NMH Magazine selected articles

NMH Magazine

Selected Articles

Northfield Mount Hermon compiled february 2018

Are you ready for an adventure?

According to the dictionary, “adventure” is defined as “an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.” Don’t worry! NMH isn’t hazardous. But there will be some risks waiting for you here — the good kind. The kind of risks in which you try new classes and activities, embark on projects you never imagined, connect with new people, talk about new ideas, even try new foods. You’ll become a well-grounded young adult at NMH, ready to take on college and the world.

Office of Admission One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon Massachusetts 01354

The stories in these pages, which come from recent issues of the award-winning NMH Magazine, describe a few of the adventures our students have taken.

What will yours be?

413-498-3227 admission@nmhschool.org www.nmhschool.org

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Claude Anderson Dean of Enrollment

Cover art by Kevin Ouyang ’15, featured in the I1 spring 2013 issue of NMH Magazine.

IN THE CLASSROOM

Start Small, Scale Up

Learning how to build a business and create change through social entrepreneurship.

by JENNIFER SUTTON

Students in the new Social Entrepreneurship class were hardly the first to venture out on a field trip when they climbed into a school van last fall. But the Franklin County Jail? Definitely not your typical outing.

Grant Gonzalez, who co-teaches the class, says the prison visit helped students to “see what a community’s social problems are and what innovations are needed.”

The Rhodes Fellowship Course in Social Entrepreneurship launched in 2015 with a grant from William R. Rhodes ’53, an international banker and the former chair of Citicorp and the NMH Board of Trustees. The class, all juniors, incubates business projects that students propose to solve problems that they see around them.

“We want the students to dream big,” Gonzalez says. “But they also have to think about what’s possible now, on a realistic scale.”

Students apply and interview to join the class. “We’re looking less for a specific business idea than a mindset,” Gonzalez says — “students who are able to identify social issues or problems, understand what is and is not within their immediate ability to change, think about what has been done already to solve the problem, and finally, how can they actually affect change.”

For example, the giant international issue of hunger, Gonzalez says, “is something we all care about, but what is a

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system that you” — a 17-year-old student — “could feasibly put in place, one that hasn’t been tried before and that can start small and be scaled up.”

The yearlong course unfolds in three phases, the first of which is fairly traditional: reading about the history and theories of social entrepreneurship, as well as learning basic business principles and vocabulary. Then the group spends time visiting organizations in nearby Greenfield, Massachusetts — Community Action, which runs family and youth programs; the jail; a food pantry. The students team up and brainstorm new potential programs that could serve the city of Greenfield.

Finally, they take those Greenfieldbased ideas — or new ones based elsewhere — and start developing them into real-life business ventures.

The class becomes a “social innovation lab,” Gonzalez says. “Building an actual enterprise puts a lot of responsibility on the students, and forces them to think

“ We want the students to dream big, but they also have to think about what’s possible right now.”

through everything they’ve learned so far in the course.”

Last year, the projects included “We Rise,” a mentoring and tutoring program for high-potential but low-achieving students in Brooklyn, New York; “Veg.Out,” which aims to connect farmers in southern Vermont and western Massachusetts with low-income consumers to increase the accessibility of fresh, local food and decrease produce waste; and “The Anti-Stigma Campaign,” an online story-sharing program for people in Greenfield affected by opioid addiction. All three projects are still in the development phase, with their founders, now seniors, hoping to launch pilot versions this year.

Eli Nicholson ’17, who works on The Anti-Stigma Campaign, says the class initially felt a little overwhelming. “We were reading about people who had gone into third-world countries and started micro-lending banks, and there was no way I could see us, as students, coming up with anything that could be called social entrepreneurship.”

Then the class talked with actual entrepreneurs, such as Dorothy Stoneman of YouthBuild, an international organization that teaches construction skills to low-income youth.

Her company now runs hundreds of programs, but Stoneman described “how she started really small, and she made it seem feasible,” Nicholson says.

Students in the Social Entrepreneurship class say they “had to adapt when they found flaws in their plans.”

“We learned that you have to be willing to take it one step at a time,” says Sophie Basescu ’17, one of the leaders of the Veg.Out project. “The people we talked to came up with a bunch of business ideas and they all failed, so they took one part of one idea that they’re really passionate about and focused on that.”

As they fine-tuned their projects, the Social Entrepreneurship “fellows,” as they’re called, stumbled plenty. They changed their projects’ names, locations, logistics, even their overall goals.

“We had to adapt when we found flaws in our plans,” Nicholson says.

PHOTO: GLENN MINSHALL

That’s exactly the point, Gonzalez says. “We try to steer everyone away from ‘You pass the course if you create an enterprise and you fail if you don’t.’ They’re working through the challenges and details of launching a business, taking ownership of the time management, figuring out their own roles and how to work together — that process is more important than rushing something out to meet an artificial deadline.”

Basescu and Nicholson both found the hands-on element of the course the most valuable — “when we got to work with people who are in local

communities, not on campus,” Basescu says. “It’s empowering to be able to go out on our own and make those connections.”

For The Anti-Stigma Campaign project — which resembles NPR’s StoryCorps, recording people’s stories of addiction and sharing them online so others affected by the disease can listen and feel less isolated — Nicholson interviewed a recovering addict in Greenfield whom he met through the Opioid Task Force.

“There’s no more hands-on education than what I spoke about with her,” he says. [NMH]

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NMH I N TH E WO R L D “At school, you can get so busy with your schedule that you kind of store yourself away; you reserve a part of yourself.

Traveling really breaks that shell open.�

4 I NMH Model U.N.Magazine Students on the dunes near Doha, Qatar

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ITALY

CHINA

BRAZI L PHOTO: ELEANOR CONOVER

INDIA

These travelers found people, landscapes, and histories that changed the way they see the world—and the way they see themselves in the world.

Byrom has led NMH trips to a dozen countries, and each one challenged cultural stereotypes that were embedded in her mind. “I became a better teacher of world history and a better diplomat in my work,” she says. Byrom sees the same changes in students, too. “They return with a desire to share insights that could, in the long run, help bring about a more peaceful world.”

QATAR

In these pages, we’ve highlighted six of NMH’s numerous study-travel experiences, with snapshots and reflections from both teachers and students. There are sophomore humanities classes in Brazil and South Africa, a language immersion program in China, a Model United Nations delegation in Qatar, student singers performing at the Vatican in Rome, and NMH students-turned-volunteerteachers at an orphanage in India.

SOUTH AFR ICA

T

HERE’S NO BETTER TIME than high school to start traveling and learning about the world. That’s according to Lorrie Byrom, director of NMH’s Center for International Education.

“High school students have fewer preconceived ideas about the world than college students, so they’re more open to possibilities,” Byrom says.

Drema, age 7

JOYBELLS SCHOOL AND ORPHANAGE I N DI A

DEHRADUN, INDIA J ULI ET KIM ’ 16 During a service trip to the Joybells orphanage last March, Drema and the other kids welcomed us with bright smiles and dazzling eyes. I fell in love with them at first sight.

Our job was to tutor them, so we taught various subjects in the morning, and during the afternoon, the little boys and girls brought out colorful cups of delicious chai tea for us to drink.

I still find myself craving that tea. I miss the taste. But what I miss more is the warmth and generosity that were poured into those little cups, and the shy smile of the little girl who carried the tea, and the little hands that held the cups. It was those little things that taught me the most in India; they filled my heart.

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I’ll be returning to Joybells this summer. I cannot wait to smell that sweet chai tea, or to see the unconditional smiles of those same little boys and girls when we meet again.

AT TA KU RZ M A N N Director of Service Learning Thirteen of us arrived at the orphanage after many hours of travel by airplane, bumpy train, and crowded bus. We knew the children who lived there came from harsh circumstances of loss, deprivation, and starvation, and we were prepared to find them challenging— detached, perhaps, or shy or unwelcoming. But we would be their teachers for the next two weeks and we would have to make it work.

With our anxiety and excitement building, we turned off the dusty roads

of the village and drove into the orphanage compound, past shacks, gardens, and fruit trees. In the distance, we spied a group of children in bright T-shirts, cheering and smiling, holding flowers they had picked for us. The cheering grew louder as we got off the van. They circled around us and took our hands, two or three little children on each of our arms. They walked with us to their school, where we dove into two weeks of hard work, fun, laughter, and affection.

Each day, we were touched by their eagerness to learn, the way they cared for one another, their gratitude and sweetness, their pride in sharing with us what they had. It didn’t take us long to realize that even though we had come from afar with the goal of teaching these children, they were the ones teaching us.

PHOTO: JULIET KIM ’16

QUILOMBO SCHOOL

SUSAN KENNEDY Religious Studies and Philosophy Teacher When we arrived at the Quilombo school on the island of Itaparica, in northeastern Brazil, the students and faculty were waiting for us. They were playing drums, singing, and clapping, and soon everyone started dancing. The Quilombo are descendants of African slaves, and the school is for people who want to go on to higher education. It costs a ton of money to take the test that’s required for college in Brazil, and most of the Quilombo people 1) don’t have the money for the test, let alone higher education, and 2) don’t have the knowledge to do well on the test. So the school operates in the afternoon and on weekends. Some of the students are going to regular high school, too; some have already graduated. They’re basically giving up their free time in order to better themselves.

We shared presentations about our countries, schools, and cultures, and we learned a lot about each others’ backgrounds. Most impressive, however, was how quickly and easily the Brazilian and American kids became friends.

That set the stage for the ease with which NMH students interacted with Brazilians throughout the trip.

T YM IR SI M PS ON ’ 16 This was my first time traveling outside the U.S., and I did not know what to expect. I thought maybe the Quilombo students would see us as outsiders—like “those Americans.” In fact, it was the opposite. As soon as we got there, they wanted to talk to us. We all had so many questions for each other. I don’t speak Portuguese, so most of the time I could not understand what they were saying. We learned to communicate without a lot of words.

In another part of the trip, we did activities with some young children in

PHOTOS: JAVIER ESCUDERO

their neighborhood. We served them dinner afterward, and lots of the children took the plates of food we handed them back to their homes and then returned for their own meal. When we first began serving, most of our group was hungry, and I was thinking, “I can’t wait to eat.” But these kids were worried about their families first, even before themselves. When I saw that, I wasn’t hungry anymore. I offered my plate to many of the children, but not one would take it.

I really want to travel more now.

I want to see more places and cultures around the world. I hope to go back to Brazil in the future and maybe lead travel groups—lead people to more awareness. At school, you can get so busy with your schedule that you kind of store yourself away; you reserve a part of yourself. Brazil really broke that shell open. It was an experience so new that I wanted to be in it as much as I could.

BRAZIL

ITAPARICA, BRAZIL

Dancing with Quilombo students and teachers (top); eating dinner with children in Lençois.

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ST. PETER’S BASILICA ITALY

VATICAN CITY, ROME M OLLY RIEHS ’ 14 After walking through the Vatican museums, I thought there could not be a more beautiful collection of artwork and a deeper connection to thousands of years of history. When I walked into St. Peter’s Basilica, I knew I had been wrong.

The intense feelings of amazement and excitement were overwhelming. We were the featured guests, preparing to sing for a Mass that would be broadcast around the world.

Looking out at the crowd, I saw nuns, strangers in suits, and tourists. I felt goose bumps rise on my arms and along my spine. When our guide pointed at us to start singing, we opened our hearts with “Adoramus Te,” and I knew we were

meant to be there in that glorious space, uniting people through song.

The Mass was in Latin and Italian, so although I did not understand it, the words sounded fluid and beautiful. Just when I thought the service couldn’t get more emotional, the cardinal looked right at us and repeated his sermon in English—a language rarely spoken in St. Peter’s. He translated for us so we could feel a part of the spirit we helped create. At that moment, I felt so proud of my school and so connected with my choir and friends: my singing family.

SH E IL A HE FFER N O N Director of Choral Programs Ever since I first visited the Vatican 23 years ago, I’ve had the dream of taking NMH choirs to sing during Mass in the superb acoustics and physical beauty of St. Peter’s Basilica. But when that dream

became a reality, I began to worry that I had idealized the experience too much. Would the students be intimidated by the history and size of the Basilica? Would they connect with this extraordinary edifice and testament to centuries of people’s faith?

The moment they began to sing, I could see they knew this was a cathartic moment. They filled the historic space with the beautiful music, full tones, and ringing chords of Palestrina and Lotti, sharing what they love and do so well with the pilgrims who had made their way to Mass.

After the final cutoff, their voices echoed through the Basilica for several seconds. Those seconds seemed to last forever, giving me time to look at the singers. Each of their faces wore an expression of sheer joy. The professional choir members who were there to sing the responses for the Mass erupted in applause, but even before that, I knew my worry had been unnecessary.

The students not only understood what they had done, but they were transformed by it and by one another. The reality was far more glorious than my dream had been.

NMH student singers, including Molly Riehs ’14 (top), perform during Mass at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica.

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PHOTOS: STEVE BISGROVE

At the Kaifeng Night Market, vendors cook dinner on the spot for throngs of people.

Kaifeng night market

PAUL POLK ’ 1 4 Kaifeng is a big city, but not like Beijing or Shanghai. We got to the night market early, when the vendors were just setting up. It was a normal Saturday, and people were coming for something to eat before they went out to do something else. You could get all sorts of food—meat, vegetables, dumplings. I got noodles and they were excellent.

A lot of our time in China was pretty scripted, with a set itinerary and schedule, but I really wanted to feel what it was like to be a regular person instead of a tourist. When we went to the market, it was different. There was nothing scripted about it. There was no touristy stuff. It was just everyday life.

PHOTO: PAUL POLK ’14

We weren’t looking for anything in particular; there was no statue we had to visit or anything like that. We just wandered from one end of the market to the other, seeing what looked cool. The vendors were cooking food right out in the open, families were eating dinner, and it felt really authentic.

J IN G L IU Chinese Teacher The Kaifeng Night Market is very famous because Kaifeng was the capital city of the Northern Song Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago—and also because the food is wonderful. It’s local food, not restaurant food. One of my favorites is xiao long bao; it’s a steamed

CH I N A

HENAN PROVINCE, CHINA bun, and inside, there is meat but also soup. Sometimes you have to drink the soup with a straw.

At NMH, students learn Chinese in the classroom from a textbook, and they don’t get the chance to understand average Chinese people’s lives. In some cases, we bring the culture into the classroom—talking about the ancient cities of China, for example. But on this trip, the students get to see the real ancient cities of China. Seeing the real China is exciting for them. They go to the night market and speak Chinese, they go shopping, they try to negotiate in Chinese. That is the most exciting part for me: seeing the students use their language skills, after all our hard work.

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MODEL UNITED NATIONS QATAR

DOHA, QATAR “ The debate of a Model U.N. conference is incredibly exciting, but it doesn’t compare to becoming friends with people from the other side of the world.”

A LEC S H EA ’ 14 When I traveled thousands of miles from New York to the Model U.N. conference in Qatar, I dragged along a copy of the International Herald Tribune. It served as a pillow, notepaper, and reading material: On the long plane ride, I read the front-page stories about places like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Egypt.

At the conference, it became clear that the NMH students were the only Americans in attendance. The delegates around us were Pakistanis, Indians, Iranians, and Tunisians. I debated a relatively basic international nuclear

question, acting as North Korea in the International Atomic Energy Agency, but it was between debates that the conference got really interesting. All the delegates would talk to whoever was nearby, about everything from movies to ideal systems of government.

It’s one thing to read a country’s name on the front page of a newspaper.

It’s another to talk to someone from that country, especially when their homeland often is reduced to an enemy.

The debate of a Model U.N. conference is incredibly exciting, but it doesn’t compare to becoming friends with people from the other side of the world. I

remember Qatar most when I read a news story about some far-flung corner of the world, and think of a friend who calls that place home.

GRA N T GO N ZA L EZ Arabic and HistoryTeacher The authenticity of a place is often the Holy Grail of a traveler. “I want to experience the real [fill in the country],” is a common tourist’s refrain.

In Qatar, though, authenticity is tough to define; 90 percent of its nearly 2 million inhabitants are foreign workers.

Our NMH students tried to learn from everyone they met in Qatar, including Qatari citizens; our guides, who came from disparate countries; and, most important, their peers from around the world at the Model U.N. conference.

While tourists might be shielded— or might shield themselves—from the complex realities of a place, the NMH students asked good questions about the sustainability of the fast-growing city of Doha, and its visible inequality and dismal record of protecting workers’ human rights. A taxi driver from Nepal told us: “Ten years ago, I could count on one hand the number of skyscrapers in Doha.” Today, the city resembles New York in the desert.

I’ve traveled extensively in the Middle East, but these students pushed me to see Qatar through their eyes and as part of their future. “Is Doha a portent of our globalized future?” one student asked. “Or will it be viewed as a relic of modernization?”

Model U.N. delegates, including NMH’s Ismini Ethridge ’14 (center), get to know one another during breaks in the debate.

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PHOTO: ELEANOR CONOVER

GA RY PA RTENH E IME R Religious Studies and Philosophy Teacher We traveled to South Africa to feel what it was like, however briefly, to be the minority—to reconcile our “book learning” with experience.

In Soweto, there were children everywhere. They seemed to materialize on cue from every corner of the township, from the narrow alleys of the shantytowns—the “informal settlements”—to the open squares, where they joined our pickup soccer games. So much energy, so much joy! It was tempting to conclude that they needed nothing from us or the rest of the world, that they were somehow content with what they had, despite the injustices imposed by history and circumstance. But where, I wondered, would these kids be in 10 years, or 20?

At the end of that day in the townships, we sang a South African folk song as a farewell, and our hosts clapped and danced along with us. It occurred to me then that the kids whose voices and bodies harmonized with ours could teach us something about resilience. In the face of overwhelming odds, they pointed toward a future in which sharing is the answer to the ageless cry for social justice.

SOWETO

JOHANNESBURG, South africa B E A DOW DY ’ 1 5 When we got to South Africa, our tour guide, Joe, greeted us by saying, “Welcome home.” He explained how our ancestors had come from Africa, and so we were truly home. That felt rare to me, to be welcomed home to a place I had never been before.

Joe described to us how he had been tortured during apartheid, but he had forgiven his persecutors because he knew there was no point in dwelling in the past. His courage and willingness to forgive floored me. And it wasn’t just Joe. People waved to us, welcomed us with hugs—they seemed determined to move on and be united.

PHOTOS: BEA DOWDY ’15, ISABELLE LOTOCKI DE VELIGOST ’15

South Africa changed the way I thought about what I can do.

Everywhere we went, we saw people building up their communities and helping others. We worked with an organization called Soil for Life that teaches people how to grow their own food; we visited the House of Homework, which helps children after school; we played pickup games at Grassroots Soccer, which provides constructive activities for children.

Individuals were taking it upon themselves to be the change. I’ve heard my whole life that one person can make a difference, but for the first time I was witnessing it in real life. [NMH]

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S O U T H A F R I CA

NMH students meet neighborhood children in Soweto.

INSIDE LOOK What happens when a student turns her camera on her peers?

At NMH, we take lots of photographs of students. Those images are often evocative and striking, intended to tell the story of the school for alumni, parents, and prospective students and their families.

But when you ask an NMH senior to carry her camera around with her for a few days, you get something different: a spontaneous glimpse of everyday life on campus, a sketch of a moment that is at once fleeting and enduring.

Maggie Dunbar ’17 — who’s made her name at NMH as a dancer, visual artist, and serious student — floated under the radar the way no professional photographer could.

Her images are casual, low-stakes; nobody’s posing for the grown-ups.

At first, Dunbar took pictures of her friends. Then she started asking other people if she could photograph them. It was a little awkward. “People had a hard time being candid when they knew they were being photographed,” she says. “But the better I got at asking, the more realistic they became.”

P HOTOS BY MA G G IE D U N B AR ’17

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Clockwise from lower left: Chuck Hannah ’18 and his roommate relax in their dorm room in Shea; Anna Martin ’18 helps a customer at the dorm store in Mackinnon; Marcus Lin ’17 takes a study break with a friend in the library; Aissatou Thiam ’19 prepares for a dance performance of Alice in Wonderland; Chloe Castro-Santos ’17 (right) congratulates Elyse Kassa ’18 after the performance; college counselor Sarah Kenyon runs an advising session in her office; Annika Voorheis ’20 and Ella Bathory-Peeler ’20 perform in Alice.

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INSIDE LOOK

“

People had a hard time being candid when they knew they were being photographed. But the better I got at asking, the more realistic they became.”

Clockwise from lower left: Kellan Grady ’17 warms up on the basketball court with his teammates; Emmet Flynn ’17 during lunch in Alumni Hall; Sekou Bolden ’18 in Shea; Checking out the costume shop in the Rhodes Arts Center; Rylie Hager ’17 eats dinner with her “little” during NMH’s weekly Big Brother Big Sister gathering; Ashlyn Koh ’17 and Celia Oleshansky ’17 during a visit to Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory in Deerfield; (below) photographer Maggie Dunbar ’17.

Maggie Dunbar ’17 is from Rhode Island. She loves breakfast, sailing, and speaking French (she hopes to live in France someday). She plans to take a gap year after she graduates this month.

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INPARTING THE CLASSROOM WORDS

Hands in the Dirt

Students research improvements for the NMH Farm.

by TARA JACKSON

Scenes from the Science of Farming class: Two students check the progress of the logs they inoculated with mushroom spores; another scavenges the lab for parts to build a mushroom dehydrator; four others brainstorm ideas to ensure that the composting initiative they developed for on-campus faculty homes continues after they graduate.

The class, now in its second year, applies the scientific method to a broad range of agricultural topics, using the NMH farm as a laboratory. Drawing on students’ knowledge of biology and chemistry, the class also incorporates economics, ethics, and sustainability into class projects and discussions. Mary Hefner, chair of the science department, helped develop the class out of a desire, she says, to better “use a beautiful, unique resource — the farm.”

The idea was first proposed years ago by former farm manager Richard Odman as an immersive “study-away” semester: Students would all live together in North Farmhouse and spend their days on the farm. That proposal never came to fruition, but Hefner glimpsed the idea in practice when biology teachers would ask students to do two-week research projects on the farm each spring. Hefner says, “The kids loved their projects,” so she and Odman’s successor, former farm manager Liam Sullivan ’05, began batting around the idea of a semester-long class.

The result has students researching plant and soil science, gaining an understanding of food production systems, and literally rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty as they learn. Emma Lindale ’17 has done her workjob on the farm for most of her time at NMH, but says that before taking the class with Hefner last spring, she hadn’t thought of the cows she milked and the crops she tended as science.

Junmo Kim ’17 says he signed up for the class because he was interested in studying an applied science. Indeed, one of the goals of the course, according to Hefner and Camilla Nivision, who taught the class last fall, is for students to identify improvements that can be put into immediate practice at the farm. The results of Kim’s final project, which compared three propagation methods for lavender plants, can be applied to the farm’s production of the crop, which is used to make soap and other cosmetics.

Another goal of the course is to show students how the challenges and opportunities of the class mirror those of the farm: Constant activity. Weather. Seasons.

Hefner says of her class: “We talked a lot about how at a farm, there isn’t one project. The cows need to be fed, and the beans need to be picked.” The students learn firsthand how multiple tasks are juggled in agriculture. “Every kid had a big project for which they were the principal investigator,” but they also were expected to help one another out. “Sometimes the whole class would

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Science teacher and department chair Mary Hefner (second from right) works with students in the greenhouse.

need to go pull weeds out of the beds so we could get the indigenousspecies flower garden project going,” Hefner says.

Nivision acknowledges that cold November and December weather makes it “really hard to be productive on the farm in New England,” so her class used that time to dig deeper into food systems and ethics, reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, studying meat production, and watching King Corn, a documentary

“ E veryone has a project for which they’re the principal investigator, but they’re expected to help each other out.”

film that raises questions about how Americans eat and farm. Kim says the class changed his perspective on the food industry. “Every time I walk up to the dining hall food bars, I can’t help but think about the carbon footprint and the paths the food took to get to the metal trays.”

Although the Science of Farming class lasts one semester, “the farm is not a one-season event,” says Hefner.

“Depending on when they take the class, students could have a completely

PHOTO: GLENN MINSHALL

different experience — harvesting or planting or soil tending.” Next year, the class will run in both the fall and spring, so interested students will have the opportunity to take it both semesters and “keep their own projects going,” Hefner says.

A project like the one Lindale did — researching the effect that plotting methods such as tilling, no tilling, and companion planting have on the soil — could be expanded over time, and put to better use on the

farm to increase productivity. Because she is a day student, Lindale was able to monitor her plots last summer, and ended up developing a larger no-till research trial that could begin this coming summer.

One of the goals of the class is to explore real-world agricultural problems and solutions, especially as the climate changes. Lindale’s project did just that.

“The class was eye-opening,” Lindale says. “It made me look at farming in a new light.”[NMH]

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Lab Girl

From Cutler Science Center to the U.S. Chemistry Olympiad’s top echelon.

Michelle Lee ’18 loves chemistry. She’s good at it, too — so good that last spring she was one of the top 20 scorers in the 2017 U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad, a competition for high school students sponsored by the American Chemical Society.

That honor earned Lee, who is from Seoul, Korea, a spot at a two-week academic training camp at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado in June. Lee and 19 other students from across the country studied chemistry with faculty from the academy and other colleges and universities — lectures, four hours in the lab every day, assessments — with the goal of being chosen one of four students to go on to the International Chemistry Olympiad.

Lee wasn’t one of the four, and she’s not sad about it, she says. Her goal was to get to that study camp — “to be immersed in chemistry, all day every day,” she says.

“It’s the process, the work, that is so much fun for me.”

Last year, Lee was the top finisher in a regional New England Olympiad; then she placed in the top 15 percent of students who took the national Olympiad exam.

This year, after Lee scored in the top 2 percent of students who took the national exam, NMH chemistry teacher Michelle Hurley, Lee’s mentor, reported that Lee “worked incredibly hard” for a “huge accomplishment.” Both the regional and national exams are

formidable, Hurley says, especially the lab components. “Students have to think for themselves, decide what methods to use, and devise their own solutions,” she says.

Lee is almost philosophical when she talks about chemistry. “After learning how chlorophyll makes leaves green, when I look at trees, they’re not just ordinary trees anymore,” she says. “There is so much happening that we can’t see, and that drives me to zoom in until I get to the bottom of everything. And I want to share this amazing feeling I get from studying chemistry with many people.”

E C L I P S E Last August’s eclipse was the perfect opportunity for science teacher Andy Corwin to test NMH’s two solar telescopes in preparation for his astronomy class this fall. Corwin outfitted the equipment with a cellphone camera and a tripod, and drove to Greenville, South Carolina, where he documented the eclipse in the path of totality. “It was surreal,” he says. “You look up at the sun and you see what looks like a black star.” Back at NMH, Corwin’s students use the telescopes to study sunspots, prominences, and other features of the sun. They’re excited, Corwin says, “to see the sun ‘live.’”

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PHOTOS: SHARON LABELLA-LINDALE, ANDY COR WIN

WHO•WHAT •W H Y

Mr. Nice Guy During his first winter at NMH, Yash Mehta ’16 liked to go sledding down the snowy hill by Memorial Chapel after every Monday-morning all-school meeting. In just a T-shirt and jeans. No jacket. No gloves. “It was the first time I ever saw snow, and I was just loving it so much,” Mehta says, grinning. “Sometimes I even rolled down the hill!”

Many NMH students make a name for themselves in one way or another. Over his two years at NMH, Mehta, who’s from Mumbai, India, has earned a reputation as the most cheerful kid on campus. There he goes, whizzing across campus on a mountain bike, waving madly. There he is again, leading a conga line of giggling ice skaters on Shadow Lake in January. When he described the dining hall’s burrito bar at a storytelling event, he threw his arms open with joy, as if offering a giant hug. Ask him what he thinks of his courses, and he marvels, “Every day, I walk out of my Genetics and Ethics class and think, ‘Oh, my God, what just happened?’ DNA is so cool!” In the 2016 yearbook, Mehta is listed as the senior “Most Likely to Brighten Your Day.” Not so, he insists. “It’s the other way around. Everyone else here makes my day.”

Mehta says his upbeat outlook comes from his father. When Mehta was about 12, he was in a restaurant with his dad, eating a cheese sandwich. “If you’re in a restaurant in India, there is always someone asking you for food, and it happened that day,” Mehta recalls. “I didn’t give the person my sandwich, and my dad asked me, ‘Are you happy?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Go buy five sandwiches and give them to those people over there.’” Mehta protested, but his father was firm. After Mehta handed out the sandwiches, his

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father asked him again if he was happy. “I said, ‘Dad, what did you do? I’ve never felt this way before.’ Ever since then, I have understood that eating a sandwich will make you happy, but when you give the sandwich to someone else, that’s true happiness.”

Mehta comes from a large, close, extended family, and when he calls his parents in India, he’s often on the line for a couple of hours as the phone gets passed from one relative to another. Yet he does not get homesick, he says. The transition to NMH was only hard for about 10 minutes. “I’m pretty sure there was no time that I was actually sad,” he says. “Everyone was so friendly and nice. It felt right away like I had a new family.”

At NMH, Mehta has launched himself on a busy, I’ll-try-anything trajectory.

He ice-skated for the first time. Read crime fiction.

He’d never paddled a canoe or ridden a mountain bike, but as a member of the NMH Outdoor Team, he competed in, and eventually won, boat-bike-run triathlons in western Massachusetts.

When his affection for those NMH burritos led to extra pounds, he asked his best friend across the hall in the dorm, Will Desautels ’16, a varsity soccer goalkeeper and a pole-vaulter, for help. “Will taught me to pick out foods that were good for me, like spinach instead of dessert,” Mehta says. “This year, he said, ‘Let’s work harder,’ and he started training me. He’ll say, ‘This is the last sprint,’ and we do the sprint, and then he says, ‘Just kidding, let’s do 10 more.’”

That’s got to be annoying — even for the most cheerful student on campus. Right? “Oh no,” Mehta says, surprised. “I love it!”

Mehta sports his and his teammates’ numbers after a triathlon, and (above) leads a parade of skaters on Shadow Lake.

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HANDS-ON HOW-TO In NMH’s Science Club, students prototype an inexpensive microscope with a laser pointer lens.

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