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Faculty and Staff Accomplishments Chair of Foreign Languages rick dixon conducted research on Charles Wertenbaker’s novel about EHS, “Before They Were Men” (1931). English teacher perry epes ’65 will have a book of poetry published in early 2010 by The Word Works, a nonprofit literary and educational organization in Washington, D.C. The book, “Nothing Happened,” will be published under the imprint of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Karren Alenier, president of The Word Works, writes of Epes: “This Southern poet addresses what has been built and what is left standing. No surprise that there are elephants in the room.”
kathy howe , assistant director of communications for publications, graduated from American University in May with a master’s degree in communications, specializing in interactive journalism. Social studies teacher heidi huntley attended Harvard University’s Center for Middle East Studies teacher workshop “Oil and the Contemporary Globe: A Multi-Regional, MultiStudy of the Modern World’s Foundation.” She was one of 33 elementary and secondary school teachers to attend the five-day workshop, which studied the role and importance of oil in three regional settings. Chair of the Arts doug kehlenbrink was on sabbatical in the spring of 2009 as recipient of the Olsson Sabbatical. While he spent most of the sabbatical pursuing professional performance opportunities as a bassoonist, Kehlenbrink also visited peer schools to observe their arts programs and traveled to London to explore the possibility of creating and co-sponsoring a two-week “Shakespeare in
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by the National Gallery. He also wrote the Catullus Exam for the Classical Association of Virginia’s yearly exam series and was hired by the Roxbury Latin School in Boston to review their Classics Department. However, he said that his favorite moment of the summer was taking his students to see an excavation being run in part by Meg Andrews ’01 while in Italy this June.
julie wang-gempp ,
EHS Chaplain The Rev. Gideon Pollach (left) and his wife Sarah (center) attended a meeting with Sen. Mark Warner (right) to discuss health care reform issues.
London” program for Episcopal students with London’s Globe Theatre. “I have taught full-time and performed professionally for over 30 years – 22 at James Madison University and 10 at EHS – and I have never had a sabbatical or leave. Having the spring to pursue new ideas, tinker with the already successful arts program at EHS, and recharge my energies as a professional, was truly a welcome and wonderful opportunity,” Kehlenbrink said.
kathleen lawtontrask , English teacher and assistant director of communications for electronic media, spent the summer in England studying Restoration-era literature at Lincoln College, Oxford University, through Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. Spanish teacher chris page successfully transitioned the EHS Summer in Spain Program from Segovia to Sevilla, Spain. It will now include a true “exchange” component – EHS will invite 15 Spanish students to stay at
Episcopal, who will then host EHS students in their homes in Sevilla. While in Spain, EHS students will complete a four-week academic/ cultural program for academic credit. School Chaplain the rev. gideon pollach and his wife, Sarah, were invited to attend a meeting with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to discuss health care reform – Gideon as a leader in the faith community and Sarah as a leader in the geriatric medical profession. The senator wanted to hear from practitioners and pastors about issues concerning hospice care and end of life. More than 50 people attended the meeting, sponsored in part by the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. Rev. Pollach also was the keynote speaker for the Mid-Atlantic Episcopal School Association’s fall membership meeting. Latin and Greek teacher jeff streed co-authored a guide to “Pompeii and the Roman Villa,” an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. The guide was published in print and online
Chinese teacher, received a scholarship from the Confucius Institute at China Institute to study at East China Normal University (one of China’s premier universities) in Shanghai this summer. “The program offered me an opportunity to study with the leading scholars working at the cutting-edge of research in linguistics, cultural studies, and pedagogy, specifically for teaching Mandarin to English speakers. I was immersed in intensive training and earned 12 graduate credits in Chinese language and literature,” Wang-Gempp said. EHS social studies teachers bobby watts and
michael reynolds spent a week in Louisville this June as AP Readers for the U.S. History Examination. Watts later traveled by car to “The Land of Lincoln” with mason new , chair of the EHS English Department; Billy Peebles ’73, headmaster of The Lovett School; and Bill Dunkel, Lovett’s upper school head. “We went everywhere that Lincoln lived outside of Washington, D.C., and we toured some key Civil War battlefields in the West. (Perryville in Kentucky; Ft. Donelson, Shiloh, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge in Tennessee; and Chicamauga in Georgia.) In all, Mason and I traveled 2,850 miles in a week,” Watts said. n