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The Chronicle April 2
Changing of the guard
Hudnut wa for having a
By Elana Zeltser
PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ART DURITY
WORKING TOGETHER: Future President of Harvard-Westlake Rick Commons, second from left, teaches an English class at
Groton School. Commons served as headmaster at the selective five-year Massachusetts boarding school for nine years.
Former faculty member to serve as ‘this generation’s Tom Hudnut’ By Lara Sokoloff
The future President of HarvardWestlake School sits with his son in a window seat, reading E.B. White’s “The Trumpet and the Swan” on a spring morning in Groton, Mass. “Children’s books are great!” he said. “I think I was loving it more than he was.” Although he won’t be engaging students in children’s novels, Rick Commons, who spent five years at HarvardWestlake as an English teacher, assistant dean, college counselor and soccer coach, said he hopes to be the chief question asker to mold his position. Commons will replace Thomas C. Hudnut as President of Harvard-Westlake School for the 2013-2014 school year, Hudnut announced on April 9. Hudnut announced his retirement in March after 26 years at the school. Commons is currently the Headmaster of the Groton School, a five-year boarding school for 370 students in Massachusetts. “Both [Harvard-Westlake and Groton] have academic excellence as a primary characteristic,” Commons said. “Both have students who are incredibly talented in other ways as well. Both have faculty who are inspiring and magical in what they do in and beyond the classroom.” Commons attended the University of Virginia and received his Masters of Arts in Teaching from Stanford University and a Master of Arts from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Commons has served as Headmaster of the Groton School for nine years, where he is responsible for the school’s internal and external aspects. “I often think about five different constituents: students and their experience, faculty and their experience, staff and their experience, parents and their experience and alumni and their experience,” he said. “I am generally involved in ensuring that the experience of all those different groups is as positive and inspiring as it can be, with the focus clearly on the students. That’s what we’re most interested in.” “Every day is different,” he said. “Ev-
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He is the perfect combination of good humor and gravitas. Every conversation was meaningful. I always left with some nugget of insight that I didn’t have before. —Jocelyn Medawar English Teacher
ery moment is different. This is my ninth year here, and no two days are really the same, or even close. It’s fun in that way.” Commons said he chose to leave Groton to be closer to his wife’s family, which lives in the Los Angeles area. Commons’ wife, Lindsay McNeil, graduated from Harvard-Westlake in 1996. He also said that to “be involved in a school as great as Harvard-Westlake was the perfect opportunity.” He was first approached by Hudnut in January about the position and has been talking with members of the Board of Trustees since. “I think the transition [to HarvardWestlake] will involve a lot of listening and asking questions of many different people,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to that period of time where I’m hoping to be a sponge and soak up everything that I can. I know going in that there is just no way that I can possibly have as much to offer the school as the school has to offer me in those early days.” Upper School Dean Sharon Cuseo, who worked closely with Commons in the college counseling office in the 1990s, said he always made people feel confident. “He was smart enough to know that you have to fake it until you make it,” she said. “It was so genius because he never let parents or students feel that he had any questions. That was a really good skill that will serve him well.” Commons said he knows the name of every Groton student and hopes to develop a similar closeness with members of the Harvard-Westlake community. “I don’t have the bandwidth to be able to know 1,500 by name,” he said. “I will depend on students being willing to
Perched atop the Upper School campus in a white house turned office, President Thomas C. Hudnut enjoys a piano composition by Frederic Chopin. This is one of the many classical pieces he rotates through his speaker system, filling the room with music. However, Hudnut, who announced his retirement from his post last month, hopes his office will be remembered for a different sound. “I hope that when people remember my office they will recall that the dominant noise was laughter,” Hudnut said. “That this has been a place where people have enjoyed working.” The culmination of the school year in June marks Hudnut’s 25th year as headmaster and then president of HarvardWestlake. Hudnut said his greatest challenge as headmaster was overseeing the merger of Harvard School for boys and Westlake School for girls in 1989. Since the merger Hudnut said that improvement in girls’ athletics as been most gratifying. “I have taken a tremendous amount of satisfaction and pride from the show-
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talk with me. Students who see a new person they don’t know might feel some distance, and I hope I can erase that distance very quickly by asking a lot of questions and showing a lot of interest and displaying real belief in the community.” In working with colleagues to gain the broadest perspective, Commons said he hopes he will construct a role for himself that has the greatest possible impact without getting in anyone’s way. Former Head of School Mimi Flood, who led Harvard-Westlake when Commons was last here, remembered him for his eagerness and energy. “Throughout those years, he continued to teach, to coach and to throw himself into the whole of campus activities,” she said. “He loves kids and loves school life. He is a school man through and through.” “He is the perfect combination of good humor and gravitas,” English teacher Jocelyn Medawar said, who worked with Commons in the English department. “Every conversation was meaningful, every conversation I always left with some nugget of insight that I didn’t have before.” Flood said she thought Commons was a fitting replacement for Hudnut. “Tom Hudnut is almost an impossible act to follow. What he has accomplished at Harvard-Westlake over the years of his stewardship is astounding,” Flood said. “It is so in keeping with his character that the man he has helped select as his successor is a man of equal stature. His wisdom, clarity, integry and proven effectivenes make him not only a worthy sucessor but also an ideal one.” “This is this generation’s Tom Hudnut,” Cuseo said.
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Rick Commons to become Pre
Commons taught at Har and is the headmaster o
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Harry Salamandra to serve as
Salamandra has been H and will serve as the firs next year.
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Audrius Barzdukas to serve a
Barzdukas, who became with Head of Athletics, w Upper School.
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Terry Barnum to take over as
Athletic Director Barnum the next Head of Athletic holds.
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Margot Riemer to become Fo
Spanish teacher Riemer w Chenier, who has held th return to teaching full tim
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Beth Slattery to become Chai
Slattery will replace John of the Middle School.
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Christopher Jones to replace Jones currently works as Academy in Ohio.