@SPS Newsletter Fall 2023 by St. Paul's School

325 Pleasant St, Concord, NH 03301 www.SPS.edu

Fall 2023-24

A PREFECT PAYS IT FORWARD

Older students helped Colter Sienkiewicz ’24 when he was new — now it’s his turn. CAMPUS LIFE:

Fall 2023

Seated at a table in Raffini Commons in the Friedman Community Center, Colter Sienkiewicz looks out a window toward Drury, the boys dorm he has called home for the past three years. It’s a bright and temperate September day and Drury is concealed by slowly turning leaves that will fall, fully orange, later in the term. Sienkiewicz is between American Foreign Policy class and varsity soccer practice, and he nods and returns hellos to teammates, classmates, housemates and teachers who walk by as he talks.

Dorm common room renovations completed (every house!)

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New pieces of dorm room furniture

New classroom task chairs

Student arts performances in Chapel during the first six weeks of school

Sienkiewicz on the SPS grounds in September.

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SPS athletes competing on

Fall teams for #BigRed sports

65 Clubs and affinity groups enrolling new members at the fall Club Baazar

A Sixth Former who joined the SPS community as a Fourth Former, Sienkiewicz smiles as he recalls what brought him more than 2,000 miles and most of the way across the country for his second year of high school. “I didn’t really feel like I was getting anything out of school [at home], and I’ve always been kind of adventurous,” he says. He was attending public school remotely due to COVID-19 when he started filling out the application to SPS … without telling his parents he was doing so. “Eventually I got them on board,” he says. Sienkiewicz’s smile takes on just the tiniest hint of mischief as he relates this story. Still, he recalls feeling scared and nervous during his first few weeks in Millville, and credits close relationships with Sixth Formers in his house with helping him through the transition. “I don’t know if my experience would have been as positive if I hadn’t had that,” he says. It was the desire to serve as that same sort of safety net for younger students that inspired him to apply to be a Sixth Form prefect — a priority, he says, that he shares with many of his formmates, both prefects and not. “I think that’s how a lot of students feel,” he says. “They want to make sure the dorm culture continues to be positive.” As one of two prefects in Drury, Sienkiewicz makes himself approachable and available to the other residents if they need anything, whether it’s someone to help think through a friend problem or a math problem or just to celebrate an accomplishment. Over

Opening Days, he helped set a calming and welcoming atmosphere in the house by greeting students and families as they came in, answering parents’ questions and helping kids get settled in their rooms. Often, he will leave his door open in the evenings and chat with other residents as they walk by, letting them know he’s not “hunkered away in there,” he says. He makes sure everyone in the house feels connected and organizes activities like playing basketball in the gym or ordering chicken wings from town. Sienkiewicz also keeps in close contact with his head of house, Associate Dean of Admission/Director of Multicultural Recruitment Derek Johnson — who also checks on him. In addition to serving as a prefect and playing varsity soccer, Sienkiewicz rows crew and is a varsity wrestler. His schedule is loaded with honors and advanced courses, and he is one of just a dozen students who were selected for the Applied Science and Engineering Program, for which he is currently working on his Sixth Form capstone. Sienkiewicz says that making time for everything that matters to him means taking time away from things he can live without: social media (deleted) and TV (which he doesn’t watch during the school year). He knows he won’t regret not watching the latest reality show or blockbuster during his free time, and that carving out time to build relationships with other students and Drury residents is something he will value forever. —Jacqueline Primo Lemmon

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Sixth Former Miru Nam spent her summer studying the aquadynamics of bluegill sunfish Miru Nam ’24 always knew she was interested in STEM. She couldn’t have predicted, however, that her interest would lead to her taking a deep dive on the mechanics of the way fish swim. Selected to the School’s Applied Science and Engineering Program (ASEP), Nam spent a month this summer at Tufts University in the laboratory of Eric Tytell, an associate professor of biology who specializes in biomechanics and neurophysiology of locomotion. At the core of the lab’s work is the study of how water moves around fish as they swim. Through flow tanks and underwater cameras, researchers map how changing conditions initiate different responses from the fish, modeling intricate data points that ultimately help engineers craft better underwater autonomous vehicles.

autumn, the senior will be doing another round of analysis. Nam spent time during her first few weeks back on campus rigging up an underwater camera system that consists of three GoPros fixed at the points of a triangle-shaped PVC frame. She says the work she’s doing this fall will robustly build on what she concentrated on this summer.

For her ASEP internship in Tytell’s lab, Nam blended her interest in biology with her growing background in computational science. Focusing on the deceleration of bluegill sunfish, which have a large pectoral fin and deep body that make it a prime animal to study maneuverability, Nam worked high-speed underwater cameras to track the animal’s movement. That footage was then uploaded to a computer, which Nam analyzed, frame by frame, marking different movements of the fish’s

“Most research has been done in a controlled environment,” she says. “Actually observing the fish in its natural environment and seeing what it does, that hasn’t really been explored yet. That’s exciting to me. It’s hard work, but I’m really invested in what I’m doing — I don’t mind turning my free time over to this. I don’t see it as additional work.” It’s hard to imagine that Nam has free time. An avid computer programmer, she is a member of the SPS Coding

As she extends her summer research into the fall, Nam sets up her underwater camera system at Turkey Pond — a process that involves checking the water temperature and ensuring proper calibration of GoPros affixed to each corner of a submerged PVC frame.

fins. She then programmed code to graph the data she’d collected. “They could be long days because you’re working with a live animal and you can’t predict their behavior or manipulate their behavior to what you want them to do,” Nam says. “It required a lot of patience and trying different things to see how the fish would respond.” But she says the work was everything she hoped it would be. Her team was small — she collaborated with just Tytell and Andrew Clark ’12, a doctoral student in Tytell’s lab — but the exposure she received at a prominent academic laboratory was huge. “Being able to do that hands-on work in a professional laboratory environment taught me not only about the tangibles, the technical aspects of work and stuff like that, but also the importance of pursuing something that you’re passionate about,” Nam says. “Just being able to take ownership of a question and investigate it like we did was really enjoyable.” Back at St. Paul’s School, Nam has continued the research she started at Tufts. As it happens, the School’s ponds also are stocked with bluegill sunfish, and throughout the early

Club and over the years has developed different games to play with her friends. She’s also used her skills to pursue personal projects, including a recent endeavor to develop a method to find and correct an error in the Braille code. A gifted humanities student who credits her SPS classes in the discipline with helping expand her perspective on the world, Nam earned the coveted Dickey Prize in Humanities at the end of her Third Form year, and last year explored the history of public spaces for women during the feminist movement’s Second Wave. As co-head of the school’s Asian Society, she has commited herself to helping others feel safe and welcomed through cultural gatherings and more irreverent get-togethers. If there’s a through line for all these pursuits, it’s collaboration and connection, says Nam. “From living in Korea and California and at St. Paul’s, I have had the opportunity to be a part of various communities,” she says. “Through these experiences, I’ve learned the value of engagement and support.” Including working with others to develop vital insights about the way fish swim. —Ian Aldrich

DID YOU MISS . . .

During FALL CONVOCATION on Sept. 5, Rector Kathy Giles spoke about the School’s dedication to the pursuit of excellence in character and scholarship, emphasizing the importance of every student to the School community and the role each one of us has to play in contributing to an SPS environment of beauty, relevance and joy.

St. Paul’s School (New Hampshire) St. Paul’s School Alumni

Read Rector Giles’ full Convocation remarks

During OPENING DAYS, Sept. 1-4, 548 new and returning students from 37 U.S. states and 28 countries moved into their houses and quickly fell into the rhythms of the academic year. There was no shortage of sunshine and smiles as new student got to know one another and returning students reconnected after three months apart.

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@StPaulsSchoolNH @spsathletic

Watch the opening days video

Over the summer, SPS began site work near the entrance to the School for the future home of the new FLEISCHNER FAMILY ADMISSIONS CENTER, slated to open during winter 2024-25. Located less than 200 yards from Dunbarton Road, the 16,000square-foot building will provide a modern and warm entrypoint for prospective families beginning their journey through Millville, even as its construction enables Sheldon Library to return to its original purpose as a central hub for community Take a virtual tour of the new center and student life.

THE CIRCLE OF SCHOOL LIFE

Meet Math Teacher Caroline Darling ’10 Though she grew up at St. Paul’s School and graduated as a member of the Form of 2010, math teacher Caroline Darling says she couldn’t have guessed she would one day return as a faculty member. In fact, teaching wasn’t on her radar at all. “When I graduated from here, I wanted to go into medical research,” says Darling, who earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in the college of engineering and a minor in applied mathematics at Lehigh University. Between her junior and senior years of college, however, she served as a teaching intern in an artificial intelligence class at the School’s summer Advanced Studies Program, working with longtime SPS Computer Science Teacher Terry Wardrop ’73. “It was fun to watch the students get excited as they completed the various tasks and got their programs to work as intended,” Darling says of her internship. “Then I went back to college and was in the lab 20 hours a week my senior year. … I remember calling my parents to say, ‘So about this engineering degree … I want to go into education now.’” Following her graduation from Lehigh, Darling gained teaching experience at two private high schools and started working toward her master’s degree in mathematics for teaching at Harvard Extension School. It was then that a friend reached out to her. “The School was looking for a programming and statistics teacher, and they wanted to know if I would be interested in coming home, and I jumped at the opportunity to return to SPS,” Darling says. She was hired by the School in 2019, balancing her full-time teaching duties with the completion of her master’s, which she earned in 2022. This fall, the start of her fifth year as a member of the SPS faculty, Darling is teaching computer programming, statistics and two honors sections of precalculus. Ironically, she says, statistics was her least favorite

class in college, but it’s her favorite class to teach at SPS — because, she says, she learned all the ways not to teach it. “A lot of it is making sure that I’m writing assessments to reflect what I’ve taught, not to assess how they can piece together things on their own,” she says. In addition to teaching, Darling coaches girls JV soccer and serves as head of house for Conover 20 — the dorm where she spent two years as an SPS student, was a prefect her Sixth Form year and now lives with her husband, Luke, and their 1-year-old daughter, Samantha. She also lives just down the road from her parents, fellow SPS Math Teacher Scott Heitmiller ’81 P’10,’12,’15 and SPS Director of Advancement Diane Heitmiller P’10,’12,’15, and says the proximity to her parents is one of the gifts of returning to SPS. Her classroom in the Lindsay Center for Mathematics and Science is directly beneath her father’s, and the duo even coached a season of soccer together. (“It was the best season, hands-down,” she says.) As she welcomes students into her classroom for precalculus, they greet her with smiles just as warm as her own. Her enthusiasm and love for her students is palpable. “Saturday night, we did a murder mystery,” Darling says of an in-house bonding activity she led for the girls in Con20. “They all came completely dressed up in character, and it was so much fun because they made it so much fun. And it’s fun for me. “All I’ve known is boarding school since I was 4,” she adds. “It’s funny, when I think of home — I know a lot of people will think of a childhood house or a childhood bedroom. I have this campus.”

—Jacqueline Primo Lemmon

FIVE QUESTIONS WITH

SPS Medical Director Dr. John Bassi P’17,’19,’21 Dr. John Bassi almost didn’t become a doctor. A first-generation college student from the small milltown of Adams in western Massachusetts, he started out at Middlebury College on a pre-med track, but switched his major from biology to physics when he realized that solving problems appealed to him more than memorizing information. After graduation, he figured he’d become a patent lawyer, and had already been accepted to law school when he woke up one morning back home in Adams and told his mother he’d changed his mind; he was going into medicine, after all. “I expected it to be this huge shock, but she just turned around and said, ‘Oh, it doesn’t surprise me,’” Bassi recalls with a laugh. After earning his medical degree from Brown University and landing a surgical residency, he soon found he was more interested in the human interactions of caregiving than operating on people and switched to family medicine. The rest, he says, is history — almost.

How did you end up at SPS?

What puts a smile on your face in the morning?

What keeps you up at night?

The funny thing is, I actually almost didn’t take the job here. … I’d been working in the area for about 10 years, taking calls in the ER and staying up until midnight or 1 a.m. writing notes, and I just thought to myself, ‘There must be something beyond this. I’ve trained for my whole life, but maybe there’s something else.’ I applied to SPS when the position came open, but then withdrew my application when I found out I’d have to live on campus because I didn’t quite get why I had to live here to do this kind of work. Fortunately, though, they called me back, and I realized I was made for this job: I love working with adolescents, I love sports medicine. … I showed up for my interview with my entire family [Bassi and his wife, Julie, are parents to son Chapin ’17 and daughters Claire ’19 and Grace ’21]. That was in spring 2008. Now, I get why it’s so important to be part of the community and to create those connections between students and faculty and staff.

My dog [Luca, Bassi’s golden retriever and the School’s de facto therapy dog], my family, my kids, my health. Walking to campus from my house at the end of the road and coming upon students who are playing their music, and what they’re playing is my music: Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC. … I literally laugh almost every single time this happens. I had a radio show in college, and it just makes me smile to think that some of these students today are listening to the same music I played back then.

The same thing that makes me smile: the kids. I’ve gotten better over the years at not worrying about [them] so much. … It’s something I learned in my medical training, what you can control and what you can’t control, and part of what you learn is that what you have control over is how you respond and prepare. COVID was probably one of the most stressful professional times in my life, worrying about 540 kids, a whole entire community, how we’re going to get through this, waking up at four in the morning and going, ‘oh my God, I haven’t thought about X. What are we going to do with this?’ But I worked with a team of great people and we came up with great ideas to [develop] the right protocols and really bring some life back to this campus as quickly and as safely as possible.

Speaking of great people, who do you most admire?

Is there a particular piece of advice you got from someone that’s stayed with you? Or maybe a piece of advice you have for the SPS community?

I admire a type of person who is humble, smart, diligent and not too caught up in their own importance. We’re all replaceable, right? We’re only in these positions for a short period of time. The people who have really influenced me over the years have been certain teachers: Mr. Mulcahy, my biology teacher from ninth and tenth grade; Jeff Dunham, a physics teacher at Middlebury who was my thesis adviser and taught special relativity. I still keep in touch with him.

Be honest. Be humble. Be kind. Always be kind. And be forgiving — you never know what people are carrying. As for advice I’d give? I said it in Chapel today: Wash your hands.

—Kristin Duisberg

LET THE YEAR BEGIN With a little more than half of the Fall Term to go, campus life at SPS is in full swing: sports teams are on the road and welcoming competitors to the Bogle-Lechner and Guzzo Family fields; rehearsals for the fall play, “CLUE,” are underway; the first outside visitors have spent time in classes and in Chapel; and students and faculty members have broken bread together during the first Seated Meals of the year. In early October, the student-favorite Cricket Holiday offered a welcome break from the busyness, as new community members traded class time and office hours for a hike on the Millville trails with Rector Kathy Giles and cider and donuts down at the docks, and Eco-Fest brought students — and animals! — to Chapel Lawn for music, games, pumpkin carving and more.