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est in the museum, drawing in new work-duty students and possibly igniting the imaginations of future archaeologists. Further, Blustain says, the Abbots made important contributions to help jump-start BALAM, the Bilingual Archaeology Learning Adventure in Mezzo-America, a collaborative program by which the museum and the Spanish department take Andover students each summer on an interdisciplinary language immersion and archaeological expedition to Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. In the summer 2007 trip to Belize, BALAM students help uncover a 2,000-year-old staircase in Cahal Pech. The program got off the ground with Abbot Academy Association funding.
Moreover, in 2007 the Abbot Academy Association made a $150,000 grant to the Peabody Museum’s endowment fund, named for Hiram Bingham III, a member of PA’s Class of 1896 who in 1911 rediscovered the largely forgotten Inca city at Machu Picchu.
Changing the Landscape In fact, some of Andover’s most lasting innovations over the decades have started with three years of seed funding from the Abbots, then gone on to play a role of both prominence and permanence at the Academy. The Abbot Academy Association legacy thus includes programs as integral to PA today as the Community Service Program, the counseling services at Graham House, the Brace Center for Gender Studies, and the outreach program Math and Science for Minority Students (MS)2. A more recent project that has potential to become part of the long-term landscape is the two-year-old ACE (Accelerate, Challenge, Enrich) Scholars summer program, which brings rising lowers with uneven academic preparation to the Colorado Rocky Mountain School for an intensive five-week program in math, science, and critical reading and writing. Natalie Schorr, who grew up on campus as the child of former faculty members Allan and Clare Gillingham, has a 42
good sense of institutional history. She notes that a chronicle of Andover’s priorities can be read in the list of grant applications over the decades. Describing what she calls “waves of applications” focusing on coeducational studies, then global and multicultural programming, then community service projects, she says, “The next big theme is sustainability; you can really see it coming.” Indeed, recent Abbot Academy Association grants enabled not only the electric car project, but also the hiring of a campus sustainability coordinator and an initiative by school nutritionist Aggie Kip to conserve resources by encouraging consumption of local foods. Conserving resources is certainly going to be part of the larger trend, as the economic downturn batters endowments across the country. The Abbots’ funds are invested with the Phillips Academy endowment, and so have suffered the same significant drop in value over the past six months. Because the grant amount is calculated on a threeyear average of available funds, “based on what we know now it will be several years before there will be much of an impact on grants,” Zimmerman says. “We’ll be somewhat more conservative in our grants, but we don’t expect to see a radical change.” Zimmerman was recruited to serve on the board six years ago. She is now completing her term of service, which included three years as president. Although she has been involved in a range of other volunteer work as an alumna, she says the association has been the most meaningful to her. “There are very few situations in life,” she says “where you have the opportunity to make your mark on the future by helping people’s dreams come true.” Theresa Pease is an award-winning magazine journalist specializing in academe. From 1994 to 2006, she served as editor of the Andover Bulletin.
Students, faculty, and parents weed and harvest an organic garden in Beverly, Mass., during last September’s Non Sibi Day. The annual day of service was launched in 2007 with substantial help from the Abbots.