FENN: Winter 2013

Winter 2013

FENN Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age

From the Headmaster Winter 2013 Reporting and reflecting on technology, as we do in this issue of FENN, seems akin to reflecting on the air we breathe or the ground we walk. An integral part of our lives, ever-evolving technology is virtually omnipresent as it defines the ways we communicate, provides essential resources that sustain and advance society, and sets the trajectory for the future of our civilization and for many realms of our individual lives.

For schools, teachers, and students, it is no different. A walk through virtually any public or independent school of today provides snapshots of teaching and learning propelled by technology. Fenn boys gathered around a seminar table in a senior social studies class are linked by sight and sound to a classroom in India, with which they are collaborating to address a global issue such as populations’ access to clean water. Students compose musical pieces on individual computers, preparing to play them on synthesizers for classmates and teachers. In the theater tech booth, they gather around a complex control board to consider the multitude of sound and light options for an upcoming drama production. At home in the evening, boy writers across divisions create stories, poems, and responses to literature, post their work on their English class blog, and comment on others’ entries. And student scientists collect and record their lab and field findings, distill and analyze their data, and share the results seamlessly, supported by powerful technological tools. While in all classrooms there are moments, lessons, and even curricular units absent of technology, in equal or larger measure, technology’s use is expansive as a singular and powerful medium of education.

Where will technology lead schools and education and how will it shape our students’ knowledge, skills, intellects, reasoning, and even their neurological pathways? The imponderable scope of this question reminds me of conversations we had with expert library “futurists” while planning the new Fenn library that will open this September. In answer to the related question, “What will libraries be and look like in forty to fifty years?,” they stated they had no idea and that anyone who claims to have such knowledge is misinformed or delusional. This unavoidable ambiguity guided our considered library design, which will serve well our current needs yet provide a facility that readily adapts as technology evolves.

While it is true that teaching and learning in the digital age defies precise predictions of the future, there remain enduring principles and realities that can guide us in educating Fenn boys. This fall Lorraine and I, traveling for Fenn in California, visited with Tully Foote ’99, who at the Menlo Park firm Willow Garage serves on an engineering team that designs and builds state-of-the-art robots used by research universities such as Cal Tech, M.I.T., and Stanford. (See article on p. 17). As we toured the labs and assembly rooms, Lorraine and I were fascinated by the futuristic creations we saw. As educators, we were equally intrigued by the prominent posters and slogans throughout the facility that reminded the engineers about the essential elements of human interaction—listening, respecting, collaborating, responding, and supporting. And in the understated company dining room, we were struck by the sight of colleagues seated family-style at a long lunch table specifically designed to promote collegial conversation, connectedness, and community. No electronic devices were evident, and these bright and inspired colleagues were savoring breaking bread together. Off at a side table we sat with Tully as he fondly reflected on the Fenn education that helped prepare him for his current endeavors.

Tully noted that one of the most powerful components of his Fenn experience rested in the creative arts and in his connection with teachers who opened his mind to new ideas and encouraged him to pursue his passion.

To prepare boys for their future in a technology-driven world evolving at light speed, Fenn must remain forward-looking in its teaching and learning practices. But while doing so, Fenn must equip boys with skills, sensibilities, and values that transcend technological change and are grounded in genuine human connection, transcendent values, and community. To prepare boys well for a world beyond our imagining, Fenn must embrace that which changes and that which remains constant.

FENN VOLUME 81 NUMBER 1 WINTER 2013

2 TEACHING

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LEARNING

IN THE

DIGITAL AGE

Everywhere on campus, from music rooms to English classes to science labs, students, faculty, and staff are employing technology to improve their learning and teaching; Alumni who have built their passion for computer programming, software development, and analytics into services that improve the lives and work of others take us along on their paths from Fenn.

20 FACULTY Page 2

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STAFF NEWS

Fenn welcomes new faculty and staff.

22 ADVANCING FENN Library and Science Center is on schedule; Campaign surpasses $25 million dollar mark; Board of Visitors holds annual meeting; Fenn welcomes new Trustees.

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26 AROUND CAMPUS Boys are active in Community Service projects; Seventh grader summits Mt. Kilimanjaro; Concerts showcase musicians and singers; Students reap first harvest from school garden; Young actors shine in fall productions.

28 SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS Page 28 Editor and Feature Writer Laurie O’Neill Editorial Board Derek Boonisar Anne Ames Boudreau Thomas J. Hudner III ’87 Laurie O’Neill Jerry Ward Lorraine Garnett Ward

Varsity soccer wins fall tournament, following tournament victory for Varsity lacrosse last spring.

30 REFLECTIONS Remembering Robb Hall

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Photography Ellen Harasimowicz Laurie O’Neill Tony Santos Joshua Touster

CLASS NOTES

Design Michele Page

GRADUATION 2012

Alumni updates; Former faculty news; Milestones

41 Remembering Robb Hall FENN is published twice a year for alumni, parents, and friends of the School. Letters and comments are welcomed and can be sent to Laurie O’Neill, The Fenn School, 516 Monument Street, Concord, MA 01742; loneill@fenn.org; 978-318-3583.

From Sibelius to Spectrometers

IPads, iPods, iPhones, Kindles, Nooks. Google, Facebook, tumbler, Bing, Ning, YouTube, yelp, wikis. How do these devices, engines, or applications work? Who should use them? And how should they be used?

These questions are a part of nearly every conversation at Fenn, as teachers and administrators acknowledge that living in a digital world means they must work on developing uses for technology that will help boys think critically, solve problems, and make decisions. All the while, they realize the importance of “balancing the digital and non-digital realms in boys’ lives,” according to Academic Director Steve Farley. And they share the goal that, as Headmaster Jerry Ward has said, “We want technology to inform us, not to define us.”

Fenn’s new Strategic Plan 2012-2022, which was recently finalized by the Board of Trustees, “charges the School to produce a master technology plan for the future, which we will begin creating in the spring,” says Mr. Ward.

How technology is advancing the nature of teaching and learning at Fenn verywhere on campus, one can find students and faculty employing technology to improve their learning and teaching. Boys are using Quizlet to study for Latin assessments, Google Earth and Skype to become more globally knowledgeable in social studies, OneNote for note taking in science classes, and countless other tools. Spanish teachers have adopted an online curriculum with heavily integrated and interactive audio and video components. Ninth graders are doing homework on tablet computers that Fenn provides for them and working in small groups using iPads in some of their classes.

Lower School boys are reading on Kindles and Nooks in the library.

Science students are using sophisticated devices including spectrometers and Vernier temperature probes to conduct experiments such as determining the amount of color that leaves absorb from light and computing the

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In the following pages you will get a glimpse of the way technology plays a part in teaching and learning at Fenn.

Then you will meet several Fenn alumni, who, as risk takers and innovators, have built their passion for computer programming, software development, and analytics into services that improve the lives and work of others.

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Technology At Fenn

boiling point of certain solutions, respectively. In math, boys are programming TI-graphing calculators, with a few students so fascinated with the technology that they are going beyond what is required in class and programming together during their free time.

The Middle School Lego team is in its second year, and met twice a week this fall, preparing for the state championships. In the headmaster’s garage, ninth graders led by math teacher Sean Patch are installing a Greasecar fuel system in an older VW Jetta so that it will run on recycled vegetable oil.

In the Arts, boys are using MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) to compose music, are filming and editing their own videos, and are mastering photo editing programs. They are learning how to use the new, state-of-the-art tech booth that has helped make the Meeting Hall a stellar venue for performances and presentations.

In English classes, students are maintaining blogs and creating podcasts about the books they are reading. John Fitzsimmons has boys reading aloud from The Odyssey so that they can experience the power of the spoken word and become familiar with Homeric form, and students are employing GarageBand to create musical accompaniment for their readings.

Lower School boys write and publish class newsletters online and use Google to compose, save, and share their work. Teachers can access students’ documents to comment on them.

Making Sense out of “Messy Algebra” Ralph Giles, math teacher and department chair, watches with delight as his seventh graders make a contest of finding the point of intersection between two given lines while using graphing calculators. The photo shows Teddy Pyne, who has written a program on his own and is trying it out. Ralph reacts as several students provide different answers while they race to beat Teddy.

The enthusiasm of the boys is obvious as they banter back and forth with their teacher and each other. “It’s fun to let them run with what they are curious about and weave it with the material that we need to cover in class,” Ralph says. In order to understand how a program works, his students must comprehend the general solution of a system of equations, which “has some messy algebra,” he says. “But when they are motivated to understand the program, the messy algebra has a significant purpose and is better understood.”

Science Students Engage in High Tech Leaf Peeping e call it leaf-peeping when we set out to view the fall colors each year, but how many of us know the scientific explanation for why certain colors emerge at different times of the year? Dave Duane’s ninth grade science class used spectrometers to determine the absorption spectrum of a sample to derive the wavelength most effectively used by the pigments in a bright green summer leaf and a yellow/red autumn one.

A spectrometer measures the amount of light absorbed by a color sample. It breaks light into a

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spectrum, the light’s collection of component colors, all of which make up the color of the light as a whole. Each spectrometer employed in Dave’s experiment used a CCD chip and was connected to a computer; the spectrometer chip sent the image to the computer, which analyzed the spectrum and graphed it to show the amount of each wavelength of light apparent in the image.

Boys in the lab worked in teams, grinding each leaf with a mortar and pestle into a mash that they mixed

with isopropanol; while the extracts developed, they measured the absorbance of food-colored water samples to provide an analogy to the absorbance of the plant pigment extracts. Placing the test tubes in their spectrometer, the teams watched excitedly as the wavelengths appeared on their computer screens, examining the graphs and recording their observations. Dave moved from station to station, checking his students’ progress.

“It’s a really cool experiment,” he declared.

Technology at Fenn

Though blogging has recently been launched in the Lower School as a way to foster an enjoyment of writing, it has been part of the Upper School Fenn curriculum for years. Each boy has his own blog (as does each English teacher), where boys post journal entries and compose essays.

They have a place to share their writing and comment on the writing of others, and the blogs have a shout box and chat box, where students can go to ask questions of their peers about homework. “It’s amazing to see,” says English Department Chair Laurie Byron, who adds that the boys “crave input from their peers.”

Creating Music at the (Computer) Keyboard

iPads and Impact Testing A faculty iPad pilot program has teachers planning class activities and blogging with colleagues to share their experiences. Fenn has twenty-five iPads for use by students and thirty teachers are currently using the devices professionally while experimenting in their classrooms to see how employing them compares to using laptops. Several program participants recently attended an iPad Teacher Summit in Boston, with John Fitzsimmons excitedly reporting on the event to his students, who are using the devices for their Odyssey project, via his blog: “In a lot of ways, this recording project is what the future is—students collaborating and creating and presenting,” he wrote to them, adding that “…your future world is going to be ‘in your hands’.”

Even the health center is utilizing technology, employing the program Impact Testing, which, in collaboration with an attending physician, helps determine when boys can return to play after suffering a concussion, and whether asymptomatic athletes have cognitive deficits.

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sing computer programs including GarageBand, Sibelius, imovie, and keyboard labs, Lower and Middle School boys are learning to create various types of music, from rap to jazz to classical. Under the guidance of teachers Maeve Lien and Mike Salvatore, boys are honing their skills in MIDI composition (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), teaching themselves how to play the piano, making movie soundtracks, and sharing their compositions with their classmates, who applaud each other and offer constructive advice.

For example, sixth graders complete a trumpet fanfare when provided with one half of the melody while seventh graders produce variations on Pachelbel’s Canon. And fourth and fifth graders learn how to play “Ode to Joy” and other pieces by picking out the notes on a keyboard and watching them appear on the screen so they

can check their performance against the sheet music they are reading.

The computer plays back the notes, and the student can correct them as he goes. “It’s like a game in which they compete with themselves,” says Maeve.

One of her technology projects this fall involved having the boys draw the name of an emotion out of a hat and compose a piece in GarageBand that conveyed that feeling—anger, happiness, or love, among others. Next they created a slideshow with the video editing software called imovie, matching pictures to their music. “We’re teaching the concepts of music creation by going beyond notation,” she says. “We think about the way music is organized—which sounds complement each other and why,” she adds, “and how important form is so that a piece has a beginning, middle, and end.”

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Technology At Fenn

Build, Test, Revise, Repeat: Robotics Team Works on STEM Skills

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hat do the Fenn Pirates, the team of ten Middle School students who spent countless hours last fall preparing their Lego robot for a regional robotics competition, have in common with the scientists who developed and control the Mars “Curiosity” Rover?

Lots, says math teacher Dave Sanborn, who was involved with the creation of the team, which is advised by faculty members Sue Fisher and Pauline MacLellan. Both endeavors require the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, or STEM, he says. Both are centered on dynamic moving robots that operate automatically once the mission begins, and both are dependent on extensive computer programming to control their mobility and functionality.

Most important, these projects can succeed “only if a large team of engineers, programmers, and analysts collaborate effectively for an extended period of time,” Dave adds. Which is the name of the game for the boys who meet twice a week at Fenn to gel each fall as a team, learn how to resolve differences and to be resilient, and practice patience and persistence. The advisors are coaches, not teachers, Sue points out, with the boys assuming leadership, setting goals, and motivating each other. They learn life skills, says Pauline, such as learning to abide by a timeline and budget and to understand that “consensus is essential in the real world.”

The hands-on experience the boys are getting is invaluable. Their “emerging engineering and programming skills will be widely applicable and highly valued in our chip-driven world,” Dave says. The possible applications, he adds, range from the “mundane—programmable coffee machines and thermostats, to the “simply efficient—EZ Pass toll collection and T fares by smart phone,” to the “most sophisticated— tablets, medical devices, and drone airplanes.”

Their robot relies on programmable sensors

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to detect and respond to measurable conditions such as proximity to objects and light levels in their working environment and can answer questions such as “Am I close enough to Object X to execute Object Y?” Boys who “like quantitative and analytical tasks and feel rewarded when they accomplish them,” are drawn to Lego robotics, says Dave. But the team not only builds and operates a robot; its members, in pairs that are responsible for specific tasks, must also complete a research component, choosing a topic and coming up with a solution to a problem. Last year, and again this year, the boys won the Best Research Project Award at the FIRST LEGO League regional qualifier. This year they focused on a quality of life issue, interviewing seniors about their concerns, including loneliness and isolation, and designing a product worn as a watch that could allow people to send information to a partner or caretaker.

Another component of the competition involves the core values of the FIRST LEGO League. For the kindness and respect they demonstrated while competing, the team won the Gracious Professionalism Award in 2011.

On December 1 at a regional qualifier, the team earned the opportunity to compete in the FIRST LEGO League state championships held in Worcester on December 15.

There, the Pirates won the runner up trophy for Inspiration.

The award “celebrates a team that is empowered by their FLL experience and that displays extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit.” The Pirates are: Linc Berkley, Rob Brower, Spencer Davis, Anthony Duane, Kevin Ewing, Ben Kelly, Reid Monahan, Mark Morton, Teddy Pyne, and Ian Urban.

At the competition, seventh grader David Nguyen and his Arlington robotics team, the Brainstormers, were awarded First Place.

An expert builder and programmer, David is proud to be the chief engineer for the best middle school robotics team in Massachusetts.

Fostering a Love of Writing through Blogging Your country is being invaded by another country and people of a certain race, religion, or ethnicity are being persecuted. Your neighbors next door, who are good friends, are of that race, religion, or ethnicity. If you try to warn them or help them, and the enemy sees you, you and your family will be persecuted or even killed. What would you do?

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his was a prompt provided by Lower School teacher Winnie Smith to her class last year. Her fourth graders responded enthusiastically, with Ollie Cheever describing in detail how he would come to the aid of his neighbors and closing with the lines: “I would not have been able to live with myself if I said no. I only pray it will work.”

Winnie and colleague Ben Smith ’85 have instituted blogging with their classes as a way for them to write “more freely and to an audience,” says Winnie. “When they know someone is going to read their work, they amp it up,” adds Ben. The two were inspired by John Fitzsimmons, who has made blogging a major element of his Upper School classes. When Winnie and Ben were preparing their students for blogging last year, two of John’s eighth grade students came to talk to the class.

Most writing prompts are tied to the literature the class reads, though some are free write assignments.

Students are expected to post two or three pieces a week, each one at least five to seven sentences long, and to enter comments on others’ entries. It’s important for the teachers to “keep on top of the blogs,” says Winnie, who says the technology is set up

so that she can read and comment on her students’ writing from home.

Blogging with their Lower School boys is approached carefully and thoughtfully, say the two teachers, who, though unrelated, jokingly refer to themselves as “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and collaborate so well that they often finish each other’s sentences.

Winnie and Ben talk about digital citizenship, and the boys write for a few weeks before beginning to comment, a process that is modeled by their teachers.

“At this age humor is their way of connecting and sometimes it’s inappropriate,” Ben explains, “but we tell them ‘no silly or snarky comments’.” Since boys love to correct each other’s mistakes, Winnie points out, the teachers remind them that it is not their job to revise grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure.

Winnie and Ben are finding that reluctant writers benefit from reading others’ work, and that “kids love to share.” When Ollie posted his vow to help his hypothetical neighbors, he elicited a series of comments including one that must have particularly delighted him: “You should become a writer someday because you are a great one!”

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Technology At Fenn

A fundamental shift The possibilities for using technology in the classroom are endless and can seem overwhelming. The challenge, says Steve Farley, is to develop a program by which technology is used creatively, effectively, responsibly, and productively, to communicate, collaborate, conduct research, and utilize information that calls for critical thinking and enables problem solving skills.

Part of the challenge involves making a shift in how technology is used. “We are teacher-prescribed at this point, and we want the kids to own it more.” Perhaps a boy asks a teacher if he can take a photo of the latter’s class notes because he is not a strong note taker, Steve explains, or a student decides to use a calendar app instead of a plan book to record assignments, or boys in English class conduct peer editing by creating a voice thread, for which they read a classmate’s writing on an iPad, pass it around

Vroom! Vroom! Grease Car Project Puts Boys in Charge

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n the Headmaster’s garage, on alternate Tuesday afternoons after sports and on an occasional Saturday morning, a technological transformation has been taking place.

As part of the School’s sustainability efforts this year, a group of ninth graders is converting a 2001 Jetta diesel-fueled sedan into a “grease car” that burns used vegetable oil.

Enabled in part by a 2011 summer curriculum grant, math teacher Sean Patch did a year and a half of research on the project’s viability. He talked to other schools that had done similar conversions and addressed safety issues such as the need to acquire parent permission. A car was found on Craig’s List and a western Massachusetts distributor supplied the

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conversion kit.

Sean sees the project as “awesome and hands-on” and says “it allows kids to manipulate things physically.” More important, he wants the boys to feel “a sense of responsibility and pride in their work.” To that end, he has vowed to be more facilitator than teacher. “I have to be comfortable with a certain level of chaos and uncertainty and to resist the urge to prevent a struggle or solve a problem,” he says.

The project is an ideal one for students, Sean points out, as “it’s not like a math word problem. It’s difficult in a real way, not an abstract one that isn’t relevant. I couldn’t in a classroom come up with a better problem that is more authentic.”

The grease car crew, fifteen boys

whom Sean first asked to write an essay about the challenges they would have to overcome, have different responsibilities; some are working on the car or its filtration unit, some are filming the project, and some are handling marketing and solicitation.

The team needs a source for used vegetable oil and has been developing a well-articulated sales pitch.

In order “to validate the fact that the kids are putting in time” beyond their regular Fenn obligations, the car will be driven when the conversion is completed— Sean will use the Jetta to commute to campus. The boys hope to finish by late spring. “We’re all learning, and we’re going to make mistakes, ask questions, do research, and get dirty,” he says with characteristic zeal. “But if we persevere, we can do this.”

Meanwhile the boys are posting their observations on a blog. Kyler Hall reported that the first time the crew assembled, all the boys “were standing around the engine watching one boy unscrew something.” But by the end of the session, the novice mechanics made a lot of progress and had begun to work well together. “It can only get better from here,” he declared.

Technology at Fenn

the seminar table, and provide a spoken comment, an activity that would enable far more feedback to be generated. Already, the teachers overseeing the grease car project intend to be as hands-off as possible, letting the boys trouble shoot and solve problems.

“It would be a fundamental shift,” Steve says of moving toward a more studentdirected use of technology. If we want our boys to be initiators and collaborators “we need to move them from being consumers to being creators.” This applies to teachers, too, who are being asked to “grow with” technology and realize that their responsibility is to “identify the destination” for their classes and “encourage students to engage with the material in a way that will allow them to take the best path towards that goal.”

Steve says that teachers and administrators are “determining the shape of one-to-one computing at Fenn, and the storage system and infrastructure that will support it.” They are also identifying opportunities that will emerge as a result of the new Library and Science Center in the areas of information literacy and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) applications and possibilities. Fenn has “the interesting opportunity,” he adds, “to decide when it does and doesn’t use technology. We know, through research,” he notes, “that boys have difficulty with not getting lost in technology and with being responsible users.”

“We don’t look at technology as a solution,” Steve points out. “We continue to look at it as a way to better accomplish what we have always tried to do at Fenn: help boys develop into thoughtful, articulate, and empathetic young men.”

Being Good Digital Citizens

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sing technology at Fenn means being a good digital citizen, and much of that instruction comes from classroom teachers and the librarians. Internet safety is part of the Student Life curriculum in grades six through nine and Technology Director Jeff LaPlante is part of the faculty.

Topics include understanding one’s digital footprint— where does my information go, how long does it stay there, and who has access to it? “We explain that the boys can’t do what they want and have no one find out,” says Jeff, who reminds students that “you can still get at someone’s information even if the user wipes his hard drive.” Students learn how to create strong passwords, and why to be careful about posting personal information. They are encouraged to make good choices regarding the “friends” with whom they network, taught how to use privacy settings, and in short, reminded that they should create a positive online image.

Upper School students talk about the appropriate and safe use of social media, and about such inappropriate and dangerous activities as cyber bullying and sexting.

The boys are “savvy,” Jeff says, but, he adds, there is still much they don’t know. What’s been great, he notes, is that the boys tend to be good about “calling each other out” if a classmate hasn’t been using the internet responsibly.

Students sign an acceptable use of technology agreement at the beginning of the school year and programs on internet safety have been held for parents. This year Fenn enlisted ChildrenOnline, which offers consulting services to schools and other organizations, to speak to students, faculty, and parents in three separate sessions.

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Alumni in Technology

Industry “Guru” Makes Simulations and Serious Games

Clark Aldrich ’82 ou are training to be a world-class athlete and want to develop a competitive edge. Maybe the reason you are losing so often, you think, is that you aren’t doping. What should you do?

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The scenario is a familiar one, and the issue is so troubling that the World Anti-Doping Agency runs a game on its website that is meant to appeal to young athletes by leading them through a simulated series of decisions they must make as they strive to become a superstar in a fictional sport called JumpCross. When you play the game you must decide to train harder, eat better, or dope. If you dope, you will win races and accolades, but suffer the consequences: paranoia, fear, and guilt. You begin to lead a double life, even convincing yourself, as Lance Armstrong likely did, that you are doing what you need to do to win.

The creator of this simulation, called PlayTrue, is a leader in the field of educational simulations and serious games. From his Connecticut office, and with the help of a lead artist, a project manager, a data person, and a coder, Clark Aldrich ’82 runs Clark Aldrich Designs LLC, which produces simulations and serious games, and advanced learning strategies for education, corporate training, health care, government, and military training.

Clark admits he is a “computer geek,” but says he feels strongly about balancing his fascination with virtual worlds with his devotion to leading “an authentic life.” His interests range from raising chickens to maintaining a plot at the local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) garden, to sailing. His favorite pastime is traveling around the region with his wife to serve as the photographer for and contributor to her popular blog, The Daily Prep. While he talked about these pursuits on an early fall day, sitting on the porch of a restaurant overlooking Long Island Sound, Clark occasionally picked up his camera, snapped a photo, and made a note in the journal that he takes with him everywhere.

The blog (www.muffyaldrich.com) chronicles the couple’s adventures touring the region and their strong convictions about supporting locally sourced crafts, 10

While an analyst at Gartner, a technology research company, Clark was profiled in Training magazine as an “industry visionary” in the field of eLearning.

food, and clothing. The writing is often lyrical and poignant, as they muse on the melancholy quality of fall and its symbolic nature, a reality that strikes them as they close up their Maine cottage for the season: “Regardless of our age, we run through, almost zeotropically, moments of past summers and friends who shared them, and then race forward into the unknown. How will we be different next time we are here?”

CHALLENGING EDUCATIONAL NORMS Another passion is educational reform, about which Clark penned a book, Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education (2011). Originally selfpublished, the collection of essays has been translated into several languages and has been read by Bill Gates (who “used to agree with three and now agrees with ten of the rules”), President Obama, and the Pope. Of the “rules” Clark sets forth in the book, “some may be profound and some banal,” he concedes. But more and more of the “rules” he espouses reflect what is making headlines in educational reform, he notes. Among the essay titles in the book: “Include meaningful work,” “Create and use periods of reflection,” “Outdoors beats indoors,” and “Embrace technologies.”

Clark says he is able “to challenge educational norms because I’ve been to the best schools,” including Fenn, Lawrence Academy, and Brown, where he earned a degree in Cognitive Science. Attending Chewonki, an outdoors program in mid-coast

Alumni in Technology

CLARK ADMITS HE IS A “COMPUTER GEEK,” GEEK,” BUT SA SAYS YS HE FEELS STRONGLY STRONGLY ABOUT BALANCING HIS FASCINA ASCINATION TION WITH VIRTUAL VIRTUAL WORLDS WITH HIS DEVOTION TO LEADING “AN AUTHENTIC LIFE.”

Maine, for eight summers, four of them as a counselor, had a “significant influence” on his life, convincing him that outdoor play stimulates healthy development. He also met his wife there.

Clark’s work is driven by questions that he says dominate his thinking: How do we learn to BE? How do we figure out who we are in a group? “Fenn does a good job with that,” he says.

Chewonki may have impacted him non-academically, Clark says, but Fenn did so academically. The latter gave him a “great education,” he says, making subsequent school experiences “a bit anti-climactic.” He taught himself basic programming on a Fenn computer, and “we learned the necessity of monitoring, an exercise of stewardship, when we kept fish tanks in biology.” Clark got his “first taste” of public speaking, something that “always terrified me,” in Robb Hall and recalls that his extemporaneous speech was about peanut butter. The teachers who most influenced him are Jim Carter ’54 and Mark Biscoe, whom Clark bumped into at an ice cream shop in Maine not long ago; they now keep in touch.

A “DEFINING 21ST CENTURY INDUSTRY ” Clark’s first job after college was with Xerox, initially as the speech writer for Executive Vice President Wayland Hicks. While at the company, he became the Governor’s appointee to Connecticut’s Joint Committee on Educational Technology, serving from 19962000. At Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company, where he moved next, Clark launched their e-Learning coverage, and began his formal writing and analysis about education. Training magazine called him a “visionary” and Fortune dubbed him an industry “guru.” Clark left Gartner about eleven years ago to do hands-on work as a designer and builder of simulations and to do external writing about the industry in books, columns, and articles. He is the author of four other books, most recently The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games (2009), and Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds (2009).

Clark’s first project was a leadership simulation called Virtual Leader, designed for the company SimuLearn, Inc.—it became the most used leadership simulator in the world—and every simulation he has built since 2001 is still out there, he notes. Simulations are still a very new, emerging market, Clark says.

“It will be a defining 21st century industry.” One of his current projects is to create what he believes will be a vital tool: a registry of simulations where one can find out what is available, who designed it, and what it can do.

Merging his educational philosophy with his design work, Clark is working with the Educational Testing Service to retool the SAT’s. By 2015 or so, he predicts, the SAT will be “more interactive and more game-like, and textbooks will begin to address this to prepare students for the tests.” He also likes working with the military—he has top secret clearance—which is extremely interested in simulations. “It’s easier, safer, and cheaper to learn how to operate a tank in a simulation,” he notes.

Simulations are great for boys, Clark points out (he and his wife have a high-school age son) “because they like to learn on their own and discover the answers themselves.” His company’s simulations take less than a minute to get into and are designed to provide “incremental bumps of challenge and frustration, just enough to keep the operator motivated.” Clark loves the idea that in such an environment “you can play and learn, and there is always a reset button.” Play, he adds, “is the thing that makes learning work. Rigor without play is punitive, and doesn’t work.”

Clark organized the first annual Serious Play conference for the industry in 2011, but says his real dream is for the perfect think tank: “500 smart, intense, passionate people” who would talk about educational reform—how to create a philosophy that reflects a diversity of approaches and develop a student-centric curriculum.”

He would like 25% of the attendees to be academics, 25% of them military (“I love how they talk, so visually and graphically, whereas academics tend to talk in symbols and make obscure references.”), 25% corporate, and 25% “random.” Clark smiles at the prospect of such an event, and one realizes that with his determination and drive, it will likely take place; he even has a location picked out: Portland, Maine.

Meanwhile, Clark continues to serve as an advocate for his industry.

“Right now, educational media is both hated and necessary,” he declares, “but I want it to be celebrated.”

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Alumni in Technology

Making Magic

Award Winning Composer Clint Bajakian ’77 lint Bajakian ’77, whose passion at Fenn was band, calls Dave Huston his “initial music mentor.”

One of Clint’s best friends at the time was his classmate Steve Carell, “my euphonium buddy,” he notes, referring to a brass instrument that is smaller than a tuba. The two boys played in the band during the 1976 Bicentennial celebration, when President Ford landed in a helicopter on Fenn’s lacrosse field for the Concord Independence Day ceremonies.

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Fenn, he says, with its motto of Sua Sponte, helped him develop a set of values and ethics. “It struck in me a deep appreciation for knowledge, fixed like a bright eternal lamp in that overall moral structure that has endured with me my whole life.” He went on to study at Middlesex and the New England Conservatory of Music, where he majored in classical guitar and music theory, and he has a master’s degree in music composition from the University of Michigan.

Clint’s first job in the video games industry was as a composer of music at LucasFilm (which soon became LucasArts Entertainment Company), creating scores for games including Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. His most successful and enjoyable project, he says, was working on the game Outlaws, released by LucasArts in 1997. An orchestra with authentic instruments was used, which was not common practice at the time; the score was an homage to the Spaghetti Western music of Ennio Morricone, and Clint played several instruments on it.

While at LucasArts, Clint was called upon to be the voice of Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt for several Star Wars game titles. To make this happen, “we learned how the sound designer Benn 12

Burtt processed James Earl Jones’ voice for the films.”

Composing for and designing sound effects for video games and producing or supervising scores has been Clint’s professional life for the last twenty-one years. To score the game Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb in 2003, for which he received Game Audio Network Guild (GANG) awards for Best Interactive Score and Music of the Year, he used a sixty-five-piece orchestra and added synthesized music. One of the founders and the initial vice president of GANG, Clint is on on its Board of Directors.

Since 2004 Clint, who lives in San Rafael, CA with his wife, Deniz Ince, daughter Lara, 16, and son Deren, 13, has served as Senior Music Manager at Sony Computer Entertainment. “I love working with people,” he says. “At the end of the day, while so many technical and creative faculties are employed, the magic happens as a result of many different people with different orientations collaborating in concert on a common goal. And the whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts.”

Alumni in Technology

Computerizing Electrical Systems with Virtual Wiring

Stev St evee Morss ’73 hen Ste Stevve Morss ’73 was a little boy boy, he lov loved ed to take things apart apart to find find out how how they wor worked, ked, though he usually usually managed managed to get get them back back together together before before incurring incurring his parents’ parents’ wrath. He moved mov ed on on to “in invventing enting”” co contraptio ntraptions ns fro from stray stray batteries, batteries, car ardboar dboard, d, light bulbs, and tape tape.. But it was at Fenn, he rrec ecalls, alls, that he w wor orked ked with one one of the first first mainframe computers computers at Dartmouth, Dartmouth, co connecting nnecting through thr ough a bulky telety teletype machine over over a pho phone ne line. line.

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Interestingly, Steve never took another course in digital electronics or computer programming in high school or college, or in graduate school at Princeton. From Fenn he went to Phillips Exeter, after which he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at Princeton. After working for a year as an engineering assistant at a solar power company, he took a “fantastic” course in lab electronics at Harvard Extension School, which motivated him to build and study electronics on his own. When he returned to Princeton as a graduate student in semiconductor physics, he had already built his first computer from circuit boards, wires, and IC’s (integrated circuits).

Steve also has an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Harvard, has worked as digital design engineer at Wang Laboratories and as the director of ERX hardware development at Redstone Communications. Redstone was bought

by Siemens, a global force in electronics and electrical engineering, and put in a holding company called Unisphere Solutions, where Steve served as VP of Hardware Development.

BUT IT WAS AT FENN, HE RECALLS, THAT HE WORKED WITH ONE OF THE FIRST MAINFRAME COMPUTERS AT DARTMOUTH, CONNECTING THROUGH A BULKY TELETYPE MACHINE OVER A PHONE LINE. Nowadays Steve runs Catalina Computing from his Concord home, which he shares with his wife, Lili. They have three daughters: Alexandra, Abigail, and Caroline. The technology Steve has developed, called Virtual Wiring, allows one to use a web interface instead of actual wiring to interconnect systems. In other words, the technology makes much of the time and money spent on an electrician unnecessary; in one’s home, lights and switches can be connected to a small computer, he explains. Then,

for example, lights can be controlled by switches that are set up by connecting virtual “wires” on the web page. This way, a computer program “can control almost anything, almost anywhere,” he says.

Catalina is a one-man operation. The product is currently installed in a number of private homes and in one small business.

Steve foresees “some interesting markets licensing the technology for larger companies,” but needs to have patents in place for that to happen. Catalina also has, he says, “some fun applications” for engineers, hobbyists, and students.

Recalling his time at Fenn, Steve credits his advisor and teacher Jim Carter ’54 not only with offering “entertaining” classes but also with “making sure we were disciplined and worked hard.”

He and his classmates would laugh when Jim scolded boys who were “chattering in the corner of the room,” Steve said, “but we knew we had to get serious. I got serious,” he added, “and that is saying a lot, because I’d always been pretty noisy in class.”

13

Passion and Determination Drive Software Start-up

Sam Clemens ’90 and Seth Wylie ’97 am Clemens ‘90 has, he says, “a builder personality.” When involved in a project, “I lie awake at night thinking about other things I can do for our customers.”

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Sam is a co-founder of InsightSquared, a Cambridge start-up whose software helps mid-sized businesses track sales and marketing activity. As Chief Product Officer, he works to design a product the company’s customers will love, and Seth Wylie ’97, as Manager of Customer Engagement, makes sure that clients get the right mix of self-help tools and hands-on support at the right times.

InsightSquared offers analytics software for small and midsized businesses that is less expensive and easier to set up and use than most software that is geared for large companies. Its

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customers are local and national, and the company also works with clients in places including Britain, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, and the Cayman Islands.

At the eighteen-month-old start-up, some forty employees share 5000 square feet of work space, bicycles lean against a wall in the hallway, and Friday nights involve home-brewed beer and families joining in to celebrate the work week. “It’s cozy,” Sam says of the crew who work cheek by jowl at long tables covered with computer equipment. “You want to keep the energy levels high and the communication barriers low; it’s noisy, but interaction is optimized.”

Alumni in Technology

THEIR ENTHUSIASM FOR THEIR WORK, THEIR LAUGHTER AND CAMARADERIE, IS CONTAGIOUS, AND PERHAPS PART OF THE SECRET TO THE COMPANY’S SUCCESS.

The start-up is thriving, “doing as well or better than any other company I’ve been involved with,” Sam says. His work history would lead one to believe he has been in the industry for decades.

With a degree in applied math and economics from Yale (he would go on later to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School), Sam became one of the first employees at Elance, which helps businesses hire and manage in the cloud. Sam worked on writing its business plan, designed products, and led partnerships with eBay, Intuit, and Business Week.

He knows about start-ups from more than one angle; early on Sam worked in venture capital, during which time he was able to Sam Clemens look closely at a dozen fledgling enterprises “to see if they flew.”

Sam worked as VP of Product and Community for BzzAgent, a word-of-mouth marketing software company where he met Seth, and he co-founded Models from Mars, a 3-D modeling start-up. Next up was a stint as VP of Product Management at Hubspot, a pioneer in inbound marketing that works with 8000 customers in fifty-six countries.

A great (times four) grandson of Samuel Longhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, Sam says he owes a “substantial debt” to his Fenn teachers. Kip Norris “sparked my interest” in the subject, he says, pointing out that what InsightSquared does is math-based analytics of compiled data. Sam learned to write

“WE ALL OWN STOCK AND HAVE A GREAT SENSE OF OWNERSHIP, BOTH MENTAL AND FINANCIAL. PEOPLE STAY HERE.” clearly and effectively in Jim Carter’s class, which was “extraordinary preparation for secondary school and college.” ( Jim, ordained for the day, married Sam and Ann Grabhorn; it was an anxiety-laden experience made easier, Jim says, by the glass of wine he acquired at the bar, which was open only to the minister before the ceremony.)

At InsightSquared, which Sam formed with Fred Shilmover, the company’s CEO, and Bryan Stevenson, the Chief Technology Officer, “you work for yourself and define your own job, just like at any start-up. We all own stock and have a great sense of ownership, both mental and financial. People stay here.” Most members of the initial team were people with whom the cofounders had worked. “That’s the way to do it because not hiring the right employees is the biggest risk in starting a company.”

One of those hires was Seth, and Sam calls his friend and colleague “the smartest guy in the building.” A graduate of Brown with a degree in cultural anthropology, Seth has always been interested in “how people interpret the world around them,” he says, so it was a “natural segue” for him to move to his role in the company.

Seth, whose mom, Sally, was a Fenn tutor for more than twenty-five years, has fond memories of his Fenn teachers, especially Sue Finney (“She was the most wonderful teacher and person.”), Walter Birge (“I learned from him the value of communicating through stories.”), Bob McElwain, Seth Wylie who was head of the French department, and Joe Hindle (“He taught me the importance of details, which appealed to my anal retentive side.”)

Seth recalls acting in The Prince and the Pauper under Kirsten Gould’s direction and singing in the Trebles Chorus. He continued to sing and now performs with a Boston-area a cappella group called Vinyl Street.

As Sam and Seth sit across from each other in an empty meeting room, dealing with frequent interruptions by employees who open the door a crack and fire in a “This is urgent; I mean right now” question, their enthusiasm for their work, their laughter and camaraderie, is contagious, and perhaps part of the secret to the company’s success.

“When you love what you do,” Sam says, “you think about it when you’re sleeping, in the shower, eating lunch, and so on.

Having it on your mind all of the time makes you fifteen percent better, and with that fifteen percent, you’ll rise to the top.”

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Alumni in Technology

Aiming to Make the World “Healthier and Safer” Safer”

Energy Consumption Analyst Rob Poor ’68 enn alumni are an illustrious group. They include doctors, scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, architects, military veterans, and clergymen. But perhaps only one of them can say that he appeared in a Star Trek film.

If you download Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and look for the image of Captain Kirk’s right retina that at one point fills the screen, you’ll be looking at the light-sensitive eyeball lining that belongs to Dr. Robert D. Poor ’68, who was a computer graphics designer on the film.

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Rob Poor with son, Nico

Considered to be a pioneer in the wireless sensor network industry, Rob built a rather intriguing resume after studying music at Oberlin. In San Francisco he worked as a recording engineer for the Grateful Dead, and he was a hardware engineer for Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, and a hardware and software engineer for LucasFilm. Rob has a master’s and a doctoral degree from MIT, and is the founder and CEO of BlueDot, a consumer service that seeks to reduce energy consumption in homes and commercial buildings by offering owners simple recommendations based on deep analytics.

Prior to his role in creating BlueDot, Rob co-founded the Ember Corporation in Cambridge eleven years ago, growing the company to about fifty people by appealing to the emerging market of low16

cost, low-power wireless networked devices.

“I’ve become fascinated with what you can do with ‘big data’—amassing mountains of data from various sources and performing advanced analytics to discover unexpected patterns or relationships,” Rob says. Three advances have made this possible, he notes: “Computers have become cheaper and faster; the Web has become a repository for large amounts of data; and an abundance of open source libraries means one can quickly assembly applications from software components, not unlike creating a building from Lego blocks.”

Rob, who lives with his wife, Maria, and their two-year-old son Nico in Manhattan Beach, CA, aims, he says, to “make the world safer and healthier.”

BlueDot can take a home or business owner’s electric bills and the local daily weather data, both available online, and build a model of how one’s home consumes energy. Then, an analysis can show how much energy is used for heating and cooling, how much goes to lighting, how much is “everyday” power, and how much money is spent on each.

Rob is also a principal in NBT Ventures, which also uses analytics to help costumers save money while conserving natural resources.

“I THINK IT IS IMPORTANT THAT FENN BOYS BECOME SKILLED IN HOW TO LEARN. NOT ONLY IS THIS THE ULTIMATE JOB SECURITY, BUT IT MAKES FOR A MUCH MORE INTERESTING LIFE.” Rob was “already dabbling in technology” when he got to Fenn as a seventh grade boarder; he recalls building a crystal radio powered entirely by airborne radio waves. But more so, he says Fenn is where his growing love of music was “cemented,” due in large part to the encouragement of his music teacher, Marty Segal.

Learning skills are great, Rob observes of technology in an educational setting, “but to become a specialist in technology is to run the risk of becoming irrelevant because it changes so quickly.” Instead, “I think it is important that Fenn boys become skilled in how to learn. Not only is this the ultimate job security, but it makes for a much more interesting life.”

“To be really effective in technology,” he continues, “or in any other discipline, you need to develop the imagination to envision what is possible, the good communication skills to explain what is possible, and the good interpersonal skills to get people to help you create what is possible.”

Alumni in Technology

Working to Advance the Robotics Industry

Tully Fo Foot otee ’99 n the YouT ouTube ube video, video, a man relax relaxes es in a living roo room m chair. chair. Not an unusual sight, but in this case case,, a rrobot obot bearing bear ing a tray laden with pastries pastries halts obedientlyy at his feet. In the obedientl video,, Tull video ullyy Foote Foote ’99, the softtwar sof waree dev develop elopment ment manager manager at Willow Garage, is show owiing off the abilities of Tur urtleBot. tleBot.

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In other videos you can observe the TurtleBot wearing a jaunty bow tie or a colorful pointed party hat, or folding laundry and stacking dishes, and despite its similarity to a small, modern, multi-tiered end table, like something from IKEA, you begin thinking of it as human. Willow Garage, in Menlo Park, CA, develops hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. Its robots have far-ranging applications, including their use as aids to people with disabilities.

The company’s PR2, a humanoid robot, can autonomously open doors, locate power outlets, and plug itself in. It has been filmed playing pool with development team members, daintily picking up sushi pieces from a plate, and carrying dishes across a room.

Willow Garage aims to “lay the groundwork for the use of personal robotics applications in everyday life.” Committed to open source robotics software, the company founded and continues to contribute heavily to the robot operating system, or ROS. The software it develops is BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) licensed, making it completely free for anyone to use and to change, and for other companies to commercialize on. Several universities are among the company’s customers.

AT FENN, TULLY “LEARNED THE VALUE OF WORKING HARD AND HOLDING MYSELF TO A HIGH STANDARD.” The company believes that its approach will advance robotics innovation and will help to ensure that the adoption of robotic technologies is a transparent process with positive social impact. Tully notes that the computer industry underwent “huge growth” in part “because there was a common core of Linux (a computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution) as an open source project around which a community was built and people could collaborate.” Willow Garage is seeking to build an open source product “with the same sort of community,” in order to grow the robotics industry, which is poised to “take off,”Tully says. “I’m really excited about being able to drive this process forward.”

Willow Garage’s open source software and hardware allow users to “jump in at any level, and the company has worked hard to provide a system which can be brought up and made to work without extensive domain knowledge,”Tully says. “Even without buying any hardware there’s a simulator such that you can learn to program a robot as long as you have a relatively modern computer.”

At Fenn, Tully loved sports, photography, theater tech, and band, especially marching in the Patriots’ Day Parade, and his classroom memories include preparing his Russian history map, having conversations in French class, and going on the Latin, Williamsburg band, and Washington, D.C. trips. But he was intrigued with technology even then, and recalls many Fenn afternoons spent “playing with early versions of Linux on an old computer.” Fenn, Tully adds, played a strong role in making him the person he has become. “I learned the value of working hard and holding myself to a high standard.”

After graduating from Concord Academy, Tully earned a bachelor’s degree at Caltech and a master’s at the University of Pennsylvania. He knew what he wanted to do professionally as soon as he began working on his graduate degree, but says that he has “loved to create things and solve problems” as long as he can remember. “I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the world,” he declares.

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Alumni in Technology

Number Crunching for the Team

Sports Analytics Expert Matt Marolda ’89 “

e are card counters at the blackjack table. And we’re gonna turn the odds on the casino,” declares Billy Beane, whose unconventional approach to scouting and trading baseball players set the world of the sport on its ear.

The scene is from Moneyball Moneyball,, and those who saw the film know that Beane was referring to the analytical, evidence-based, sabermetric approach to assembling a competitive baseball team, a method that he used to turn around the beleaguered Oakland A’s.

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Alumni in Technology

THE COMPANY COMPANY CAN TRACK HUNDREDS OF STA STATISTICS, COMP COMPARE ARE ATHLETES ACROSS SEASONS, AGE, AND EXPERIENCE, AND RAPIDL RAPIDLYY ANALYZE ANALYZE THOUSANDS OF PLA PLAYERS. YERS.

Sports analytics, the use of complicated statistics for decision making in all aspects of team sports, from player trades to drafts to on-field strategy to ticket prices, is a rapidly growing field that is impacting teams around the world.

Getting a high-powered job in sports is said to be increasingly about working with data, and a number of Boston area companies are having an impact on teams around the world.

One of the number crunchers is Stratbridge, a software tech company founded in 1999 by Matt Marolda ’89. Matt says his passion for technology was sparked in college, saying that at Fenn, he was always more interested in sports than in computers. At Fenn and Middlesex he played football and basketball and recalls Read Albright and Mark Biscoe as “big influences on me.” He has remained close to three of his best Fenn friends and classmates: Ben Fortmiller, Stew Williamson, and Jason Ryan.

After graduating from Bowdoin, where he majored in math and economics and lettered in football, Matt joined Braxton Associates as a consultant, doing customer analysis and company valuations. Using the same, repetitive approach for all of his analytic work eventually led him to a conclusion: “If I could learn coding, I could make this easier on myself.”

Matt began building tools for Stratbridge in his Back Bay bedroom, naming the company for his father’s consulting firm, Windbridge, and his own experience with strategy consulting, and wanting to create a label that was “not trendy, but sounded old and established.” Despite at one point having just $78 in his checking account, he got his start-up off the ground without venture capital, in part by realizing early on that “it’s better to get people to commit to multiple years” of the company’s service than make one-time sales. Meanwhile, Matt pursued an MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he won the prestigious Adams Award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship. At about the same time he tripled his business and hired ten employees.

In 2005 the VP of technology at the Celtics asked if Stratbridge could apply its data analysis to ticket sales, and the company developed a whole suite of projects for this purpose.

“We could help owners make the most money from tickets, and price them by providing data on who’s buying,” he says.

Matt Marolda in TD Garden, home of the Celtics

Soon after, the company began building software tools for player evaluations, and that part of the business was eventually bought by XOS Digital, where Matt serves as executive vice president, currently dividing his time between both companies.

XOS, where about 200 of the company’s employees work on sports technology, has about 300 U.S. and European pro teams and Division 1 schools on its client list.

Peter Brand, the Ivy League wiz who comes up with the number crunching formula in the Moneyball story, says the old way of scouting players, based on what a scout saw, box scores, and the like, is “medieval.” Sports teams are flooded with player data, from health histories to speed to time on the court, for example, but limited in their ability to analyze it, Matt says. The company can track hundreds of statistics, compare athletes across seasons, age, and experience, and rapidly analyze thousands of players. It provides teams with a suite of customized analytic software.

“THE THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD ME THINKS THE THIRTYEIGHT-YEAR-OLD ME IS AWESOME!” Matt says he attends All Star games and gets to hobnob with sports figures, but adds that “if you get into this business for that reason, the bloom is off the rose quickly.” What he looks for in a hire is “someone who is fanatical about sports but also passionate about technology; we don’t want fanboys and we do need people who have stamina.”

Having once “shunned” computers, Matt is a self-described “geek” who says it’s sometimes hard to turn off his own wiring at the end of the day so he can spend quality time with his wife Betsy, and their children John, seven, and Kate, five.

Still, there is nothing else he would rather do than “work with challenging, cool technology that’s always changing.” As he swivels back to his computer in his XOS office, where posters of pro-sports teams decorate the walls, Matt declares that despite the challenges of the daily grind, “The thirteenyear-old me thinks the thirty-eight-year-old me is awesome!”

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FacultyDevelopments Fenn Welcomes New Faculty and Staff Fenn welcomes eight new faculty and staff members and one Fenn Fellow this year, some of them familiar faces on campus.

EDEN DUNCKEL

ROB KETTLEWELL ’04

JENNIFER MANGANO

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EDEN DUNCKEL is the new director of Learning Support Services, coming to Fenn from Bridgton Academy, a boarding school for boys in Maine where for six years she managed all activities of the Office of Disability Services, actively promoting the importance of empowering students by helping them learn how to learn. She has also taught English, psychology, and history, and was a school psychologist in Anchorage, Alaska, prior to her tenure in Maine. Eden has a BA in psychology from UMass Amherst, an MA in psychology from Tufts University, and a PhD in Education from the University of Tennessee.

Eden, her husband, Matthew, and their twins Eric and Eva, who turned two in November, live in Acton, where Eden grew up. “It’s great to be back home,” she says. She calls Fenn a “wonderful, caring, and respectful community,” and says she has been “welcomed with open arms.”

ROB KETTLEWELL ’04 is a Fenn Fellow for the fall and winter trimesters. Rob has worked at Star Camps; he enjoys teaching young people because it is rewarding, he says, “to see them improve with my help.” Rob is assisting John Sharon, chair of the Social Studies department, in the latter’s Global Studies classes, and is observing and covering some Latin classes, coaching football, and working with Tiffany Toner in drama.

The Fenn Fellow—a non-compensated, one-trimester appointment that carries an option for extension—was inaugurated two years ago as part of Fenn’s continued commitment to encourage and inspire recent college graduates to pursue teaching. It a great opportunity, Rob says, because he has the time and flexibility to observe other teachers, including those who taught him while he was at Fenn. He cites as a role model retired social studies teacher Jim Carter ’54, who not only taught him research skills but also sparked Rob’s interest in Russian history, a subject that Rob continued to study.

A Worcester Academy graduate, Rob earned a BA in history at the University of Richmond, where he co-hosted a campus radio talk show, interviewing political figures such as Virginia Governor Mitch Daniels. When asked if Fenn has changed at all since his days here, he notes that it is “more diverse in many ways, allowing more perspectives in classrooms, but it still has that strong sense of community that I remember.”

JENNIFER MANGANO, Fenn’s new athletic trainer, has a BS in athletic training from the University of Southern Maine. A certified trainer, she most recently worked at Middlesex School.

Drawn to Fenn because “it was everything I was looking for in a position,” Jennifer says she liked the challenge of being one of the school’s first trainers and of helping Fenn build a great sports medicine program.” An Ayer resident, Jennifer says her greatest passion outside of her work is snowboarding. “I’m really excited to be a part of Fenn and I’ve had a great experience so far,” she says.

Faculty Developments

DEBBIE VOLPE HOGAN

FREEMON ROMERO ’04

HARRIS ROSENHEIM ’02

CAROL VALCHUIS

DEBBIE VOLPE HOGAN has joined the Alumni and Development Office as a part-time Development Assistant. Debbie has worked at Boston College, Anthill Technologies in Woburn, and Harvard University, and was the associate director of the Baby John Fund in Lexington.

Debbie, who grew up in Milford, was technical director and scoreboard operator at Fenway Park when she was in college; she earned a BA in Communication at Boston College and an MS in Sport Management at UMass Amherst. CHARLOTTE PADDEN (Not pictured) is working part-time with Sarah Gianfriddo in Extended Day and monitoring the pick-up area for the 5:30 p.m. late bus. Charlotte has been on the Summer Fenn staff for the past four summers and her brothers Patrick ’99 and Timothy ’03 are Fenn graduates. Summer Fenn welcomes SUSAN SEE (Not pictured) of Uxbridge as an office assistant. Susan previously worked as the director of Human Resources and of Operations at the YWCA of Berrien County in Missouri. She earned her Professional in Human Resources certification in 2006.

FREEMON ROMERO ’04, a Fenn Fellow last year, has joined the faculty as a sixth grade math and Spanish teacher, and will be coaching and assisting in Admissions. Freemon, who lives in Roslindale, graduated from St. Mark’s School, has a degree in marketing from Bryant University, and has worked at Star Camps for several summers, coaching basketball and soccer.

Freemon was drawn back to Fenn “because of the caring and supportive community that has been here since I was a Fenn boy back in fourth grade,” he says. “I feel like a professional student” he adds, explaining that he is “doing all the things I once did as a Fenn boy—sports, classes, lunch, and socializing.” Freemon is a “big sports fan” who tries to play as much as possible when he has free time; he plays pick-up basketball year round and joined a softball league this summer.

HARRIS ROSENHEIM ’02 has joined the staff in a one-year position as Advancement Officer in the Alumni and Development Office. He is focusing on supporting the efforts of Fenn’s Annual Fund and encouraging alumni participation in events and programs. Harris had been working in the Alumni and Development Office at Harvard Business School following his graduation in 2009 from Connecticut College, where he earned a degree in economics.

“It’s exciting and enjoyable to be back at Fenn,” says Harris, who remembers vividly his days as a student, particularly working with “terrific teachers,” playing on the tennis team, serving as a Senator, acting in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and every morning raising and lowering the flag with classmate Will Howerton. Harris, who grew up in Wayland, is living in the Back Bay and spends his free time playing tennis and volunteering for his college.

After working on a temporary basis, CAROL VALCHUIS is the permanent receptionist in the front office. Carol, who earned an Associate degree in lab technology from Massachusetts Bay Community College and has worked as an assistant supervisor and lab technician at Somerville Hospital, is the mother of four children, two of them Fenn graduates: Steven ’03 and Eric ’04.

Carol volunteered for years in the Fenn library, bringing her young sons before they were old enough to start school. She and her husband, David, are Fenn neighbors, so Carol has an ideal commute. What strikes Carol the most about being Fenn’s receptionist is that when she gets a call from a parent who has realized with horror that she forgot to report that her son is sick, “I know what that’s like. I’ve been there.” Carol feels “blessed” she says, to be part of such a great community.

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AdvancingFenn What is Signif icant in the Lives of Boys?

Board of Visitors Hears Results of Study

dam Cox, PhD, a clinical psychologist and advocate for children’s mental health, was the featured speaker at the annual Board of Visitors meeting in November. Dr. Cox presented an overview of a study he conducted for the International Boys’ Schools Coalition on “Locating Significance in the Lives of Boys.” He began his research at Fenn, one of about twenty schools around the world selected for the study, and learned from the students with whom he met that they are “surer about their passions and hopes than either they, or we, realize.”

Before Dr. Cox spoke, Board of Trustees president Kevin Parke welcomed the Visitors and updated them on the construction of the Library and Science Center, due to be completed this summer. “Think of the Fenn campus as a tool, and the faculty as caring craftsmen,” he said. Mr. Parke noted that the new building will not fundamentally change the school but instead will enhance the educational experience for Fenn students by improving the tools for those who “challenge boys at a critical time in their lives.”

Headmaster Jerry Ward reported on the progress of the next strategic plan, which was presented in draft form to the Board of Trustees this fall and which was to be finalized in December. He reminded the Visitors that “as the school moves forward, we wish to preserve what is central and good, and that involves evolution and adaptation.”

Dr. Cox presented his findings in a powerful series of “I’ve learned” statements, including these:

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• I’ve learned there is a brotherhood in a boys’ school that can last a lifetime.

• I’ve learned that boys are desperate for adults to be honest with them and to hear the truth about what they are good at but also about what they are not so good at.

• I’ve learned that boys love and relate to animals; they have a grounding effect that technology doesn’t have.

• I’ve learned that just about the worst thing a boy can experience is disappointing his parents.

• I’ve learned that boys spend about three hours a day checking Facebook, but actually think Facebook is a huge waste of time; they would be glad to give it up, as long as everybody else is willing to do the same.

• I’ve learned that the biggest fear of boys is that they will be stuck in a job that makes them feel like someone they’re not.

• I’ve learned that every boy has had a teacher who he believes has changed his life.

Dr. Adam Cox with ninth graders who were on a panel, talking about what is important to boys.

Dr. Cox shared his research with faculty and staff on a Professional Day in November. Among his recommendations to parents and educators is that they need to teach with a vocation in mind, to uncover and promote purpose, and to create a forum for dialogue. The father of an eleven-year-old boy, Dr. Cox noted that he has been fortunate to travel to multiple countries and visit some of the finest boys’ schools in the world. If he could choose a school for his son, he added, it would be Fenn.

“I’ve learned there is a brotherhood in a boys’ school that can last a lifetime.”

Advancing Fenn

Library and Science Center to be Completed this Summer onstruction on the new Library and Science Center is proceeding well, according to architect Malcolm Kent, and the project is on budget and on schedule for completion in August. Designed by Imai Keller Moore, architects of the Meeting and Performance Hall, the building will provide ample space for a light and airy library that includes dedicated rooms for instruction and group studies and nearly double the shelf space of the former library.

Provisions are being made for a permanent archival display on the history of Robb Hall (see Reflections on p. 30), including preserved senior seats. Digital resources such as emerging mobile media will be supported throughout, with individual access to power and wireless data. Four new and spacious labs with moveable central desks and rooms for prep and storage will be part of the Science Center.

Creating a new building was essential, notes Jeff Adams, chair of the Building and Grounds Committee of the Board of Trustees. Over the last ten or so years, Fenn looked at a number of approaches to renovating Robb Hall, he says, first as a larger meeting space and then as a possible library. Two different architectural firms were consulted and “each time we came to the conclusion that the building, (which had been substantially remodeled in the early 1980s,) could not be practically renovated into an effective or efficient hall or library to meet the needs of the School.” Much effort, he adds, was spent “trying to make it work.”

Adds Mr. Kent, “There was no reasonable way of altering the old one-story structure. So much would have to be done to it that there would be nothing original left.” He says that the new

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structure represents a fifteen-degree shift to the north, which preserves more area to the south, for the best use of the School’s land. The site, he notes, has been carefully set up to protect the existing trees, particularly the massive copper beech at the corner of the building. An arborist regularly checks the health of the trees.

One of the goals was to construct an efficient building with well-insulated walls and roof, so that as new and more efficient heating and cooling technologies emerge over the next fifty years, they can be incorporated into the structure. This goal would not have been achievable with a renovated structure. Utilizing the second floor upper volume for classrooms, Mr. Adams says, which is possible in a new building, yields an efficient use of the footprint.

The vision of the trustees in support of this plan “will form a very coherent center for the sciences with enhanced interaction among science, IT [Information Technology], and the library programs,” says Mr. Adams. Construction of the second floor allows use of the existing elevator in the Boll Building to provide handicapped access to the entire Schoolhouse, which includes the Mulvany Center. Imai Keller Moore and their consultants modeled the energy use of the building, considering such factors as lighting design, types of insulation, air sealing, and efficiency of mechanical equipment “to achieve a design that surpasses the stretch code requirements in Concord,” according to Mr. Adams, who reports that he is happy that the project is going so well and is “thrilled” each week to attend the site meetings.

Top: In October, boys signed a beam (left) that was set into the framework of the new building (center).

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The Countdown to Campaign Success Incredible. Unbelievable.

Heartwarming.

These are the reactions campaign volunteers receive when they tell people that Fenn’s Boys at the Heart campaign has just surpassed the $25 million mark.

Despite the extraordinary progress made thus far, a cadre of solicitors—including Headmaster Jerry Ward, Campaign CoChairs Nancy Beaulieu and Vinnie Lynch ’64, and Board Chair Kevin Parke— continues to work hard to raise the final $560,000 needed to pay for the new Library and Science Center, now under construction, and an additional $1.1 million to complete funding of the campaign’s $5 million endowment objective.

Meeting the anonymous $1 million challenge for Fenn’s diversity initiative is also a key element in this final phase of the campaign. Mr. Ward has been speaking with donors who believe strongly in the important role diversity plays in preparing students for success in an increasingly global world.

Donors have committed just over $250,000 toward the challenge, and Mr. Ward is working with others who will help the School triple that amount.

The success of the Boys at the Heart campaign is especially impressive given that Fenn’s last capital fundraising effort, completed in 2004, raised $6.7 million to construct the Boll Family Building for Academics and Athletics and create a $1.5 million endowment earmarked for faculty salaries.

The School’s unprecedented fundraising success isn’t typical for an elementary/ middle school. In fact, Fenn—with its $1 million Annual Fund and a campaign in the $25 million range—is now in the company

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of well-respected secondary schools. “The Fenn community has always been generous, but for this capital campaign families extended their philanthropy to a degree that we never could have anticipated,” says Mr. Ward. “It has allowed us to meet all the strategic needs set forth in Fenn’s last long-range plan.”

With one gift of $5 million+ and eight more gifts of $1 million+, early campaign commitments hinted at the success the School has seen. An additional thirty-eight six-figure contributions removed any doubt; Boys at the Heart would be a record-breaker.

Now, with only six months before the campaign draws to a close on June 30, the volunteer leadership is striving to fulfill all its fundraising objectives.

The generosity of the broad school community has allowed Fenn to accomplish many wonderful things for its students.

“This campaign is really all about the boys,” says Mr. Parke, “and one of its over-arching objectives has been to ensure that Fenn’s teachers have the tools necessary to provide Fenn boys with the best education possible.”

The new Meeting and Performance Hall is one of those tools, a spectacular building made possible through the campaign’s success. What’s truly important is what happens inside—on stage, in the music or band classrooms, on the floor during All School Meeting announcements, or in the tech booth high above.

Fenn’s new artificial turf football/lacrosse field, given by Bob and Laura Reynolds, parents of Will ’11, ensures that valuable “teaching moments” extend to the Fenn sports program as well. With a first-rate playing surface guaranteeing that less time is lost to wet fields caused by inclement

weather, Fenn athletes are maximizing their potential both as individuals and teammates.

None of the recent campus improvements would have been possible without the infrastructure provided through the campaign’s earliest gifts. These gifts funded the new campus entrance drive, the addition of much needed parking, the acquisition of adjacent properties, and the renovation of buildings to house the Admissions and Advancement offices.

“Parking and paving may not be the most exciting campaign projects, but they were an essential requirement. Once in place, we could move on to address more studentfocused needs,” says Dave Platt, Director of Finance and Operations.

One of the most visible of those needs— at least from Monument Street—is the new Library and Science Center. Thanks to another, separate, $1 million anonymous challenge, Fenn was able to accelerate giving in the first two months of 2012. This allowed the Board of Trustees to commence building this past summer.

While the Library/Science structure is taking shape before our eyes, it will require another half million dollars to fund fully. If you haven’t had an opportunity to give and would like to contribute to the Boys at the Heart campaign—either for the new building or to support the School’s endowment needs in the areas of financial aid, faculty support, or general operations— please be in touch with Anne Boudreau in Fenn’s Advancement Office.

The Fenn community has proven— through the campaign’s extraordinary success—that by working together the School can achieve truly amazing things.

Advancing Fenn

Fenn Welcomes New Trustees Fenn is extremely fortunate to have an exceptional group of volunteers who give generously of their time and energy as members of the Board of Trustees. Our thanks go out to them for their tireless efforts and selfless support of the School.

COLIN GOUNDEN

“I’m excited about the balance the school seems to have struck between evolution and consistency,” says new Board member Colin Gounden, whose son, Louis, is a seventh grader at Fenn. As an investor and advisor to Entrepreneurs Globally, Colin works closely with the founders of very early stage companies in biotechnology and e-commerce sectors, particularly in the U.S., U.K., and India.

After earning a degree in biochemistry and molecular

biology from Harvard in 1992, where he was a three-time winner of a Ford Scholarship for original academic research, he worked for a series of strategic research and software services in the U.S. and abroad.

Colin and his wife Alyson, who live in Cambridge, chose Fenn for their son after looking at many schools and doing research on different styles of education. “We became convinced that Fenn’s singular focus on boys and middle school would be a great fit for Louis,” he says.

SUFIA JAMAL

Fenn parent Sufia Jamal joined the Board this fall. She is the Publications Manager at The Steppingstone Foundation, which develops and implements programs that prepare underserved urban school children for educational opportunities that lead to college success. Three Steppingstone graduates joined the Fenn community as students this year.

Sufia, who earned an MBA from Bentley University, is also the Assistant Director of Development and Alumni Relations at the Fayerweather Street School in Cambridge

and has worked at the National Conference for Community and Justice and at City Year Boston. Of joining the Board, she says, “I can’t think of a better way to spend my time than to support the work of Fenn’s amazing cadre of educators.”

Though Fenn is a relatively small school, “the fact that its students come from more than forty surrounding towns and cities is remarkable and speaks volumes to the school’s dedication to diversity,” says Sufia, who lives in Burlington with her husband, Yasin, and two children, both at Fenn: Adam, a seventh grader, and fourth grader Riaz.

BETTY ANN KILLIAN

As president of the Parents’ Association this year, Betty Ann Killian, parent of Matthew, an eighth grader, is an ex-officio member of the Board. An active volunteer in her children’s schools, she has been a PTA president and grade parent, and a member of the executive committee at Lawrence Academy. Betty Ann serves as cochair of the Executive Committee of Corporators and as a member of the Foundation Board at Emerson Hospital.

After a fifteen-year career as a retail buyer, Betty Ann works part-time as a wardrobe consultant and a

representative for the Doncaster Collection, helping women build self-confidence and find a personal style. She also works with Suitability, a local non-profit that provides underprivileged women with appropriate clothing and skills for interviewing.

Volunteering at Fenn is important to Betty Ann “because I strongly feel that a school community thrives when students, administrators, faculty, and staff are supported by parents.” Betty Ann, her husband, Michael, Matthew, and his sister, Meghan, live in Concord.

JK NICHOLAS ’81

JK Nicholas ’81 says some of his best childhood memories are of being a student at Fenn, which, he says “was an amazing place for boys to develop and thrive, and it seems it still is.” He recalls his classmates, his teachers (“with a nod to Mr. Hyde”), step ball, bombardment in the old gym, science teacher Peter Stowe “and his amazing field trips,” and Fenn-Nashoba dances.

Chief Executive Officer of the Chelsea Clock Company, JK earned a degree in philosophy at Duke University and an

MBA from its Fuqua School of Business. He and his wife, Virginia, have three children, Katherine, Anna, and Matthew, who attend Nashoba Brooks.

JK says that as a new Board member, he feels “it is an honor to give back to one of the schools that had the most profound impact on the development of my character and of my academic discipline and habits.” He adds that Fenn has the same “inner character” he remembers. “Sua Sponte will forever endure,” he declares.

ANDREW J. SHILLING “Our son is benefitting so much from Fenn in some part because of the time and effort put forth by past generations of Board members,” says trustee Drew Shilling, who joined the Board of Trustees last year. The Shillings chose Fenn, he said, because of “the many advantages of a single-sex education in the middle school years.”

Senior Vice President, Partner, and Equity Portfolio Manager at Wellington Management in Boston, Drew earned a degree in economics from Amherst College and an

MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He and his wife, Kiki, live in Lincoln with their three children. Reid has two sisters: Maggie, a student at Deerfield Academy, and Ellie, who attends Nashoba Brooks. Drew has been an adjunct member of the Board’s Investment Committee for three years.

Calling the future of the School “bright,” Drew says that as a middle school for boys, Fenn occupies “an important and rare niche.”

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AroundCampus

Communit Co unityy Se Ser vice Pr Projects Help Feed Feed Hungry Hungr y, House Homeless Homeless he School conducted its annual food drive in November for the Open Table Pantry, with students collecting thousands of canned and packaged nonperishables and delivering them to the Concord organization. Fenn is among the largest providers of food items for the Pantry. In October some two dozen boys, plus parents and faculty members, helped the Boston organization Heading Home relocate two formerly homeless families from shelters into apartments in Boston.

Heading Home’s mission is to end homelessness in Greater Boston by providing support services and emergency, transitional, and permanent housing to low-income homeless and formerly homeless families. The Fenn volunteers helped clean, repair, and furnish the apartments prior to the moves. Jennifer and Bob Ewing have been involved in the organization, as have their children, Fenn students Ryan, Kevin, and James, for several years. Fenn parents Josh and Nancy Solomon have also participated in the moves with their sons Max and Jo-Jo, and have served on the organization’s Advisory Committee.

Also in the fall Lower School students helped prepare the gardens for winter at Gaining Ground Farm in Concord, wielding pitchforks and shovels, and racing wheelbarrows to the compost heap. Meanwhile, students harvested peppers, beets, carrots, chives, parsley and other crops in the Fenn garden before planting cabbage and bok choy, followed by winter rye. Armfuls of beets were contributed to Gaining Ground, which immediately donated them to area food pantries and meal programs.

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Top: Lower School boys helped out at Gaining Ground Farm in October.

Middle: The Fenn community collected non-perishable items for Concord’s Open Table Pantry this fall Bottom: This beets doing homework! Louis Gounden, left, and Benjamin Zide help with the fall harvest in the Fenn garden.

Riley Gustafson, a fifth grader, carries in fish for the aquarium the new apartment resident had wished for.

Winter Concerts Showcase Singers and Strings wo winter concerts highlighted the vocal and instrumental talents of scores of boys. The annual Instrumental Concert featured eighty-nine young musicians directed by Maeve Lien. The Beginning Band, Second Year Band, Jazz Band, and Concert Band offered holiday classics, with many featured soloists. The Holiday Choral Concert had a German theme, with the Trebles and the String Ensemble performing German and Eastern European folk songs, traditional holiday music, classical pieces, and a sing-a-long. The choral concert was directed by Mike Salvatore.

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Seventh Grader Summits Kilimanjaro onfidence, determination, and excitement propelled seventh grader Ian Urban to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in August, making him one of the youngest people to conquer the 19,341-foot African peak. Ian, who made the ascent with his parents, Robert Urban and Mary Lynne Hedley, his older brother, Cameron, and twelve other climbers, raised nearly $1200 for Heifer International, a nonprofit that works to end hunger and poverty throughout the world.

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Right: Seventh grader Ian Urban summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in August.

Young Actors Shine in Fall Productions all was a busy time on stage in the Meeting Hall. Directed by Tiffany Toner, the Middle School Players presented The Worst Middle School Play in the World, written by Bill Gleason (who published it under the title The Worst High School Play in the World). The Upper School Players offered Charlie Foster, an ensemble piece by Raymond King Shurtz about coming-of-age and the sensitive nature of walking in someone else’s shoes, and Rob Morrison’s Shakespeare class offered scenes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Hamlet.

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Left: Sixth grader Kadin Ali as Hamlet 27

FennSports

FEN ENN N ATHL THLE ETE TES S POST STR TRO ONG SEASONS SPR SP RING 2012 SPORTS SPORTS The VARSITY LACROSSE TEAM achieved an undefeated season with a win over Hillside in its final game. Jack Lyne was named Outstanding Defensive Player at the May tournament. Coach Nat Carr called the team “a great, deserving group of guys who had a lot of fun playing this season.” Assisting Coach Carr was Topher Bevis.

The three games of VARSITY BASEBALL’S tournament were “filled with emotional highs and lows,” said Bob Starensier, who coached with Dave Rouse. Despite losing captain and shortstop Bryce Dion to an injury in the third inning of the championship game with Fessenden, the team “stayed together and left it all on the field.”

The team’s season record was 7-5.

VARSITY TENNIS posted a record of 5-3-1, with Gavin Tasker playing #1 singles throughout the season, while Co-Captains Carter Jones and Andreas Sheikh played #2 and #3 singles. The final singles player was seventh grader Alex Muresianu. All four singles players had winning records.

Andrew Nadja and Luc Mundel went undefeated at the #1 doubles position. A season highlight, according to Coach Rob Morrison, was the team’s third place finish at the Fessenden tournament, with Gavin winning the consolation round.

TRACK AND FIELD, coached by Dave Duane and John Fitzsimmons, placed third in the Fenn relays, with Cole Winstanley earning a bronze medal in the pentathlon at the Hillside Jamboree meet.

Fenn Sports

FALL 2012 SPORTS The VARSITY SOCCER team’s tournament held at Eaglebrook School in November ended with the pressure on ninth grader Will Hrabchak to make a penalty kick and break the final game tie with Cardigan Mountain’s A team; Will was up to the task and the team clinched the title for Fenn. Season record for the team was 4-4-1, with Fenn winning the Eaglebrook tournament. Jason Rude, who coached with Bob Starensier, called James Sanderson “the MVP of the day,” after James, who had become ill on the sidelines, “came back in and played like a warrior,” a performance that “propelled us in a direction to win.”

VARSITY FOOTBALL’S season came to a premature end with a record of 2-3, due to two weather-related game cancellations that denied the team “a sense of closure,” according to Coach Joe LoPresti, whose colorful Post Game Reports appeared on www.fenn.org. Coaches LoPresti, Nat Carr, Dave Rouse, and Rob Kettlewell agree that season highlights included Odom Sam’s sixty-yard run in the opening play against Dexter.

More exciting football was played towards the end of the season in the annual Blue-Gold intrasquad game on Reynolds Field.

Usually a tight contest, it was a 38-6 rout, with Gold dominating from start to finish.

CROSS-COUNTRY, coached by Dave Duane and Kwame Cobblah, posted an 8-3 record; lead harriers were Cormac Zacher, Duncan Umphrey, Nick Johnson, and Spencer Davis. The team placed seventh out of thirty teams at the Jim Munn Invitational.

Middle School athletics are traditionally intramural activities, but this year the MIDDLE SCHOOL FOOTBALL team engaged in a hard-fought, competitive battle with archrival Fay right up until the final whistle. Coaches Jeff LaPlante and Morgan Hall, assisted by Dave Rouse, Topher Bevis, and Rob Kettlewell, molded thirty-nine sixth and seventh graders into three cohesive units. Highlights of the 20-16 game included a forty-yard score by Piseth Sam and a twenty-eight yarder by Zack Goorno.

JUNIOR VARSITY SOCCER posted a 6-1-2 season and snagged second place at the Derby Academy Tournament. CoCoach Dave Sanborn says that among several exciting moments during the season were a “furious” three-goal rally in the last fifteen minutes of a fast-paced game against Pike School, a “thrilling” 3-2 victory over archrival Fessenden on Reynolds Field, and a “thorough” 7-0 trouncing of Fay. Dave, who coached with Rob Morrison, noted that Alex Hill was an outstanding goalkeeper and that the team’s defenders were “an organized, tireless, and stingy back line.”

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Reflections “Robb Hall of the past now becomes, in fact, the soul of our wonderful school and as such is rightly remembered, honored, and celebrated.”

Remembering Robb Hall o countless alumni, Robb Hall was, to use Fred Lovejoy’s words, “the soul of the Fenn School.” Fred, Fenn class of 1951, says that what began “as a place for our small student body to be grounded in the spirit of Sua Sponte, a place for the annual Fenn speaking contest, and a place for plays and student elections,” went on to “represent something larger and more important: the legacy of those who had gone before and built our school on a goodly foundation—Robb and Kidder, Jewell and Newbury, Fenn and Frothingham, Twitchell and Aloian. All were examples of extraordinary commitment and service to a lofty ideal—the education and development of young boys as they embarked on their voyage in life.”

When you ask the men who were the boys growing up with Robb Hall—especially those who, like Fred and his classmates Tom Piper, Russ Robb, and Sam Jewell, hail from its earliest years—to talk about what made the building so important to them, they will speak instead about what is more meaningful and significant in their memories.

They will move quickly from a recollection of a speech they made or a dance they attended in Robb Hall, to the teachers, coaches, and classmates they loved; the skating they did on

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Buttrick’s Pond; the treks they made up and over the hill to Bemis Farm for skiing on Big Punk; the mid-day meals of roasts that came from George Buehler’s father’s farm and were prepared

by Lydia, Fenn’s Finnish cook; the marbles they played; the stilts they crafted in Woodshop and teetered around on; and the school’s first headmaster, Roger Fenn, an avid naturalist who led them on bird walks, instructed them through science experiments, refereed their games, and all the while imparted the lessons in values and personal responsibility that held them in thrall.

Many remember what came before the new hall that was completed in 1949: the red boathouse—or hay barn (Roger Fenn referred to the structure as both) that served first as a play room, and later as a dining hall, gymnasium, and stage. Mrs. Russell Robb, a Monument Street neighbor whose grandson Russ would become a student at Fenn in the 1940s, donated the 51 x 17-foot structure to the fledgling school in 1929. “After lunch on opening day, we saw it coming across the vacant lot, drawn by a horse winding up the tow rope on a capstan, to settle on the stone foundations which still support it,” the founding headmaster writes in Roger Remembers. In 1931 the boathouse was renovated and a kitchen was added, and it was dubbed the Dining Hall.

Reflections

“…a place for our small student body to be grounded in the spirit of Sua Sponte…went on to represent something larger and more important: the legacy of those who had gone before and built our school on a goodly foundation…”

Mrs. Robb “was there at a critical time in the life of the school,” says Tom Piper ’51. “I think she admired what Mr. and Mrs. Fenn dreamed of doing and she, too, saw a need for a school in the town. I’m guessing she could see that encouraging us would make a difference.”

Tom knows first hand about Mrs. Robb’s generosity. His father was a local doctor who charged two dollars a visit and made house calls at all hours. The family “didn’t have much,” Tom says. Russ, or Rusty as he is known to his close friends, would sometimes invite Tom to the Robbs' house, where the family had one of the few swimming pools in Concord at the time.

But as the years passed and the student population grew, the Dining Hall, which also served as the stage and gymnasium, proved problematic. Though it had its charms, including the two-inch thick ropes, leftovers from the structure’s boathouse and barn days, that enabled boys to engage each other in contests to see who could shimmy up to the rafters the fastest, the kitchen served as a green room, the washroom as a hiding place for villains in dramatic productions, and all the tables had to be dragged outside in order for students to use the space for play.

A new hall, which the Board of Trustees voted to name in honor of the woman who had shown such interest in the school and had voiced unflagging support for its success, allowed the theatre program to grow and thrive and provided a proper stage from which boys could hone their public speaking skills. Tom remembers delivering a “stern rendition of a talk” on the Baltimore oriole on stage there, though Russ recalls a different sort of incident, one for which Mr. Fenn was decidedly less appreciative. When Russ mischievously threw the light switch in the hall one day and was caught, Mr. Fenn was “livid,” and the

miscreant received a D in conduct that term.

More than sixty years later, with enrollment at 300-plus and a pressing need for more and updated library and science space, the School set out to renovate Robb Hall, but every architectural study showed that altering the current structure, which was last remodeled more than thirty years ago, was not viable. (See p. 23 where update of Library and Science Center appears). This was disappointing news to Headmaster Ward. But the new Library and Science Center “will permanently honor the impact and place of Robb Hall across time and with it the generosity of the Robb family,” he says. The building will house a permanent archival display showing the history of the hall and its highbacked senior seats.

As each generation of alumni look back on their Fenn lives, they seem to recall the moments more than the buildings in which they took place: the games of Hare and Hound, the fierce but friendly Blue vs. Gold contests, the crackers and milk served at recess and after sports, and the times when, after they put in a disappointing performance in a game, a teacher would offer words of compassion and encouragement. “What was important about teaching—kindness and gentleness,” says Tom, “I learned at Fenn.”

Today, Robb Hall represents “the need to maintain in perfect harmony the halcyon days of the past with the imperatives for change of the present,” says Fred. “Robb Hall of the past now becomes, in fact, the soul of our wonderful school and as such is rightly remembered, honored, and celebrated. For it is honoring that soul that we assure a glorious future for the Fenn School.”

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ClassNotes Class of 1939 Joanna “Jo” Crocker shared the sad news that her husband, Weyman “Stumpy” Crocker, passed away on June 21 after several years of battling dementia. In addition to being an alumnus, Weyman taught math for two years at Fenn, living on campus with Jo in the Farm House. From the age of six, Weyman knew he wanted to be an engineer. During his long career he worked at General Electric, Polaroid, and Boeing (among others) while developing precision optics, precision measurement, and aerospace systems and designing some of the U.S.’s first satellites. Weyman had a lifelong love of the outdoors and canoed every possible river in New England.

Among his proudest achievements, though, was the establishment of a halfway house for alcoholics in need in Bellows Falls, VT.

Class of 1963 Fenn recently learned that Robert Niss died on August 4, 2005, after battling a debilitating illness for several years. After graduating from Fenn, Robert attended Proctor Acade-

32 www.fenn.org,

my and received a BA in journalism in 1971 from Colorado College. His writing career was marked by numerous awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, among others.

Class of 1983

Class of 1965

Adam Kanner is living in Los Angeles, where he started an online company called Score Big where you can buy inexpensive tickets to all kinds of premium events. In May, Andy Krantz joined the Elmore-DeRose Group at RBC Wealth Management as a Partner. He will continue to live in Denver.

Sad news comes from the sister of Nick Samson. Nick died peacefully in his sleep this past March, having retired in August 2011 on his 60th birthday from a 37-year career at Boston Financial Data Systems to allow greater focus on his nature photography. He had photographed 1,000 bird species in both North and South America and had started on his quest for 1,000 species in Africa. The pictures were magnificent and his sister Suzanne assures us that Nick died at a happy and fulfilled time of his life.

Class of 1982 Peter Kirshe reports that after 23 years he is still working at Merck, where he is Director of US Customer Engagement.

Anthony Morris is living in London. He has two sons—Mark, age 8, and Blake, age 5.

Class of 1985

Class of 1986 Roger Duncan recently returned from a deployment with the US Navy in Afghanistan, where he led a team of media specialists who interfaced with the civilian media when they came to the country. Nat Kessler and his wife, Caty, have very much enjoyed watching their son Zander build new friendships in his first year at Fenn.

Class Notes

Class of 1987

Class of 1994

Ben Kanner is working at the central branch of the YMCA in Boston as an after school teacher for eight to twelve year olds, leading enrichment activities which include time in the gym working on communication, sportsmanship, and fundamentals.

After nine years living in Alaska Alec Duncan moved back to the “Lower 48.” He left BP, where he was working in Prudhoe Bay as a well site geologist on oil rigs up on the North Slope. He writes, “It was a bittersweet move, but the biggest reason to move to Denver was to be closer to home and family, and it doesn’t hurt that I got a job offer that was absolutely written for me. I’m working now as an Operations and Development Geologist for Anadarko Petroleum Co., planning and drilling horizontal oil wells. I really enjoy the work, and Denver is an amazing place to live.

My big, short-haired dog Shaemus loves it here, too. He’s perfectly happy leaving behind long, cold, snowy, dark winters for 300+ days of sun a year and so am I.” Curtis Singmaster and his wife, Meg, are teaching at the Besant Hill School in Ojai, CA. He is head of the art department.

Class of 1988 Ned Jastromb and his wife, Medina, are proud to share news of the birth of their son, Eric Nicholas, on July 11, 2012, at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan. Carl Robinson is living in Wayland, MA, and has been married for seven years. He and his wife have a threeyear-old son. Richard Connolly moved back to the Boston area and is now teaching at St. Sebastian’s School in Needham.

Class of 1990 Hunter Groninger changed jobs about two years ago and now works for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He ran the NYC Marathon in November as a member of the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society Team-In-Training to raise money for the fight against blood cancers. In November, Mike Poignand was featured on stage in New York City as one of four cast members in the psychological thriller Speaking in Tongues by Australian playwright Andrew Bovell. Watch for Mike in February when he’ll appear in the upcoming web series He’s with Me by Jason Cicci. Josh Schohn and his wife, Carina, spent their two-week honeymoon in June rafting in the Grand Canyon with Sam Hamilton as their guide.

Class of 1992 Chris Lane reports that he has been working as a marine biologist at the University of Rhode Island for the past four years. On November 27, Grafton Pease and his wife, Julia, welcomed a son named Emmett to their family.

Class of 1995 Dave Andrews recently had an opportunity to spend four months in Salisbury, England, with The Queen’s Helicopter Flight, part of the department of the Royal Household.

He is now back home in Seattle, WA. Nate Goshgarian is working as the Endangered Shore Bird Manager at Waquoit Bay Reserve in Falmouth, MA, having completed a master’s degree in conservation biology at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. Nate is also an accomplished photographer of wildlife and landscapes. One of his photos appeared on page 14 of the July 2012 issue of National Geographic as a reader’s choice selection. (See back cover of FENN.)

Class of 1997 Gary Artinian received his MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Management last May. Donny Belle is living in Milwaukee and got married in July, with Christian Arcand and Aaron Beatty as groomsmen.

Class of 1993 Nathan Kraft is working at the University of Maryland in College Park as a plant ecologist in the biology department.

After graduating from Denison University in 2004, Donny worked as a manager at Stop & Shop until 2010, when he moved to Wisconsin to be with his fiancée. He is currently managing a supermarket in Milwaukee. Josh Francois reports that he is living in the greater Dallas area and works as a financial manager for a product line at Raytheon. He received his MBA from University of Texas at Dallas in May 2011. Josh and his wife, Keri, who also participated in Raytheon’s Financial Leadership Development Program, were married in August 2010. Congratulations to David Kitendaugh who was engaged this fall to Katie Gagne. James Ward married Sophie Barberich at her parents‘ home in Wauwinet, Nantucket, on September 8, 2012. They currently live in the South End in Boston not far from Nat Carr and Billy Vigne.

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James Ward and his bride Sophie

Class of 1998 Woody Hoyt married Kate Dranzer on August 25, 2012 in Michigan. Woody and Kate live in Denver, where Woody is an environmental scientist. Alex Wayman got engaged to Ashley Harmeling this past summer. Bill Weiss owns the Broadbill Fish Co., which sells fish to local restaurants and as far away as New York City.

Class of 1999 After a year and a half working for Morgan Stanley in San Francisco, Ryan Connolly moved back to Boston in August. Nate Swift has been living in Los Angeles for the past five years, where he works as an account manager in advertising.

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Class Notes

Steve McDonald ’03 Chronicles Solo Trek Across Asia e’s climbed to the summit of Kala Pattar in Nepal, hidden from Chinese guards in the “starlit dunes” of the Gobi Desert, and visited mud hut villages, where he saw “old Uighur men as hairy as camels shriek in wonder and delight as they passed around a plastic light-up guitar.” He’s even danced as an extra in a Bollywood movie.

Steven McDonald ’03 is an ardent traveler who describes himself as “a modern day Marco Polo, except I can’t grow impressive facial hair.” He is on a two-year solo trek across Asia, from Mumbai to Manila, with no plans, no reservations, and only a backpack, while documenting his exploits on a blog.

Embracing Lao Tzu’s belief that “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving,” Steve is following a guidebook to wherever it leads him, which is sometimes into dangerous places or bizarre and sometimes hilarious situations. He started in India and is winding his way through Pakistan, “to the frozen heights of Tibet, then big, red China, followed by Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Borneo, Brunei, and finally, the turquoise archipelago of the Philippines.”

The journey is, he writes in his first blog entry, the “ode to my life, my manifesto to location, independence, and my Motorcycle Diaries or my Eat, Pray, Love, albeit with explosive diarrhea, scamming, and animal attacks.”

After attending Westford Academy and majoring in film production and screenwriting at Emerson College, Steve, whose brothers Ryan ’09 and Sean ‘05 graduated from Fenn, interned at Watertown, MA-based Clam Bake

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Steve McDonald (and friend) travel through the desert.

Animation before moving to Los Angeles and an internship at Comedy Central. That’s when he decided, “I wanted to live a little first, to celebrate my youth, to enjoy the music of the world before shackling myself to a career.” He moved back to Boston, worked as a bartender, and saved money for his trip.

Steve created a non-profit website that features his colorful writing and conveys his native curiosity, his daring, and his delight in discovery. His entries are illustrated by his striking photos and contain tips for cheap and safe travel. Since he was a child, Steve has been “intensely fascinated with foreign cultures,” he says. He used to collect masks and artifacts from other countries and display them on his bookshelves, which made his bedroom look like “a creepy flea market.” Growing up, “I was an odd little man,” he adds, one whose early love of exploration was revealed by his “repeatedly sneaking into the old shooting gallery below Robb Hall and pretending it was a secret passage.”

Steve says he might return to Hollywood or write a book about his adventures when his journey ends. For now, he says, “I’m just going where the road takes me.”

Follow Steve’s adventures on his website: www.backpackology.org.. www.backpackology.org Kicking back with the locals.

34 www.fenn.org,

Class Notes

Class of 2000

Class of 2002

Isaac Chan finished up the first year of his MBA program at University of Chicago this past spring and spent the summer working at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in their Chicago office. Adam Clark reports that he’s been living in New York City since graduating from college in 2007. While he originally worked on traditional TV/print/radio advertising, he recently changed his focus to social media, working with brands to help them connect with users and/or customers across Facebook and Twitter and other peripheral social properties. Adam is engaged to his long-time girlfriend, whom he has known since his days at the University of Rochester. Apparently Erik Trautman has already signed on for best man duties. After meeting at Dartmouth and dating for seven years, Rob Hale married Catherine Haldeman on June 23, 2012. Catherine is an elementary school teacher, originally from Philadelphia. Matt Hedstrom spent a week in London this summer, watching his sister Kristin vie for an Olympic medal in the lightweight women’s double sculls. Matt lives in Utah where he runs the retail marketing business for DIRECTV. Joe Robbins graduated from Fordham Law School in May and is working as a first year associate doing commercial litigation for Goodwin Procter in their Washington, DC, office. Lance Stratton reports that he is living the dream in Montana, where he works at the Yellowstone Club as a fly fishing guide in the summer and as a member of the ski patrol during the winter. On August 21 he married Megan Larson, a Montana native from Helena. Lance, Megan, and their dog live in a house they purchased in historic downtown Bozeman. Peter Tully is working in New York City at American Express doing digital partnerships/marketing/capabilities.

He says he was lucky enough to join one of the very innovative groups there, so it actually feels much more like a small business than one with 60,000 employees. He and his girlfriend are big foodies, so they love

Aaron Colby is getting his PhD in biomedical engineering at Boston University, which he also attended as an undergraduate. Xander Manshel made his way back to the United States from Hong Kong to work on his master’s degree at Bread Loaf in Vermont this past summer. Chris Seward is working as a lab manager in a microbiology lab at the University of Rochester, researching cholera pathogenesis. He was hoping to publish his first scientific paper this fall as well as applying to PhD programs in microbiology. Jon Weigel headed back to school this fall to enter Harvard’s Political Economy and Government Program, a cross between economics and political science. He’ll be working toward his PhD.

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Lance Stratton ’00 with current fifth grader Peter Jones in Big Sky, MT. The Joneses had hired fishing guides for their family trip and one of them turned out to be Lance, who fished for a day with Peter and his mom, LeeEllen.

exploring the city for new and exciting places, and at the same time, manage to get out of the city for a bit of travel and seeing family.

Class of 2001 Fenn was well represented at Chris Fincke’s wedding to Taylor Parrott on June 30. Greg '99 and Jonathan Fincke ’04 were best men, and groomsmen included David Khuen and Jack Martin. Sam Hoyt is living in Irvine, CA, and working as a video producer for Flash Point Communications, an internet marketing company. Siddharth Joshi is happily living in Cambridge and has been privately teaching music for the last year. Check out Eric Kester’s new book—That Book about Harvard: Surviving the World’s Most Famous University, One Embarrassment at a Time—which was published this past summer. While at Harvard, Eric wrote a popular column for The Harvard Crimson. He is now a featured writer for CollegeHumor.com and also contributes to the Boston Globe, someEcards.com, and Dorkly.com. Andrew Vigne is returning to his undergraduate alma mater, Lynchburg College in Virginia, to help coach lacrosse and pursue a master’s degree.

Class of 2003 Ian Boll has temporarily left Colorado behind while he works in Lenox, MA, on his mother’s next film. Ben Griff iths provided an update on his life in recent years. After attending St. John’s College in Santa Fe for a year, he transferred to Boston University, where he studied classics and history. After graduation, he worked at a wind energy startup that attempted to make wind prospecting better, faster, and cheaper. As of this past summer Ben was living in Somerville and doing energy economics at Resource Insight in Arlington. Neal Hicks is working as a sales manager for AT&T in Washington, DC, and playing professional lacrosse for the Chesapeake Bayhawks in Annapolis, MD.

Class of 2004 Matt Livingston, an All American in lacrosse and Academic All American, graduated from Union College this past June with high honors in history. He is currently employed by the English Lacrosse Association in the U.K. Matthew Midon graduated from Villanova University in May. Jeff Olshan graduated from Oxford University last spring with a major in classics. He is now in his first year of law school at Boston University.

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Class Notes

“I was never scared”: Juan Rojo ’08 Awarded Purple Heart

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hile proceeding carefully into a valley in Afghanistan where Taliban fighters had been reported, Private 1st Class Juan Rojo ’08 spied a “crease” in a wall that he earmarked as cover in the event he and his fellow soldiers were fired on. Moments later he was throwing himself into that space while bullets were hitting the ground near his feet and the wall next to his head. So many were flying that Private Rojo suspected he had been hit.

He was “never scared,” Juan says, but to make sure he wouldn’t bleed out, he snapped a tourniquet onto his thigh and did what he was trained to do: take position and return fire. “I didn’t think twice,” he said. “I knew there were other guys out there with me and I had to make sure they were going to be all right.” Later, while Juan waited for a helicopter to transport him to a base hospital, a fellow soldier handed him his helmet; in it was lodged a bullet.

Sent to Germany to recover, Juan came home to Lowell on leave before departing for Italy, where he is now, to undergo more training in the event he is called back to Afghanistan. Dressed in fatigues, he visited Fenn one November morning and spoke in All School Meeting about his experiences in the Army and about being awarded the Purple Heart,

Private Rojo ’08 in Afghanistan

an honor bestowed on members of the armed forces who are wounded by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy.

At Lowell High School Juan began looking at colleges, but one day, at a Patriots’ game, he watched an Air Force flyover and turned to his dad, declaring, “I want to join the military.” He pondered his options and finally chose the Army. After basic training and additional preparation in Italy, Juan participated in war simulation practice in Germany before being deployed to Afghanistan. On an October 3rd patrol, he was caught in an ambush.

Juan told the gathering of students who listened raptly to his

words that the bullet he took from Taliban machine gun fire is still in his leg, purposely left there by doctors who felt that surgery could damage the surrounding nerves.

Despite his injury, all he could think about when he was recovering and what he continued to wish for, even as he stood on the Meeting Hall stage, was “going back,” he said.

“It’s a brotherhood,” Juan said of his unit. “And it breaks my heart that I can’t be there with them.”

Afterwards, faculty member Dave Duane said Juan’s story was powerful and moving. “To see him talk about his extraordinary service and receive two standing ovations brought a lump to my throat. He is a success and a true hero.”

Network with Alums on LinkedIn The Fenn School Alumi 36 www.fenn.org,

Class Notes

Class of 2005 Eric Beaulieu, Patrick Mara, David Oxnard, and Trip Smith all graduated from Colby College this past May with distinction in their majors. During the presidential campaign John McBride served as the chief of staff at Obama for America-DC, where he oversaw the campaign staff and grassroots strategy for the Washington, DC, office.

Given that the District was already firmly for Obama, his efforts centered on building a base of support in DC and then exporting volunteers to the neighboring battleground state of Virginia, with a focus on voter registration, persuasion, and turnout. John and Cam Baggen, both graduates of George Washington University, have been roommates for five years.

Class of 2006 This past summer Malin Adams worked as a banking analyst at a private bank. Cam Boll was living in Oregon this past summer and worked as a camp counselor at a ski camp on Mt. Hood. JB Henderson started his senior year at the University of Vermont in the fall, working towards a degree in economics with minors in math and business. This past summer he interned at a startup nonprofit in Quincy that provides research and holistic healing for victims of domestic abuse, and also did research for a calendar app startup. JB sends the following message: “For all you soccer fans, the FC Fenn Alumni is still going strong after seven years, playing two games a week and participating in tournaments.”

Henry McNamara climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in June to raise money for the Nyegina Secondary School in Tanzania. Sam Petrie is a member of the renowned Yale Alley Cats a cappella group, which performed in Concord in August.

Class of 2007 Robert Palmer just finished up his freshman year at University of Southern California, where he is double majoring in human biology and cognitive science. He had to take a Latin course to fulfill his language requirement and said, “I wish that I had remembered half of what I learned back in 7th grade Latin at Fenn!”

Class of 2008 Luke Flood started his freshman year at UMass Amherst this past fall. Charlie Hoff is studying at UCLA, where he plays on the lacrosse team and has pledged SAE fraternity.

Tim Marchese played on the Williams College varsity soccer team this past fall. Alex Moskowitz is enjoying Brown University, where he is studying physics. In addition to doing physics research at Brown over this past summer, he also continues to play cello.

Winston Pingeon has begun his studies at American University’s School of Public Affairs Leadership Program. This “by invitation only” program lasts four years, during which time Winston will be studying leadership and policy. He will earn a Certificate in Leadership Studies upon graduation. His present social action project is helping to develop a dating violence prevention program on campus. Andreas Valhouli-Farb graduated from St. Mark’s last spring and won the Henry Large Prize, a new baseball prize named in honor of a long-time St. Mark’s coach and history teacher. Andreas started his freshman year at Cornell University this fall.

Class of 2009 Charlie Alex-Barton began his freshman year at M.I.T. this fall. Scott Berkley is attending Middlebury College. Jamie Billings rowed in the Groton School varsity eight oared shell this past spring. Wyatt Bramhall reports that his first year at Rhode Island School of

Design has been “really fantastic.” He’s hoping to be an industrial designer. Wyatt also passed along the news that he has “stayed on axis,” is learning Mandarin in his spare time, and has a dope ponytail. Seth Brownmiller graduated from Medford High School in May and is now attending UMass Lowell for biology as part of their Honors Program. He is hoping eventually to go to medical school.

Last spring Henry Bumpus was named a Dual County All Star in lacrosse. He was also recognized as an All Scholastic and All American player. Last spring Dan Cellucci was named a Dual County All Star in baseball. Carl Hesler was elected one of the captains of the Belmont Hill varsity hockey team. Thacher Hoch is traveling on a threemonth semester program with a group of students through Laos, Cambodia, and China as part of his “gap year.” He’ll enter the University of Virginia next fall. Ryan Hoey is doing a post-graduate year at Pomfret School after graduating from Concord-Carlisle High School. Last spring Michael Hoffman was elected Co-Head Monitor for his senior year at St. Mark’s. Graham Kaemmer entered Yale University in the fall. Andrew Linn graduated from Belmont Hill School last spring and is now at Bowdoin College, where he will be playing on the squash team. AJ Lucchese was elected captain of Middlesex School’s varsity lacrosse team for his senior year. He was the leading goal scorer in the ISL this past spring.

Sam Miller has started his freshman year at Tufts University. Ethan Moses entered Vassar College this fall. Having graduated from 37

Class Notes

L to R: Will Keyser '97, Justin Kieffer '97, Derek Boonisar, Jon Byrd '76, Tom Hudner '87, Jamie Atkins '03, Dave Kitendaugh '97, David Rubin '02, Harris Rosenheim '02, Sean Melia '99, Jack Carroll '03, Nick Carr '00, Pete Stone '03, George Carr '00, Freemon Romero '04, GUEST, Bob Starensier, GUEST, Chris Fay '03, Anthony Gilberti '96, Peter Carroll '04, William Hamilton '96, Kevin Connolly '03, Luke Marchand '02 Missing: Jared Jammal '04, John LoVerme '04, Mike Marinella '04 Guests: Jeff Gordon, Eric Sussman

WHAT’S NEW? Back at school?

Won an award?

Changed jobs?

Traveled somewhere exotic?

Keep your classmates updated by sending us your news!

Email: alumni@fenn.org Alumni Office The Fenn School 516 Monument Street Concord, MA 01742 Scan this QR Code with your smart phone to submit a class note instantly!

38 www.fenn.org,

Wayland High School this past spring, Matt Munsey has moved on to Castleton State College in Vermont, where he plans to study literature. Philip Oxnard is attending Trinity College, where he is rooming with Connor Neill. Oliver Parke began his freshman year at Lehigh University in September. Jack Pellegrini is studying at Babson College. Charlie Peters is in his freshman year at University of Massachusetts. Derek Schwartz attends Washington University in St. Louis. Patrick Straight is continuing his education on the West Coast, where he is a freshman at Stanford University. Evan Turissini entered Bucknell in the fall. Jake Oh is attending George Washington University. Andrew Wester, a three-year starter on the Concord-Carlisle High School varsity golf team, will be competing at the collegiate level for Monmouth University.

Class of 2010 Jack Anderson was named All-League goalie for his play on Concord Academy’s varsity soccer team this past fall. Gabe Arnold is captain of the Concord-Carlisle High School wrestling team this year. Tommy Crowley, who played offensive guard and defensive end, was a tri-captain of the Con-

cord-Carlisle High School varsity football team this fall. Dylan Dove, who rows crew for Tabor, had the opportunity to race at the Henley Regatta this summer. Joe Emello is back in the area, now attending Belmont High School. Sam Rice transferred to Salisbury School in Connecticut last year. He’s still playing hockey and loving it. Phil Skayne was captain of the Middlesex School’s varsity soccer team this past fall.

Class of 2011 Last spring George Cohen was named a Dual County All Star in tennis, playing for Concord-Carlisle High School. Alex Hreib was named an All ISL Honorable Mention for his play on the St. Mark’s hockey team last year. Robert Shapiro played center for Concord-Carlisle High School’s varsity football team this fall.

Class of 2012 Joey Crowley earned a spot in the ConcordCarlisle High School orchestra playing cello. Max Gomez will be playing the role of Bobby Strong in the Groton School production of Urinetown this winter.

Class Notes

“Teacher Jack” Lammert ’09 Volunteers in China uring morning advisor periods at Fenn, Jack Lammert ’09 would often chat with his classmates, incorporating for fun the few Chinese words he knew. Fascinated by other languages and cultures since he was in Middle School, Jack never imagined that in a few years he would be speaking Mandarin and teaching English to rising seventh graders at a school outside of Beijing.

Now a senior at Brimmer and May, Jack last spring asked his teacher, Yuhong Jia, if she knew of any summer immersion programs he could attend. She suggested that he apply to volunteer at the non-profit Dandelion School in Daxing, a boarding school that serves low-income migrant children.

Some 130 million people, about one tenth of the entire Chinese population, are migrant workers or their children, according to the Dandelion School website. An estimated 20% of the children are school-age. They face poverty, instability, and illiteracy, among other problems, and due to a residential registration system, they must stay in the area where they were born, needing special papers or “connections up high” to live or attend school elsewhere, Jack says.

Jack served with several other volunteers in the school’s English Summer Camp for three weeks, working with his students on interpersonal communication and presentational skills, and playing games and sports with them. At the start, some of his charges could not speak a single English word and others knew only a few animal names or letters of the English alphabet. Early on he would sometimes use the wrong inflection of a word that changed its meaning (Chinese languages “are highly tonal,” he explains). “They asked me how old I was and I thought I said ‘17,’

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but what came out was ‘7’ and everyone laughed.”

Jack says he “learned a lot” from his students, who called him Jack Laoshi, meaning “Teacher Jack,” and presented him with Jack with his Mandarin teachers Yuhong Jia, left, and Yuhong Xu, pictures of themselves right, at Brimmer and May School. before he returned home.

“People were very curious, kind, and helpful,” says Jack, who lived in a dorm with his fellow volunteers, sleeping on a plywood bunk and using a communal shower across the street. His classroom was equipped with one chalk board and lacked air conditioning. The area is rustic and impoverished, and very hot and humid, and it was utterly foreign to Jack, who would turn around in a shop and realize a Chinese person had snapped his photo just because he is white. “They would pop their phones in my face and dash off,” he recalls, smiling. Jack was one of only two Caucasian volunteers at Dandelion and one of the youngest.

Most were Chinese.

What struck Jack the most about his time in China were the assumptions the people there have about Americans, he says.

“They think our food is unhealthy, and they are convinced that we all run around carrying guns.” (His students asked him, “How many guns do you have?”) While he was at Dandelion, the Colorado movie theater shootings took place and Jack’s Chinese students and friends were “really shaken” by the incident, he notes.

However, he saw first-hand that in China there is a dramatic class division: “It’s the rich and the rest.” Otherwise, Jack found the Chinese culture, which is “informal compared to ours,” to be appealing. “People are so honest, curious, open, and pragmatic, and they have a fantastic work ethic.”

As curious and open as the people he describes, Jack, who hopes to become a writer and journalist, or perhaps a college professor, loves words and how people communicate. He has met several Chinese students at Brimmer and May, and no doubt he spends considerable time chatting with them. He took Spanish at Fenn and recently worked on learning French so he could read Tin Tin in its original language. But his interest in world cultures began at Fenn, in courses such as Middle East Studies. And his passion for reading non-fiction accounts of people’s experiences and of writing his own, he says, was inspired by his ninth grade English class.

“Teacher Jack” in his classroom at the Dandelion School in China

39

Class Notes

Past Faculty News Mark Biscoe has colorfully captured the character of Waldoboro, Maine, in the 19th and 20th centuries in his two-volume history, Merchant of the Medomak (a river in Lincoln County). Like Volume I, which came out in 2004, Volume II was published in 2012 by the Waldoboro Historical Society. The books contain true stories about people and events, including, in Volume II, a scandal and a murder.

In the new book Mark writes about “unsung Civil War heroes, pesky newspapermen, politicians, sportsmen, musicians, an unhappy ghost, several funny baseball stories, and an escaped slave who shipped himself to freedom in a wooden crate,” according to a November Portland Press Herald review, which called the book “lively and entertaining.” Mark wrote No Pluckier Set of Men Anywhere: The Story of Ships and Men in Damariscotta and Newcastle in 1994, his last year at Fenn.

Mark reports that he and Jane attended “one of the loveliest weddings possible” in early September, when former athletic director, teacher, coach, dormitory master and “athlete extraordinary” John O’Keefe was married to Toni Chute, his long-time friend, on the beach at their home in Martha’s Vineyard.

Jane Higgins is setting records with her powerlifting (state and world).

Jane’s daughter is married to a Marine pilot who was assigned to a NATO school at the Canadian Military College in Toronto for a year.

So Jane and Joe Hindle made a couple of visits to Canada this past

year, one of which prevented them from attending Fenn graduation last June. Jane’s son-in-law is now assigned to San Diego, but will have to do a third or fourth deployment to the Middle East soon.

Joe Hindle reports that retirement is going well. He has a part-time job that gets him out of the house and keeps him active in the community. He’s also a member of the local Rotary Club, which gets him involved in various civic activities. He and Jane spend a good deal of time outside—hiking, biking, and canoeing, but missed out on skiing and snowshoeing last winter due to the lack of snow.

Former math teacher Kristin Hudson is living in San Francisco with her husband and two daughters, working for Teachscape.

Pamela Post-Ferrante, who worked as a Fenn Learning Specialist from 1986 to 1998, recently wrote Writing & Healing: A Mindful Guide for Cancer Survivors (Hatherleigh/Random House 2012).

Pamela suffered four bouts of cancer and eight surgeries and treatments over five years in the 1990s. She says she developed the writing prompts she uses in her book, Pamela Post-Ferrante which is intended to help individuals and groups use writing as therapy, while meeting with boys one-to-one at Fenn.

Pamela used creative writing prompts of pictures, poetry, cartoons, objects, and music and says the approach was successful “beyond what I might have guessed.” The students’ grades went up and their selfesteem improved. “I wanted to know why,” she says, and so when Pamela was being diagnosed and treated, she thought, “If it works for them, it should work for those with cancer.”

The book, which comes with a CD on which are meditations and suggestions for how to follow the exercises on one’s own, is a guide for individuals and support groups in using expressive writing as a therapeutic experience. It also contains a step-by-step guide to help caregivers such as nurses and social workers to lead such groups. Journalist, author, and cancer survivor Cokie Roberts called Writing & Healing “practical, yet beautiful, and added, “As you read, it becomes quite clear why healing comes with the writing and sharing of stories.”

Pamela has taught writing and healing workshops in the Boston area for several years. Having earned an MEd and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, after Fenn Pamela went on to earn a degree in Expressive Therapies from Lesley University, where she taught in the graduate studies program.

Correction: Dave Irwin’s wife’s name was misstated in the Summer 2012 issue; she is Mandy Irwin.

40 www.fenn.org,

Graduation 2012 o the pealing of the Meeting Hall bell, fifty eighth and ninth graders processed across the green and into their futures at the 83rd Graduation Exercises held on June 8. Diplomas were presented, prizes awarded, and graduates celebrated in remarks made by Headmaster Jerry Ward in the New Gym. The Fenn Band played a stirring rendition of “Air Force One” and the Treble Chorus performed. The outgoing school president and vice-president addressed their classmates and teachers, staff members, families, and friends, with President Max Gomez comparing his experience at Fenn to being given a coloring book, “a good set of crayons,” and the opportunity to fill in the outlines with “an infinite amount of colors.”

Mr. Ward provided personal reflections of each graduate, capturing his character and his life at Fenn. Of soon-to-be Lawrence Academy student Tim Joumas, for example, Mr. Ward said, “It has been said there is nothing as strong as gentleness and nothing as gentle as strength…you’ve proven this truth to all of us.” And Jack Lyne, who was headed to Middlesex, had been a “high scorer” in school life, Mr. Ward said, “beloved by classmates not for his shots on goal but for his readiness to help in any situation.”

This special publication captures the highlights of Prize Day and Graduation, and the eighth and ninth grade celebration dinners.

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AWARDS AND HONORS ach year before diplomas are awarded at graduation, the headmaster presents on behalf of the faculty six prizes that recognize in different ways members of the eighth and ninth grade classes for their exceptional character, effort, achievement, and growth, all vital elements of a Fenn education. The recipients are chosen on the basis of recommendations and votes of the Fenn School faculty.

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FACULTY PRIZE The Faculty Prize is Fenn’s highest honor. It recognizes a ninth grade student or students whose breadth, character, and consistency of involvement in the life of the school have best exemplified the faculty’s ideals for Fenn students. This year the Faculty Prize was conferred upon Timothy R. Joumas and Andreas C. Sheikh.

Faculty Prize winners (left to right): Andreas C. Sheikh and Timothy R. Joumas

LOVEJOY PRIZE Created in 1998 by Trustee Emeritus Frederick H. Lovejoy Jr. ’51 and his family, the Lovejoy Prize honors a graduating eighth grade student or students whose exceptional character, effort, and achievement have so enriched the life of the school as to merit special recognition from the faculty upon their departure from Fenn. The prize is awarded only in years when there are students of extraordinary merit. This year the Lovejoy Prize was presented to five members of the Class of 2013: Steven S. Anton, Kojo B. Edzie, Gavin T. Kennedy, Ethan J. vanderWilden, and Cole R. Winstanley.

Receiving the Lovejoy Prize (left to right): Gavin T. Kennedy, Steven S. Anton, Cole R. Winstanley, Kojo B. Edzie, and Ethan J. vanderWilden 42

DR. SAMUEL C. FLEMING MEMORIAL PRIZE Established by members of the Class of 1965 on the occasion of their 25th Fenn reunion, the Dr. Samuel C. Fleming Memorial Prize honors their classmate and friend who wore a “wonderful, ever-present smile.” The prize is awarded each year to an eighth or ninth grade student or students who merit recognition for determination and perseverance in meeting academic challenges, whose efforts never languished, and who contributed to the school through qualities of friendliness, unselfish conduct, and sensitivity and warmth to their classmates. This year the faculty honored ninth graders Bryce H. T. Dion, Gaetan L. Dupont, and Jivan H. Purutyan.

Dr. Samuel C. Fleming Award winners (left to right): Gaetan L. Dupont, Jivan H. Purutyan, and Bryce T. Dion

WALTER W. BIRGE III PRIZE FOR PHILANTHROPY AND SUPPORT OF THE FENN COMMUNITY

Gaetan L. Dupont, (left) and Adam N. Jolly were awarded the Walter W. Birge III Prize.

Nominated by the faculty and selected by the headmaster, the recipient of the Birge Prize demonstrates qualities that were championed by Mr. Birge, Fenn’s fourth headmaster (1983-1993). The prize recognizes one or more members of the ninth grade class who have continually distinguished themselves through their support of Fenn community service projects, their helpfulness to teachers, and their support of their peers. The prize was awarded this year to Gaetan L. Dupont and Adam N. Jolly.

MARK BISCOE AWARD

Recipients of the Burbank Prize (left to right): William J. Baxter, John L. Lyne, and Jonathan C. Tesoro

BURBANK PRIZE The Burbank Prize is awarded by the teacher-coaches of Fenn to those graduating athletes who have distinguished themselves through their generous and unselfish spirit, which fostered the success, happiness, and self-esteem of their teammates. This year the prize was awarded to William J. Baxter, John L. Lyne, and Jonathan C. Tesoro.

Named for retired master teacher Mark Biscoe H’95, who gave thirty-six years of service to the school, the Mark Biscoe Award honors the extraordinary example that Mark set for his colleagues and students. The award is presented to a ninth grade student or students who, through their personal growth in their years at Fenn, have come to value and live out the ideals of school citizenship which Mr. Biscoe, as teacher and coach, inspired generations of Fenn students to embrace. This year the honor went to William J. Baxter and Benjamin W. Stone.

Biscoe Award recipients (left to right): William J. Baxter and Benjamin W. Stone 43

AWARDS AND HONORS

Recipients of the Moats Mathematics Prize (left to right): Cole R. Winstanley and Maximilian A. Gomez

ALAN S. MOATS MATHEMATICS PRIZE

Eleanor B. Fenn Modern Language Prize winners (left to right): Cole R. Winstanley and Maximilian A. Gomez

ELEANOR B. FENN MODERN LANGUAGE PRIZE Originally a prize for achievement in French, the Eleanor B. Fenn Modern Language Prize commemorates the many contributions of Mrs. Fenn, the school’s first French teacher and the dedicated wife of founder Roger Fenn.

Today, with this prize, Fenn recognizes the most accomplished Spanish students for their talent and interest in the language and culture of Spain and for their exemplary academic work in the Spanish language. This year, ninth grader Maximilian A. Gomez and eighth grader Cole R. Winstanley were honored with the prize.

The parents of Alan S. Moats ’62 established the Moats Mathematics Prize in 1966 in their appreciation for Fenn’s excellence in preparing their son for the rigors of Phillips Exeter Academy. In its first year, the prize was given “for the curiosity which raised questions, the perseverance which sees through to the answers, and the thoroughness which is the mark of excellence in any field.” This year the Moats Mathematics Prize was awarded to ninth grader Maximilian A. Gomez and eighth grader Cole R. Winstanley.

Recipients of the Lennox Lindsay Latin Prize (left to right): Conrad J. Meier, Carter F. Jones, and Jackson T. Boyle

LENNOX LINDSAY LATIN PRIZE Lennox Lindsay was Fenn’s first Latin master, who taught at the school from 1929 to 1939.

Mr. Lindsay, according to Roger Fenn, “made Latin a living language, not a dead one,” through his explorations of Roman manners, culture, and artifacts. Initially conferred on the boy who shared Mr. Lindsay’s passion for these areas of the curriculum, today the Lennox Lindsay Latin Prize is awarded for overall excellence in the study of Latin. This year the prize went to ninth grader Carter F. Jones and eighth graders Jackson T. Boyle and Conrad J. Meier.

MILLAR BRAINARD SCIENCE PRIZE The Millar Brainard Science Prize was established by Edward C. Brainard II ’46 in memory of his father, an old friend of Roger Fenn’s at the time the school was founded.

The prize is awarded to a member or members of the ninth grade class who have not only demonstrated an outstanding knowledge of science but have also displayed enthusiasm, creativity, and an impressive understanding of the scientific method. This year the winner of the Brainard Science Prize was Maximilian A. Gomez.

Millar Brainard Science Prize winner Maximilian A. Gomez

GOULD ARTS AWARD The Arts Award is named for Kirsten Gould, who retired in 2011 after twenty-seven years at Fenn, for her “visionary shaping of Fenn’s Arts program in its rich and full dimensions.”

The award is given by vote of the Arts department faculty, and in its first year was presented to three students who had demonstrated throughout their careers at Fenn exemplary dedication and accomplishment respectively in music, drama, and the visual arts. This year, from the Class of 2012, Gaetan L. Dupont was honored for distinction in the visual arts, and Maximilian A. Gomez for distinction in drama and music.

Gould Arts Award winners (left to right): Maximilian A. Gomez and Gaetan L. Dupont 44

THE CARTER PRIZE FOR HISTORY AND SOCIAL STUDIES

Recipients of the Carter Prize for History and Social Studies (left to right): Ethan J. vanderWilden, Alexander L. Lyman, and Maximilian A. Gomez

The Carter Prize for History and Social Studies, named in honor of Jim Carter ’54 for his distinguished forty years of teaching history and social studies at Fenn, is awarded to a graduating student or students who in their years at Fenn have shown exceptional interest, knowledge, and diligence in their study of history and social studies. This year the recipients of the Carter Prize were ninth grader Maximilian A. Gomez and eighth graders Alexander L. Lyman and Ethan J. vanderWilden.

BAND AWARD The Band Award is presented for leadership and dedication. This year’s recipients were ninth graders Adam N. Jolly and Carter F. Jones and eighth graders Gavin T. Kennedy and Steven S. Anton.

JOSEPH A. HINDLE JR. SCIENCE RECOGNITION PRIZE The Joseph A. Hindle Jr. Science Recognition Prize was established in 2011 in honor of Mr. Hindle, who retired that spring after thirty-two years at Fenn. The prize is awarded to the ninth grade student or students who consistently demonstrate mastery of laboratory skills and who creatively apply critical thinking skills to the field of biology. This year the recipients of the Hindle Prize were Gaetan L. Dupont and Adam N. Jolly.

Recipients of the Band Award with Instrumental Music Director Maeve Lien (left to right): Gavin T. Kennedy, Steven S. Anton, Carter F. Jones, and Adam N. Jolly

CITIZENSHIP PRIZES Awarded by faculty to students in their divisions, Fenn School Citizenship Prizes honor boys who show exceptional citizenship traits: they are especially hard working in their school activities, they are particularly cheerful, positive, and supportive to other students, and they are relied upon by faculty to lend a hand when important jobs need to be done. This year the following students were honored with Citizenship Prizes on Prize Day:

Winners of the William O. Travers Writing Contest (left to right): Raef J. Gormley, Adam N. Jolly, and Colin M. Regenauer

4TH GRADE

6TH GRADE

8TH GRADE

WILLIAM O. TRAVERS WRITING CONTEST

Maxwell M. Byron Benjamin M. Carbeau Nicolo A. Carere Olivier E. Cheever James J. Ewing Ethan B. Gorewitz

Walker L. Davey Matthew M. Hart Paul P. Michaud Nicholas E. Schoeller Nicholas R. Steinart

Jackson T. Boyle Odom Keo Sam Leo J. Saraceno

5TH GRADE

Arthur L. Gildehaus Maximilian A. Gomez Daniel J. M. Broun Carter F. Jones Ryan A. Ewing William R. Hrabchak Jonathan C. Tesoro Timothy R. Jones Daniel P. Kramer William W. Page Christopher J. Ruediger

At graduation in 1979, the Fenn School Board of Trustees established an English prize to honor the long and dedicated service of William O. Travers, English teacher and assistant headmaster from 1956 to 1979. Mr. Travers’ keen interest in writing and his long-held desire for a composition prize prompted a contest to be created in each division of the school for which submissions of imaginative, creative, and descriptive writing were sought. This year, in the Lower School, Colin M. Regenauer, a fifth grader, received the Travers Prize, with Honorable Mention awarded to fourth grader Gray M. Hussey. In the Middle School, the winner was seventh grader Raef J. Gormley, with Honorable Mention awarded to seventh grader Daniel J. M. Broun. In the Upper School, Adam N. Jolly, a ninth grader, received the prize, with Honorable Mention awarded to ninth grader Benjamin W. Stone.

Maxwell E. Boyle Samuel J. Farley Kevin Yun Gao James K. Harvey Matthew P. Kirkman Jacob H. Pine

7TH GRADE

9TH GRADE

45

AWARDS AND HONORS P.G. LEE MEMORIAL PRIZE Each year the P.G. Lee Memorial Prize is awarded at Prize Day to honor a member or members of the graduating class who contributed outstanding determination, hard work, positive spirit, and cheerfulness to their athletic teams. Established in memory of P.G. Lee ’87, the award honors the spirit of a boy who was a true competitor but is perhaps best remembered for “his smile and his ability to make people laugh, and the happiness he brought to people around him.” This year’s eighth and ninth graders voted to honor John L. Lyne. Leslie Warner, P.G. Lee’s mother, attended the Prize Day ceremony to congratulate the winners.

P.G. Lee Memorial Award winner John L. Lyne with Leslie Warner and Athletic Director Bob Starensier

AUSTEN FOX RIGGS AWARD First awarded by the Class of 1951 as their parting gift to Fenn, the Austen Fox Riggs Award is given in memory of Austen, a Fenn student from the Class of 1955 who lost his life attempting to save his younger brother from drowning in the Concord River. Determined by vote of the Lower School faculty, the award is given to the student or students who most resemble “Autie” in the helpful effort he contributed in work and in play. This year the Austen Fox Riggs Award was presented to fifth grader Kevin C. Ewing.

Winner of the Austen Fox Riggs Award: Kevin C. Ewing

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F

E N N

G

R A D U A T I N G

C

L A S S

O F

2 0 1 2

MATTHEW M. AZARELA Governor’s Academy

ARTHUR L. GILDEHAUS Phillips Academy, Andover

JIVAN H. PURUTYAN Middlesex School

WILLIAM J. BAXTER Middlesex School

MAXIMILIAN A. GOMEZ Groton School

BRENDAN J. SEIFERT Lawrence Academy

SCOTT J. CORREIA Rivers School

ADAM N. JOLLY Kent School

ANDREAS C. SHEIKH Phillips Academy, Andover

BRYCE H. T. DION Concord-Carlisle High School

CARTER F. JONES Concord Academy

BENJAMIN W. STONE Lawrence Academy

AUSTIN J. DORSEY St. Mark’s School

TIMOTHY R. JOUMAS Lawrence Academy

JONATHAN C. TESORO St. George’s School

GAETAN L. DUPONT Belmont Hill School

JOHN L. LYNE Middlesex School 47

EIGHTH GRADE CELEBRATION

D

uring graduation week, eighth graders and their parents and teachers gathered for an evening celebration of the class to honor those students who were leaving Fenn and to allow those who were returning an opportunity to come together and look towards

their future as seniors at the school.

Headmaster Ward offered a personal reflection about each student, capturing memorable moments from that boy’s years at Fenn.

Derek Boonisar, assistant headmaster and head of the Upper School, welcomed the guests and spoke to the eighth grade on behalf of their teachers and advisors. The class was notable for its “friendliness and playfulness,” he said, and for “respecting people for who they are and showing patience with each other.” The boys clearly enjoyed each other’s company, he noted, often gathering in the Stone Lobby or in the first floor lobby of the School House, near advisors Michele Heaton’s, Luke Thompson’s, Derek Cribb’s, and John Fitzsimmons’ rooms.

“You have been a great class,” Mr. Boonisar declared.

This year, four student speakers, two departing boys and two returning ones, were chosen by their classmates to address the gathering. They were Gordon Hargraves, the next president of the school, Steven Anton, Leo Saraceno, and Ethan vanderWilden.

48

F

E N N

G

R A D U A T I N G

C

L A S S

O F

2 0 1 3

WILLIAM F. ADIE II Lawrence Academy

CHRISTOPHER F. HEALEY North Shore Country Day School

JAMES A. O’BRIEN Belmont Hill School

STEVEN S. ANTON Groton School

SAMUEL P. HESLER Belmont Hill School

MARK E. RUSSELL, JR. Lawrence Academy

MARK L. BENATI Acton-Boxborough High School

AUSTIN W. HOEY Concord-Carlisle High School

KEVIN C. RUTLEDGE Concord-Carlisle High School

JACKSON T. BOYLE Concord Academy

ANDREW J. HUGHES Concord-Carlisle High School

DANIEL F. SIMOSA St. Mark’s School

PATRICK D. CROWLEY Concord-Carlisle High School

CARTER P. HUSSEY Lawrence Academy

JONATHAN R. STASIOR Concord-Carlisle High School

KOJO B. EDZIE Middlesex School

GAVIN T. KENNEDY Deerf ield Academy

NICHOLAS M. STONE Lawrence Academy

LEO W. FEININGER Concord Academy

AIDAN R. S. LONG Concord-Carlisle High School

PRANAV K. TADIKONDA Phillips Academy, Andover

JAMES C. FINNERAL Lawrence Academy

ALEXANDER L. LYMAN Concord Academy

WILLIAM G. J. TASKER Middlesex School

BENJAMIN A. GAINSBORO Lawrence Academy

CONRAD J. MEIER Middlesex School

ETHAN J. VANDERWILDEN Concord-Carlisle High School

THOMAS B. GIRDWOOD Concord Academy

NICHOLAS A. MOSKOW Concord-Carlisle High School

NICHOLAS A. WALTERS Concord Academy

ROBERT T. GRIFFIN Belmont Hill School

LUCAS MUNDEL Concord-Carlisle High School

COLE R. WINSTANLEY Concord-Carlisle High School

49

Class News

Milestones Births

Marriages

To Madina and Ned Jastromb '88 a son, Eric Nicholas July 11, 2012

Mike Gilboy ‘95 to Carrie Gabbard November 12, 2011

To Alexa and Cato Anderson '91 twins, Harris and Lake September 6, 2012

Jon Bonoma '98 to Jen Gaj May 19, 2012

To Amanda and Ted Lovejoy ‘95 a son, Cooper Thatcher November 6, 2012

Rob Hale '00 to Catherine Haldeman June 23, 2012

To Julia and Grafton Pease '92 a son, Emmett November 27, 2012

Chris Fincke '01 to Taylor Parrott June 30, 2012

Staff member David Rouse to Hilary Golas November 3, 2012

David and Hilary Rouse

Rob and Catherine Hale

Donny Belle '97 to Rachel Schott July 21, 2012 Lance Stratton '00 to Megan Larson August 21, 2012 Woody Hoyt '98 to Kate Dranzer August 25, 2012

Eric Nicholas Jastromb

James Ward '97 to Sophie Barberich September 8, 2012

L to r: Tate Bevis ‘96, Brad Bevis ‘93, Derek Boonisar, Jon Gilboy ‘97, Carrie Gilboy, Mike Gilboy ’95, David Kitendaugh ’97, Nat Carr ‘97, Bob Starensier, Topher Bevis ’02

In Memoriam Minturn V. Chace '55 December 28, 2011 William E. Conway December 29, 2011 Grandfather of Jack Eames, grade 7 Anne W. Abry January 11, 2012 Grandmother of Charles ’02 and Harrison Abry ’04 Carlos H. "Nick" Samson III ’65 March 19, 2012 Marie M. Maguire April 7, 2012 Grandmother of Alex Newman ‘15 and Luke Newman, grade 9

50

Susan M. Mayer Fenn Trustee 1973-1982 April 16, 2012 Mother of David ’74 and Paul Slye ’77 Joan E. Mahoney May 3, 2012 Grandmother of James Finneral ’13 Mary Rose Marano Reiss May 12, 2012 Grandmother of John McCormack ’00 Weyman S. Crocker, Jr.’39 June 21, 2012 Norman A. Sas June 28, 2012 Grandfather of Jamie '02, Chris '04, and Peter Jones ’06

Isabel G. Dockendorff July 6, 2012 Grandmother of Caleb Ballou ’01

Charles W. Dee, Sr. July 29, 2012 Grandfather of Blayne Dee, grade 7

Amy E. Bajakian September 7, 2012 Mother of Kyle ’73 and Clint Bajakian ’77

George E. Slye July 13, 2012 Father of David ’74 and Paul Slye ”77

Jack Kavanagh ’75 August 17, 2012

William E. Roth ’83 October 1, 2012

Bradford S. Kingman Fenn Trustee 1977-1983 August 17, 2012 Father of Brad Kingman ’81 Erik D. Jenkinson ’98 September 2012

Robert W. Sides Fenn Trustee 1960-1975 October 21, 2012 Father of Bucky Sides ’57 Grandfather of Charlie ’84 and Fred Flather ’96 and Bobby Miller ’99

Edmund B. Cabot September 1, 2012 Father of Brad Cabot ’99

Tobey Churchill Williams October 22, 2012 Mother of Gordie '’91

D. William Lee July 19, 2012 Grandfather of Pat ’99 and Tim Padden ’03 Mary C. Duncan Fenn Staff 1941-1942 July 26, 2012 Mother of Bob Duncan Grandmother of Roger '86, Ritchie ’89 and Alec Duncan ’94

Class News

Blue or Gold, you can always tell a Fenn boy in a crowd.

He’s the boy with the inquiring mind, the drivve to succeed, s and the heart to care. fid He’s courageous, he’s confident, he’s creative, and he’s curious. Boys build character at Fenn.

Your o donation to the Annual Fund u helps boys become Fenn boys . . . and Fenn men.

Make your your o Annual A Fund Fu und gift gifft today! todaay! y GIVING OPTIONS

Online: www.ffeenn.org/supportingg feenn Phone: (978) 318-3600

Tom Hudner ’87 Harris Rosenheim ’02 ma k pa a y ya yable to The F e enn S c hool, , mailed to: Director of Advancement For more Chec Advancement Officer information, contact Tom Hudner ’87, Director of Advancement 978-318-3520 978-318-3517 The Feenn School The Fenn School, 516 Monument Street, Concord, MA -1742. Email thudner@fenn.org or call 978-318-3520 thudner@ffenn.org e hr osenheim@f nheim@ffeenn.org45 Alumni & Development Office

516 Monument Street Concord,, MA 01742

THE FENN SCHOOL 516 MONUMENT STREET CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 01742-1894

NONPROFIT U.S. POSTAGE PAID N READING MA PERMIT NO. 121

Parents of Alumni If this publication is addressed to your son, and he no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please notify the alumni office of his new mailing address (978-318-3525 or aboudreau@fenn.org). Thank you!

Nate Goshgarian ’95 (see Class Notes) is an accomplished wildlife and landscape photographer. This photo of Milford Sound, a fjord in New Zealand’s South Island, marked Nate’s National Geographic debut and the image was named a Readers’ Choice photo in the July 2012 issue of the magazine.