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Steve McKibben, English Over the summer Steve and his wife, Andrea, spent six weeks in England working for Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English at Lincoln College, Oxford, as assistants to the director. “We received our master’s degrees in 1991 from Bread Loaf, and this was the third summer we worked at the Oxford campus (we were students there in 1990). Afterward, we backpacked and camped for two weeks in Iceland, visiting the fjords just south of the Arctic Circle and the glaciers in the southeast part of the island.”
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Laura Erickson, Biology Once again, Laura spent most of her summer working with the Taft Educational Center. This year, however, she graduated from the role of student to that of teacher. “I taught the AP Biology two-week workshop. The increase in work was exponential at the instructor’s level. It is always enriching to spend time with other teachers in my area, and I really believe I learned almost as much from my ‘students’ as they did from me. I have been able to integrate this new knowledge into my AP course this year.”
Jenny Glenn Wuerker ’83, Art
Steve McKibben and his wife, former faculty member Andrea Baier, spent part of the summer backpacking and camping in Iceland. Here, they are positioned between a huge glacier and a barren lava field.
Steven Laufer, Physics Steve spent the month of August in Eastern Europe. “I went to Greece and Istanbul with my family and saw the total solar eclipse from the Black Sea. Then I went backpacking for ten days in Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.”
Jenny returned to Wyoming last summer to paint(see cover photo). “Each summer for the past six years, Aaron and I have headed west to work on a series of Western landscape paintings. This year Taft helped defray a portion of my costs with a Summer Study grant. I paint only on location, directly from observation, even when working on my larger canvases. We own a place in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, south of Buffalo, WY, and for the last four years I have worked here painting the expanse of nature. Aaron and I both have work presently exhibited at Montana Trails gallery in Bozeman, MT.”
Lance Odden, Mike Maher, Jean Piacenza ’75 Lance Odden, Mike Maher, and Jean Piacenza attended a conference at Middlebury College on the topic of “binge” drinking. The keynote speaker, Dr. Henry Wechsler, Ph.D., from Harvard University, presented the findings of his recently completed survey of over 14,000 students on drinking and its consequences for college students. The conference was designed to begin effective dialogue between high school teachers and administrators about ways to educate and support students to make healthy decisions concerning their use of alcohol. The headmaster, along with dean of students Mike Maher and school counselor Jean Piacenza, developed ideas from the conference that are reflected in new policies and programming at Taft. Middlebury’s director of health services will deliver a presentation to Taft students and faculty this winter designed to teach college freshmen about images and advertising associated with alcohol use.
Taft Bulletin
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