fighter jets are all being made by 3D printers. In Amsterdam, a steel bridge is being printed; in China, they’re making earthquake-proof houses. The promise that if you can conceive it you can create it — right now — has ignited the public imagination. But 3D printing may not usher in a micromanufacturing revolution in quite the way many imagine, by putting commercial design and production in the hands of individuals. Instead, we can anticipate acceleration in research and development and changes in

Photos courtesy of Local Motors

Left: Local Motors relies on 3D printing to build highly customized cars. Below: The LM3D Swim, first in a Local Motors series of 3D-printed vehicles, was designed by the winner of a community challenge.

where most plastic ends up.

Last summer, Colson sailed across the Atlantic with SEA Semester to study the distribution of plastic. Using a Neuston net, he sampled the upper water layer, and he found it everywhere — interspersed, like a plastic soup. After returning home, he decided the best way to stop things from getting worse was to clean along shores. He’s starting this spring on Martha’s Vineyard. After MIT, Colson hopes to work on harnessing renewable energy from ocean sources — waves and currents — and build exploratory underwater robots. “It’s amazing how much we don’t know about the ocean,” he says.

BECKETT COLSON ’11 ‘I CAN GO FROM THINKING OF AN IDEA AND SKETCHING IT ON PAPER TO HAVING THE PARTS IN LESS THAN A DAY.’ Beckett Colson

CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

entry-level technologies.

While high-end machines are extremely precise and consistent, they’re expensive. Hobby printers turn out lower-grade products and parts that often fail, and even they require controlled environments. Often discounted in stories about 3D printing’s promise are the efficiencies of a well-honed system of mass production and the level of sophistication consumers have come to expect from store-bought products.

Three-dimensional printing can be better understood as one rapid-prototyping technology among many. The process

can be grindingly slow compared with laser cutting, which can produce a hundred parts in around 20 minutes — flat parts, that is. Parts produced by 3D printing don’t have the same strength and tolerance as machined components. However, compared with CNC milling, which drills into a block of material, the additive process of 3D printing means that there are very few limitations on what can be made. As always, the choice of tool depends on the needs at hand.

For Fiechter at Local Motors, 3D printing is “a great weapon toward making highly

targeted design an economical option.” In his experience, consumers are so diverse that he finds the concept of mass-market products a little insulting.

“You haven’t addressed the needs and wants of individuals until you have made something especially for them,” he says.

Fiechter anticipates that collaborative design will only grow, citing an abundance of tools for mass contribution and collection of data only recently developed. But whether 3D printing will dominate over other manufacturing techniques depends largely on consumers.

Right now, 3D printers in

production scenarios are most advantageous for creating very specific products, a few at a time. The more customization a design requires, the better the technology is suited. “What would really set 3D-printed manufacturing off is if consumers started expecting and insisting that their products should be tuned especially for them, and at reasonable prices,” Fiechter says. Are you ready for your custom ride?

Learn more about Local Motors at www.localmotors.com.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Watch time-lapse video at www.concordacademy.org/3dprinting.

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Photos by Beckett Colson ’11

RECENTLY NAMED one of “15 impressive students at MIT” by Business Insider, Beckett Colson ’11 is finishing a degree in ocean engineering. He discounted 3D printing until he used it to prototype and was impressed with the quality produced by a home setup. Now he’s caught the 3D-printing bug. On a Printrbot Simple Metal, a basic machine he purchased with prize money from MIT’s Keil Ocean Engineering Development Award and assembled himself, he has printed everything from a light-up rocket ship to the propellers for his remotely operated underwater trash-collecting vehicle, which he’s planning to use to help clean up the ocean,

Left: DEMONs faculty advisor Max Hall and club cohead Ingrid Apgar getting acquainted with CA’s new LulzBot TAZ 5, which arrived in March and will expand the possibilities for 3D printing on campus

Heidi Koelz

Below: Although 3D printing had not yet arrived at CA, Alex Fiechter ‘02 and Jake Ware ‘02 (seated on bikes, with Adam Olsen ‘03 and Giuliana Di Mambro ‘02) worked on custom bikes with mentor Dan Sanford their senior year on campus.

Science teacher Max Hall remembers fondly the construction of a geodesic dome that stored their equipment.

EARTH SYSTEMS science teacher John Pickle used to make models of silicon tetrahedrons, fundamental building blocks of nearly all rocks on Earth, out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Now, using an entry-level 3D printer CA has owned for nearly two years, Pickle, fellow science teacher Max Hall, and the DEMONs club (which stands for dreamers, engineers, mechanics, and overt nerds) have created tetrahedrons that snap together with ball-andsocket joints. They’re not quite sturdy enough for classroom use, but they might be once CA gets its new 3D printer up and running. The big step up to a LulzBot TAZ 5 with modular parts and dual extruders — delivered this spring along with a range of flexible, conductive, and magnetic plastics — means students will be able to print things that end up stretchy, or potentially even use filaments filled with stone or wood. The new printer’s housing is open, without barriers to understanding its workings. Excitement about the possibilities, not only for science and engineering students,

but also for architectural modeling, is bubbling up.

Ingrid Apgar ’16 has been the primary user, and caretaker, of CA’s older 3D printing machine.

Turning diagrams from the page, such as electron orbital structures, into hands-on learning tools has been a primary use of the technology, but Ingrid has also printed objects out of curiosity, such as a tiny elephant with movable legs.

“It’s given me the opportunity to design things that I wouldn’t otherwise know how to make,” she says. Without much prior engineering knowledge, she approached her projects with infinite patience, spending countless hours in a beta space getting familiar with the machine. The graduating senior spent this spring writing a user’s manual to help democratize the process. She also designed a custom portable cart to make the new printer more accessible when CA Labs opens next year. The new building will have a space built specifically for 3D printing. Naturally, DEMONs helped brainstorm the requirements.

Photos by Max Hall

3D PRINTING AT CA

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KNOCKING ON THE CELLULOID CEILING

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Jason Travis

With the government investigating a dearth of female filmmakers, the Hollywood gender gap is getting national attention. Is there hope for real change?

by Heidi Koelz

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T

HEY’RE CALLING it the boys-in-baseball-caps phenomenon. In recent years, several young men have vaulted from directing a single independent feature to helming blockbusters. This trajectory is both meteoric and gender-biased: It’s increasingly common for men and unprecedented for women. That’s created an outcry, put Hollywood in the spotlight, and motivated women in the business to speak out — several of them graduates of Concord Academy.

The evidence of discrimination is more than anecdotal. A raft of research documenting underrepresentation of women in the film industry has prompted the media to chronicle female filmmakers’ fight for equal opportunities. Women constituted just 9 percent of all directors of the top-grossing 250 U.S. films of 2015, according to the annual Celluloid Ceiling report out of San Diego State University. That percentage hasn’t improved since 1998 — the year Saving Private Ryan topped the box office and Netflix started shipping DVDs to mailboxes. Last spring, the ACLU filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that instigated a government investigation into hiring practices. It could be the first step toward a class-action lawsuit.

There’s been a sudden scramble to hire female filmmakers, amid other rumblings of change. In January, in response to criticism of the Oscars, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences restructured its voting requirements with a goal of doubling minority and female membership by 2020. It’s unclear whether the gamble on identity politics will result in more diverse awards ceremonies — recognition depends on enough women and minorities getting into the pipeline. And with many eyes on directors, it’s been easy to overlook bias that affects women in other roles, inside and outside the studio system. Now women from several sectors are speaking up with a hope of joining their voices and having their work valued as highly as that of their male peers.

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2015 1998

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6 EDITORS

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS

WRITERS

DIRECTORS

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CINEMATOGRAPHERS

Source: “The Celluloid Ceiling,” Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, San Diego State University

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■ Only 30.2 percent of 30,835 speaking characters in the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014 were female.

■ Less than a quarter of all speaking characters were female in the top animated films of 2014.

Source: “Inequality in 700 Popular Films,” Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative, USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

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PRODUCERS

Media representation of women still presents a host of challenges, and appearance-focused criticism of actresses is perhaps harsher than it’s ever been. “We have to get past this narrative, particularly in Hollywood, that if women aren’t perfect creatures, they’re unhireable, or worse, bad people,” Caitlin FitzGerald ’02 says.

■ Only 21 of the 100 top films of 2014 featured a female lead, and no female actors over 45 years old performed a lead role.

Percent of women working on top 250 films, by role 26

MEDIA REPRESENTATION

Scott Larkin Courtesy of Weinstein Company

Behind the Lens

Shooting Fruitvale Station

Rachel Morrison ’96 can’t wait for the day when she’s judged solely on her merits as a cinematographer—not as a female cinematographer. Although the director of photography (DP) renowned for Fruitvale Station and Dope once sought to steer conversations away from gender, the recent push for female directors made her realize that denying the problem wasn’t helping. “My experience as a cinematographer is that it hasn’t changed at all,” she says. “If anything, I’ve been given more opportunities to direct, which is not even something I set out to do. But nobody is opening the doors for me to shoot any more than they were five years ago.”

As underrepresented as female directors are, female cinematographers are rarer still: 94 percent of 2015’s top-grossing 250 films were shot by men, according to the Celluloid Ceiling report, down slightly from 98 percent in 2006. For Morrison, it was in trying to move from successful independent films to larger studio movies that she registered something amiss. Although Fruitvale Station won both audience and jury awards at the Sundance Film Festival, three years later Morrison has yet to shoot a major studio picture.

Most other DPs at her level of success get a call within a year or two. “For women in this industry, we have to prove ourselves every step of the way,” Morrison says, outlining incremental steps to bigger-budget movies that her male peers don’t seem to have to take. While she notes that her gender may actually help her stand out in hiring for smaller movies, it feels like a liability for larger films.

Morrison is confident, though, that it’s simply a matter of time: “To me, it’s never 35

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Rachel Morrison ’96

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Even women from film families have to work hard to counter gendered expectations. “Hollywood is a boys’ club,” filmmaker and writer Liz Goldwyn ’94 says. The granddaughter of movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn recalls that when she was cutting her first film, Pretty Things, about 20th-century burlesque queens, she was the first woman director on the Paramount lot in nine years—and she overheard some choice words about women in power.

“You know that you’re going to run the risk of them saying, ‘We don’t want to work with

Emily Abt ’93

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her, she’s too difficult,’” she says. “Whereas if it’s a man, they would not say that. They would just say, ‘He’s fighting for what’s his.”

Goldwyn takes the call for change personally. “I have to work that much harder to be taken with the same level of consideration and respect as my male peers,” she says.

“The stories that I make are about strong women, complicated women, problematic women. Not everyone is going to like that, but I’ll keep on because that’s what I’m drawn to.”

Women filmmakers are comparatively better represented outside the studio system, but even in the independent world there’s a narrative/documentary divide. In 2014 and 2015, women made 29 percent of documentaries and only 18 percent of narrative features

Keegan Allen

been that women can’t get there. It may just take twice as long to reach the same level.” Her concern right now is that if she and her fellow female cinematographers end up directing because studios are “trying to plug a hole with DPs, then there won’t be any of us left.” She takes it as her duty to future female cinematographers to not desert the camera entirely.

Liz Goldwyn ’94

In the documentary world, a relative playground for women filmmakers, men still tend to be the box-office heavy hitters, while women’s films are better represented on PBS. That division may be driven as much by the tastes of theater audiences as the system that determines distribution. Certainly financing for documentaries seems to be on more even footing, with support available from organizations such as the Sundance Documentary Fund and the Ford Foundation. Still, Catherine Saalfield Gund ’83 concedes that there are investors she doesn’t even think to approach “that boy doc filmmakers would just dial right up.”

The documentary filmmaker and producer has made her name by focusing on social justice

As a producer at BuzzFeed, Daysha Edewi ’10 is responsible for shooting, lighting, directing, editing — and most often starring in — her own videos, and she’s had the satisfaction of seeing one of them hit over 37 million views within a week. She does it all for only $300 per video. The low budget has taught her to be resourceful and allows for endless iteration and testing. Because BuzzFeed gives creative control to its producers, she is free to take on what really matters to her, including difficult topics such as race and body image.

“One of my biggest goals as a creator is making videos that people will play in a classroom,” Edewi says. “The idea of creating something that a CA teacher could use to articulate something is a life goal for me.”

Moments from three of Daysha Edewi’s BuzzFeed videos, which include spoken-word poems she has written and directed about relationships, body image, and sexuality

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THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF ONLINE VIDEO

Photos courtesy of Daysha Edewi ’10

that screened at more than 20 high-profile U.S. film festivals, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film—and narrative films by men get better distribution.

Emily Abt ’93 has a foot on each side of the indie world, with three documentaries and one narrative film under her belt. Now she’s gearing up to shoot her second narrative feature, Audrey’s Run, about an African American woman who runs for mayor of Boston. After her first narrative film, Toe to Toe, hit Sundance and Variety magazine named her one of the “top 10 directors to watch,” she met with several studio executives to pitch them her next project. She was visibly pregnant, and nothing came through. “I wasn’t going to wait to get hired,” she says. “I was going to keep making films.” So she directed another documentary (Daddy Don’t Go) while her children were still young. “Documentary work tends to be more flexible than narrative since the shoots take place over a longer period of time,” she says.

“There are ways to work no matter what, to not let ourselves be excluded.”

A founding member of a support network in New York called Film Fatales, Abt calls herself “one of many women filmmakers pushing hard at the gates.” She has raised over $1.5 million for her own projects and credits her involvement in every aspect of filmmaking, from writing to shooting, directing, editing, and producing. “Women filmmakers who have a strong technical background—directors who are also editors, or who also shoot—are doing better than those who don’t,” she says. “It’s not in our interests as women to throw our hands up and say we don’t understand the technical aspects of filmmaking.”

Sadie Hope-Gund

issues; she is currently at work on films about the ranchera singer Chavela Vargas, black organizing in the wake of police killings in Cleveland, and 100-year-old but newly discovered interracial silent moviemaking.

Gund doesn’t think much of talk about a dearth of women directors. “There are many and they’re brilliant, and it’s silly for people to say that they can’t find one,” she says. At her production company, Aubin Pictures, the producers and directors she works with are all women. Surrounding herself with a hub of passionate colleagues, she sees Hollywood operating largely in a parallel universe. “They can’t keep saying they don’t see Catherine Saalfield Gund ’83 gender,” she says. “If you have no women on your crew—none?—then you need to make a big change. As a simple rule, folks could be aiming for 50 percent women.

And if your big complaint is that you can’t find any women, then start a mentorship program or internship program and step outside the walls of your old boys’ network.”

Sally Rubin ’95 also makes films about underdogs—and has from her very first documentary, about LGBT life at CA. Keenly attuned to media representation, she’s at work on a documentary called The Hollywood Hillbilly, about how rural people are portrayed on screen. In addition to documentary filmmaking and editing, she now codirects the documentary BFA and MFA programs at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. She sees that male students are more confident picking up cameras, while females tend to default to more administrative roles, like producing. “I don’t think men are naturally more apt with cameras or editing systems, but I do think that they’re encouraged to approach technology with more of an open mind and with more confidence from an earlier age,” she says. In her classroom, she often insists that women shoot and men produce, and is deliberate in how she pairs students. Rubin has seen opportunities for women improve—if slowly.

“Progress starts with conversations and naming injustices,” she says, “and that’s exactly what’s happening.”

Courtesy of Aubin Pictures

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Catherine Gund filming Amor Puro y Duro: Love Hard & Pure

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SALLY RUBIN ’95

WHERE WOMEN DOMINATE Archival producer Becca Bender ’95 works in “a comically female-heavy” branch of the documentary field; nearly all jobs that involve researching and editing archival materials are held by women. “There’s very little glory in it,” she says by way of explanation. In her niche of black documentary, she is attuned more to race than gender, and what her lived experience does and doesn’t bring to a project: “I try to be hyper-aware of who I hire for my team to be sure that I’m getting diverse perspectives — and that extends to interns.”

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‘I completely credit CA with giving people like me — teenage girls especially — a voice.

CA does nothing if not encourage people to find their passion, to know that they have a voice in the world that can make a difference. I learned that at 14 years old, and I’ve never forgotten it since.’

Hollywood’s business pressures create an exceptionally challenging environment for women. International financing and the need to appeal to foreign audiences have contributed to a focus on action and comic franchises to the detriment of middle-budget dramatic features. Audiences now mostly go to theaters for spectacle. Men still dominate executive positions, but women executives face similar pressures. “Hollywood is fear-driven,” says Abt. “With every decision a development executive makes, their job is on the line. It’s almost inevitable that they feel forced to make the safe call, and unfortunately that safe decision often comes in the form of a man.” She praises actress Natalie Portman, who owns her own production company and recently insisted on a female director for a biopic about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “That kind of move is very powerful, and I think the more that happens, the more you’ll see a real shift in who gets picked to helm these projects.”

Part of the equation is who decides what stories get told. Several women point to an issue much larger than the film industry—a sort of gendered empathy gap. “For whatever reason, women can empathize with the male experience, but not all men can empathize with a female protagonist,” Morrison says. She wonders how we can teach males—including her own toddler son—to do so. “I think that will help level the playing field more than anything in terms of front-of-the-camera talent,” she says. Rubin identified the same problem.

“Girls grow up seeing male protagonists and male subjects, and females are often adjuncts, additives to their stories,” she says. “Our resulting experience is that we’re second-class citizens.” And everyone loses when men aren’t encouraged to put themselves in women’s shoes.

When it comes to casting, most filmmakers secure a male lead first. “There is a prevailing opinion that men spend more money on entertainment than women, especially in the 18-to-35 demographic, so more roles are written for men than for women,” says casting director Pamella Pearl ’86, who has worked on Argo, The Twilight Saga, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes and now casts for television. “With women it’s less about box office

Courtesy of Becca Bender ‘95

Tucia Lyman

What’s Driving the Numbers?

Courtesy of Dani Girdwood ‘11

GETTING A START IN FILMMAKING Dani Girdwood ’11 has benefited from the type of mentorship that many women have been calling for. Now assisting with indie films made by women, she is finding collaborative, inclusive filmmaking thrilling. “It’s a team sport,” she says.

“I owe my confidence fully to the women who tucked me under their wings, who nurtured me and wanted to hear from me.”

her first feature, remains a rarity. “For Lupita it was a perfect storm, with timing, with the zeitgeist,” Rea says. Still, after the Academy Awards that year, the majority of the scripts Rea was sent for Nyong’o were for roles as slaves or abused women. So actresses like her are now generating many of their own projects. Nyong’o and Rea have bought the rights to make a movie of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.

Television and film actress Caitlin FitzGerald ’02 has also found good roles mostly lacking. “In the scripts, particularly for big movies, it’s 17 dudes and one female character—and she’s the wife, or the girlfriend, and usually not terribly dimensional,” she says. But television is pioneering a broader range for female parts. FitzGerald plays Libby on Showtime’s series Masters of Sex and feels fortunate to work on a show with complicated characters written by women. “I’m very grateful to be in the industry right now,” she says. “It feels like a watershed moment.” The tide may be turning in terms of how women are represented in films, too, but it’s too early to tell. According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, in the topgrossing 100 films of 2015, females constituted 22 percent of protagonists, a recent historical high. That’s up 10 percentage points from 2014, which was an exceptionally poor year for women’s roles.

FitzGerald belongs to a group, Women in Motion Pictures, that connects women in Los Angeles. “There’s this beautiful internal hiring that’s happening among women. We just need the opportunities,” she says, “and supporting each other in that endeavor is crucial.”

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Courtesy of Caitlin FitzGerald ‘02

and more about, ‘Is she pretty enough? Is she young enough?’” It’s possible that casting might present more opportunities if looked at in a different light, as a Time story highlighting recent films with female leads originally written for men suggested. Pearl says that’s far from common, but a similar situation did arise recently when she was casting a TV pilot.

“It was exciting and refreshing to have people think outside the box,” she says. “My hope is that it has become apparent that women can carry shows and bring in audience, and consequently more roles will be written for women.”

Perhaps the elephant in the room is the impact that starting a family has on women’s careers. Morrison was asked to shoot the movie Creed but had to decline the offer because her baby boy was due right in the middle of filming. Working on it would have been a career game-changer: The film grossed over $200 million worldwide. Age is a big factor for women, she says: “Before 30, guys are allowed to be geniuses and women are not hireable. Then you have from 30 to 40 to prove yourself, and that happens to be the exact same window your biological clock has.”

To be close to their children, many women filmmakers pursue less lucrative positions, create in-home production companies, or accept only projects that don’t require travel.

Others make hard choices. Abt’s second daughter was just 4 months old when she took a commercial job in Texas to fund her next documentary. By the time she returned, her daughter had weaned herself. That was hard, but Abt doesn’t regret taking the job.

“I’ve been adamant about staying in the game, as a woman, as a mother,” she says. “My two daughters inspire me professionally. I want them to see me killing it. I want them to know what it looks like to see a woman who loves what she does and does it well.”

What We See On Screen For actresses, bias comes in many forms. Didi Rea ’69, a talent manager, has followed the arcs of many on-screen careers. While several of her male clients are claiming bigger and bigger parts, roles for women are harder to find—and ultimately women are offered less than men. Rea represents, among others, Lupita Nyong’o, whose Oscar for best supporting actress in the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave, 40

Caitlin FitzGerald ’02

With original shows developed by Netflix and Amazon snapping up traditional industry awards and Nielsen now tracking them for ratings, Internet TV has the potential to disrupt the system. And in episodic television as a whole, women are starting to play more formidable roles.

“The way that women are written is so much more dimensional and compelling, in television. Certainly there are beautiful, small independent films being made with great roles for women, but you can’t make a living as an actress doing them. I always say I have a TV show to support my indie habit.”

CAITLIN FITZGERALD ’02

“TV is becoming the new ground for substantive lead roles for women. So many acclaimed directors and writers are working in television right now because they’re being given a lot of money and creative freedom.

Actresses from all mediums are coming to television because these incredible roles are being written.”

PAMELLA PEARL ’86

“Television is just now starting to present more of a real picture and open people’s minds to the idea that women aren’t dead once they’ve passed reproductive age.”

DIDI REA ’69

What we see from the studies, and from women’s experiences, is that success is harder and harder to come by the further up the ladder women climb. The jump from independent to mainstream films is the most difficult to make.

While it stands to reason that the Oscars ceremony, the most visible industry event beyond Hollywood, has been a focus of late, will the Academy’s restructuring pave the way for change? Producer Sarah Pillsbury ’69, a lifetime member (known for Desperately Seeking Susan and River’s Edge, she also won an Academy Award for the short film Board and Care) finds it unlikely. Under the new rules, filmmakers who haven’t made a movie in a decade will become inactive. “I think they assumed that this would affect older white men,” she says. “I’m concerned that it’s likely to affect a lot of women who haven’t worked recently because they’re up against ageism and sexism.” Pillsbury does, however, point to a promising trend: “The level of camaraderie between younger women feels really new.” For her, hope lies in how young women themselves are changing and grappling with these issues— and how young men are, too. “They’ve always seen a world where their mothers work,” she says. “They’ve seen their mothers be powerful and respected. Finally it’s cool for women to be feminists, and a lot of young men would say that they’re feminists, too.”

For Morrison, the problem of recognition starts further back than choosing performances or movies worthy of Oscars. “Certainly the reason there’s never been a female cinematographer nominated for an Oscar isn’t because

somebody deprived us of the nomination,” she says. “There are so few of us, and even fewer shooting bigger-budget projects—there just haven’t been any to choose from.” She thinks change has to start with the hiring process.

Abt feels change is inevitable given the quality of the work that women filmmakers are producing. She hopes to see incentives for production companies and studios willing to take the leap of faith and hire more women.

For Rubin, who points to last year’s box-office smash Mad Max: Fury Road, with Charlize Theron, financial success is what will make the difference. FitzGerald agrees. “Showing that female-led, female-directed, female-written scripts can make money is where Hollywood’s going to shift,” she says.

Gender bias affects all of society, but the imbalance in Hollywood is particularly alarming—not only for the sake of women in the entertainment industry, but also because how we see our lives reflected on-screen goes a long way toward defining our identities, relationships, and ambitions. If you can’t see it, the adage goes, you can’t be it. On the flip side, culture can drive substantive social change.

Although in 2013 and 2014, women accounted for 14 percent of directors of episodic television, according to the Directors Guild of America, powerhouse creators such as Jill Soloway (Transparent) and Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal) are proving that collaborative working styles and storylines with meaty roles for women can capture major audiences.

That trend may yet push films in a different direction.

Awareness and intentionality in hiring could also go a long way toward evening the numbers. It’s clear that both top-down and bottom-up approaches are needed. If we want to see a truly more diverse approach to storytelling, it matters who gets to greenlight films, just as it matters who gets the coffee and has a chance to make contacts and move up the ladder to write, shoot, act, edit, direct, and produce—to prove their determination to circumvent obstacles and share their visions with the world.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE:

For videos and photos from these CA graduates’ work, visit www.concordacademy.org/womeninfilm 41

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IS TV CHANGING THE INDUSTRY?

The Promise of Change

IN MEMORIAM

b Charles Ames husband of Persis Buxton Ames ’50 and step-grandfather of Emery Ells ’15

Dr. Alexander Gunn II father of Catherine Gunn ’84 and Mary Helen Gunn ’87

David Arnold Jr. father of Dorothy Arnold ’63 and Wendy Arnold ’65, uncle of Ellen Arnold Raja ’54, Mary Arnold Bachman ’56, Emilie Sisson Osborn ’65, Susan Kidder ’66, Margaret Sisson ’69, Virginia Sisson ’75, Katharine Sisson Feehery ’75, and Polly Sisson Fleckenstein ’81

David Greene ’82 brother of Linda Ortwein ’74

Norman Beecher father of Catharine Beecher ’70, Carolyn Beecher ’72, and Edward Beecher ’76, host father to AFS student Carla Piccinini ’69, brother of the late Ann Beecher ’44, and great-uncle of Alexander Homans ’02

Dr. John Keller father of Jennifer Keller ’86

Raymond Biggar father of Robert Biggar ’87 and James Biggar ’89 Sarah Farnsworth Blackett ’58 Joan Barry Brookes ’47 sister of Angela Barry Smith ’43 Elizabeth Carlhian mother of Isabelle Carlhian ’72 and Sophie Carlhian ’79 Muriel Christopher mother of Sarah Christopher ’92 Jay Claster father of Saundra Claster ’83 Mary Cross mother of Stuart Warner ’77 CONCORD AC A DEM Y M AG A ZINE SPRING 2016

Elizabeth des Cognets ’44 Daniel Douglas husband of Deanna Douglas, faculty Janet Eisendrath faculty emerita Pamela Cash Fisher ’48

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Doris Halaby mother of H.M. Queen Noor of Jordan ’69 Mary Hildreth ’69 cousin of Ellen-Alisa Saxl ’67

Charles Kellogg III husband of Gillian Shaw Kellogg ’59, brother-in-law of Susan Shaw Winthrop ’62, and cousin-in-law of Joan Corbin Lawson ’49, Sylvia Shaw Brandhorst ’49, and Louise Shaw ’60 John Kellogg father of Rebecca Kellogg ’71 and grandfather of Luke Dennis ’03 and Bo Dennis ’08 Patricia Kellogg ’66 Dr. Leo Marx husband of Hilary Falk Marx ‘64, brother-in-law of Margaret Falk Pirovano ’64, and cousin-in-law of Jean Simon Bendon ’69 and Jean Simons ’76

Bertram Read brother of Nancy Read Coville ’49 Paul Drummond Rust III father of Holladay Rust Bank ’72 Joan Fahnestock Ruvinsky ’61 sister of the late Deborah Fahnestock ’64 Oakes Spalding Jr. father of Lucienne Spalding Schroepfer ’85 and Timothy Spalding ’90 Charles (Tim) Stewart husband of Howsie Jenney Stewart ’53, uncle of Susan Seabury Aselage ’72, and cousin-in-law of Katrina Jenney Saltonstall ’56, Bronwen Jenney Anders ’59, and Elisabeth Jenney Paige ’53 Charles Eyre Terry brother of Julia Terry ’59 and Elise Terry Brown ’62 Lester Thurow father of Torben Thurow ’91 and Ethan Thurow ’94 Stephen Toussaint son of Joellen Maloney Toussaint ’58 Lorraine Wang mother of Juliette Wang Coombs ’82 Priscilla Little Webster ’35

John Mauer husband of Pamela Mack ’73, father of Elizabeth Mauer ’11, brother-in-law of Carey Mack Weber ’79, and cousin-inlaw of Jennifer Underwood Johnson ’59

Margaret Wengren mother of Ellen Smith Harde ’62, host mother to Anne Buxton Sobol ’62, grandmother of Christopher Harde ’86, Matthew Ricci ’02, and Mary Soule Ricci ’05

William Meyer husband of Diana Murfitt Meyer ’55 and brother-in-law of Caroline Murfitt-Eller ’58

James Wood husband of Ethel Borden Wood ’47, brotherin-law of Margaret Fenn Borden ’42, Anna Borden Sides’44, and the late Martha Borden Moss ’46, and stepbrother-in-law of the late Joan Merrick Neider ’43

Henry Milliken, Jr. father of Sophie Milliken Rogers ’67 Susan Normand ’58 Carol Rand former faculty

Thomas Wright brother of Mary Wright ’63 Alexandra Wylie ’66

Janet Eisendrath

Faculty Emerita, Faculty Member 1952–1990

by Parkman Howe, English Department

Gabriel Cooney

WORD OF Janet Eisendrath’s recent passing released

a flood of memories from my decade with her in the 1980s: her enveloping warmth and support when I confessed to having a hard first fall teaching at CA; Janet playing the piano while Derek Nelson ’76 and I sang “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”; listening to Janet address the school a year or two after her retirement, knowing that one of my career’s high points was having worked with her.

Stephen Spender’s “The Truly Great,” a poem Janet introduced me to, seems to have been written especially for her, who “remembered the soul’s history / Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, / Endless and singing.” Janet has passed beyond our physical reach, but part of her spirit will always reside in the hearts and minds of her family, friends, colleagues, and students, her new resting place and home.

Janet Eisendrath touched thousands of lives during her three decades at Concord Academy. While she will be remembered during the annual Memorial Service on Saturday, June 4, at 5 p.m. in the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel, we anticipate that many more will have reflections to share than can be included in the service. Therefore, everyone is encouraged to submit reflections about Janet, or perhaps a letter from Janet or a visual that is meaningful to you because of her, that will be mounted in a display for all alumnae/i and faculty to enjoy throughout Reunion Weekend. Please send submissions to Billie Julier Wyeth ’76 at billie_wyeth@concordacademy.org or (978) 402-2232.

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Only a handful of colleagues who taught alongside Janet still teach today at CA. Shortly after her passing, we found ourselves drifting together to share a few memories: Janet’s animated glance; her intelligence and compassion; her love of music and art and teaching; her fierce mantra to “look deeply.”

< CIRCA RESPONSE Anne Buxton Sobol ’62 reported that her class “had much fun”

with this photo and identifies herself as the young woman on the far right in blue. She and her classmates identified the teacher (in the far back) as Dr. Kubin and the students, from left to right, as Deborah Taylor ’62, Lawson Prince Allen ’62, and Katharine Rea Schmitt ’62. The young woman next to Anne remains a mystery. Any guesses?

• 1920 • 1930 • 1940 • 1950 • 1960 • 1970 • 1980 • 1990 • 2000 • 2010 •

CIRCA Readers, please pull up a chair and tell us what you can about the people pictured here.

Do you see familiar faces or places?

Please send names, dates, stories, or caption suggestions for the images seen here to magazine@ concordacademy.org. We’ll publish select responses in the next issue.

Lionel Delevingne

Gabriel Cooney

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Celebrate a CA Moment

WHAT WILL YOU MAKE POSSIBLE? Invest in Concord Academy with a gift to the 2015–16 Annual Fund.

www.concordacademy.org/give

THIS YEAR faculty and staff showed their commitment to CA by reaching record-breaking 100% participation in the Annual Fund. Join them with a gift before June 30.

Event dates May 26–27 Baccalaureate and Commencement June 3 –5 Spring Reunions for classes of 1941–2001

October 22 Alumnae/i Fall Weekend and Reunions for classes of 2006 and 2011

Contact the Advancement and Engagement Office at advancement @concordacademy.org or (978) 402-2240

CATalks • CAService • CANetworking • CAGives • CAReunion

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Concord Academy magazine is printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink.