CA Magazine Fall 2019

CA

CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE

O P E N I N G S PAC E TO L I V E & L E A R N

CA celebrates the completion of the William M. Bailey Commons and, with it, the CA Houses initiative

FALL 2019

26 Nearly 300 CA students, faculty, and staff joined thousands of young people in Boston as part of the Global Climate Strike on September 20.

FEATURE S

FALL 2019

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Editor

Heidi Koelz Associate Director of Communications

Defining CA: Today & Tomorrow

E CA invites you to reflect on the school’s new mission statement.

See page 16.

Design

26 Sustaining CA

Aldeia www.aldeia.design

Concord Academy introduces a holistic environmental sustainability plan

Editorial Board

Ben Carmichael ’01 Director of Marketing and Communications

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Alice Roebuck Director of Advancement and Engagement Hilary Rouse Director of Engagement

Reaffirming Concord Academy’s core values, a revised mission statement calls on everyone to engage

Feeding the Need CA alumnae/i are working locally to support food justice.

See page 28.

CA alumnae/i are finding ways to address hunger in their communities

Sarah Yeh Assistant Head and Dean of Faculty

DEPARTMENTS

Contact us:

Concord Academy Magazine 166 Main Street Concord, MA 01742 (978) 402-2249 magazine@concordacademy.org © 2019 Concord Academy

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Message from the Head of School

Alumnae/i news and profiles

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News about students, faculty, arts, and athletics

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CA opens space to live and learn

Spanish teacher Enrique Alcayaga

Opening Remarks

CA theater teacher Shelley Bolman studied mask work this summer. See page 12.

M I SSI ON We are a community animated by love of learning, diverse and striving for equity, with common trust as our foundation.

Campus

Centennial Campaign

Alumnae/i

Creative Types

Then & Now

End Space

Honoring each individual, we challenge and expand our understanding of ourselves and the world through purposeful collaboration and creative engagement.

We cultivate empathy, integrity, and responsibility to build a more just and sustainable future.

O N T H E C OV E R Students in the new William M. Bailey Commons.

C OV E R A N D BAC K C OV E R: C O L E + K I E R A • I FC : B E N CA R M I C H A E L ’0 1

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Living Our Mission “I believe we do have a role in addressing systemic wrongs, and that is to do what we can in our communities.”

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THIS SUMMER, spurred by reading Stony the Road, by Henry Louis Gates Jr. P’99, I found myself reflecting about current events in light of historical parallels. Gates describes the idealism of Reconstruction giving way to the rise of white supremacy and the discriminatory laws and practices of the Jim Crow era, and then draws a parallel to what we observed after the election of the country’s first African American president, Barack Obama — a period of euphoria followed by political polarization, leading to the rejuvenation of white supremacy and a spike in violence against people of color in the wake of the 2016 election of Donald Trump.

What can we say or do about the instances of cruelty, pain, and loss that continue to confront us? What can we say or do in the face of injustice and discrimination and the grave threats to our environment? Should we turn away? Should we throw up our hands?

It’s easy to do those things. Easy to say it’s beyond fixing.

In this moment, I believe we do have a role in addressing systemic wrongs, and that is to do what we can in our communities. To do what we can here at CA, this place whose inhabitants come from far and wide.

Seeing the commitment this school has recently made in establishing a comprehensive sustainability plan (see page 26), and then witnessing so many students and

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faculty engage earlier this fall in peaceful climate activism — things like these give me renewed hope.

As this issue of the magazine reports, Concord Academy’s mission statement was revised last spring (see page 16).

The renewed statement grounds us in long-held values — love of learning and common trust — while expanding our thinking about community, so that we see ourselves as a diverse community that is also striving to be an equitable one. We commit to celebrating individual differences, examining our own attitudes and actions, and remaining open to growth and change, and we pledge to engage creatively, not by simply following the way things have been done but by being open to new ways of thinking and doing. We define empathy, integrity, and responsibility as the tools with which together we can build a more just and sustainable future.

In my opening chapel this year, I invited all of our students, faculty, and staff to strive to live according to our mission. I hope you will read the renewed mission statement, learn about the process from which it resulted, and reflect on its meaning for you.

As we all grapple with what it means to be a citizen of a world that is assuredly imperfect, a world we want to improve, we can remind one another that to build tomorrow is to be present in the effort today, and every day.

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campus WOMEN IN TECH For their first annual Women in Technology (WiT) conference in April, the founding student organizers welcomed middle school and fellow high school girls and nonbinary individuals to CA to encourage them to participate in student technology clubs at their schools and help one another pursue high-tech learning.

Read more: www.concordacademyorg/wit-2019

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Class of 2019!

Concord Academy’s 97th Commencement Exercises On May 31, a day of hope and promise, Concord Academy’s 97th graduating class strode down the senior steps to the Chapel lawn. Fay Lampert Shutzer ’65, president of the Board of Trustees, praised the graduating seniors as “deeply thoughtful and introspective,” “courageous risk-takers” who “forge partnerships to work for change.” Head of School Rick Hardy commended them for embodying a fundamental CA value: love of learning. Student Head of School Ananya Pani ’19 recognized faculty and staff who had reached milestones of service, including 30 years for Shawn Buckland P’10, Chris Rowe, Jonathan Smith, and Amy Spencer P’13.

“Being aware of your surroundings is essential.”

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Senior Class President Chaney Dalton ’19 introduced the Commencement speaker, Assistant Head and Academic Dean John Drew P’15 ’19, who was soon to depart CA after 21 years to lead the White Mountain School. Reflecting on how a recent course of his had left her feeling inspired, compassionate, and empowered, she said, “I am humbled to share my graduation day with John’s graduation of sorts from CA.” Drew applauded the class of 2019’s “sustained devotion” to one another and the school and he offered advice to the young adults whose paths from CA, he noted, would be “shaped by the temptation to believe that each landing spot is only temporary,” a stepping stone to some eventual “good and worthy” conclusion. “You don’t have to live that way,” Drew said. “It’s not the moving that is necessarily the problem, but the risk of not caring about the places where we land.”

“Being aware of your surroundings is essential,” he said. “You and the world both need that attention and connection.”

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Watch Drew give the Commencement address: www.concordacademy.org/john-drew P H OTOS BY C O L E + K I E R A , B E N CA R M I C H A E L ’0 1

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COMMENCEMENT 2019

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C O N VO CAT I O N

At Convocation, opening Concord Academy’s 98th academic year, Jon Waldron, coach of CA’s crosscountry and track and field teams, spoke in praise of slow learning. Other speakers included Head of School Rick Hardy, Board of Trustees President Fay Lampert Shutzer ’65, and Student Head of School Vedika Sharma ’20.

M A I L B OX I can count only one or two times in 69 years when one of [the alumnae/i magazines I read] has featured a story on anyone pursuing the spiritual life unless it is somehow tied to action in the world of accomplishment or adventure. So it’s wonderful for the magazine to shine a light on the journey [in “The Modern Pilgrim’s Way,” spring 2019]. The story brought up two things for me: first, the luck and privilege involved in being able to take actual geographic journeys to distant places that are believed to be sacred (and which also make for some great photography, as we see) and that allow for dropping off the familiar, the routine, the responsibilities that get in the way of internal solitude. That aspect of the story led naturally to the second thing: There is no sacred place other than the one in our own minds (substitute hearts, souls, spirits), so we don’t need money or privilege to make it possible for us to go somewhere else other than where we are right now. It does take developing the meditative mind.

This may take regular application and practice, but there’s no need for reintegration upon return, because we’ve been here the whole time.

—Lisa Volckhausen McCann ’60 R

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU CA Magazine welcomes letters from readers. Please send responses or story ideas to magazine@concordacademy. org. Letters may be edited for length or clarity.

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“Don’t mistake difficulty for failure.

Difficulty is exactly the raw material you need to begin learning the really important stuff.”

J O N WA L D RO N , coach Read more: www.concordacdemy.org/convocation-2019

SPARK INVENTORS CLUB TAKES OFF In its first year, a CA club for student inventors reached new heights — literally. The scientific experiments proposed by Spark co-heads James Gow ’20 and Connor Dayton ’20 earned coveted spots in the Cubes in Space program, a global competition for students aged 11 to 18 that received thousands of entries from more than 30 countries. In June, James and Connor traveled to the Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., where they first presented an experiment designed to James Gow ’20 and Connor Dayton ’20 hold their discover whether exposure to radiCubes in Space experiments. ation and microgravity affects seed germination and growth, then watched it blaze into space aboard a NASA sounding rocket. A zero-pressure research balloon carrying another of their experiments, involving data in solid-state storage, launched in September from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, N.M. During the 2018–19 academic year, Spark club members also took part in the Google Science Fair, the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision science competition, and the Massachusetts State Science Fair. The club’s mission: “Stay curious, be innovative! Solve the world’s problems, one invention at a time.”

Read more and see the rocket launch: www.concordacademy.org/cubes

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SUMMER INSTITUTE HELPS EDUCATORS TEACH FOR DYNAMIC LEARNING For years, Kim Frederick dreamed of hosting a summer institute for educators at Concord Academy, one that would support teachers committed to dynamic learning pedagogy. Over four days in August, she and her co-director and fellow CA history faculty member Topi Dasgupta P’22 brought that community into being. CA’s first Summer Institute welcomed 15 humanities teachers from both public and private schools to discuss real-world, problem-centered practice; issues of equity; frameworks for experiential and project-based learning; approaches to technology and collaborative learning; and ways to foster creative thinking and global citizenship.

The educators each brought lesson plans to develop with the help of other participants and guest faculty Jeff Robin, a project-based learning specialist. In conversations with staff at several institutions — the Concord Museum, the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Harvard University’s History Design Studio, and the Boston Public Library — they considered the elements of successful partnerships with cultural organizations and the resources available within their own communities.

Workshops with CA faculty members, including English teacher Abby Laber P’16, Performing Arts Department head Amy Spencer P’13, and ceramics teacher Monica Ripley, gave participants a chance to examine their own experiences as novice learners as well.

The work will continue throughout the school year as the educators create a network and share planning materials for future participants.

Generous gifts from members of Concord Academy’s class of 1968, in honor of their 50th reunion in 2018, made possible this institute as well as a second planned for summer 2020.

Frederick and Dasgupta say they are excited to expand the disciplinary focus beyond the humanities and open attendance next summer to teachers in all subject areas.

Read more: www.concordacademy.org/first-summer-insitute

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N E W FAC U LT Y A N D STA F F

CA welcomed new faculty and staff members to campus this fall, many with a special focus on the performing arts. Standing, from left: Nate Tucker, digital music production; Sabine Labuhn Kaluscha, German teacher covering a leave; Trish Saunders, associate director of admissions and financial aid; Brendan Crowley, science teacher; Chris Gagne, jazz ensemble teacher. Seated, from left: Amara Rojo, admissions counselor; Julie Wadland, associate director of admissions; Juan Matos, Spanish teacher covering a leave; Martha Soper, Spanish teacher covering a leave.

Not pictured: Michael Giordano, music and jazz ensemble teacher; Brandon Martinez, music teacher; and Cindy Morrissey, accountant.

All Fired Up CA now has its very own mobile wood-fired pizza oven, constructed from clay, sand, and cement.

In April, visual arts teacher Jonathan Smith — also a baker extraordinaire — and science teacher Max Hall invited students to help them apply around 200 pounds of sand and clay to form the 3-inch-thick dome. They fired up the oven at a year-end event, baking Smith’s delicious za’atar flatbread. A crack across the dome “fumed like the Phlegraean Fields,” according to Hall, but, undaunted, the duo tackled repairs to get the oven back in service for everyone to enjoy.

Above: Jonathan Smith stokes the fire. Right: Students pitch in to build the oven.

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Painting with Light In a CA departmental study, Elliot White ’19 explores photography without a camera During the spring art show, students and faculty clustered around Elliot White ’19, curious about the otherworldly shapes in her images, which evoked cellular structures, crystals, and flames. For her departmental study in her final semester at CA, White had taken on a challenge: How much photography could she do without a camera?

CA photography teacher Cynthia Katz had urged her, in researching alternative photography, to take inspiration from contemporary artists’ prints. “This isn’t a popular niche right now,” White says, “so it was really an exploratory process. It was like nothing I had ever done before.”

She tried her hand at many techniques that use photographic paper but no film: lumen prints and solar printing, exposed in the sun; photograms, which make use of an enlarger; and cliché verre, the transfer of a painting or drawing from glass onto photosensitive paper. She quickly discovered her two favorites: chemigrams and gum bichromate prints.

Both processes rest mostly on darkroom chemistry. Making chemigrams involves applying a substance to photographic paper to create a resist, then adding dye that visually tracks its dissolution in fixer and developer. White experimented with shellac, wood varnish, corn syrup, cooking oil, acidic juice, soap, wax, even sprinkles. For the second type of print, working with gum arabic and ammonium dichromate required her to take safety measures including ensuring proper ventilation and wearing gloves as well as a gas mask on loan from a science faculty member.

Katz calls White “fearless” in her approach to artmaking, but White insists that she can be overly self-critical — and that Katz’s understanding and encouragement were vital. For her, pursuing alternative photography was

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Left: The grid of 20 chemigrams that earned Elliot White ’19 the Best of Show award at a Belmont Hill School student photography show. Below left: CA art show attendees were welcome to handle a variety of White’s chemigrams.

Right: White’s gum bichromate prints of leaves required sun exposure and three imprints.

freeing. “What I loved best was that I didn’t know how things would turn out,” White says. “Because of that aspect of unpredictability, I could be really clear about the ways I wanted to work, but the process introduces a distance — it’s not in my control.”

She has been encouraged by the reception her work has received. In March, her display of 20 chemigrams won Best in Show at a juried Belmont Hill School student show for alternative photography. “It was wonderful to be around people who understand the process,” White says. She also earned an honorable mention for her cyanotypes at the Griffin Museum of Photography’s Secondary School Exhibition, as well as Scholastic Art & Writing awards for photography.

White is now a student at Oberlin College, where she plans to double major in visual art and environmental science. She’s excited to continue working on chemigrams in the school’s alternative photography program. “I got such an intense experience being able to focus on process for the whole semester,” she says. “I really want to keep doing it.”

S P R I N G A RT S H OW Prints, photographs, fiber art, and more filled the Ransome Room for the spring 2019 student art show. Left to right: Ceramic plates decorated using the sgraffito (from the Italian for “to scratch”) technique by Piper Gordon ’21; paintings by Syd Culbert ’19, for a departmental study; portrait by Cynthia Jin ’22.

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Digging Deeper A CA Latin teacher shares her passion for archeology with CA students The Alentejo region of Portugal is hilly, dry, brambly. “It’s Michaela Trieloff ’19, now studying at Brandeis University, beautiful in its desolation,” says Latin teacher Karilyn Sheldon, describes the “documentation before destruction” the students who joined the Concord Academy faculty in fall 2018. For engaged in — measuring and drawing layers before excavation. three weeks in July, four CA students and recent graduates, Their efforts yielded artifacts ranging from mildly interesting along with college students and professional archaeologists, burnt clay and ceramic fragments to, as she says, an “objectively worked with Sheldon at the Caladinho Archaeological Project, epic” Roman coin. an excavation she directs of a first-century BCE Roman fortiFor Eric Yoon ’20 and Hans Toulmin ’21, working through initial insecurity, soreness, and homesickness, and the commufied structure. nal bonds that formed in the group, were instrumental to their Caladinho was the first field school Sheldon herself particgrowth. Colin Regenauer ’19, now studying at the University ipated in — a reminder to her of the importance of exposing of Chicago, says he was most influenced by informal tours with young people to archaeology firsthand. “Kids crave touching archaeologist Rui Mataloto, also Redondo’s history, being fully part of it,” she says. “We cultural officer — a local expert he described present history as a form of social networkas “one of those people who breathes intelliing: At an excavation, you can touch a pot gence.” Mataloto took them to the ruins of and literally feel the fingerprint of the person a church constructed from the marble of a who made it thousands of years ago.”

Roman villa that was later melted down for Sheldon, whose work explores concepts mortar. His insights, says Regenauer, “seemed of identity, hybridization, and innovative to illuminate the site’s entire arc of history, craftsmanship on the fringe of the Roman from the Romans to the early Christians to, Empire, uses her experience in the field to now, me.” enrich her CA students’ understanding of It’s not common for adolescents to parthe ancient world. Those who accompaticipate in excavations, but Sheldon cares nied her this summer gained much more: deeply about exposing high school students a hands-on, culturally immersive learning to fieldwork. “They work even harder than opportunity. The group stayed in Redondo, college students,” she says. “They have more a village that drew a vibrant crowd during energy, zeal, and curiosity, and fewer inhibiits biennial flower festival in their final week tions. They’re not afraid to dig in emotionally, there. On excursions to destinations rangMichaela Trieloff ’19 holds an ancient Roman mentally, and physically.” ing from the capital of ancient Hispania coin discovered during the dig.

For the past five years, Sheldon has been (Merida) to the local potter’s workshop, they researching field school pedagogy. Some of her former indediscussed cultural heritage and the obligation to protect the pendent school students, now in college, returned to the site past in order to learn from it. “It’s experiential learning gone for the third year in a row, this time in leadership positions. wild,” Sheldon says proudly.

“Students this age are very invested in global citizenship, and At Caladinho, the students worked in both the field and we’re planting the seeds for that here,” Sheldon says. “If you the lab, experiencing every facet of an archaeological dig. wait until college, it can be too late. It’s important to harThey learned theories and methods of excavation. They used ness their idealism, to whet their appetite early and keep them pickaxes, hand picks, and trowels. They learned how to wash caring. Teens are culture-crafters. For that reason, they are the pottery, how to catalog artifacts and analyze them, and how to most important audience.” draw both artifacts and stratigraphic units. Working alongside Sheldon is grateful for the support from CA parents, faculty, ceramics expert Archer Martin and another ceramics specialand staff for this endeavor. “They’ve fully realized the potential ist, archaeologist Joey Williams, who co-directs the Caladinho for benefits we can’t fully see yet,” she says. “Archaeological project with Sheldon, the students focused their object-based digs are the same way: You never know what you’ll uncover.” study on items that connect all cultures: storage vessels, plates, — Heidi Koelz cups, bowls.

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“It’s experiential learning gone wild.”

K A R I LY N S H E L D O N , Latin teacher

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EMPATHY FOR THE MASK

LEARNING THE A RT O F SUS P E N S E

Concord Academy’s fourth feature film was the product of a full year of work by 24 students in film teacher Justin Bull’s Feature Film Project course; Jared Green ’88, P’22, who co-wrote the screenplay; and Ben Stumpf ’88, who supervised the film’s editing in his post-production class.

A contained psychological thriller in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock, Deerstalker examines the tenuous relationships among a group of teenagers over the course of one night. The film, which students shot in a barn adjoining campus that the school recently purchased, premiered in the Performing Arts Center in May. Visit www.concordacademy.org/deerstalker to watch the trailer.

Some of the quarter masks CA theater teacher Shelley Bolman worked with during his summer intensive study.

“One of the beautiful things about mask work is that every person brings something different to it,” says CA theater teacher Shelley Bolman. “The same exact mask plays differently on me than it would on you.”

A Concord Academy professional development grant allowed Bolman to attend a three-week summer intensive in July at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, Calif. While his CA colleague Megan Schy Gleeson engages students with many types of masks in classes and productions, Bolman’s mask work had been mostly limited to the commedia dell’arte style, as in Molière’s Scapin, which he directed in 2018. He was eager to expand his understanding, he says, of “what mask is.”

A teacher and profesSHELLEY BOLMAN, sional performer, Bolman, who joined the faculty in 2016, made the most of his time as a student.

At Dell’Arte, he was surprised by how much fun he had working with quarter masks, which cover the cheeks, nose, and upper lip, leaving the eyes, forehead, and mouth free.

Mask work creates structure for movement as actors attempt to embody the nature of specific masks while improvising and interacting with an audience. “It requires empathy for the mask,” Bolman says. “It also requires resistance to the two great gods of the West, Trying and Doing, and embraces Being. This simplicity is a hard lesson.”

It’s one that his fellow Dell’Arte students — actors, dancers, directors, teachers, and designers — helped him learn. Once, while preparing a scene, he was fiddling with a prop. “They told me I was using it as a crutch and they were taking the prop away from me,” he says.

“They were totally right. It’s nice to be called out on stuff like that!”

The summer intensive has informed the course he’s teaching this semester, Theater 2: Mask Work, in which students are exploring the fundamentals theater teacher of mask play and expanding their physical capabilities.

“Anything that encourages students to be comfortable in front of an audience,” Bolman says, “to speak without a text and to understand that they are enough, will help them in all walks of life, not just theater.”

“Simplicity is a hard lesson.”

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Students in the 2018–19 Feature Film Project course film scenes for Deerstalker.

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ST U D E N T-AT H L E T E S

Gaining the Advantage Girls varsity tennis continues its winning ways our freshman year. It’s evident that he really cares and just wants the best for the girls on the team.

What did you expect from the season?

Lily: I’m very competitive and so I shoot

for the best in everything. Last year, I was hoping we could win our league and NEPSAC, but I know the competition is really tough. In the end, I was very happy to come in second.

Ella: We played in the exact same spot in

CA’s girls varsity 2019 NEPSAC tournament team with coaches Hung Trieu P’18 and Laura Kaye.

In spring 2019, the CA girls varsity tennis team stormed into the NEPSAC finals for the second time in three years. We interviewed returning seniors Lily Gray ’20 and Ella Griffiths ’20 about the team and Hung Trieu P’18, who has coached the squad to the NEPSAC tournament four years in a row.

Did you come to CA knowing you wanted to play tennis?

Lily: I’ve been playing tennis since long

before I came to CA. My dad was a hitting partner for players on the tour.

Because of my foundation in the sport and the environment of camaraderie at CA, I knew I wanted to play tennis the moment I stepped on campus.

Ella: I definitely knew. CA is very well-

rounded. We have very athletic and very artistic people, and that’s what makes the school feel so balanced. The Moriarty Athletic Campus is a huge benefit — it’s a beautiful campus that CA is partially known for now.

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How would you describe the team?

Ella: The last four years have been so

great. The camaraderie on our team was so immediate and so strong, and I think it’s part of the reason we have done so well — we’re so supportive of one another, and that’s something I’m really proud has been present all four years.

What is Hung Trieu like as a coach?

Lily: I love Hung. He’s one of the best

coaches I’ve had, ever, in any sport.

Ella: Oh my gosh, he’s phenomenal.

He does so much for the team.

Everyone loves him. He has a book in which he has kept all of the scores since

our freshman year. Obviously we would have liked for the result to come out a little differently, but we all did our best.

I have a lot of faith in the returners to continue to do well, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

What’s it like to be a student-athlete at CA? Lily: It can be hard to balance sports

with the academic rigor that’s expected of us here — for instance, I go from volleyball to my tennis academy. Even though not everyone at CA is that kind of athlete, you can build very strong teams because everyone is willing to learn. What I found playing No. 1 as a freshman was that upperclassmen were very excited and wanted to learn, even though I was younger.

Ella: Being a student-athlete at CA

builds confidence and camaraderie with others both on and off the court. Our school is filled with so much spirit and love that the supporters who come out for games are really nice. It’s just so nice to see that people do care.

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Go Green!

CA had a successful spring season, with several teams advancing to postseason play in the Eastern Independent League (EIL) and New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) tournaments.

Disc Drive

Due to moving to a new training site, the coed varsity sailing team logged

The coed varsity Ultimate Frisbee team once again posted a stellar record, losing only one game during the regular season.

It went on to earn the No. 8 seed in the highly competitive B bracket of the NEPSAC tournament, where the team upset a powerful Choate squad and posted a 3-1 record.

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more hours on the water than in past years.

The girls varsity tennis team competed in the NEPSAC finals for the

2nd

time in three years.

Game, Set, Match

Carrying an unblemished record into the last regular-season match against EIL rival Winsor School, the girls varsity tennis team fell just short of the league title but earned its fourth consecutive bid to the NEPSAC tournament, where a quarterfinal win led to a rematch against Winsor. This time, CA took the prize, advancing to the finals.

Though unable to overcome the eventual champions, the squad had another impressive NEPSAC tournament run. Boys varsity tennis lost just one match during the regular season and earned the program’s first NEPSAC tournament berth in over a decade.

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Earning its first NEPSAC bid in over 10 years, boys varsity tennis nearly toppled the No. 1 seed and ultimate champions in a

5-hour

battle that came down to the final point.

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A Stellar Track Record

At the EIL championship, the boys track and field team came in second — the best finish at this event in program history — and the girls finished fifth. It was a true team effort, with more than 30 student-athletes scoring points for CA and four individuals and one relay team earning EIL titles. At the NEPSAC championship meet a week later, multiple athletes represented CA on the podium, including Nick Spoor ’19, who capped his undefeated season in the javelin with a NEPSAC championship, and a girls 4x400 relay team that finished third, the highest place ever for a CA relay team at the New England meet.

After narrowly missing a postseason bid the previous year, the boys varsity baseball team secured a thrilling 5–4 victory over league rival Landmark School in the last game of the regular season to compete in the EIL tournament.

As the No. 4 seed, the squad pushed the top-seeded team, Pingree, to the limit in a well-played semifinal, losing a close game 2–1.

Smooth Sailing

3rd

winning season in a row was enjoyed by the boys varsity lacrosse team.

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The coed varsity sailing team relocated to Lake Cochituate in Natick, Mass., for practice, leaving behind a long commute into Boston. The squad’s increased time on the water translated to a better experience and improved sailing skills.

CA earned a postseason berth and placed second in the B division of the Mass Bay League.

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For highlights from spring and fall athletics and news about all of CA’s dedicated student-athletes, visit www. concordacademy.org/athletics.

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MISSION STATEMENT We are a community animated by love of learning, diverse and striving for equity, with common trust as our foundation.

Honoring each individual, we challenge and expand our understanding of ourselves and the world through purposeful collaboration and creative engagement.

We cultivate empathy, integrity, and responsibility to build a more just and sustainable future.

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& Today Defining CA:

Reaffirming Concord Academy’s core values, a renewed mission statement calls on everyone to engage

Tomorrow

MISSION REVIEW TASK FORCE Co-Chairs: Marie Myers P’19 ’21, director of enrollment management (15 years) Laura Twichell ’01, interim academic dean, English faculty, former assistant dean for community and equity (eight years) Members: Maggy Godfroy, director of human resources, multiple committees (four years) Deborah Gray, scheduler, mathematics faculty, recycling assistant coordinator (32 years) John Grossman P’17 ’19, trustee, chair of the Board of Trustees’ Community and Equity Committee (second term) Max Hall, science faculty, DEMONs advisor (16 years) Alyse Ruiz-Selsky ’05, director of studies, college counselor, English faculty, house faculty, former director of student life (one year) Sabrina Sadique, English faculty, house faculty, Youth in Philanthropy and Muslim Students Organization advisor (three years) Carmen Welton, Spanish faculty, house faculty, crosscountry coach, Alianza Latina advisor (four years)

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Introduction by Mission Review Task Force co-chairs Marie Myers P’19 ’21, director of enrollment management, and Laura Twichell ’01, interim academic dean

As Concord Academy approaches its centennial, the community has been considering who we are as an institution and who we would like to be for the next 100 years. Several years ago, the CA@100 Task Force named sustainability, social justice, and global citizenship as key areas of focus.

Simultaneously, community members began to recognize that some of the language of our mission statement was out of step with our current approach to diversity and equity.

Last spring, we became co-chairs of a nine-person Mission Review Task Force — faculty, staff, parents, alumnae/i, and trustees — that was given the charge to review and, if needed, revise the statement to ensure that it describes the school CA is and the school it wants to be.

We were asked not to change CA’s values but rather to reflect how we are living our values today. We quickly agreed that love of learning, valuing all individuals in our community, and common trust must remain at the statement’s heart, and that our commitment to lead in the areas of sustainability, social justice, and global citizenship

supported and amplified these core values.

We also agreed that we wanted the revision to be more active and concise to call every community member to engage fully with the mission.

Over the spring 2019 semester, we met to brainstorm, parse, and debate how best to revise a poetic and beloved mission statement. We are pleased to say that no stone went unturned, no question unasked, no phrase unpolished — and that this was some of the most enjoyable, engaging, and thoughtful committee work we have ever experienced.

We invite you today to delve into Concord Academy’s renewed mission statement, the thinking that went into it, and the ways it is already lived on campus and by alumnae/i around the world. The “we” pronoun in the mission invites every member of our community into the work of upholding the principles we hold so dear, and into the engagement in lifelong learning that this entails. We hope the mission statement speaks to you as much as it does to us.

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> MI S S I ON

C O NC O R D A C A D EM Y

PRE V IO U S ST A T E M E NT : This was the work when the previous mission statement was written.

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Concord Academy engages its students in a community animated by a love of learning, enriched by a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, and guided by a covenant of common trust.

Common trust is what love of learning and our commitment to equity are built on.

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Students and teachers work together as a community of learners dedicated to intellectual rigorzand creative endeavor. In a caring and challenging

atmosphere, students discover and develop talents as scholars, artists, and CA’s athletes and are encouraged to find their voices. longestablished commitment to honoring the The school is committed to embracing and broadening the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and talents of its people. This diversity fosters individual. respect for others and genuine exchange of ideas.

Common trust challenges students to balance individual freedom with responsibility and service to a larger community. Such learning prepares students for lives as committed citizens.

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Notes bridging previous and renewed The members of the Mission Review Task Force invite you to reflect on their choices in renewing CA’s mission statement for Concord Academy’s centennial and beyond.

REN E W E D ST A T E M E NT :

Our understanding of how to support We live and breathe love of learning! a diverse community We are a community animated by love of learning, has evolved to work toward diverse and striving for equity, We created equity of access and space for with common trust as our foundation. experience for all broader community members. consideration of what Honoring each individual, we challenge and expandz defines individuals. our understanding of ourselves and the world

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through purposeful collaboration and creative engagement.

chose verbs that describe GROWTH to indicate the rigorous z We engagement with learning expected in our community.

Every member of our community is called to live the mission.

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We cultivate empathy, integrity, and responsibility

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to build a more just and sustainable future.

What does it mean to be a committed citizen in the 21st century?

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What:

“love of learning” “striving for equity” “common trust” Last fall, a group called Student Action for Social Justice formed at CA to draw attention to inequities in students’ experiences. Tired of having to educate peers about race, class, and gender, these young people shared their struggles with faculty and administrators, and their hopes that everyone, not just those most affected by injustice, would engage around these issues.

In his Commencement speech, Head

Below: CA English teacher Nick Hiebert, current holder of the Katherine Carton Hammer ’68 Endowed Faculty Chair, is examining how his white racial identity functions in the classroom and studying inclusive teaching practices. Right: CA students at the Civil Rights Memorial erected at the University of Mississippi in 2006, which honors James Meredith, who became the university’s first African American student in 1962, and those who fought to give all citizens equal educational opportunities in the South.

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Nick Hiebert

of School Rick Hardy called their approach to seeking dialogue “powerful and positive.”

CA has long been committed to promoting diversity and supporting inclusion. Nevertheless, these students demonstrated that more than the structures already in place — Community and Equity programming, affinity groups, Inclusion Council, Health and Wellness seminars, and school-wide assemblies and workshops — is needed.

The pursuit of equity, they showed, is inextricable from CA’s core values of love of learning and common trust.

Around the same time, CA convened the Mission Review Task Force, having already identified priorities — sustainability, social justice, and global citizenship — for the school’s centennial in 2022, and recognized gaps between the school’s stated mission and its work around diversity and equity. During the New England Association of Schools and Colleges reaccreditation process CA completed last year, a visiting committee affirmed that the school should examine whether its mission statement reflected its values as they are lived today.

The renewed statement, developed and refined throughout the spring and accepted by the Board of Trustees in May, now explicitly calls everyone whose lives CA has touched to engage in building a more just and sustainable world.

Today, educators at CA are participating in the second year of a Witnessing Whiteness curriculum. Teachers meet, formally and informally, to talk about equitable classroom practices and interpersonal engagement. Their approaches vary, but they share a commitment to learning from and with this community.

Recently, faculty read and discussed Joe Feldman’s book Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms.

Before coming to CA, English teacher Andrew Stevens taught at the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project, directed literacy programs at

Leadership journey through the Mississippi Delta

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the Sunflower County Freedom Project (SCFP) in Sunflower, Miss., and taught in Greenwood, Miss., with Teach for America. In June, he and history teacher Stephanie Manzella P’14 ’17 ’18 brought a group of rising CA sophomores to the American South to deepen their leadership skills and knowledge of American history, culture, and activism.

The group traveled to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Miss., and historical blues sites and the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., where they spoke with a former student of Stevens’ who is advocating there for the removal of Confederate monuments. Seeking to understand the relationship between segregation and economic suppression, they also learned how activists in the Delta are promoting racial reconciliation.

“Activism and reconciliation are difficult and require a lot of tenacity,” Stevens says. “There aren’t easy answers.” He challenges his students to see racial injustice not as a Southern problem but as a condition that shapes life in the United States.

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Stevens’ English Department colleague Nick Hiebert currently holds the Katherine Carton Hammer ’68 Endowed Faculty Chair and has used funding from that award to study the most effective ways to teach more inclusively and to examine the way his white racial identity works in the classroom. He has traveled to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., and to conferences such as the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and the Equity Exchange for public and private school educators.

He collaborates with the Community and Equity Office’s Courtney FieldsThomas and is working with a colleague in English, Abby Laber P’16, who teaches along with him at the Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking, to reconceive how students approach academic essays. “We’re trying to be explicit in talking about assumptions, expectations, and the practice of writing,” Hiebert says.

The Hammer Chair support extends over three years, which Hiebert says has been “tremendously helpful.” “I’ve been able to apply my thinking to my classes more actively and intentionally,” he says. “It’s also reminded me that teaching is what I love. It’s never uninteresting to me.”

History teacher Emma Storbeck, who joined the faculty last year, is consciously taking the time to build community and openly addresses inequality and moments when trust is breached. While teaching about the colonial history of Brazil or U.S. interventions in modern Latin America, for example, Storbeck models backtracking. “I’ll say something, and when I realize I need to, I’ll go back and say it differently,” she says.

“I’m consciously modeling apologies and how to make something right, in a kind way — right then, in the moment.”

“Justice and equity work are lifelong commitments, not just on campus but in the world,” Storbeck says. “I appreciate

CA’S C O M M I T M E N T TO E X P E R I E N T I A L EQ U I T Y

26.5% $51,780 106 $5.1 of the student body receives financial assistance.

the average award for incoming students

students are receiving

million in aid

This has been one of the Admissions Office’s most selective years ever, with an acceptance rate of just 21 percent of 809 applicants; 59 percent of those decided to attend CA — a high-water mark for the school, as was the percentage of new U.S. students of color at 42 percent.

Without CA’s commitment to providing financial aid, Concord Academy would not be the community it so intentionally is.

The school supports students who receive financial assistance to the fullest extent possible, reaching beyond tuition and room and board to ensure that their experiences in all facets of life and learning at CA are as equitable as they can be.

Prioritizing experiential equity gives all of the promising young people on this campus opportunities to mature into engaged and confident citizens, their paths determined by passion rather than financial obligation.

everything the school is doing to emphasize that with adults and students. It’s great to be part of a community that recognizes this, and to teach in a place where my colleagues and students are so passionate about this work.”

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How:

“purposeful collaboration and creative engagement” Below: The warp-weighted loom created by students in the DEMONs engineering club to give all CA ninth graders a hands-on experience of The Odyssey. Right top: Students reflecting on a chair design project they completed in an engineering of architecture course. Right bottom: Students working in CA’s fabrication lab.

DEMONs loom

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CA’s renewed mission statement charges students and teachers alike to “challenge and expand” their understanding of both themselves and the world. “At CA, students grow and change through the insights of all those with whom they share the experience,” Hardy says. “We have committed to this practice because we have seen the depth of learning it creates and how it prepares students to thrive in the complex world they will make their own.”

Laurence Vanleynseele P’22 has been working with her fellow English teacher Andrew Stevens to bring to life The Odyssey, a central text of the ninthgrade curriculum. Wanting to promote slow reading and material intelligence, an awareness of age-old processes and skills, she began focusing last year on weaving as a metaphor for storytelling.

Vanleynseele sent science teacher Max Hall, who advises the CA club Dreamers,

FO R T H E LOV E O F L E A R N I N G : S E N I O R P ROJ ECTS CA students are expected to engage creatively. Just consider the subjects of the most recent student-designed senior projects, from the spring 2019 semester, which ranged from hands-on experiments with metal casting, shadow puppetry, and lasercut wooden bowls to more scholarly pursuits such as original translations of ancient Roman texts by women, reimagining Boston’s Emerald Necklace of park space as an Emerald Net through an urban planning lens, and researching the relationship between food insecurity and type 2 diabetes. Ethan Cole ’19 and Lucy Frost ’19 worked on the original score to CA’s feature film project Deerstalker (see page 12). Chaney Dalton ’19 analyzed her experiments with zero-waste living. And Raphi Kang ’19 illustrated a translation by Spanish teacher Adam Bailey (see page 49). What better way to cap off a CA education than a semester of passion-driven exploration?

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Engineers, Mechanics, and Overt Nerds (DEMONs), an image of an ancient Greek amphora depicting Odysseus’ wife Penelope at her loom. Could DEMONs build something like this? she asked. “It is nuts,” he replied, “in precisely the way we would like to encourage.”

Under the direction of Annie Lubin ’19, three freshmen — Eliza Morton ’22, Amanda Rosenbaum ’22, and Grace King ’22 — created a warp-weighted loom, fashioning the weights in the ceramics studio, so that all first-year students could try their hands at weaving this year. “It’s important for students to get a feel for this object that is so central to the text, for the activity, the time involved, and the repetitive nature of the work,” Vanleynseele says. “This is an opportunity for us to reflect on the way a plot is constructed and how verbal and conceptual patterns emerge.”

Hall says the loom is “one of the finest examples of a DEMONs project driven by community need” — the club’s stated purpose. Using the school’s 3D printing and scanning tools, and its plasma and laser cutters (the workshop is growing and modernizing each year), DEMONs also recently built specialized storage for the film program, among many other projects. A new engineering course using computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing tools debuted last year, and a robotics club is coalescing on campus. “New students are coming with more baseline knowledge of maker spaces than ever before,” Hall says.

“There aren’t enough hours in the day for everything they want to take on.”

As the head of CA’s fabrication lab, ever ready to open it to students and colleagues, Hall also contributed to Topics in Engineering: Architectural Design Concepts, Processes, and Technologies in spring 2019. Art teacher Chris Rowe recently reimagined this course to include online learning as well as several hands-on projects. Students explored movement in the dance studio with now-retired co-director of CA’s dance

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program Richard Colton P’13, who helped them better understand the relationship of the human body to space.

A series of exercises evolved into a sculpture project, then a final assignment: to design a chair at human scale that expressed a specific motion, using only cardboard, dowels, and rubber bands.

“Movement was really out of the comfort zone for many of them,” Rowe says, “but surprising students is critical. There’s a danger, especially in architecture, of preconceptions getting in your way.”

After investigating and redesigning social spaces on campus, the architecture students looked beyond Concord. David Nagahiro P’17 ’20 and his colleagues at CBT Architects in Boston mentored the class in urban design, employing as a case study the firm’s award-winning mixed-use residential space in the city, 10 Farnsworth. Student teams developed proposals for turning an empty parking lot into, variously, a Seaport museum, an artist space, a community center, and an innovation hub. And they received feedback from several professional architects, among them Zeke Brown ’87, P’22, of Brown Fenollosa Architects, Inc. in Arlington, Mass.

The Performing Arts Department’s Jessica Cloutier-Plasse, who advised the architecture students last year and will co-teach the class with Rowe this spring, says problem solving is the basis

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Engineering of architecture

of the class. “Students grapple with experimenting when there are very clear expectations for how to work, but not for what they should be producing,” she says.

Rowe says, “This is the tip of the iceberg of what we could be and, more and more, will be doing as departmental silos are knocked down and people rethink education for the 21st century.”

While many such collaborations arise naturally, CA also provides its educators — through the Faculty Leadership Endowed Fund, an initiative of the Concord Academy Centennial Campaign — with resources to develop new curricula, exchange ideas across disciplines, and create and seize opportunities for experiential learning. Beginning in the 2016–17 school year, an endowed faculty initiative called Department X offered funding and release time to help teachers engage students more creatively. The first result was an interdisciplinary course on Concord’s black history, co-taught by history teacher Kim Frederick and film teacher Justin Bull, for which students created multimedia, interactive museum experiences for the nearby Robbins House. The students’ projects, Frederick says, showed “great potential for historical storytelling through drama and media.”

Most recently, CA English teacher Kirsten Hoyte P’22 has been using Department X support to redesign her Digital Stories: Oral Traditions and Interactive Fiction course for next fall.

Intrigued by technology’s potential to enrich fictional narratives, during a summer sabbatical in 2017 she familiarized herself with the software Isadora, often employed in dance and theater, which utilizes motion-detector cameras to allow users to interact with images, sounds, and text. This summer, she attended a four-day Isadora workshop in Berlin and returned brimming with possibilities, including for location technologies that could unfold a story in the physical world.

The last time she taught the class, her students’ video experiments enabled them to “know their texts in a more visceral and emotional way than our usual read-analyze-write method,” Hoyte says.

“Being willing to move in front of their classmates required allowing themselves to be more vulnerable and open than we usually are in more traditional ‘intellectual’ spaces, and I saw in some students a freedom and confidence that I had not previously seen in the classroom.” For her, the more ways students can experience stories and storytelling, the better.

At CA, the value accorded to storytelling, in classes such as these and in the tradition of chapel talks, places equal emphasis on the storyteller and the listener. This dynamic is part of what defines Concord Academy as a school dedicated to learning and growth, for individuals and in community. The renewed mission statement both reflects this reality and charts a course for CA, one that will be guided by this community’s most deeply held ideals.

Maker space

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Why:

“to build a more just and sustainable future” ERIC NGUYEN ’00

Expanding opportunities for first-generation college students In what ways do existing policies and practices favor certain students while disadvantaging others? How can more equitable systems be created for all groups?

Eric Nguyen ’00 wrestles with these questions with colleagues across Northeastern University, where he is the senior assistant director of opportunity scholarship and outreach programs. “I want to push us beyond simply thinking about granting access so we can more fully include all of our students,” he says.

Nguyen is passionate about creating equitable programs, communities in which all students feel they belong, and opportunities for individuals to take ownership of their experiences. He supports around 180 scholarship recipients, most of whom identify as first-generation, low-income, and/or students of color, empowering them to make the most of Northeastern’s programs and resources.

Raised in Lowell, Mass., by parents from Vietnam, Nguyen received financial aid to attend CA, and his experiences sparked his desire to pursue a career in education. “Feeling fully seen and cared for was a hallmark of my experience,” he says. “It has really shaped my work with students, which is highly relational.”

After graduating from Amherst College, Nguyen taught math and science at several independent schools.

He also helped launch and later lead Achieve, an academic enrichment program for students from under-resourced Boston communities. After overseeing a shift in its mission to support students all the way through high school, Nguyen recognized a gap in support for students once they set foot on college campuses.

Now at Northeastern, his work is having a multiplier effect. For example, one student who approached him last spring for help understanding a lease agreement became increasingly involved at the university and spent this summer developing a pre-orientation program for first-generation Latinx students.

“When you improve a process for a specific student population, I firmly believe that it improves the experience for all students,” Nguyen says.

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IZZY LOWELL ’98

Runs a telemedicine practice for transgender patients in the Southeast Around 1.4 million adults in the United States identify as transgender, according to a 2016 study by the Williams Institute.

“That’s more people than have Type 1 diabetes, a condition we learn about extensively in medical school,” says physician Izzy Lowell ’98, who specializes in transgender health care. “Hormone therapy is so much easier than diabetes, but many people think this isn’t a valid medical issue.”

That denial has health consequences. “Over one-third of trans patients have been harassed or denied care by a doctor,” she says. “Many don’t want to go to a doctor or even the ER. This stigma has layers of repercussions.”

In medical school, Lowell learned nothing about transgender health, so during her residency in Lawrence, Mass., she developed her own elective in collaboration with Philadelphia’s Mazzoni Center. Upon moving to Atlanta with her wife in 2013, Lowell joined the faculty of Emory University and opened a clinic, QMed, to offer care for transgender and nonbinary children, teens, and adults.

Through videoconference visits, Lowell treats patients throughout the Southeast, where few doctors are knowledgeable about transgender health. This kind of telemedicine doesn’t require physical exams. “A diagnosis of gender dysphoria is about how that person feels in their body,” Lowell says.

The clinic has grown quickly and now serves more than 1,000 patients. “We’re doing the opposite of what should be done, though,” Lowell says. “I hope that one day we won’t need special clinics, that all primary care doctors will manage transgender health.”

She’s optimistic. In July, Lowell spoke at the American Academy of Family Physicians conference. “It was amazing to be on that stage,” she says. “It really indicates support. And for medical students now, trans care is a hot topic. It gives me comfort knowing that the next generation of doctors is being trained.”

In aspiring to influence the world to embrace justice and sustainability, it is Concord Academy’s alumnae/i to whom the school entrusts ultimate responsibility. Not only is CA’s renewed mission statement a set of ideals by which to chart a way forward, it is also a reflection of the passion and compassion, the intelligence and involvement, that have characterized this community for decades. This pursuit of a better world, this embrace of unapologetic idealism, is reflected in the differences the following alumnae/i, and countless others, are making.

TONY PATT ’83

Climate change professor making policy recommendations in Europe “For a long time, I saw climate change from an economic perspective,” says Tony Patt ’83, a professor of climate policy at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. “We’ve been locked into that paradigm of marginal improvement since the Industrial Revolution, but other approaches are more useful for thinking about discontinuities in society, times of radical change.” This, he says, is one of those times.

After studying architecture at Yale in the 1980s, narrowly missing a modern pentathlon Olympic berth, and earning his law degree at Duke, Patt practiced environmental law in Vermont. On the ski slopes in the early 1990s, he saw signs that local climate action would be insufficient. He changed course, completing a doctorate at Harvard in environmental public policy.

Now Patt makes policy recommendations to European governments, identifying successful approaches to eliminating societal greenhouse gas emissions within a short timeframe. His research shows that some popular approaches, such as carbon taxes, are ineffective.

What is making a difference? “We need a complete restructuring of technologies for getting and using energy,” Patt says. “Solar and wind are now the cheapest energy sources, and countries do want them. They don’t need to be forced into legally binding commitments.

They just need help.

“As the exponential growth of renewable energy continues — and it will, if we keep the policies we have in place — fossil fuel consumption will shrink.” His models show this starting to happen soon.

“For 20 years we’ve been laying the foundation for dealing with this crisis,” he says. “It’s essential that we build on it with strong policies. That’s possible now in Europe, in Canada, and in several states in the U.S. And it’s becoming possible in more and more developing countries, which are seeing the drawbacks of reliance on fossil fuels.”

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AMY LONGSWORTH ’76

Director of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission

The city of Boston sits at sea level; entire neighborhoods are built upon landfill. And the sea is rising. In economic terms, the World Bank has estimated that Boston is the fourth most vulnerable city in the United States, and the eighth in the world. A nor’easter hitting at high tide is a scenario Amy Longsworth ’76, who has directed the Boston Green Ribbon Commission (GRC) since 2015, keeps in mind.

The GRC is a volunteer group of business, institutional, and civic leaders that formed in 2010 to develop and share strategies for addressing climate change in coordination with the City of Boston. The Carbon Free Boston and Climate Ready Boston reports, which address carbon mitigation and climate resilience, respectively, and upon which much of Boston’s Climate Action Plan is based, are two examples of GRC work. The GRC also manages four sector working groups — higher education, health care, commercial real estate, and cultural organizations.

Boston’s cultural institutions, preparing for a year of climate-related programming kicking off in 2020, have a “unique ability to influence individuals,” Longsworth says, “and the commercial sector holds the highest leverage for reducing the most carbon.”

Longsworth has made a career of bringing business into the environmental fold. A Massachusetts native who returned after 30 years in Washington, where she worked first with corporations at the Nature Conservancy and then as a corporate sustainability consultant, Longsworth calls climate change “the existential question of our time.”

Boston, Longsworth says, is a “big enough but small enough city” to take meaningful action, and there’s now “considerable pressure to be aware of climate risks and actions.”

“We have the technology,” Longsworth says. “It’s a matter of pivoting from the science to the will to get it done. We can improve the situation by 2050. The world’s a mess, and that’s a reality. But the opportunity is a reality too.”

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Sustaining CA

In accordance with the sustainability plan, by 2022 CA has pledged to meet the following goals:

Concord Academy introduces a holistic environmental sustainability plan B Y

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On the Main School Lobby steps, off the quad, CA students rallied in February 2019 as part of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led movement to combat the climate crisis. One held a sign that asked, “What is your plan?” Now, Concord Academy has an answer.

CA has become one of the first independent schools in the greater Boston area to adopt a holistic campus sustainability plan, which the board approved at its Annual Meeting in spring 2019. The plan emerged from a longstanding environmental ethos at CA, one that has recently moved more formally into the foreground.

A few years ago, when a working group of faculty and staff articulated values they wanted to be sure the school would honor at its centennial in 2022–23 and into the next century, stewardship rose to the top. That, in turn, is an outgrowth of Concord Academy’s core value of common trust — a call for us all to look after one another and to understand our impact on the world.

In fall 2017, CA hired GreenerU, a local consultancy that works with educational organizations, to develop a process that would lead to a sustainability plan. Over more than a year, three working groups that included students, faculty, staff, alumnae/i, and members of the school’s food service

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team refined objectives and considered the approaches that would have the greatest impact. The working groups formalized their recommendations — setting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, food waste, and overall waste, and providing institutional staffing support — into a plan, which they then presented to the community. In March, over 150 members of the community signed the sustainability declaration. The working group presented the plan to the Board of Trustees, whose members were unanimous in their support.

The energy on campus around sustainability has grown this summer and fall as students, faculty, and staff have embraced the cause. As a part of its revised mission statement, the school now calls upon the community to create a “more just and sustainable world.” At the first opportunity to rally in support of environmental responsibility, nearly 300 members of the community headed into Boston on September 20 to participate in the coordinated Global Climate Strike.

They had a plan, and no Planet B. Read the plan: www.concordacademy.org/sustainability Left: CA students participate in the sustainability planning process with GreenerU. Above: Audrey Lin ’19 was one of the lead organizers of the Boston climate strike in September.

INSTITUTIONAL Devote one faculty/staff full-timeequivalent position to sustainability; dedicate part of the annual budget to sustainability efforts; complete a standardized sustainability assessment.

GREENHOUSE GASES Reduce campus greenhouse gas emissions from buildings by 15 percent; develop a comprehensive 20-year greenhouse gas reduction plan; pilot a program for individual climate action plans.

FOOD Reduce food waste by 20 percent from a 2019 baseline; promote awareness of local and sustainable food systems; ensure that all food is organic, fair trade, and/or sourced from within 250 miles.

BUILDING OPERATIONS Reduce overall waste by 10 percent; create green operations and management standards addressing energy, water, operations practices, and purchasing guidelines for all buildings.

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Feeding the Need When they see hunger in their communities, CA alumnae/i find their own ways to address it B Y

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On a steamy July morning, Kezia Parsons Simister ’95 drives slowly through her East Arlington, Mass., neighborhood, scanning the stoops of the two- and three-family homes for contributions. In front of one bright blue building, she pulls over. There’s a canvas bag on the doorstep, resting against a child’s bicycle. The bag is bursting with nonperishable food and labeled “Good Teel,” the name of a community food drive Simister began organizing in 2016.

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GOOD TEEL “The idea was to make it easy for people to give,” Simister explains as she empties cans and bags of rice from the neighbor’s bag into the trunk of her red station wagon.

Once a month, she sends an email asking neighbors to put spare nonperishable goods into bags on their porches, then she collects and delivers all the goods to the local food pantry.

In establishing Good Teel, named for her neighborhood street, Simister joined other CA alumnae/i taking creative approaches to address a persistent — and tragic — paradox: The United States is a nation of great food abundance, yet millions of people go

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hungry. Some 40 million Americans faced food insecurity in 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it also estimates that the nation wastes between 30 and 40 percent of its food supply annually.

While many factors contribute to the waste on a macro level — such as food that spoils between origin and destination and produce that is discarded for aesthetic reasons — on a micro level, the challenge is often connecting those who have with those who do not.

That’s where Good Teel and other initiatives led by CA alumnae/i enter the picture.

Simister had done hunger-related volunteering in the past; she knew that both the need and the capacity were great in Arlington, whose proximity to the high-tech sector of Cambridge has led to an increased cost of living. But she wasn’t really sure how she could help.

She sometimes would start a food collection, intending to take the items to the Arlington Food Pantry, but often she thought her individual contribution was too small. “I felt silly going there with just a couple of cans,” she says.

When a friend mentioned a local teenager who had done a neighborhood food drive, Simister got interested in the idea of giving as part of a group. “We all may have a little to give, but together, it turns into a lot,” she says.

A food collection route appealed to her for other reasons, too. As part of a dual-career couple with young children, she was having trouble fitting traditional volunteer gigs into her schedule, but she wanted service to be part of her family’s life. “I looked around this neighborhood and it’s full of families, and I thought, I can’t be the only one who wants to give but doesn’t have time,” she says.

So she hung a few flyers in the local park advertising Good Teel and had some bags printed up. Soon, four families had agreed to store Good Teel bags in their pantries, drop extra items in

them whenever they could, and leave the bags on their porches once a month for her to collect. Four families quickly ballooned to 30, and Simister had to stop advertising.

“I couldn’t fit more in my car!” she says with a laugh, pointing to the overflowing trunk of her station wagon.

Clockwise from top: Mallory Cerkleski ’16 checks produce to be sold through the Mobile Oasis Farmers Market; carrots on display at the Mobile Oasis; a Good Teel bag awaits pickup at a home in Arlington, Mass.; Kezia Parsons Simister ’95.

She says neighbors often email her to say they appreciate having a volunteer opportunity brought to them that allows them to feel like part of a positive force in the community.

While Good Teel has stayed small, Simister’s idea proved contagious.

Word traveled quickly up Massachusetts Avenue; a nearby neighborhood launched its own food drive. Simister’s route delivers about 150 items a month to the Arlington Food Pantry, which serves about 1,200 town residents each year.

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Part of Good Teel’s success, Simister says, lies in its simplicity. It’s focused on the needs and capacities of one “microneighborhood,” about six square blocks. Each month, she emails out a list of what the food pantry needs most — “usually toiletries, toilet paper, and diapers especially” — and her neighbors respond with whatever they can.

“It’s not a nonprofit, it doesn’t have a website,” Simister says. “It’s just neighbors with an email list, giving what we can.”

“The market site gives people the choice to have what they want, not just a bag of what’s left over.”

MALLORY CERKLESKI ’16

Of course, what communities can give, and what they need, changes over time. Mim Locke ’64 sees that change daily at the San Francisco soup kitchen — sometimes called a “free restaurant” — where she lives and works. Since 1986, Locke has been part of the Martin de Porres House of Hospitality (Martin’s for short), which

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serves breakfast and lunch to anyone in need in the city’s Mission District. Part of Martin’s philosophy is “that eating is a right, not a privilege, and that feeding the hungry is a matter of justice, not of charity.”

As part of a collective that manages Martin’s, Locke has done everything from serving meals and running the garden to keeping the books and managing any problems that arise with volunteers or guests. She and her partner live there and share all the responsibilities with 10 or 12 others at a time.

She describes herself as “kind of a hippie” who came to Martin’s as part of a search for a meaningful, contemplative life. “Back in the ’60s, we all kind of took a pledge to be part of the solution, not the problem,” she says.

Since then, the soaring cost of housing has transformed San Francisco, dramatically affecting who can live and work in the city — and who has the ability to devote a life to service. “It used to feel as if the city was a kind of sanctuary for alternative lifestyles, but no more,” Locke says. “It’s just so hard for people to live here now, which has really changed our volunteer base. Originally, people could volunteer and have a day job and pay rent and it worked. No more.”

So Martin’s has had to get creative to attract new volunteers. In addition to its “free restaurant,” Martin’s provides space to and sponsors the Burrito Project SF, a three-year-old organization that offers busy professionals time-defined, tangible ways to be of service. Once a month, volunteers gather at Martin’s to make burritos, which they then deliver by bicycle to the homeless or others in need. Volunteers sign up for shifts on Facebook; prep, assembly, delivery, and cleanup all have separate sign-ups so people with as few as 45 free minutes can still participate.

Locke sees this style of volunteering as a positive sign for the future of

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“Part of Martin’s philosophy is that eating is a right, not a privilege, and that feeding the hungry is a matter of justice, not of charity.”

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Martin’s. “The Burrito Project has brought in more young people, and that’s exciting to us,” she says.

“There are a lot of young people who really care and are coming up with creative solutions.”

One such young person is Mallory Cerkleski ’16, a senior at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C. Drawn to veganism and issues of food systems beginning in her years at CA, Cerkleski got involved with the college’s farm during her first year on campus. That interest introduced her to a local health department initiative called Mobile Oasis, which brings local produce into “food deserts” — communities with no convenient access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

This year, Cerkleski is the manager of the program, which is now overseen by the college. She and other student workers set up and run weekly pop-up produce markets in neighborhood sites such as community centers and office buildings. Mobile Oasis does not give away produce, but its prices are usually lower than the grocery store’s.

The downside to selling rather than giving, Cerkleski says, is that not everyone can afford their offerings. The upside is that those who can afford to shop there feel empowered and in charge of their food choices.

“The market site is so humanizing to communities who have, in the past, been dehumanized,” she says. “It’s a

service that’s the same as the grocery store. They have the choice to have what they want, not just a bag of what’s left over.”

As a result, she says, the customers at their most successful market, in a predominantly black neighborhood of Greensboro, have helped Mobile Oasis spread the word to others. “They’ve helped a lot with the advertising and canvassing,” she says. In 2018, Mobile Oasis sold 2,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables to communities in or near food deserts.

Cerkleski says involvement with the college farm and Mobile Oasis has been a big part of her college experience, one closely connected to her academic pursuits of sustainable food systems and political science.

While much of her work is hands-on — setting up the market, selling food, and chatting with customers — she also writes grants to help secure the program’s future and expand the number of market sites.

She says she finds the work deeply satisfying, but that it raises a lot of hard questions. “Logistically, trying to find money and grants is hard, but when I step back from it, I wonder why I have to do it in the first place,” she explains. “Why do I have to search so hard to find money for people to have one of the most basic things in the world?”

Right: Mim Locke ’64 stirring the oatmeal pot at Martin de Porres House of Hospitality in San Francisco’s Mission District.

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Opening Space to Live & Learn

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CA celebrates the completion of the CA Houses initiative With the joining of the Haines and Hobson houses, which created the new William M. Bailey Commons and faculty residences, Concord Academy has completed the two-year initiative, for which $12 million for construction and an additional $1 million for an endowment to maintain the houses was raised. Improvements to all of the student houses were made possible entirely through the enthusiastic support and generosity of the CA community.

The renovated spaces will have lasting effects on campus culture, providing room for classes and clubs, and for boarding and day students alike to gather and grow.

ADDITIONAL FACULTY APARTMENTS

THE WILLIAM M. BAILEY COMMONS At the request of the generous donor who made this project possible, the new commons connecting Haines and Hobson has been dedicated to former History Department head Bill Bailey P’87 ’88 ’91, GP’21 ’22, who taught, mentored, and inspired CA students from 1967 through 2002. On October 4, Bailey returned to campus for the dedication of the William M. Bailey Commons. CA invites all alumnae/i to attend the Alumnae/i Assembly on June 5 (see page 44) to celebrate this exceptional teacher’s living legacy. Read more: www.concordacademy.org/bailey

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CA is grateful to the many generous individuals and families who are committed to bridging the 10 percent budget gap between Concord Academy’s income from tuition and endowment and the total funds necessary to ensure the daily operations of the school — the actual costs of CA’s distinctive educational program. These donors explain why they continue to give to Concord Academy’s Annual Fund every year.

BY ABIGAIL JENNEY

JULIA PRESTON ’69

KIM AND ARNAUD TESSON P’19

Julia Preston ’69 is a member of one of the last few classes to Five years ago, when Kim and Arnaud Tesson P’19 were thinking experience Concord Academy as a school for girls. Her years about high school for their only child, Alex ’19, they wanted spent at Concord were deeply meaningful, she says, as she more than a school. They were looking for a partnership — a developed friendships and bonds that remain among the most place where Alex would have the opportunity to develop special important in her life. Preston and her classmates learned to relationships with peers and mentors, and where they could engage, to believe in themselves, to go out into the world and become involved as a family. They found exactly that and more “construct,” she says, and, perhaps most imporat Concord Academy. As a result of the family’s tantly, to give back. “I’m not a wealthy person,” positive experience at CA, the Tessons have supPreston says with a laugh, “but I give to the CA ported the Annual Fund for the past four years and Annual Fund every year because I believe in the have pledged to do so for the next five as well. “We extraordinary education I received.” believe in education through both academics and After graduating, Preston and several of her life experience, and CA was the perfect fit for our classmates went to Yale, where they joined the family,” Arnaud says. “We give so that when other university’s first coeducational freshman class — families find their perfect fit in CA, they have the “an appropriate execution of our pioneering spirit same opportunity that Alex did — that all three of as women,” she says. That spirit was cultivated at us did.”

CA, which she credits with instilling in her “conKim attended a public high school in upstate fidence in my own ability to figure things out, the New York with 1,600 students, and Arnaud went to understanding that I had a place in the world where a private, all-boys high school in his native France, Julia Preston ’69 I could make a contribution, and that I could comwhere the focus was on academics and little else. pete in a constructive and collegial way.”

In contrast to their own educational backgrounds, Preston graduated from Yale in 1976 (she “folat CA the Tessons found that “the whole experilowed a meandering course in college,” she says) ence was a priority — from the very beginning, and embarked on a career in freelance journalism, CA’s faculty and staff focused on Alex’s education covering Mexico and Central America. In 1984, she as a whole person.” In addition to CA’s rigorous became a professional correspondent, and she academics, Alex’s days included playing drums with spent the next six years covering war in Central the Vocal, Jazz, and Pop Ensemble; sports; writing America for the Boston Globe and the Washington for the Scallion, CA’s satirical newspaper; and time Post. In 1995 the New York Times hired Preston as with friends. The Tessons watched with excitea Mexico correspondent; three years later, she and ment as Alex built strong relationships with faculty, four colleagues were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for administrators, and peers that were unlike what their coverage of the “corrosive effects of drug corthey had experienced as students.

Alex Tesson ’19 with his parents, ruption” in the country. Today, Preston is a contribOver the course of Alex’s four years as a day Arnaud and Kim uting writer for The Marshall Project and a contribstudent at CA, the Tessons formed their own conuting reporter for This American Life on National Public Radio. nections to the school, and to the town. Kim volunteered for and Preston reflects on her experience at Concord Academy co-chaired several CA Parents committees and events and served with appreciation, as well as a sense of responsibility. As she as an admissions tour guide, while Arnaud was a member of approached her 50th reunion last June, Preston encouraged the Parent Annual Fund Committee and chaired senior parent conversations among her classmates about giving to CA, asking giving efforts last year as well. The Tessons view their pledge of them to “dig deeper and give a little more.” continued support to the Annual Fund as a way to both help the “We received a bedrock education” at Concord Academy, she school offer a unique CA experience to future families and stay says, and she is proud to give what she can to CA to help the connected to the community they have all come to know and school to continue to offer “an extraordinary experience to stulove. “This was an important part of our lives for four years,” dents today.”

Kim says, “and we’re not ready to let go just yet.”

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Doula by Design A life-changing trip to Nepal led an acclaimed architect to change careers

As managing partner of SHoP, the internationally renowned New York City architectural firm she co-founded with her husband, among others, Kimberly Holden ’84 spent most of her 30s and 40s earning acclaim for her company’s design portfolio.

But with the onset of her 50s came some unanticipated life changes. Her marriage ended, and with it the professional partnership. Leaving behind the firm she’d helped grow from its original team of five to more than 200 employees, Holden allowed herself a six-month sabbatical to contemplate next steps. “I wanted a big change but didn’t know what it would look like,” she recalls. “Architecture can be very ego-driven, and that no longer felt like me. With everything going on in the world, I yearned to do something that made more of a difference.”

One of the charitable organizations SHoP had supported on a pro bono basis was Kids of Kathmandu, for which Holden’s team had designed schools to replace structures destroyed in Nepal’s devastating 2015 earthquake. During her sabbatical, Holden traveled for the first time to see the region and the people she had assisted, visiting the schools she’d designed and helping to coordinate health and education initiatives for local women and children. The journey left Holden certain that she wanted her next career to focus on the empowerment of women and girls.

With her self-allotted sabbatical nearing its end, Holden took one final sojourn before returning home — this one to the coast of Maine. Sitting on the rocks overlooking the surf, she

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thought back to the life experiences that had most empowered her, and memories came to mind: the births of her daughters Vanessa, now 16, and Emilia, now 12. At both births, she says, the support provided by her midwife, her doula, her husband, and her sister Betsy Holden Thompson ’87 left her feeling like “a goddess, a superhero.”

“It was like a light bulb went off,” she says. “I didn’t want to go through the extensive training to become a midwife, but what about a doula?”

Holden knew from her own experience that doulas cover a nonmedical function, providing physical and emotional care to the mother throughout labor and delivery and into the postpartum days or weeks. “But above all,” Holden says, “being a doula is about supporting a woman’s choices and empowering her to advocate for herself within her birth environment.”

Back home in New York, Holden began putting the pieces in place.

She undertook training to become a certified birth and postpartum doula as well as a lactation counselor, then she launched her own company, called Doula X Design.

As the name implies, Holden draws upon numerous skills from her first profession to fortify her second. “One of my roles is to help create and hold a safe space for the laboring mother,” she says. “In a hospital setting, that means meeting the challenge of transforming a fluorescent-lit institutional room into a calming, soothing setting.

That might involve battery-operated candles and essential oils; it might mean ensuring that the noise level in

the room stays low. It means honoring and protecting the laboring woman’s wishes about who is in the room and keeping out the 10 residents who want to watch her delivery, if that is her preference. It’s a different kind of space planning from what I did before, but the skills are transferrable.”

She points as well to the mentoring skills she practiced as a managing partner at the architectural firm, where in the last decade many of her employees were younger women looking to her for guidance on work-life balance. Even some of the early talents for which her CA classmates might remember her — ballet and photography — play a part in her new career, as she encourages movement and physical release through dance for laboring mothers and plans to add birth photography to her portfolio of services in the future.

Through her work supporting the physical and emotional needs of new mothers and their partners, Holden has found the spiritual fulfillment that she sought when first contemplating a departure from architecture.

Before becoming a doula, she says, “Whenever I thought about what had been going on politically over the past few years, I felt frustrated by not being able to do more. Yes, I could canvass, donate to causes, attend rallies.

But I knew I was never going to be the leader of a political movement.

But now I’m helping one woman at a time, one family at a time. And when women are empowered to be strong and healthy in their roles as mothers, society as a whole benefits.”

—Nancy Shohet West ’84

“ Now I’m helping one woman at a time, one family at a time.”

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Q+ A

Freedom of Voice Weighing the risks and benefits of online anonymity Mike Pappas ’10 is CEO and co-founder of Modulate, a startup that creates “voice skins” that alter people’s voices for online use. Founded in 2017 and based in Cambridge, Mass., Modulate raised $2 million in seed financing earlier this year.

At MIT you majored in applied math and physics. What was your trajectory into software design? From a very young

age I wanted to be a physicist because I wanted to understand the universe. But once I began learning programming in my physics classes, I recognized that as a programmer, when you have an idea, no matter how wacky, you can put it into action and see what happens. My friends and I could make games and scheduling tools as quickly as we could dream them up. In contrast, my first real project in physics — helping design a dark matter detector — was part of an experiment which in total took about eight years to complete. I still love physics, but I just couldn’t see myself spending so much time without being able to see my work have an impact on the world.

What problem was Modulate designed to solve? Today’s video games give

players the ability to customize their characters’ appearances. Players spend enormous amounts of time and money designing their characters but then chat with other players in their regular voices. Our voice skins allow players to create voices that match their characters, making it more fun and immersive, and also safer. A lot of online harassment is based on age, gender, or other

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demographic facts. Until now, the player’s voice was often the giveaway as to who he or she really was. By choosing the vocal cords you want for your character, you can become who you want your character to be.

What’s the downside? Voice skins are

a hugely powerful tool, but a crucial part of our mission is to ensure that the freedom to design one’s voice results in more creativity and diversity, not less. As one example, we’ve had women gamers ask us for male voice skins, to avoid the harassment they are unfortunately often subjected to. In helping with this, we also want to make sure that we’re not masking the real problem — that harassment exists — and we also want to make sure the end result isn’t that everyone sounds like the same generic man. We’re deploying this technology carefully, to give players the fun and safety of covering their voices while conscientiously not setting the stage for going down a dystopian path.

How do you keep this capability from being misused, say for celebrity impersonation or even to create “deep fake” news? One of the reasons we started

our technology in the gaming world is that when you enter a video game, you implicitly consent to some amount of make-believe. As a player, you know you are talking to avatars and not real people. If a character in a video game starts speaking to you in the voice of President Obama, you know you’re not actually talking to Obama. Even so, we want to be careful not to misuse people’s identities. For instance, if a video game developer asks us for a celebrity’s voice, we won’t create anything unless the client can provide permission from that celebrity to use his voice.

We’ve also built an audio watermark so that, if needed, any audio we’ve generated can be identified as synthetic.

Understanding the ethics of this technology has always been a major focus as we built our company. New technologies are always emerging. Therefore, what we need to do is figure out how we can incorporate an ethical approach from the ground up.

—Nancy Shohet West ’84

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VO LU N T E E R S P OT L I G H T

We Are CA All who have attended CA are automatically members of the Concord Academy Alumnae/i Association, which fosters lifelong connections between CA and its alumnae/i community. The association facilitates meaningful opportunities to preserve and promote a love of learning, service to others, and a commitment to diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Through involvement in the life of the school, within the community, and through service to the greater world, the association strives to renew and affirm the core values instilled while at CA. The volunteer leaders on the Alumnae/i Steering Committee head up the committees that serve both the alumnae/i community and the school.

Meet the members of the 2019–20 Concord Academy Alumnae/i Steering Committee.

Laura McConaghy ’01 Cambridge, Mass.

President Jennifer Beal ’79, P’12 Concord, Mass.

Co-Chair, New England Regional Noah Fisk ’93 Brooklyn, N.Y. Co-Chair, New York Area Regional Gabe Greenberg ’98 New York, N.Y. Co-Chair, New York Area Regional

Matt McCahill ’95 New York, N.Y. Co-Chair, Alumnae/i Annual Fund

Becca Miller ’14 New York, N.Y. Co-Chair, CAYAC

Eric Nguyen ’00 Natick, Mass.

Co-Chair, Alumnae/i Admissions Network

Miriam Perez-Putnam ’12 Pittsburgh, Pa. Co-Chair, CAYAC

Eliza Grossman ’17 Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Co-Chair, Concord Academy Young Alumnae/i Committee (CAYAC)

Paolo Sanchez ’14

Lindsay Kolowich ’09 Lincoln, Mass.

Co-Chair, New England Regional

Boston, Mass.

Co-Chair, Alumnae/i Annual Fund

Dat Le ’06 New York, N.Y. Co-Chair, CAYAC

Michael Lichtenstein ’94 Yarmouth, Maine Chair, Class Secretaries

Karen McAlmon ’75 Lynnfield, Mass.

Co-Chair, Community and Equity Committee

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Allston, Mass.

Co-Chair, Community and Equity Committee

Claire Moriarty Schaeffer ’05

Lauren Bruck Simon ’85 Newton, Mass.

Past President, ex officio

Fannie Watkinson ’08 Seattle, Wash.

Chair, Alumnae/i Service Committee

Senior Representatives Current students who act as liaisons between the student body and the alumnae/i community, senior representatives update alumnae/i on campus life and help to welcome the graduating senior class into the alumnae/i community.

Jackson Philion ’20 Katherine Stirling-Ellis ’20 ChuXuan (Matt) Zhou ’20

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Together Again Idyllic spring weather welcomed more than 200 alumnae/i and former faculty who came back to Concord Academy for a reunion weekend in June. Attendees from 14 classes caught up with one another; explored the campus and the town of Concord, from Walden Pond to the Old North Bridge; and enjoyed a back-to-school class on atomic structure, boat trips on the Sudbury River, meals, and music by the recently retired Ross Adams and Jonathan Fagan ’11, and by John Funkhouser ’84. In the Chapel, the annual memorial service was held, and the 2019 Joan Shaw Herman Award recipient, Kate Morse Erwin ’69, spoke about her work to improve the mental health of the incarcerated (See page 46).

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Moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Preston ’69, a panel discussion entitled “Women and Power: What Do We Want Now?” engaged three alumnae — Kate Radtke Guedj ’84, senior vice president and chief philanthropy officer at the Boston Foundation, Meisha Thompson Newman ’94, a business owner and senior interactive developer at Sapient Consulting, and Liz Mygatt ’99, an associate principal at McKinsey & Company — in reflecting on the role of power in their careers, communities, and lives. At a time when record numbers of women are running for office, the audience members were invited to contribute their perspectives on how personal, societal, and gender-based definitions of power are shifting, and what kinds of power women need today.

Members of the class of 1969 celebrating their 50th reunion had an unexpected encounter with their teenage selves when they gathered for dinner and were presented with the recently rediscovered evaluations of their senior independent projects at Concord Academy. Who says time travel doesn’t exist?

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Visit www.concordacademy.org/ reunion-2019 for more photos.

REUNION 2019

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ASSEMBLING THE CA COMMUNITY

by Laura McConaghy ’01, Alumnae/i Association president

In June, Concord Academy welcomed alumnae/i from every generation to campus to begin a new tradition: the Annual Alumnae/i Assembly. An evolution of the Annual Meeting, the assembly now coincides with reunion weekend, and we were thrilled to have nearly 60 alumnae/i in attendance our first year.

The assembly allows us to celebrate the impact alumnae/i have had on the CA community during the year. I am proud to share that CA graduates continue to give back to the school in record numbers. This year alone, over 200 alumnae/i gave their time, energy, and hearts as volunteers. You were class secretaries, admissions interviewers, reunion committee leaders, and more; 35 alumnae/i shared their experience with students at events, in classes and assemblies, and by contributing to the curriculum. This is our school, and together we are carrying CA into a very bright future.

At the assembly, alumnae/i heard directly from school leaders and from members of the Mission Review Task Force — made up of alumnae/i, faculty, staff, and parents — that undertook the careful work of updating the school’s mission statement. (For details about the process, see page 16.) The prior mission statement was written while I was a student at CA, and to me, the new one continues to center the school around our core values while situating us within a modern context. It is aspirational, actionable, and inclusive of the broad CA community.

We also recognized Kate Morse Erwin ’69, the recipient of the 2019 Joan Shaw Herman Award. As Jamie Comstock ’82, P’17, who chaired the award committee, said, this sole honor bestowed by CA is a testament to the “noble emphasis” our community places on “nurturing those who will go out into the world ready to make a difference in the lives of others.” (See page 46 to learn about Erwin’s work.)

Finally, we recognized the service of the current Alumnae/i Steering Committee members and welcomed the newest members for the 2019–20 academic year (see page 41). Spearheading alumnae/i initiatives and activities, these leaders serve as ambassadors, thought partners, galvanizers, and cheerleaders in all that they do for CA. Their efforts in keeping alumnae/i connected to the school and one another are vital to the life and vibrancy of this community. I encourage you to reach out to anyone on the Steering Committee if you are interested in learning more or in getting involved with CA. We look forward to continuing this tradition for years to come, so save the date for the second Annual Alumnae/i Assembly — June 5, 2020!

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S AV E T H E D AT E S W E D N E S DAY, D EC E M B E R 1 8 Boston Young Alumnae/i Holiday Party Cambridge, Mass.

W E D N E S DAY, JA N UA RY 2 2 Boston Regional Gathering with 2020 Centennial Hall Fellow Anita Lo ’84 SAT U R DAY, F E B RUA RY 2 2 Alumnae/i and Students of Color Conference Concord Academy T U E S DAY, F E B RUA RY 2 5 New York Regional Gathering with 2020 Centennial Hall Fellow Anita Lo ’84 SU N DAY, A P R I L 5 Sustainability Festival Concord Academy SU N DAY, M AY 3 Boston Regional Mount Auburn Cemetery Tour and Reception Cambridge, Mass.

S P R I N G 20 20 Chicago Regional Gathering F R I DAY, J U N E 5 Alumnae/i Association Assembly All CA alumnae/i are welcome to return to Concord Academy and encouraged to attend!

REUNION WEEKEND J U N E 5 –J U N E 7 Are you a member of a Concord Academy class that ends in 5 or 0?

If so, 2020 is your year!

Make this reunion weekend the best yet for your class by joining your reunion committee. If you are interested in participating, contact Hilary Rouse at hilary_rouse@concordacademy.org or (978) 402-2217.

R E U N I O N S P OT L I G H T Persis Buxton Ames ’55 will be celebrating her 65th Concord Academy reunion at the same time her granddaughter Emmy Ells ’15 is celebrating her fifth!

See event details: www.concordacademy.org/events

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In May 2019, the Concord Academy Board of Trustees elected five new members.

Adil Bahalim ’02 attended CA for two years as a boarder in Hobson House. He has traveled to six continents, lived on five, and worked on four — thereby consistently challenging what it means for him to identify as a South Asian Texan. He has worked in various roles at multinational businesses, UN agencies, and nonprofits. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in physics from Davidson College, earned a master’s in mechanical engineering from Cornell, and is currently working toward a doctorate in public health at Harvard.

Bahalim served as the 2018–19 co-chair of the Community and Equity Committee for the CA Alumnae/i Steering Committee.

He lives in Cambridge, Mass.

Pauline Lin P’21 ’23 graduated from Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages in Taiwan in 1982 with a concentration in English and has embraced a love of learning throughout her adult life. Lin took several advanced business administration courses in Hong Kong and Shanghai before enrolling in a business administration program at the University of Wales in the United Kingdom in 2013. She graduated with her MBA in 2015 and went on to earn an executive doctorate in business administration (EDBA) from the ICD International Business School in France in 2018.

Her professional career began in sales, for companies in both Taiwan and the United States. In 1992, with almost 10 years of sales experience behind her, Lin became deputy general manager of the Shanghai HJH Catering Group, comprising three catering chains. After seven years with HJH, Lin moved on to the Shanghai HJW International Hotel Management Group, where she has served as vice-chair of the board for the past 20 years.

Outside of her professional career, Lin is a member of the board of the Overseas Chinese Union, to which she was appointed by the Shanghai municipal government. She has also volunteered in several roles for the Shanghai American School, which her children attended.

Despite her physical distance from Concord Academy’s campus, Lin has contributed to the Faculty/Staff Appreciation and International Potluck events, demonstrating her strong commitment to the school community. She lives in Shanghai with her

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husband, Richard, and their children, Liliane ’21 and Eric ’23.

Derrick Pang ’93 is committed to bringing his visionary mindset and international perspectives to the Board of Trustees. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor of science degree and earned a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from MIT, an MBA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a doctorate in civil engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Pang is the chief executive officer and chief operating officer of Asia Allied Infrastructure Holdings Limited. He was appointed to the Economic Development Commission and the Land and Development Advisory Committee and served on the Construction Industry Council.

He dedicates his time and effort in philanthropy and is the founder of the nonprofit organization Lifewire, an online crowdfunding platform that raises funds to help children who have medical needs.

An amateur photographer, Pang loves to take pictures. He lives in Hong Kong with his wife, Etta, and his son, Darius. His sister, Angela ’95, also graduated from CA. Imani Perry ’90 was born in Birmingham, Ala., and reared in Cambridge, Mass. She is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, where she also teaches in the programs in law and public affairs and gender and sexuality studies and is affiliated with the University Center for Human Values and the program in jazz studies.

Perry earned a bachelor’s degree with a double major in literature and American studies at Yale, then received a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, both in 2000. As a postgraduate fellow at Georgetown Law Center, she earned an LL.M. in the history of property and contract law.

Perry was a professor at Rutgers Law School until 2009, when she joined the faculty at Princeton. She is the author of numerous articles and book reviews and of

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six books, including Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2018 and winner of PEN America’s PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award in biography and the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction.

Her book May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem was a 2018 finalist for the NAACP Image Award for outstanding nonfiction.

Perry lives outside of Philadelphia with her teenage sons, Freeman and Issa Rabb.

Ly Tran P’22 ’23 is a tech entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded AtHoc, an emergency mass communications system, for the U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security; it was backed by Greylock and Intel Capital and acquired by BlackBerry.

His board and advisory responsibilities include serving Jane Technologies, an e-commerce cannabis company; Genetica.asia, a provider of Vietnam-based DNA testing for Asian populations; Cirkul, a next-generation personal hydration system; and All American Lithium, which recovers lithium from geothermal brine in the Salton Sea. Tran’s interests include annual team cycling for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Waves to Wine ride (San Francisco to Sonoma County). He has served as a term member on the Council on Foreign Relations and was a civilian participant in the U.S. Army War College National Security Seminar, Carlisle Barracks. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard.

Tran was a member of CA’s International Potluck committee in 2018–19. He lives in Newton, Mass., with his wife, Lexie Olmsted; two children, Will ’22 and Katie ’23; and two cats.

Kim Williams P’08 ’14 was also named a life trustee, joining a select group of individuals who have had a lasting influence on the school.

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J OA N S H AW H E R M A N AWA R D FO R D I ST I N G U I S H E D S E RV I C E

Caring for the Forgotten This forensic psychiatrist is passionate about improving the mental health of the incarcerated

2019 RECEPIENT Read more about Kate Morse Erwin ’69: www. concordacademy.org/ jsh-erwin

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K AT E M O RS E E RW I N ’69

NOMINATIONS Do you know a CA graduate who embodies the school’s ideals of service and responsible citizenship? Nominations for the Joan Shaw Herman Distinguished Service Award are welcome. Visit www. concordacademy.org/jsh for information.

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“Service to others really is primarily a service to yourself.”

The Joan Shaw Herman Distinguished Service Award is the sole award bestowed at Concord Academy — not to a student, but to an alumna or alumnus. Established in 1976, the award honors Joan Shaw Herman ’46, who was paralyzed after contracting polio the summer after her graduation. Although confined to an iron lung, she worked constantly to improve the lives of people with disabilities. Each year, a CA graduate is honored with this award for service to others.

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Early in her career as a forensic psychiatrist, Kate Morse Erwin ’69 took over the care of a patient who had experienced significant weight gain as a side effect of antipsychotic medication. Erwin started her on a different drug and began weighing her weekly as the woman lost pound after pound. “The look on her face as I did so is etched forever in my mind,” she said to an audience of CA alumnae/i upon receiving the 2019 Joan Shaw Herman Award for Distinguished Service in June.

“She stood in startled amazement with a half-smile, totally surprised and overwhelmed that someone would care about her 90-pound weight gain and would be thrilled along with her when she lost weight.”

That was the moment that hooked Erwin on practicing psychiatry in prison.

She never dreamed of receiving an award for her one-onone work, which demonstrates what Jamie Comstock ’82, P’17, the award committee chair, praised as a “rare and unparalleled” passion for improving mental health for the incarcerated. At CA during her 50th reunion, Erwin shared an insight: “Service to others really is primarily a service to yourself.

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It’s hard to feel better than seeing a look like that on a woman’s face.”

Calling upon knowledge gained from 30 years of counseling at-risk youth and individuals in the prison system, Erwin discussed the immense toll of mass incarceration in the United States, which imprisons a starkly higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world. More than half of the men and women in prison are parents, she said, and “there’s a huge trickle-down effect” on children. The deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients over the last several decades has also resulted in an influx

of inmates with mental illness, she said.

Addressing mental illness within a system that Erwin said prioritizes punishment and safety over opportunities for expressing kindness or interpersonal exchange presents challenges. But Erwin gets to know her patients — many of whom have committed violent crimes — as individuals. “You can’t work in prison unless you can see them as human beings,” she said.

Along with a key ring, humor is one of the best tools she has. “Humor makes people feel liked,” she said, “and one thing prisoners never feel is that they’re liked.”

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CONVENING OUR GREEN COMMUNITY Join us for CA’s first annual sustainability festival!

SU N DAY, A P R I L 5, 20 20 Are you involved in sustainability efforts in your line of work or as a volunteer? We invite you to participate as an exhibitor and connect with the school community at CA’s first annual sustainability festival.

Share your expertise with renewable energy, zerowaste living, climate action, sustainable gardening, alternative transportation, food production and security, conservation and natural resource protection, plastic alternatives, nontoxic products, green building design, and more.

• Organize make-and-take giveaways such as green cleaning solution or zero-waste beauty products.

• Connect with Green Club student leaders and similarly focused CA alumnae/i and parents.

• Enjoy food and drinks from local farmers and eco-friendly businesses.

Register to get involved:www.concordacademy.org/sustainability-festival

E N V I RO N M E N TA L SY M P OS I U M

I N H O N O R O F LOV E O F L E A R N I N G

A recipient of the 2018–19 Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Outstanding Undergraduate Scholars Award for demonstrated devotion to excellence, Sydney Kasok ’15 had the opportunity at the awards ceremony in March to honor a high school teacher who had fostered her love of learning. Kasok, who studied jewelry making at RIT and plans to pursue a graduate degree in art history or museum studies, chose CA history teacher Stephanie Manzella P’14 ’17 ’18.

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The lineup for CA’s Environmental Symposium lecture series this fall consists exclusively of young alumnae/i who have been returning to CA to share their sustainability research and work. Phoebe Chatfield ’14 spoke about her environmental advocacy work in October, and Sophie Drew ’15 presented about soil sequestering of carbon in November. On December 3, Austen Sharpe ’14 and Eliza Thomas ’14 will discuss their recent internships with, respectively, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (renewable energy markets and policy) and the Cape Eleuthera Institute (tropical marine biology research).

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COMPILED BY LIBRARY DIRECTOR MARTHA KENNEDY

Creative Types B O O KS

The Carousel Carver: A Novel

Perdita Buchan Connolly

(former faculty) Plexus Publishing, 2019

Murder Aboard: The Herbert Fuller Tragedy and the Ordeal of Thomas Bram C. Michael Hiam ’80

Lyons Press, 2019 Giacinto keeps to himself, living a quiet, solitary existence as a woodcarver and mechanic who maintains vintage Jersey Shore merrygo-rounds. Decades pass, as do his long-ago dreams of forging a successful American life and family. Giacinto’s life instead fades to one of predictable routines and certainties. When the onset of World War II unexpectedly places a young refugee in his care, connections to his Italian homeland are rekindled. Can it be that Rosa is the grandchild of his once-beloved Anna? What has become of her, and how on earth have they tracked him down?

Despite her young age, Rosa draws Giacinto out of his shell and allows him a second chance to realize the family he first imagined in his youth.

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CALLING ALL CREATIVE TYPES Have you published a book or released a film or CD within the past year? Please contact martha_kennedy@ concordacademy.org, and consider donating a copy to the J. Josephine Tucker Library’s alumnae/i collection.

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C O N C O R D ACA D E M Y M AGA Z I N E

In the late 19th century, a routine shipment of timber en route to Brazil from Boston went awry when the captain, his wife, and the second mate were found bludgeoned to death in their beds days into the long voyage. For the nine remaining crew and lone passenger, the agonizing sail to the nearest port was filled with suspicion and fear. Only one thing was certain: Among them was the killer. But who was it, and what was the motive? Using archival images and documents presented at the 1898 trial, Hiam brings to life this grisly tale of murder on the high seas and the courtroom events that found the wrong man guilty.

Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets Thomas Abt ’90

Basic Books, 2019 What if violent crime were approached in the same manner as a triage hospital

approaches its patients? Stem the violence, and stabilize a “hot” neighborhood.

Although mass shootings and terrorist attacks grab national headlines, more Americans are killed on the streets, victims of urban violence.

These murders, concentrated in small portions of neighborhoods and committed by

a relatively small percentage of people, evolve from relentless cycles of violence and poverty that can be traced to decades of institutional racism.

Instead of blindly focusing on drugs, gangs, and guns, attention needs to be redirected, according to Abt, to stopping the

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violent behavior. Abt presents a case for intervention, citing dozens of successful initiatives from around the nation.

Persistent and multipronged tactics, he says, work only when all parties — citizens, community leaders, social services, and law enforcement — commit to making significant cultural change.

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons Imani Perry ’90

Beacon Press, 2019 At its heart, Breathe is a prose letter by a mother raising two African American sons, drawing from the collective wisdom of generations past and the realities of an informed present. Perry instills in her children the importance of a well-examined history, one that includes struggles faced and triumphs won by their own family. Throughout her address, Perry’s deep-seated love and respect for her sons underlies the care with which she has nurtured and readied them for the injustices they will undoubtedly face.

Intensely personal, Perry’s thoughts offer universal truths for all adults entrusted with the education of young black men in a racist society.

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S E N I O R P ROJ ECT

Frank Urbano by Antonio Roura Javier Translated by Adam Bailey (Spanish faculty), illustrated by Hyowon Raphaela Kang ’19 CA Spanish teacher Adam Bailey and Raphi Kang ’19 teamed up to bring to life this illustrated translation of Spanish author Antonio Roura Javier’s novel Frank Urbano.

Bailey worked with Roura Javier, a friend of his and a professor of Catholic religion and philosophy in Madrid. Kang completed the illustrations for the text for her senior project in spring 2019, in consultation with Bailey and under the guidance of visual art teacher Jonathan Smith.

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Then

The Stu-Fac occupies the space of the former gymnasium. This photo was taken sometime between its renovation in 1977 and the early 1980s, judging by the plants and macramĂŠ. Can you help us pin down the year?

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&

Now

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SOMEWHAT NEW UPPER STU

The upper level of the Student-Faculty Center got some fresh coats of paint this summer as well as new furniture. The current floor plan, in place for many years, includes the Student Life Office and a classroom as well as (around the corner to the right) the Community and Equity Office.

N OW P H OTO BY B E N CA R M I C H A E L ’0 1

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E N R I Q U E A LCAYAGA , S PA N I S H T E AC H E R

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Most of the items at my desk are souvenirs from my travels in Latin America. I wanted to bring in things from Guatemala, my home country, and from other countries that represent what I teach here at CA and that I can use in my classroom. I still have more places to go, but it is my goal to see every part of the continent that is part of me.

01. Sombreros: Both are from Mexico and were gifts from my wife, who also teaches Spanish.

02. Shirt: A traditional Mayan woman’s shirt from Guatemala.

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03. Alpaca: From Peru.

04. Flag: From Honduras.

05. Mate cup: From Argentina.

You make an herbal drink, yerba mate, in this traditional gourd and sip from it all day through the metal straw.

06. Hacky sack: From Guatemala.

I throw this to my students in class when I’m asking them to answer questions.

07. Postcard: From Puerto Rico.

08. Rio de Janeiro magnet: From Brazil.

09. Wooden guitar sculpture: From Patagonia, southern Argentina. Music is a big

passion of mine. I love playing electric guitar, and I play almost every weekend, whenever I’m free.

10. Bus figurine: In Guatemala, they call these “chicken buses” because people bring their chickens on board.

Watch the documentary La Camioneta if you want to know more about how old U.S. school buses end up being rebuilt and customized and used for public transportation there.

11. Skulls: From Mexico.

12. Cat: From Colombia.

13. Cup: From Chile.

14. “I heart guac” button: I really love avocados.

15. Middlebury Language Schools sticker: I just finished my master’s degree in Spanish language instruction. It was a four-year program that gave me a chance to travel to Argentina three years in a row.

16. “Somos Docentes y Hacemos Milagros” sign: This translates to, “We are teachers and we make miracles happen.”

17. Frida Kahlo portraits: She’s an important artist to me. She had a very interesting life, and I feel related to her through her beliefs.

LEAP OF FAITH! Thank you! Because of you, the CA Annual Fund exceeded its goal last year and was able to close the $2.9 million budget gap, which is vital to the daily operations of the school.

2019–20 Budget: $29 Million 1%

$3

Summer Camp and Auxiliary Income

MILLION Annual Fund Goal

Where the Dollars Come From

10%

Annual Fund

78%

Tuition and Fees

11%

Endowment Draw

Tuition and endowment income do not cover the cost of CA’s unique and exceptional education.

With each new school year, CA takes a leap of faith that its generous community — more than 6,000 strong — will invest in the power and promise of a CA education. Your yearly support ensures that CA thrives!

5%

Materials and Tools for Teaching and Learning

7%

General and Administration

Where the Dollars Go

17%

Financial Aid

52%

Salaries and Benefits

19%

Operating CA’s Campus

Every single gift matters. Every dollar counts.

www.concordacademy.org/give

STAY CON N E CT E D

Non-Profit Org U.S. Postage PAID N. Reading, MA Permit #121

166 Main Street Concord, MA 01742 Address Service Requested