Feeling at Home in the Garden of Eaton Approaching Eaton Cottage is a visual feast—magenta hibiscus, golden sunflowers, roses, salvia, hydrangea snowballs, daisies, and multiple species of other colorful blossoms jockey for attention in the late summer breezes. Unquestionably, on the Andover campus at least, no other dorm is like it. And no other math teacher is like Shawn Fulford, the keeper, gardener, house counselor, baker, and denizen of the proud band of alumnae known as Eaton Girls. Gil Talbot
“I’m an introvert, and I don’t do parties,” Fulford explains. “It’s a way I give back to the community.” Ten years of Eaton Girls, parents, and alumni Fulford has tutored have contributed—planting, weeding, building stone walls and paths, presenting her with a composter and garden signs, and making donations to keep the garden growing. “She’s created the ultimate staple of home, a garden, to make this a home for us,” says Eaton resident Kate Chaviano ’12 with gratitude—and obvious affection.
A photo cannot do justice to the colors and variety in Shawn Fulford’s Eaton Cottage garden. Flanked by “Eaton Girls” Kate Chaviano and Prim Chanarati ’11, Fulford—also a longtime math instructor—is a beloved house counselor whose students have contributed much to the effort over the years.
“Green Dorm” Pilot Off and Running Alumni House has gone green, and for its 11 student residents and house counselor Anna Milkowski ’93, that means a school year steeped in sustainability. Guided by proctors Elizabeth Goldsmith ’11 and Tia Baheri ’12, the dormmates will assess the environmental impact of their daily actions whenever possible and brainstorm new ways to reduce that impact.
FPO
“We want to see what can be done with minimal inconvenience and at a very low cost,” says Milkowski, also an instructor in science. She describes the three-story brick dorm as a “testing ground” for strategies and best practices that eventually could be applied to the whole campus. The Abbot Academy Association is funding this pilot project. Goldsmith says their aim for the beginning of the term was to “get baseline data about our dorm waste and start asking questions, thinking critically, and discovering new things about food systems and sustainable living as a whole.”
Yuto Watanabe
The group has shared dinners and dorm munches featuring locally grown or organic ingredients; discussed lengths of showers; devised a dorm duty system for weighing and monitoring the volume of recyclables, trash, and compost; invited others on campus to watch an environmental film; and started talking about what “sustainable” means when it comes to food. By October, students switched to clothes lines and drying racks, discussed ideas for reducing dorm heat loss, and began monitoring electricity and fuel oil use. With its own furnace and electric and water meters, Alumni House is well suited for such tracking. “All of the members of our dorm have shown so much curiosity and a willingness to learn,” says Baheri. “It’s a great atmosphere.” Alumni House counselor Anna Milkowski and proctors Elizabeth Goldsmith and Tia Baheri are helping to coordinate the dorm residents’ efforts to test sustainability strategies and track their progress.
To read about Alumni House students’ sustainability thoughts and experiences, visit their blog at andovergreenhouse.wordpress.com. Andover | Fall 2010
13