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Prince Lecture Inspires
Prince Lecture Inspires Generations
A concert violinist, a bird trainer, and an author, writer, and naturalist are just a few of the featured guests who have taken the stage throughout the years as part of the Nichols School Prince Lecture Series. Funded through the generosity of S. Warren Prince, Jr. ’47 in memory of his parents, the lecture series brings together students, faculty members, school administrators and the public for a mind-opening event.
“The inspiration behind this lecture series was how could we make people think. We decided that by bringing in people who represented everything under the sun, we can bring people together,” said Prince.
Prince established the series in 1974 with his fellow classmate and former Nichols faculty member Frederick Zeller ’47, who convinced his friend of the possibilities of a lecture program at Nichols. Committed to diversity and the introduction of new ideas, Prince and Zeller inspired generations of Nichols students through their efforts to present guests representing a wide range of disciplines.
“We have so much going on in the world and we were seeking to help get people to think. The exchange of ideas brings us to a re-examination of our own mindset and in this, one can develop,” Prince said.
For Prince, supporting the lecture series also had a deeper significance. Named for his family, the lecture series was a tribute to his late parents, Gladys Atwood and Sydney Warren Prince. His parents, who both attended Lafayette High School, had a great appreciation for
education. Prince’s mother was fluent in several languages and taught elocution at schools, including Lafayette and Buffalo Seminary. His father, a graduate of Colgate University, later attended Princeton University as part of a World War I military program. “This really is the legacy of our family. It started out in memory of my mother and father, and then we added Buffalo Seminary, and it will keep on going. We put it together for students, and if you do something for students who then work with the faculty, everyone benefits,” said Prince. In addition to the lecture series at Nichols, a parallel program was established at Buffalo Seminary. Often, Nichols and Buffalo Seminary community members come together for a luncheon to celebrate the continuation of the Prince Lecture Series. This year, Nichols was honored to welcome Holocaust survivor Sophia Veffer as the 2022 Prince Holocaust Survivor, Sophia Veffer (left) with Jennifer Prince Lecture Series speaker. She Bronstein (right), daughter of S. Warren Prince, Jr. ’47, and retold her moving story Jennifer’s daughter, Kilby Bronstein at the Prince Lecture on May 10, 2022 at The Buffalo Club. of how she survived Nazi occupation of Holland and went into hiding before being placed away from her family. She eventually immigrated to the United States in 1954. “The idea is for the Prince Lecture Series is to continue to innovate education and introduce new things,” said Prince. “With lectures like the Sophia Veffer’s story, we would like to keep this going for years to come,” he added. n
The Work of Life
Experiential Opportunities for Nichols Students
Our aim is to train minds, bodies and hearts for the work of life, and to carry into all we do the highest ideals of character and service.
– Nichols School Mission Statement
True to the tradition of the School’s mission statement, Nichols seeks to provide all students with a world-class education that challenges them beyond textbooks and lectures. In this, Nichols offers several experiential learning opportunities for students to explore interests, collaborate with peers and mentors, and gain professional experience while earning academic credit.
“After our students gain the strong foundational education here at Nichols, we are giving juniors and seniors the opportunity to get experiences beyond what they get in the typical classroom,” said Dr. Aranya Maritime P’17,’25, Dean of Academics. “We have five core competencies here at Nichols, and these work experiences complement our competencies of thinking, communicating, creating, engaging, and developing, which make up the Nichols Portrait of a Graduate,” she added.
Nichols offers two formal experiential programs, the Work of Life, which is composed of ten different internships, and Research Scholars, which provides students the opportunity to conduct research at the Jacobs Institute and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Work of Life Internships
Managed on campus, the Work of Life program gives students practical and professional experiences in STEM, media, social justice, and more. Juniors and Seniors apply to the program by completing an application and writing an essay about the internship of their choice. These materials are reviewed by a committee of faculty and administrators. The internships include student experiences in the area of student events and speaker series, robotics and engineering, visual and performing arts, and marketing and communications.
Research Scholars Programs
Likewise, Nichols’ Research Scholars program provides Nichols seniors opportunities at Buffalo’s premiere research institutes, the Jacobs Institute and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. At Roswell, students can participate in the Thoracic Oncology program or the Psycho-social Oncology program. In the Thoracic program, students partner with Dr. Sai Yendamuri P’20, Chair of the Department of Thoracic Surgery at Roswell, to provide secondary data analysis research to develop a research question, formulate hypotheses, conceptualize statistical tests, and analyze statistical results to answer their initial research question. In the Psycho-social program, students partner with Dr. Elizabeth Gage Bouchard ’99, Senior Vice President for Community Outreach and Engagement and Professor of Oncology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, to research how caregivers’ interpersonal networks shape family outcomes after a child is diagnosed with pediatric cancer.
In addition, the Jacobs Scholars Program provides an educational pathway program in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Jacobs Scholars participate in a summer immersion experience at the Jacobs Institute for each of their four years in upper school. Scholars spend the first three years participating in a rotational program at the Jacobs Institute designed to provide direct learning experiences across a variety of career opportunities in the healthcare industry: clinical research, surgical observation, engineering, practical engagement, business development, and technology. In
their fourth year, Jacobs Scholars participate in an apprenticeship in the nationally renowned Jacobs Institute College Internship Program. Scholars are partnered with summer college interns assisting with research, development and execution of individually assigned projects.
Looking Ahead
During the last decade, more than one hundred students have benefited from the Work of Life and Research Scholars programs and the hope is to include more internships each year. Many students have been inspired to pursue medicine thanks to working at Roswell while others have sought out a career in media after their Work of Life internship.
“These opportunities are pathways for our Nichols students, and when students apply to college, this is a part of their story. They can take the foundational knowledge they have gained from fifth to tenth grade and apply it and demonstrate how they are writing their own Nichols story thanks in part to this work which takes them beyond the classroom and serve them throughout life,” Dr. Maritime said. n
– Emmy Franz ’22.
Committed to the Work of Life Celebrating Centurion
Thomas “Tom” Harriman ’38,
On a fall day in late 2021, Nichols School alumnus Thomas “Tom” Harriman ’38 received a delivery at his home in Santa Barbara, California from Buffalo. A large package addressed to Harriman had arrived with the return address listed as Nichols School at Amherst Street.
When Harriman unsealed the package, a flood of envelopes fell out. He slowly opened them one by one. “Happy Birthday,” “Celebrate,” “Congratulations on the Day of Your 100th birthday.” Harriman was the recipient of one hundred birthday cards handwritten by Nichols Middle and Upper School students. The students had come together to recognize Harriman, an esteemed alumnus, on the date of his one hundredth birthday and to celebrate Nichols’ oldest living alumni.
“I was tickled,” Harriman said. “We had a party with family, and it was a great surprise.”
Buffalo, Nichols, and Beyond
Harriman’s father, Lewis G. Harriman, a banker with Fidelity Trust Company, moved his family to Buffalo and was instrumental in the merger of Fidelity with Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company, the precursor of present-day M&T Bank, of which he became President
at the age of 36. He also served as a trustee of Nichols School. Born at Children’s Hospital and reared at 620 West Ferry Street in Buffalo, Tom Harriman entered Nichols School as a fifth grader in 1930. Anchored by Albright Hall and its iconic bell tower, Nichols back then appeared as a vast landscape of grass and woodlands when Harriman walked on to the school’s campus more than eight decades ago. Despite the idyllic scene on Nichols campus, it was a time when Europe was facing the horrific impact of Adolf Hitler, which had yet to reach the United States soil. Pictured at Le Cumbre Country Club in Santa Barbara, CA, Leslie Garcia, Assistant Head of School for Advancement; Tom Harriman ’38; Chris Burner, Head of School; Richard Harriman ’62. In pre-World War II Buffalo, Harriman was the youngest of four boys, who all attended Nichols before him. Lew Jr, ’34, William ’36, and John (Jack) ’37, preceded their brother Tom. Their last sibling was a girl, Elizabeth, who also had a Nichols connection, as she married Charles Bean, Nichols ’41. As a young Middle Schooler, Harriman described himself as a “loner.” But, at Nichols, he quickly became more comfortable in his skin as he entered Upper School. Harriman, a standout student academically, achieved highest honors and was notably always at the top of his class. He was captain of the tennis team and played
football, until a shoulder injury led to him switching to the soccer team, of which he was voted captain. Harriman excelled at languages and credits Nichols with his keen grasp of French and his exceptional academic foundation.
“I had the highest honors in high school and later when I went to Switzerland, I studied French and was able to translate from Latin directly to French within six weeks because of what I was taught at Nichols. I had a good solid background at Nichols School,” stated Harriman.
Harriman entered Dartmouth College in the fall of 1938 to study finance at the encouragement of his father, a lifelong investment banker. He was set to attend the Sorbonne in Paris for his junior year, until World War II and the advancement of the Nazis thwarted Harriman’s plans.
“There I was planning an investment banking career when the Nazis rolled over France,” said Harriman. “Therefore, I was not going to be at the Sorbonne my junior year, and I damn well better be doing something for the war effort,” he added.
The War Effort
Young men across America were reporting for the draft, but due to his poor vision, Harriman was told a desk job awaited him in Washington. Harriman realized he “did not want to end up in a clerk job” and accepted a position as a Test Flight Engineer at Bell Aircraft after completing his mater’s degree in aeronautical engineering at M.I.T.
“We performed flight tests right from the airfield in Niagara Falls. With the war on, we all had to do something,” he said. “They had a contract from the United States (Government) and that is how I escaped being a clerk in Washington … I had jumped from Dartmouth to M.I.T., so I was making aircraft for the war,” he added.
With his skills in high demand, Harriman pressed forward at Bell Aircraft through the end of the War.
The First Commercial Helicopter
In post-war America, Harriman and Bell Aircraft pivoted their attention to the race to create the first commercial helicopter. Neck and neck in competition with Sikorsky Helicopters, which introduced the first military helicopter, Harriman spent his days and nights analyzing the weight and lift of Bell’s prototype.
“I was never more than two feet away from my math notebook, my laboratory notebook,” said Harriman. “I would be sitting on a tennis court on Sunday, and I would be designing a part that had to be sent to manufacturing on Monday,” he added.
With a pencil and a notebook to record observations and calculations alongside his mentor, inventor Arthur Young, he served as project engineer on what became the first helicopter certified by the Civil Aeronautics Board, which preceded the FAA, for commercial use. Registered as Bell’s NC-1H, the serial code was branded onto the model of the world’s first civilian helicopter, the Model 47.
“In eight months, I got us to have the first commercial certificate to produce and sell the first Bell helicopter for civilian use,” Harriman said.
When Bell Aircraft moved to Texas, Harriman moved his young family to Dallas, where he flourished in commercial aviation. Yet, after 18 months, the family returned to Buffalo.
“Despite working in the best job for the best company. I moved my family back to Buffalo in 1953, because of the social climate of the South back then. It was a hard decision, but it meant I could send two boys to Nichols School,” Harriman said. The early piston engine helicopter, the Model 47, that Harriman was so instrumental in sending into the skies was also known as the “Whirlybird,” and was widely used in the Korean War. The Vietnam model was known as the Bell Huey, widely used by U.S. forces in Vietnam, is recognized by many in the television show “M.A.S.H.”
An avid skier, Harriman was the co-inventor of the ski-shaped landing gear used on this helicopter, and many others, for which he and a colleague were granted a U.S. patent. The helicopter is still in commercial use today.
Post-Aerospace Career
After his esteemed career in aeronautics, Harriman pivoted and left Bell Aircraft in 1958. He moved his family to Pasadena, California, to work in the electronics industry for a company which eventually became Conrac. In 1966, the headquarters moved to Manhattan, and Harriman moved his family to Greenwich, Connecticut, for twenty years.
While at Conrac, he applied his engineering expertise on consumer products. He was integral on projects such as the introduction of high-resolution monitors, connectivity of doorbell circuits, and application of
microcircuits. Harriman spent almost thirty years working in this innovative industry, during a time when his company saw great profitability and development, before retiring to Santa Barbara in 1986.
True to the commitment to learning and public service that he displayed at Nichols, in retirement, Harriman became involved in the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Now a trustee of this initiative, he seeks to discover the hidden capabilities of the human brain.
As a capstone to his business career, Harriman served four terms on the Board of Trustees of UC Santa Barbara, served on a local employment development initiative with other business leaders in Santa Barbara, and served on the Board of the Ensemble Theatre Company. Additionally, he found the Pacific Research Center and a start-up corporation which developed last-mile Internet connectivity. Harriman was also active in local political campaigns, including the election of two Congressional representatives.
Distinguished Alumni Award
A true Renaissance Man, Harriman is the living embodiment of the Nichols School mission, “to carry into all we do the highest ideals of character and service.” For this he was honored with the honor of the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award.
To mark the occasion, Head of School Chris Burner and Assistant Head of School for Advancement Leslie Garcia surprised Harriman with the award while on a West Coast development trip. At a lunch at the La Cumbre Country Club, Burner summarized Harriman’s importance to the school.
“Our mission at Nichols is to prepare students for the ‘work of life.’ In your life, Tom Harriman, you put your education to work and pioneered in aviation and technology. Our lives are different because of your ingenuity, and for that, we are honored to present you with the 2022 Nichols School Distinguished Alumni Award. You are a living example for today’s students and for students for generations to come,” Burner said.
For Harriman, enjoying a lunch on a warm spring day in his adopted hometown of Santa Barbara, it was a day of reflection and appreciation for the city and school that gave him his foundation.
“Buffalo has made a real comeback and it is great to see. What an opportunity for Nichols students to partner with innovators working in the Medical Corridor, the startup community, and beyond,” Harriman said. “When I look back, Nichols School gave me the foundation for my life that outfitted me to do everything else.” n
The Nichols News team 1936 – 1937. Harriman was Sports Editor.
Nichols Boys Varsity Soccer 1936
Magnificent
Maya
Q & A with Maya Jackson-Gibson
By Larry Desautels – English Department, Smith Writers Chair
Maya Jackson-Gibson, a Nichols graduate, class of 2011, took her intellectual curiosity, organizational skills, and soccer talent to Amherst College, from which she graduated Cum Laude in 2015. She was a NESCAC allstar in soccer, selected for the First Team All-Conference two years in a row, and also the winner of the John Woodroof Simpson Fellowship Award for her excellence in academics. After two years back in Buffalo, she began her official medical career at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She graduated in May 2022, and received the Pediatrics Departmental Award at her graduation.
Below is my attempt to capture some of Maya in a summary of a nearly two-hour interview, just prior to her graduation and her exodus from Chicago to begin her residency in Philadelphia.
LD: Maya…Doctor Jackson-Gibson…your resume is filled, and I often describe you as one of the three most interesting people I know. We don’t have the space in this interview to do more than touch on your life’s journey, or journeys, but you have been busy!
M J-G: Yes, I guess my resume is rather eclectic, but it kind of makes sense.
LD: Is there a single thing on your resume that defines you best, or does the resume in its entirety define you best?
M J-G: This is a tricky question because I do think [pause] a lot of things that might define me…if that’s the right word…things that might explain me best [pause], that might capture my essence aren’t necessarily on the resume.
Maya on her first safari in Madiwke Game Reserve, South Africa in 2021.
LD: Like what?
M J-G: I enjoy trying different opportunities, taking on new challenges. A lot of what you see on my resume is curated for the profession, involving medical school experiences, and some organizations in the greater Chicago community outside of the walls of medical school. Most of these were very structured, so in a way they are easier to understand for someone trying to “read” me on a page.
LD: You’re like a poem, then—much that clarifies is in the margin, or in between the lines.
M J-G: Thank you.
LD: A sonnet, not a limerick…on your way to being an epic.
During your time in medical school, you co-wrote and presented abstracts on research you did in Kenya and in Botswana, primarily on the impact of HIV on young people in those countries. That was done with support from the Harvard School of Medicine’s Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. How did you find the time?
M J-G: That was a fellowship I received during med school, which allowed me to spend eight months in Botswana doing research. It added some time to my degree but it gave me an opportunity to engage both different cultures and different challenges.
LD: We view such challenges as “global” in nature, much like COVID. You are a community activist, in many ways. Was your experience global in Botswana, or more local?
M J-G: When you’re there, it’s community health. It’s about people, about individuals, about those you meet professionally and casually. When you write investigative research papers afterward, and present that research, it becomes global…more of a view from the outside. I think an insight I gained there was how much I like community building, so I joined groups like GumboFit, a running club primarily for Black and Brown people in Chicago, to expose more people to healthy lifestyles, like running, hiking, and rock climbing. Once COVID hit, running became the safest activity. We began to get a lot of committed runners, and then Nike backed the program, allowing us to expand its scope. I became a certified running coach and helped a lot of our runner’s
Maya and her best friend from medical school, Kaitlin, hiking during vacation to Whistler in Fall of 2021.
train for their first marathon—the Chicago Marathon. From that I became part of an all-women’s racing team and have to run a certain number of races a year. Now I train four days a week, a passion that kind of spiraled into more like a side gig—a job [laughter]. I’m now directing projects, events, races. Even though I’m moving to Philadelphia for my residency, I still want to stay involved in the Chicago running community.
LD: And you’re the Secretary of the Student National Medical Association, which helps with that, right?
M J-G: Yes. It’s designed to expose the health professions to high school students, to coordinate review sessions for first- and second-year med students, and to assist the recruitment of medical students at regional and national conferences.
LD: You were also a co-founder, in the Medical School, of the Committee on Justice and Equity. How did that come about?
M J-G: I was encouraged by friends to become more of a social justice warrior. It was May of 2020, and the news was filled with stories about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Medical schools were being put on the hot seat for injustices in medicine and the profession, and for the need to reach out into minority communities with opportunities to enter the profession. This provided an opportunity to talk about issues, like the low numbers of African-Americans—especially males—entering the practice of medicine.
It’s complicated, and part of the initiative is to promote equity and equality in undergraduate pre-med school education, even reaching into high schools to educate under-represented groups about opportunities in health care.
Right: Maya with her mother Carol Jackson-Gibson (far right), sister Zoe Jackson-Gibson ’12, and father Garthfield Gibson during her white coat ceremony at the beginning of medical school in 2017. Below: Maya during a fly fishing excursion in Colorado with college friends.
LD: You like to keep busy. We spoke earlier about those two years you spent after undergraduate school. At Amherst College, you played soccer, majored in Spanish, spent vacations and summers doing a variety of jobs, not jobs that one would necessarily find their way to a medical student’s resume.
M J-G: Ironically, I suppose, many of those jobs gave me opportunities to shape both the jobs and myself. I worked at “Painting with a Twist,” a paint-and-sip shop where I cleaned paint brushes in the back room and mopped floors after suburban women played with paint and sampled wine. I even had to teach a class once. I enjoyed myself, just being in that space, reminded how to be creative even if involved in what some might consider silly tasks. I worked with a catering service. I subbed at Nichols, after graduating from college—teaching an English or a math class, wherever I was needed. Let’s say, it all kept me nimble!
LD: Because this is a “Nichols interview,” how did we help or hinder you on these paths you’ve been taking?
M J-G: I was prepared in the classroom for the academics of college classes, but I had so much exposure to other things, too. The school had just begun a series of intern programs, and I received one for the summer before my senior year, at a breast cancer research facility. That seems so long ago, but it was the first time I went through a process of applying for internships. I was accountable for studying charts and making circles and taking notes. And then my exchange trip to Spain really piqued my interest in foreign travel. I had the flexibility [at Nichols] to experiment. In Ms. Kelley’s acting class I was in a play, and then I did a monologue show for two years where I learned about production. As a soccer player I created strong relationships with teammates and coaches.
LD: What could we have done better?
M J-G: I think many of those things are being worked on now. During my time at Nichols, I wasn’t aware of a resource that I could use to reach out to other Nichols alumni, especially Black alumni, to talk to them and connect with them about their lives and their career paths. Contacts were made organically, like if families knew someone in certain professions, or if an alum came to school to speak, or if there was an alumni picnic or other event, where classmates reconnected with classmates. Recently, though, we started to meet as Black alumni as a resource for middle and upper school students of color.
There is an opportunity, now, to pool experiences, and maybe share them with students who might not be very aware of their options down the road.
I think as minority students we often proceed on the straight and narrow, knowing how much our families have sacrificed for our education. We figure we have to honor those sacrifices with a worthy profession. It’s likely that way with a lot of families, not just minorities. Students hearing from people of similar backgrounds—to hear stories of meandering toward their places in life—might make it less stressful for students.
LD: You ended up majoring in Spanish at Amherst. Not quite the normal path to medical school—a bit of a misdirection, some might say. You are nimble!
M J-G: People would say to me, “You were a Spanish major and now you’re in med school? That makes no sense!”
But it does make sense! In the way that washing paint brushes and mopping floors and playing soccer and organizing races make sense.
But with Spanish, I think my initial plan was to go into international relations, having no real idea what that meant, but it sounded cool. To travel the world, to experience other cultures, to engage people in various languages. Then I realized I might not be political enough, so I turned my sights.
Maya with older sister Adele Jackson-Gibson ’09 (middle) and Zoe Jackson-Gibson ’12 during the holiday season of 2019.
LD: Why did you decide on Pediatric medicine?
M J-G: I think that choice blends perfectly with all those things I have an affinity for. Mentorship—check; Coaching—check; Teaching—check. The whole travel piece, while doing my research, gave me greater awareness, if not a total understanding, of different cultures— an awareness of a need to be patient, even if I don’t necessarily agree with people’s thought processes or with their medical treatments they’re using. You still have to respect their cultures and how they’ve grown up believing things that might be in opposition to what I bring to them. It’s important to work as a team instead of working in opposition to them. It’s not always easy when you’re viewed as an outsider, even one with good intentions.
I think my awareness of this will allow me to work with parents and their children, at a time when people are passing cultures or beliefs from one generation to the next.
LD: If you could give a summary statement about what you’ve learned through all this, what might it be?
M J-G: It’s taken some time, but with all the opportunities and experiences I’ve had, I now know what I care about, what I find essential to me. I now find it easier to say no to things, and I’ve reached that point at a young age.
LD: If you had a piece of advice to give to our current students, what might it be?
M J-G: People are drawn to individuals who are confident and honest. Honesty is key. If people don’t have integrity and honesty, then they might be among the most ambitious people in the world, but others won’t, or shouldn’t, align with them. n
