The Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center

On March 3, Head of School Peter Becker welcomed a very special guest to School Meeting, Trustee Emeritus Jonathan Tisch ’72, one of the school’s most esteemed alumni, who announced to students and faculty that he and his wife, Lizzie, were making a $25 million gift to the school. The largest philanthropic commitment in its 172-year history, their gift will allow construction of the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship to begin this spring, with a targeted opening in the fall of 2023.

Inspired by a nearly 60-year connection to The Frederick Gunn School, the gift demonstrates the Tisch family’s tremendous philanthropic partnership with the school. The 24,000-square-foot, two-story center will take the place of — and nearly double the size of — the current Science Building, providing much-needed classroom space to meet the school’s current and future needs. It will house the school’s innovative science, math, engineering, technology, entrepreneurship, and citizenship curriculum in one location overlooking the historic Quad. It will also support the school’s strategic priorities of investing in its people, programs, and place, and its recommitment to Frederick Gunn’s values and ideals.

“The Frederick Gunn School is changing the way people think about what a school is capable of doing. We are excited to help accelerate this transformation — a strategic vision that has been crafted and led by Peter Becker for the last nine years. In important ways, the strategic path is relentlessly committed to the school’s founder and namesake, Frederick Gunn. Mr. Gunn was a transformative leader, a pioneering educator, and a courageous abolitionist. He inspired students to be curious and thoughtful, to be active citizens, and to stand up for what they believe in — his ideas are as relevant today as they were 172 years ago. The school’s leadership continues to commit itself to investments supporting the best boarding school experience that is the modern embodiment of Frederick Gunn’s ideals and there has been no better moment than now to help accelerate this momentum,” said Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch.

Beyond housing the school’s foundational courses in science and math, the new building will provide a permanent home for the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy, which touches every student through its four-year citizenship curriculum, alongside flourishing programs in engineering, technology, and entrepreneurship. Those are important offerings for students in the 21st century. Combining them in close proximity within a beautiful, new space at the core of campus will create opportunities for collaboration and give The Frederick Gunn School a competitive advantage among its peer schools.

“The Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship will be, as the Strategic Plan says, a place where people want to be,” Becker said. “We see huge opportunities for these programs to be overlapping with each other in formal and informal spaces that are really central to campus, that look out over the Quad, that draw people into them, and send people out from them. And all the while our students will be learning about citizenship,

learning about entrepreneurship, learning in a building dedicated to science, math, engineering, and technology. Our students are learning these things not just to become better learners and to become smarter, and to learn the language and practices of physics, chemistry, biology, environmental science, and the different fields of engineering, but ultimately, to make things, to do things with this knowledge.”

The building will act as an interdisciplinary hub of learning, including state-of-the-art labs that will allow students and faculty to turn ideas into action. Students will experience learning environments dedicated to helping them to be curious, solve problems, take risks, think independently, and develop strength of character. Interdisciplinary classes will promote rigorous and reasoned dialogue, rational debate, and ultimately, active citizenship. Through this innovative, interdisciplinary curriculum that is connected to a four-year program of active citizenship development, students will learn what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century, what it takes to persuade others and to lead, and what it means to be an engaged group member. Learning to be an active and engaged citizen is Frederick Gunn’s legacy to the school, and by bringing all of these curricular and character initiatives together in one building, graduates will be forces for good as they move on to their respective colleges, workplaces, and communities, equipped to be the next generation of leaders.

“What we’re intending,” Becker said, “is that students will, in part because of the proximity of these programs and spaces to each other, learn to reflect on what kind of impact they want to have in the world. This building really is meant to create those opportunities for integration and interdisciplinary work much as we are already seeing in the Thomas S. Perakos Arts and Community Center with the various art forms and community-making that happens there.”

The purpose of the new building aligns with both the school’s mission and commitment to its Core Values, and with Jonathan Tisch’s values, as evidenced by his distinguished commitment to furthering education through many of his philanthropic initiatives. In addition to being a longtime supporter of The Frederick Gunn School, Tisch has invested in educational missions at New York University and Tufts University. Through his extraordinary

philanthropic commitment to Tufts University in 2006 for the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, his visionary leadership has shaped a curriculum committed to encouraging students to take part in something greater than themselves that will enable them to effect lasting social change. Following two decades of success inspiring young minds to be active citizens at Tufts University, the opening of the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship on The Frederick Gunn School campus in the fall of 2023 will bring a similar commitment of being an engaged citizen to the unique opportunities of a boarding school environment. Combined with the founding principles of Mr. Gunn, this new building in the heart of the school’s campus will usher in the next generation of the school’s commitment to ensuring that its students become lifelong learners and principled, active citizens.

“We are grateful for the continued confidence and partnership of Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch as all members of The Frederick Gunn School community work together to move our Strategic Plan forward. This announcement is a bold move that expands our partnership with a family committed to the pursuit of teaching young people the importance of being deeply curious learners and engaged and active citizens. There is no better environment for a teenager to explore being an active and engaged member of a community than at boarding school. On our campus this pursuit aligns with the mission set forth by our founder in 1850 and is even more relevant today as future leaders enter into an increasingly complicated, interconnected world. The generosity of Lizzie and Jon will immediately contribute to the ongoing transformation of our campus and, more importantly, will further accelerate the curricular programming initiatives already underway that build on Mr. Gunn’s values that so profoundly encourage active citizenship,” Becker said.

The new building will include six math classrooms, four science labs (for chemistry, biology, physics, and general science), flexible meeting and classroom spaces, faculty space, and a two-story, glass atrium overlooking the Quad that will become “a hub” for the campus.

In contrast to the Brutalist architecture of the Science Building, which was designed to contain programs, the new center is designed to be open to and embrace the outdoors. The use of glass will provide a sense of transparency, “to make sure that the life of the campus is part of the building, and that the building is part of the life of the campus, and wants to be more of a hub for the campus,” explained Vinicius Gorgati, Principal Architect for Sasaki, the Boston-based architecture firm selected for the project. “Like TPACC or like the dining hall, this building wants to be more extroverted. It wants to be a building that makes some addition to the idea of community on campus, and wants to expand the notion of learning on campus.”

Since the Science Building was completed in 1967, enrollment has increased significantly, along with the school’s academic offerings. Only a fraction of the current offerings in math are taught in the Science Building, while the school’s newer engineering and entrepreneurship programs, and the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy, are all poised for growth.

“We realized that rebuilding in that area would be a benefit to the entire community and would create a new campus core, so that the Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship is going to be literally a beacon in the middle of campus,” said Sean Brown P’22, Chief Development Officer. “It’s going to be open and light and collaborative and transparent. Inside, you’re going to actually be able to see all the great work that’s going on. You’re going to be able to see what happens in the entrepreneurship program and our engineering program, our citizenship program, and of course, science and math in our classrooms and labs. And then, we’re going to look at continuing our Strategic Plan objective of getting all of the academic, residential, and community spaces to the main campusside of Route 47. So you’re only crossing the road at the end of the day to get to sports — and we’re going to reimagine what that side of campus looks like in the same way that we’ve reimagined what this side of campus looks like.”

In addition to being more integrated with the natural beauty of the campus, the new building will be more efficient in terms of its design and building materials. Triple-glazed glass will maximize energy efficiency and provide greater insulation, and the new center will be built to standards that are as close to carbon neutral as possible. “The roof is designed to accommodate solar panels, so that we can generate energy from the sun as well as the energy we get from the earth,” in the form of geothermal fields that will be installed on the Quad, Gorgati said. The building envelope, which is the separation between the interior and the exterior, was “designed

– Peter Becker, Head of School

to be super-efficient, to be highly insulated, so we can minimize the loss of conditioning in between the inside and outside, whether it’s in the summer or winter.”

Associate Head of School Seth Low said the plans for the new center set the bar high for all future building projects on campus. “This is by far the most ambitious sustainability plan we’ve had,” he said.

“TPACC was a critical first step in our institutional thinking about the way we build sustainability into our projects, and the fact that TPACC is LEED certified is significant for us as a school,” Low said. The new building takes that one step further. The open design will allow the building itself to function as a teaching tool for students. “It’s particularly important in the sciences to think about the building that way, and as we think about a building that in its very name is about active citizenship, to be a citizen of the world means to think about sustainability when you’re building. As Mr. Gunn’s school we have an obligation to be forward-thinking in terms of sustainability.”

In the last two years, the school considered a substantial renovation and expansion of the Science Building, but that plan was determined not to be the best use of resources. “In 1966-67, the construction of the current Science Building represented a huge step forward for the school. It did everything it was supposed to do. It was a major architectural statement at the time, for good or bad, and catapulted our science facilities into the post-war era. We caught up. The lecture space was really new and forward-looking and served its time. It gave way to a computer lab, and a few generations of legendary Frederick Gunn School teachers have done great work there, even as the building and labs began to fall behind the best new practices in science education. The building began to show its age and people began to question whether having a building with very few windows facing the Quad was a good thing long term,” Becker said. “In terms of the location and its impact on students and faculty and programs, and attracting the next generation of students and faculty, it is such an important strategic opportunity.”

The current Science Building did its job well for over 50 years, and now it is time for it to be reimagined. The gift from Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch will allow that to happen. As Becker said: “Jon Tisch has bought in entirely to the Frederick Gunn vision and model. He lives it in his own life as his family has for decades. And as he has connected to the rediscovery and the recentering of Frederick Gunn in the life and the future of the school, his voice has lended incredible credibility to the design work and the building work that we’re doing to integrate Frederick Gunn into, really, every aspect of school life and the student experience. It’s given us, I think, a new kind of courage and a willingness to take prudent risk for the school, because he said, ‘I’m in, I’m ready to go.’”

Head of School Peter Becker welcomed Trustee Emeritus Jonathan Tisch ’72, Chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels, co-owner of the New York Giants, and three-time best-selling author, to the stage in the Tisch Family Auditorium on March 3, 2022, when the $25 million gift in support of the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship was announced. What follows is an excerpt of their conversation. Watch the full discussion online at frederickgunn.org/academics/ciac.

Tell us a little bit about how you got to what was then The Gunnery at the time and maybe something about your student experience. The journey for our family actually goes back to 1963. We were living in Westchester County, New York, at the time. I would ask my mother, ‘Explain to me how we were growing up in Scarsdale, New York, and you found a very small, all-boys, preparatory school for my brother, Steve ’67 — how did that happen?’ She said: In 1962-63, they were working with a consultant, as people still do today, who gave them a list of schools and they came up here, and so Steve came here. I would come visit him on many, many occasions. The Dean of Students at the time was a lovely man by the name of Norman Lemcke P’84. I would stay with the Lemckes. I would spend the weekend. That was my indoctrination into The Gunnery (today, The Frederick Gunn School). I would say that it was my decision to come here. I saw how The Gunnery helped Steve become the person that he is today and I said, ‘I want in.’ And so I showed up in ’68, graduated in ’72, and had four very important years of my life in Washington, Connecticut.

Do you have a favorite memory or an experience that stands out from your time? For my last two years during my tenure at the then Gunnery school, I drove the Zamboni. (audience laughter)

Seriously? Oh, yeah. That was my job. The rink had no cover in those days, so there was no roof; it was exposed. If there was snow the night before a game and I was out there, the students found it very pleasurable and enjoyable to throw snowballs at the person driving the Zamboni. That was their fun for the day. I went to a summer program that Jim Haddick H’82 had up in Vermont. He had a farm up there. I learned how to drive a tractor and that helped me with my driving skills as related to cleaning the ice at The Gunnery school.

So you went from here to Tufts and, about 20 years ago, you created the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts. Can you talk a little bit about how that represents who you are and what you’ve come to value in life?

I’m not a big fan of the phrase ‘giving back.’ To me, that becomes too transactional. If you go to a dinner in New York, if you write a check, you’ve given back. What we learned at a very young age was a reference point: understanding one’s responsibility. Our family started with very little in Brooklyn. Through the hard work of my grandparents, my father, mother, aunt, uncle, today with my cousins, we have been able to have some success and have been able to — what I think is important — take on responsibilities that are outside of our day-to-day business activities. So having this notion of ‘understanding one’s responsibility,’ and then — how do you educate young people who are either at a preparatory school or high school and college, how do you have them understand what it means to become an active and engaged citizen? It’s a lot of what Mr. Gunn thought about 170 years ago and, fortunately for all of you (to the audience), a lot of what Peter Becker and his colleagues think about today at The Frederick Gunn School. That’s really the genesis of Tisch College at Tufts.

The president of Tufts at the time was Larry Bacow. Larry is the one who came to me during the capital campaign at the time, which I was cochairing, and made the suggestion to endow and to give the resources to the Dean of Tisch College to have the right faculty in place, to have the right programs in place, to have the right curriculum, so that the students at Tufts can embrace this understanding of their role. No matter what your major is — if you’re an architect, if you’re an engineer, if you’re at Tufts Med, if you’re at Tufts Dental, if you’re liberal arts — that you become an active and engaged engineer, an active and engaged liberal arts major. That’s what we’ve been doing at Tufts. When you were either a student here or in your early years as an alumnus, to what extent were you aware of Frederick Gunn, what he stood for, what he talked about?

Now that the name change has happened, it’s easier to say that the name of the school represents the vision for a man who, 170 years ago, was tackling some really difficult issues of the day, and did it in a way that today, his values are very much forefront for what you all are trying to accomplish here. I would probably admit to not having an awful lot of knowledge going back to my years here as a student. I don’t think the focus on Mr. Gunn’s beliefs was as prevalent as it is today, and that’s why the name change, once again, is certainly appropriate and that’s why the values that you and your colleagues have instilled in the school are certainly appropriate. When you leave Washington, Connecticut, whether it’s this May, next May, the May after that, and you go on to your next educational journey, you will have a background and understanding that I think is incredibly special and will allow you to take the next step in your life’s journey with some understandings that will really benefit you.

I appreciate the way you just put that, and on behalf of the Board, appreciate how much you’ve really leaned into this moment for the school and how much you have done as a family for the school over many decades. I know part of the reason you are here today is to share some news with the school. I give a tremendous amount of credit to your Chairman of the Board, Patrick Dorton ’86, to fellow board members that I have had the opportunity to know and work with, one of whom is here today, my dear friend, Jon Linen ’62. The Strategic Plan that you all have been working on for the last two or three years, to understand the physical needs of The Frederick Gunn School, to understand the needs of recruiting the best administration and faculty, and supporting them as best you possibly can, and also ensuring that the endowment is robust enough to allow you to offer an education to people who might not be able to afford every penny of it; when you look at the work that you all have done — put it all in sort of the blender, to come up with the strategic plan of once again, capital projects, faculty, and endowment — it’s pretty compelling.

So when I was here, and starting once again in ’68, the Science Building, which as you all very well know, sits in the middle of the campus, maybe in the prime (and I’m in the hotel business, so I love talking about real estate), but maybe in the prime, A1, mack daddy spot in all of the land that The Frederick Gunn School is spread out

over. When I was here, that building was so ugly. Guess what? Fifty years later, it has not improved.

And so I would call Peter and I would speak to Patrick and Jon Linen, and I would say, ‘Well, what are you doing about the Science Building as part of the Strategic Plan?’ Peter smartly reached out to incredibly talented architects up in Boston, Sasaki. And he said, ‘We have an opportunity in Washington, Connecticut. We need to come up with a replacement for what has been known as the Science Building.’

When people ask me, ‘If you weren’t doing what you’re doing, running a hotel company, what would your career be?’ Unequivocally, I answer: ‘I wanted to be an architect.’ I love the design process. I’ve designed and built 15 hotels for our company. That’s sort of the good news and the bad news for Peter, because I became his project architect and really enjoyed working with, still ongoing, with Vinicius Gorgati, Principal Architect, Sasaki, and Marta Guerra-Pastrián, Senior Associate Architectural Designer, on what could be in this incredible location in the middle of this gorgeous campus. I noticed a building that the two of them and their colleagues had designed at Lawrenceville. The building is the Gruss Center for Art and Design. I said, ‘This is a template. This is a model, in terms of the focus, in terms of the exterior architecture, in terms of the interior fit-out. This is what we should be thinking about for the center of the campus at The Frederick Gunn School. So the designs continued. The drawings became more elaborate. There were lots of conversations about the use of glass and steel. And then Peter said, ‘This is all really good, but now there’s just one aspect that we have to talk about’ And I said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Well, we have to pay for it.’ I said, ‘I got you there, too.’ Today, I am very pleased to announce that on behalf of my wife, Lizzie, who unfortunately could not be with us today, that we are making a gift to The Frederick Gunn School of $25 million.

A little while ago, you shared this news with the Board and it was a powerful moment for lots of reasons. Obviously, it was huge news, and from the bottom of my heart, and that of everyone here, and frankly, generations of students who are now going to benefit from your generosity and LIzzie’s generosity, thank you. When you shared it with the Board, it was also an emotional moment. To the extent that you want to talk about it, what do you think is going on there? It’s a reflection on our family and, once again starting with very little in Brooklyn, New York. Eighty, ninety years later, to be able to be in a position to make a difference at an institution that was very important for me, personally — I think the hundreds or so young people that are in the room, hopefully, would say the same thing — and to ensure that this school has an incredibly bright future. I’m sure you all went through this process, whether it was last year, two years ago, or three years ago; you have choices, and you have other institutions that have nice buildings, that have good faculty. But there is something very special about The Frederick Gunn School, and to compete in today’s world, you have to have everything. This building that we’re sitting in was the first step of that journey of our ability to make a difference to The Frederick Gunn School. The Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship — it’s a bit of a long name; you’ll get used to it — that is the next step in the journey. And then, there are other pieces of the puzzle that have to come together. It’s all in the master plan. It’s all in your strategic vision of a fitness facility, of a health facility, of new dorms. But, we’ll get there. For Lizzie and myself — and she is 100% part of every conversation — to make this kind of gift is just so meaningful. When I talk about it, the flashbacks to coming here with Steve in 1963, ’64 — here we are all these years later, hopefully making a difference for generations and generations of students to come.

To learn more about the design process that led to the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship, and how it will support the school’s academic programs and community, we spoke with Vinicius Gorgati, Principal Architect for Sasaki. Gorgati has over 25 years of experience creating award-winning work and has designed buildings for Dartmouth and Georgetown, among others. He holds a master of architecture in urban design from Harvard and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of São Paulo. Gorgati collaborated on the design for the new building with Marta GuerraPastrián, Senior Associate Architectural Designer at Sasaki. Guerra-Pastrián holds a master of architecture and urban design from Columbia University, and is a licensed architect from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

What was clear from the beginning of the design process, Gorgati said, was that the new building was part of the school’s master plan and needed to relate to the existing campus in terms of its history, buildings, and landscape.

“Your community embraced this idea that every intervention on campus, whether it’s a building or a landscape or both, has to relate to a bigger picture. That’s the first thing that makes this project unique. The second was, if you traverse the campus from west to east, there is a certain vocabulary, there is a certain feel about the campus. There is a certain scale to the buildings and they have a certain tonality to their colors. There is a certain geometry to the roofs. There is also a really powerful relationship to the landscape,” he said.

While the new building will be larger than the Science Building, it is intentionally broken up into three pavilions so that it reads more to the scale of the campus. The interior and exterior spaces reflect conversations around community engagement and transparency combined with extending learning opportunities across the curriculum, and developing a heightened awareness of the beautiful landscape.

– Vinicius Gorgati, Principal Architect for Sasaki

When the architects looked at the building site, and studied the Campus Master Plan, they were struck by the fact that the location is really at the center of the campus, and relates not only to the Quad, but to the flow from the Quad to the Koven-Jones Glade and TPACC. “The existing building was not really making that connection. Immediately in our heads we said, ‘What if this building, in a way, stepped back to allow that connection, and celebrate that connection?’ And then the evolution of that was, ‘If we don’t step back, can we add that transparency?’”

This inspired the design for the twostory, glass atrium in Pavilion A, which is imagined as a place for students to gather informally, or for community discussions or lecturers. “And if you’re coming down the Glade, you can peek and see through the building. It came from this notion of allowing the flow of the campus to almost reinvent itself,” Gorgati said.

“The location is just so important,” said Jonathan Tisch ’72, who worked closely with the school and Sasaki, throughout the design process. “There is a bit of an elevation change as you go from the Quad to the area that is a bit closer to Bourne. You’ve got nature there and, most importantly, the use of glass. So when you’re on the outside looking in, you will actually see the classrooms and the students learning. And then when you’re on the inside looking out, you’ve got a view on the campus that deserves to be embraced.”

The design was further influenced by discussions with faculty, administrators,

Principal Architect Vinicius Gorgati and Jonathan Tisch ‘72 discuss materials for the interior finishes with Marta GuerraPastrián, Senior Associate Architectural Designer at Sasaki. Trustees, and alumni, who spoke about places on campus that “become part of your memory as a student. You go through life and you remember those classroom moments, those hangout moments. We heard this from faculty, we heard this from dorm parents, from the alumni,” Gorgati said. “There are also places that can telegraph to the new generation of students who are coming to visit to see if they would feel comfortable here, if they would feel challenged here, if they would feel excited to be here.”

From this perspective, the design becomes not only about what the faculty and the leadership want the building to be today and tomorrow, but what the building will need to be for students in five years, or ten years from now. Buildings need to be different things for different people, and that speaks to diversity, inclusion, equity, creating environments that can be embraced and occupied by a diverse community, Gorgati said.

“The power of place, beyond architecture, is to think that generation after generation of people have handled those knobs to open the door, have been to those classrooms even though the curriculum has changed, have looked out those windows, even as the campus changed around them. It’s this sense of both permanence and evolution, of heritage and change, of traditions and new traditions,” Gorgati said, explaining that one of the reasons he enjoys designing projects for schools is that they are adding to “conversations” that are multigenerational.

“This is a campus that evolved over time. Every building that was built, I think, was built with the intent to move the school forward. We want to be embracing that heritage but we also want to be, if we can, agents or designers of places and spaces that help create new traditions, so in 50 years when someone is coming and adding other places and spaces on campus, they could add to that conversation.”

Even before plans for the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship were announced, faculty have been developing the school’s keystone programs in ways that provide exciting opportunities for students. From new course offerings to hands-on lessons in finance and investing to trips and partnerships that inspire active citizenship, the school is providing a strong base to grow our programs for the future. Students in the Gunn Goes to Washington Winterim class at the Jefferson Memorial

During Winterim, Bart McMann, Director of the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy, led 20 students on a six-day trip to Washington, D.C., where they made personal connections with the people, institutions, and iconic sites that embody our nation’s past and present. The purpose of Gunn Goes to Washington, which McMann co-taught with Kylie Regan of the English Department faculty, was for students to experience government in action. As part of the program, students explored Capitol Hill and visited famous monuments, which sparked discussions about the guiding virtues of liberty and equality. They toured world-renowned museums and hallowed institutions that define our history, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture and the Library of Congress.

Students met with a staff member from Congressman Chris Murphy’s office and were introduced to interest groups that promote active citizenship, such as the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm. Ellen Hamlett, the institute’s Activism Coordinator, spoke with them about the institute’s efforts to help individual citizens build coalitions and enact change in federal policies such as eminent domain.

Hamlett was subsequently interviewed by Maram Sharif ’22 and Clara Prander ’22, editors of The Highlander Newspaper, for an episode of The Highlander Podcast titled, “How to Be a Force for Good.” In April, Hamlett led a webinar for juniors as they began preparing for their Civic Changemakers Project (CCP), which represents the culmination of the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy’s four-year curriculum.

Hamlett led students through the process of becoming actively engaged citizens using techniques and skills she has honed through her time at the institute. For example, this spring she was working on cottage foods legislation, which would allow individuals in Rhode Island to sell homemade, shelf-stable foods such as cupcakes, jam, or dried pasta. “We encourage them to contact their legislators. We encourage them to testify so their legislators know why this issue is important, and that will help get the bill to move along. I’m doing

this type of work in a lot of states,” Hamlett said on the podcast.

Often, her work amounts to “David vs. Goliath battles,” where individuals are challenging government policies. “We like to call ourselves happy warriors,” Hamlett said. “We collaborate with decision-makers and work to change laws. Our activism team is inspired by principles and driven by specific abuses. Traditionally, we focus on changing a particular policy or defending a particular project. Usually that means working with entrepreneurs to help them fight for their right to earn an honest living in the occupation of their choice, providing children with increased educational opportunities, or making sure people can keep their homes when the government decides they have a better use for it. We want our activism to be cutting-edge. We’re always thinking about new ways to bring a unique plan of activism to new audiences and experiment with new grassroots strategies. We try to be a force for good through all of the work that we do by trying new things, by working with new people, by finding new audiences, by expanding our reach.”

Outside of this, McMann has had conversations about the school’s four-year citizenship curriculum with Peter Levine, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life. McMann first met Levine in 2019, when he participated in the Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tisch College at Tufts to learn more about the current scholarship on civic engagement. Levine was excited to hear about the plans for the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship at The Frederick Gunn School. There is a movement toward helping schools redesign their curricula to be more civicminded, and Gunn is on the leading edge of that work.

“Our goal is for students to be intentional about everything they do, to reject passivity and mindless consumption, and to embrace an ethos of action, of productivity, of meaningful work, of genuinely life-long learning,” McMann said. “We’re building a culture of self-reliance, exactly what Frederick Gunn would have wanted.”

More than 100 students in Economics, AP Economics, Honors Entrepreneurship Seminar, the Investment Club, and others have been learning about the value of early and thoughtful investing this year through a Stock Market Challenge. The “challenge” is the inaugural topic in the Financial Literacy program funded with

a gift from Robert Levine ’55. Twenty-six teams of four were asked to choose stocks and given $10,000 in imaginary funds to invest in the market. Using the MarketWatch platform, they were able to track the progress of their investments and compare success rates with their peers. “What they’re tasked with is not only growing their investments through their portfolio, but finding strategic ways to invest, and socially responsible stocks to invest in,” said Maddie Smith, who is leading the challenge for the two sections of Honors Entrepreneurship Seminar and one AP Economics class she is teaching this year. “It is somewhat subjective,” Smith said, adding, “If a group invests exclusively in Exxon/Mobil, we would ask them why, and what that company is doing for people and the planet.” While some stocks have an Environmental, Social, and Governance There is a movement toward (ESG) designation, which makes it helping schools redesign their easier to gauge whether they are socially curricula to be more civic- responsible, students are encouraged to do minded, and Gunn is on the their own background research. This year’s challenge has been impacted by actual leading edge of that work. stock market fluctuations tied to global health, economic, and political events, and a rise in inflation in the U.S. “It’s been quite volatile because of the pandemic, and in the past few months because of inflation and the supply chain shortage. We’ve seen a really big discrepancy in students’ success so far. It has a lot to do with the choices they’ve made in their investments. One group is up $2,400, almost 25% from where they started. The group immediately behind them is only up $400, which is not great, seeing that we’ve been doing this for almost four months,” Smith said in January. But she added, “I was impressed that they were positive. Some teams were down $2,000 to $3,000.” Many students started out investing in “obvious” stocks such as Tesla, Nike, and other retail companies that were top of mind. “Those haven’t been doing great because of supply chain issues,” Smith said. The key to the challenge is for students to see those trends and adjust their investment strategy going forward. Those that have done so are finding success. “A lot of them thought it was a game. At this level it is, because these are imaginary dollars. Back in October, when Tesla stock had a spike, they were feeling great about themselves. Now that they’re down $2,000, they’re realizing you need to diversify your portfolio. You need to be thoughtful and not invest in the shiny stock of the moment, because that’s not going to give you sustainable growth. It’s not just having them understand how the stock market works, but

Maddie Smith teaching her Honors Entrepreneurship Seminar class in TPACC

how to use the stock market responsibly,” said Smith, who double majored in economics and environmental science at Colgate.

She has talked with students about BlackRock founder and chief executive Larry Fink’s 2018 letter demanding greater corporate social responsibility, and what it means to “vote with your wallet;” even in terms of where they buy their clothing can impact issues such as sustainability and climate change.

“We’re teaching them that there are outlets that they can put their money into, causes they can support. The economy is changing. There is more of a demand for this now, and you’re probably going to make more money if you are investing in these companies that are more forward-thinking,” Smith said.

In addition to the Stock Market Challenge, students in Honors Entrepreneurship Seminar participated in a Lemonade Stand Project and Paper Clip Challenge this year, which helped them learn how to think creatively and strategically about business, especially from a growth standpoint. For the Paperclip Challenge, which Smith had seen on TikTok a few years ago, students were each given a $0.02 paper clip that they could then trade for something else. They then had to trade that item, and so on, with the goal of accumulating value.

“They had to be very thoughtful about watching that grow. Some groups made a trade and then found there wasn’t a demand,” Smith said. For example, one group traded a bag of Doritos chips for a computer mouse. “From a monetary standpoint, it was worth more, but no one wanted it. They would have been better off trading it for $2 and buying food from the grocery store and having it grow that way.”

The class raised a total of $360, which they then invested in a Lemonade Stand Challenge. Students had to come up with a pitch, sell their idea to the class, and then determine how much of the total funds should be allocated to their idea. “We made $800 in final profits from what was, initially, 14 $0.02 paper clips,” she said. The funds were donated to two, student-led fundraisers in support of Movember and Play4theCure in the fall.

This school year has brought students multiple opportunities to spend time in the IDEAS Lab as makers and creators, and with the opening of the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship, those opportunities will only grow.

“I think it should be a space that everybody should use. Every subject could find a way to utilize the IDEAS Lab to collaborate. I want it to be capable of feeding students into the program so they’re ready to hit the ground running,” said Jay Bell P’25, Interim Director of IDEAS Lab, who introduced 3-D printing workshops to the weekend activities schedule this year as well as a new, Pixar-themed Winterim course, Imagineering IDEAS, which he co-taught with his

wife, science teacher Cheryl Bell P’25.

Students in the Winterim class designed and built a tabletop theme park complete with two roller coasters, a dark robotic ride, a water ride, and a drop tower ride in the span of three weeks, learning about physics concepts and how to tell a story through their project.

Those who participated in the 3-D printing workshops focused on designing projects using the TinkerCAD program, but Bell noted that designs can become progressively more advanced for those who utilize additional programs such as SketchUp, AutoCAD, and Fusion 360 as well as the lab’s 3-D printer and CNC machine. “I really want to get the IDEAS Lab more at the forefront of students’ minds. There are so many things that can be done here for fun,” he said.

In terms of curricular offerings, students in Engineering I have been learning about the engineering process by designing Rube Goldberg projects, while those in Engineering II are designing and building a scale model of a military C-130 cargo plane equipped with a video camera. It is intended to help promote school spirit at events, and may have the capability to drop confetti or fly a banner. “They’re building it from scratch, scaling all the dimensions from an actual plane, and using Fusion 360 to design it,” Bell said.

In Low Impact Design, students are designing a speculative house with a negative carbon footprint, evaluating alternative energy sources, including solar and wind power. Their goal is for the house to produce 80 percent of its own electricity and be able to sell the excess back to the grid, which will reduce electrical usage and save money. “This term I started out by offering an overview of climate change and some of the issues that have come up. Because of sea level rise and global warming, environmental engineers really have to think about what is the best way to mitigate those problems,” Bell said.

For 2022-23, Bell has revamped the IDEAS Lab curriculum with introductory, intermediate, and advanced-level engineering and robotics courses. In Engineering I, students will be able to focus on a specific discipline each term, including mechanical, civil/architectural, aerospace, and electronics engineering, while Advanced Engineering is designed to be a capstone for seniors looking to I always like to incorporate the economics and marketing aspect to the classes. I can teach all the theory in the world, but to see the practical applications of things includes what is someone’s motivation for using this project.” – Jay Bell P’25, Interim Director of IDEAS Lab do an independent study or small group project focusing on one or more disciplines. A new Drafting and Design course will help students hone their mechanical drafting techniques while learning the intricacies of AutoCAD and Fusion 360. “I’d like to take the engineering classes to the next level,” Bell said. “The way I’m conceiving of it, it would be an à la carte approach. If you’re more interested in architectural design, you could do that as opposed to mechanical engineering. Everyone would have the basics but then they can start focusing on the things they’re really interested in. I’ve got some students in my Engineering I class who are seeing what the Engineering II students are doing with the airplane. Some of them are in pilot programs themselves and they’re really interested in flying. That would be great for the aeronautic engineering class.” There is also the opportunity for future collaboration with the economics or entrepreneurship classes. As Bell said, “I always like to incorporate the economics and marketing aspect to the classes. I can teach all the theory in the world, but to see the practical applications of things includes what is someone’s motivation for using this project.” Students building a tabletop model of a rollercoaster in the Imagineering IDEAS class during Winterim