The Front Lawn

It was good to see some of you as the students returned this week. I hope you enjoyed being with them over the recess. Ty and I spent part of the break traveling through California and meeting with alumni and parents. I love this work, because it gives me perspective on what we are doing at St. Andrew’s. Over and over, alumni spoke with me about the education they earned here—what they learned in and out of the classroom, the important challenges of the academic program, and the character and courage they developed to take risks and ask questions. Courage often seems to be in short supply in the world. At St. Andrew’s, all you need to do is walk around practices to see, for example, a III Former learning a new sport. Sometimes it seems like everyone is watching, and you are making every kind of mistake. It feels risky, and it takes guts.

We are all privileged to be in an environment where we can practice courage daily. I reminded the students in a meeting Monday night that we are here to get that education—the one earned by those who came before us. We pursue truth, beauty, and wisdom at St. Andrew’s, a school that is both a collection of people and a place. We see truth, beauty, and wisdom in each other and in nature all around us.

Yesterday, the season shifted, with 12 hours and 8 minutes of sunshine. This spring, I hope we can be restless in seeking the light of knowledge, never satisfied with what we know, yet free of anxiety and worry. I hope we can have the courage to do big things that matter yet put aside our pride and ask for help. Knowing that our goal is good and great—free of the distractions of phones and devices, uplifted by those who show up in the fullness of their being to support us—we will commit to doing the hard things, accomplishing together what not one of us could do alone.

When we gathered on Monday, I shared a prayer that Eleanor Roosevelt included in her national newspaper column in March 1940, almost 85 years ago to the day. She heard it at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square and she wrote that it made a “deep impression” on her. All of us can find something in this prayer to reassure, to guide, and most of all, to inspire.  The prayer’s evocation of “a world made new” resonates in this spring season, when I hope we will again find what is good in the world that we make and remake again.

“Our Father, who hast set a restlessness in our hearts, and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find; forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content, and set our eyes on far-off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us, that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pity; make us sure of the goal we cannot see, and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us, and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try enough to understand them. Save us from ourselves, and show us a vision of a world made new. May Thy spirit of peace and illumination so enlighten our minds that all life shall glow with new meaning and new purpose; through Jesus Christ Our Lord."

And the people said, “Amen.”

This week—which began Sunday evening in Chapel with a beautiful student-led celebration of the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., progressed through a review day, the King Day holiday, and the presidential inauguration, continued with exams, and is now culminating in the winter long weekend—has seemed even more full of togetherness than usual. Family meals have seemed more animated, practices and contests more energetic, and dorm evenings more connected, even by St. Andrew’s standards. It has been incredibly cold outdoors as the light of human friendship has shone throughout our buildings.

Perhaps many of you have read Derek Thompson’s “The Anti-Social Century” in The Atlantic. It certainly has captured our attention here. So many people have sent it to me to say that St. Andrew’s is an antidote to the phenomena documented in the essay: the dramatic and recent rise of self-enforced isolation and disconnection. For me, it served as a reminder of how courageous our students are to choose to live emphatically, authentically, and joyously with others, when society increasingly views that choice as bewildering and exhausting. Still, the kids do all they can to exert centripetal forces as the world embraces the centrifuge.

It’s particularly encouraging to see them do this during exam week, a time that naturally inclines us to cocoon and atomize, to retreat to our study carrels and our desks. Much as I love exams, they are challenging. Perhaps this is another valence of our Episcopal values; when we face the possibility of retreat, we always choose to engage. Even as we pursue our work as scholars—as we question and inquire and debate—we will always be a place of coming together rather than splitting apart, a school where each child is embraced, known, and seen, a place where love is the primary and animating force. That combination of faith with learning is powerful and propels us from this place, which is set apart, to do our work in the world, and to bring people together. As Stacey Duprey reminded me this morning, Galatians reads, “let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” That is the work!

As the kids head back to you, in some cases, or join up with friends in others [for the long weekend], I feel privileged to be part of their journey of faith and learning, one that will lead them in paths of connection, citizenship, and joy.

Names that come to mind when speaking about the Civil Rights movement include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or Rosa Parks. On Friday, January 17th, Dr. Keisha Blain, a professor at Brown University, visited St. Andrew’s to deliver the Levinson History Lecture on a lesser-known but important woman who was also instrumental in advancing the cause of civil rights: Fannie Lou Hamer. 

Hamer was the subject of Blain’s Until I Am Free, the part social commentary, part biography, part history book Blain wrote in 2021 about the life of voting and women’s rights advocate Hamer. Earlier in the day, students in Dean of Teaching & Learning Emily Pressman’s AS American Social Reform class wrapped up their discourse on Until I Am Free in preparation for Blain’s visit. 

Blain, a best-selling author and award-winning historian, is an MSNBC columnist, received the Guggenheim Fellowship and was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, both in 2022. Prior to the talk, Blain signed books and visited with Saints at a dinner in the Warner Gallery. 

In addition to offering students an in-depth, intimate look into Hamer’s life, Blain spoke to the relevance of Hamer’s story today. Blain shared her experience in what it looks like to do the work of a historian, both the challenges and the work’s importance. 

Blain began her talk by telling students the story of  Hamer’s upbringing. She was the youngest of 20 kids growing up poor and malnourished on a plantation. As an adult, as she underwent the process of having a tumor removed, her doctor sterilized her without her consent. Her upbringing and this medical crisis would both inform her life’s work. 

In 1962, Hamer went to a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) lecture. There, she was not only inspired to opt into the fight for equality, but she also learned about her right to vote, a right that, in the state of Mississippi, was infringed via literacy tests and physical violence. Blain said this meeting inspired Hamer to “devote her life to bettering society.” Hamer often focused her message on empowering young people by visiting college campuses. “None of us are free until all of us are free” was Hamer’s rallying cry.

Hamer led protests, helped people register to vote, raised awareness about sterilization and medical malpractice, and uplifted the voices of others. She started the Freedom Farm in 1969, an agricultural co-op founded as a rural economic development and political organizing project that worked to combat hunger those in her county encountered; she said that “hunger has no color line.” Freedom Farm ended up serving more than 1,600 families. She advocated for the “American Dream” that America promised. After attending the Democratic National Convention in 1964, Hamer reflected, “We went there because we believed that America was what it said. It was the land of the free.” Hamer demanded that America start living up to the ideals which were promised in the Constitution.

Blain argued that Hamer is an example of someone with no formal education making a huge difference. She said that everyone has the power to contribute to the fight for equity and inclusion. “Hamer’s words offer guidance and direction,” Blain said. “We often wait for others to offer bold solutions and answers to the nation’s most pressing problems, but have we considered that the answer lies within us?”

At the conclusion of the talk, Blain sat down with Pressman and History Department Chair Matt Edmonds for prepared questions. They asked about the relationship between narrative and taking action. Blain responded that while one story is not reflective of others, it allows people to empathize. She said that Hamer got people interested by sharing her story, and then she would make her larger argument. By sharing narratives, people then are “co-owners of the trauma” and must become part of the solution.

When asked how to construct a narrative, Blain advised students to “let the sources lead” them. She says that the work of a historian or researcher can make you uncomfortable, particularly when you encounter sources that complicate your message. “There are times when you are confronted with these dilemmas … I also knew that if I was committed to telling the story, I couldn’t just tell what I liked,” she said.“I needed to tell the full story, even if it made me uncomfortable.” 

That discomfort, she noted, is also important for learning and being a part of a democracy. “Of course, yes, yes, you shake your head and everyone feels comfortable [when you speak with people who agree with you]. But is that really discourse?” Dr. Blain asked students. “If you’re just kind of saying something and everyone’s shaking their head, there isn’t too much back and forth, no one’s learning anything because you all agree … it’s very dangerous to be in a position in your life where you’re resistant to listening and potentially growing.” Grappling with this complexity will help the historian grow, she said. 

Later in the evening, the student section was opened up to questions. One student asked what young people could be doing currently in the fight for equity and inclusion. “You don’t have to start yourself from scratch,” Blain said, adding that change doesn’t have to be astronomical but small things that build up over time. “You can really connect yourself to people who are already doing that work and figure out how you can use your gifts and abilities to support that work.” 

David N. Levinson ’53 and his family endowed the Levinson History Lecture series so St. Andrew’s students could engage with experts in history, politics, economics, or related social-science fields. 

Good afternoon. Thank you for sharing this time out of your busy day. This chapel service is one of my favorite rituals of Trustee Weekend. I love how it centers our meetings in this foundational space—a space I found so much peace in as a student and I hope you do too—gathered in faith and community with all of you.   

I want to take a minute to lift up your commitment on campus to the democracy and discourse initiative. It is such a natural place for the St. Andrew’s community to lean in, but still, it is not easy in the current climate. And I hope you know how much it matters. 

I recently received a note from a constituent that hits home on this point: 

“While I [am] not a member of your political party,” he said, “I truly believe you always keep the citizens of our county regardless of party, as uppermost in your work.” 

Not a sentimental statement—and maybe I was feeling emotional because I was getting ready to leave my position—but it is so simply on point for what we need as a country, it made me tear up when I read it. This acknowledgement gave me hope—that when we reach out to build bridges, the effort is recognized and valued. It not only matters, it matters to people you may not even realize are watching.   

As we recited Psalm 90 together a few minutes ago, I was drawn to the final call to “apply our hearts to wisdom.” This phrase provides beautiful framing for the work of democracy and discourse. Work that should be done with open hearts, open minds and humility; what is referred to in the book of James as “the meekness of wisdom.”           

So, I have been thinking about wisdom a lot lately—who we look to for wisdom and how we define it. I am an avid listener to the podcast Wiser Than Me where Julia Louis Dreyfus interviews women in their 80s and 90s. As I listen to each new episode, I am filled with gratitude that she chooses to lift these voices up. Voices of older women who society hasn’t traditionally valued for their wisdom, but who have it in spades. 

Similarly, I love how author David Brooks, in his book How To Know A Person, grounds his definition of wisdom in interactions with people:   

“Wisdom is knowing about people. Wisdom is the ability to see deeply into who people are and how they should move in the complex situations of life… Understanding and wisdom come from surviving the pitfalls of life, thriving in life, having wide and deep contact with other people.”

Putting our heads back into Psalm 90, what would it look like to apply our hearts to this kind of more humble wisdom, wisdom that “see[s] deeply into who people are”? 

As a trustee and alumnae of St. Andrew’s, one of my greatest hopes for every student is that you feel seen on this campus; that you learn to see others deeply, not only because of how it makes them feel, but because you recognize the power it has to enrich your own life experience.  

We intentionally create spaces for these moments to unfold here a million times a day. We just experienced one of my favorites, the tradition of sit-down meals. It is the unique nature of this small, diverse, all-residential, Episcopal school that enables our community to come to know and value each other deeply.     

All wonderful while you are tucked away here, in our St. Andrew’s bubble, but the age-old question for us as St. Andreans is how we extend these experiences into the outside world. A world in which we have hit such a crisis in our ability to see each other, that Merriam Webster’s 2024 Word of the Year was “polarization.” 

Clearly the type of wisdom we are talking about today—wisdom that compels us toward a curiosity about how and why other people see the world differently—desperately needs to be lifted up.

In 2016 I started on a journey that enabled me to apply my heart to this kind of wisdom in ways I did not expect. Unhappy with the trajectory of our national politics, I took the leap to volunteer on campaigns for local government office: town council and the like. One thing led to another, and in May 2018, at the age of 48, I was hired into my first paid political job, on the senior staff of a Democratic congressional campaign in New Jersey. 

To say this was an unexpected twist in my life is a huge understatement! I went from a career as an actuary—universally considered one of the most predictable and introverted jobs—to a polar opposite role. Suddenly the only predictable thing about my day was its unpredictability. My job now hinged on, to paraphrase Brooks, understanding how people were feeling and how they moved through the complex situations of life.    

And talk about bringing the St. Andrew’s bubble into the real world—I was floating it smack into the middle of the rough and tumble of New Jersey politics. My twitter handle, “@kindlykel”, caused my campaign colleagues to snicker. I was suddenly living in a world that felt like an unlikely mix of Parks & Recreation and the Sopranos.  

But I was supremely lucky. At a time when I could have lost myself down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of negativity, I had the opportunity to work toward something positive, with people I admired. I was working for a serious candidate: Mikie Sherrill. A navy veteran, former federal prosecutor and mom who took her commitment to public service to heart. We won with the biggest congressional flip from red to blue in the country that year. 

Given those results, it would have been easy to transition into governing with arrogance. But this was not the Congresswoman’s leadership style. And our team understood that we had a lot to learn—most of us were just finding our feet as public servants. 

As I took on the role of District Director, I assumed primary responsibility for some of the reddest parts of our congressional district. Almost 80% of my towns had a Republican mayor. And keep in mind, for 26 years they had been served by the same Republican congressman, so they were experiencing a ground shift. 

We knew we needed to build bridges to do our job effectively. That it would require patience while we proved that we were genuine in our intention to serve the entire district, not just the blue parts. We started showing up everywhere we could, respecting that no one knew us yet, and that it would take time to build trust. 

The Congresswoman urged us to be “ruthlessly competent” (I love that term!); to earn trust by simply doing the work: putting our heads down and serving constituents. We did our best to approach community leaders with an open mind, responsiveness, respect, and graciousness. People felt seen in a way they weren’t always used to from government, and it resonated.

It wasn’t easy—this was an exceptionally divisive and challenging time. We opened the congressional office in the midst of the longest government shutdown in history, served through covid, two presidential impeachments, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, just to name a few defining events. It was the hardest, most intense work I had ever done, but I now felt supremely lucky that in such a polarized time I was in a position to help bring people together. 

I can now appreciate that through our outreach we were creating a roadmap for bipartisanship that worked because it was grounded in that “wide and deep contact with other people.” Over time we found partners to tackle a variety of local issues like flooding, public safety, and mental health; so many issues that shouldn’t be partisan but too often get caught up in divisive rhetoric. Issues that make a real difference in people’s lives.

This journey wasn’t a one way street—I am grateful to those who reached back across the aisle. In an atmosphere where even showing up in a picture with an elected official from a different party can inflame the base, you come to appreciate how even the smallest acts of political courage can move the needle. 

Experts tell us that often the biggest roadblock to working with people with whom we disagree is the fear of being forced to compromise our principles. And it is scary. Making yourself vulnerable in this way requires a leap of faith. I love these verses from Colossians as a reminder that we are not the first to struggle with these interactions: 

“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Having taken this leap to engage with “outsiders,” I will tell you, it actually helped me better understand my own political beliefs. In identifying areas for common ground, I also had to determine where I could not bend, my lines in the sand. For me these include issues around women’s rights, the rights of my LGBTQ+ family and friends, educational access, and my heartbreak over January 6, 2021. 

Building trust and bipartisan muscle memory with others meant that I could have more open conversations about why these issues were important to me. I was challenged to think more deeply about the intersection of advocacy and governing, and how to create real lasting change in a world where elections have consequences. 

 In her brilliant book I Never Thought of It That Way, Mónica Guzmán tells us:

“…when we stop colliding with people who disagree, even in casual ways, we miss opportunities to see a different angle on something,” or to “get a complex picture of a complex problem…” 

It is OK to hold your core beliefs tight—they make you who you are—you just can’t let them get in the way of opening yourself up to graceful conversation.

When I started this journey in 2016, driven largely by my own partisanship, I didn’t expect to end up here. I never could have imagined the joy a text on flood mitigation would bring me. But that was exactly my reaction earlier this week when I was sent a picture of one of my favorite Republican mayors standing next to a big excavator, excited to be kicking off a project we had worked on together. That is the work and it is clear to me now that genuine broad interaction in politics is mission critical for good governance.   

So, I don’t want to sugar coat things too much. Not every curious conversation or bipartisan working relationship you embark on will be successful. You have to balance your optimism with pragmatism, and keep your eyes wide open. Especially in Jersey politics! But rest assured, if you put yourself out there, you will find your fellow bridge builders.   

I love Guzmán’s imagery of finding opportunities to “...collid[e] with people who disagree...” It makes me think of a giant pinball machine. Lights flashing, points accumulating as we bump around out there learning more about and from each other. That image captures the vibrancy and energy I feel on this campus when we collectively apply our hearts to wisdom and truly see each other. That energy, YOUR energy, is the reason I am able to look to the hopefulness in a single phrase of a somewhat desolate psalm. I hope it inspires you to continue to apply your hearts to wisdom as God calls us to do—never discounting the power you have to make a difference through the simple act of connecting with another person.

This past Saturday, Saints indoor track athletes piled into school vans and made their way to Tower Hill in Wilmington. Those same vans came home packed with wins, school records, and personal bests. 

The boys team won every individual event, from the 55m through the 3200m, for the first time in school history. Collectively, the team broke seven school records and recorded 28 different new personal bests. 

The meet kicked off with the boys 55m dash, in which Ethan Williams ’26 came in first at 6.80 seconds, setting a new personal best. In the girls 55m, Tattanna Perkins ’27 placed seventh with a time of 7.95 seconds, also securing a personal best. In the 55m hurdles, Jaxen Wingard ’28 placed second, running all the way to a new school record with a 8.85-second finish.

Boys runners Wingard, William Bido ’25, Calder Lopez ’26, and Williams won the 4x200m relay with a time of 1:42.52.

In the boys 200m race, Williams again finished first with another personal best, 24.36 seconds. Burke Donovan ’26 won the 400m boys race with a personal best time of 54.78 seconds. In the 800m, Chris Onsomu ’25 and Leah Horgan ’25 each claimed first, Onsomu recording 2:04.82 and Horgan 2:24.32—a PR for Onsomu, and a new school record for Horgan. Turner Clark ’25 also ran the 800m, crossing the line ninth with a PR of 2:42.96.

In the 1600m, Onsomu and Horgan each took first, and each, again, set a new PR and school record: Onsomu PR’d at 4:32.87, three seconds away from the record currently owned by cross-country coach Alex Horgan ’18 (and brother to Leah Horgan) and Leah Horgan set a new benchmark at 5:11.92. 

Finally, in the 3200m, Peter Bird ’25 set a school record and won the race with a time of 9:44.18. Not to be outdone, Bird’s brother, Henry ’27, ran a personal best time of 9:44.52, which would have also broken the school record had his older brother not already done so by .4 seconds. 

You can catch the Saints in action when they next compete, at Tower Hill on January 11, 2025.

 

On Sunday, I traveled to New York and attended services with my sister and young nephew at Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue. After, we spent some time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s magnificent exhibit “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350.” In his homily at Saint Thomas, The Rev. Canon Carl Turner reminded the congregation that the second Sunday of Advent is the Sunday of the messenger. (Fr. Turner amusingly recounted his days working for the Royal Mail and actually delivering Christmas cards.) Today, we are the messengers of the story of Christ’s birth—one of arrival, hope, and redemption—a story of love. With the sermon in my mind, I entered the dark rooms of the Siena exhibit to face messengers of 700 years ago who, in their way, were sharing this same love story of arrival, hope, and redemption. Duccio’s masterpiece Madonna and Child, the first work in the exhibition, is exquisite as you can see in the image. Yet, as sublime as they can be, paintings are physical objects, too, created by human beings—and this is especially true of a devotional painting such as this one, which belonged to a person who used it in a different time and space. If you look carefully, you can see the burn marks from votive candles along the bottom edge of the frame, a reminder that we are connected to those who observed this painting before, who stayed up at night to watch and wait, their brains and spirits wrestling with its meaning. The balustrade Duccio painted between us and the figures reminds us that we are separated from them, but suggests that the separation is less profound than we may think. What is holy is present, if we look for its messengers. On Wednesday evening, the Sunday School presented their annual Christmas Pageant, and indeed the messengers of what is holy were among us. The baby Jesus crawled barefooted around the altar, admiring the gifts brought by the Wise People; the older children read the story. The angels wiggled a bit, Mary and Joseph conveyed perfect gravity, a small cow put his head down to rest, and during the songs nothing in astronomy could account for the exuberant movements of the large paper star, embellished with glitter, and brandished on the end of a broomstick. And this, for me, is Christmas in a nutshell. We humans are full of contradictions. The baby Jesus is supposed to be what is divine made human, a way of understanding that we, too, contain what is divine and what is ordinary. Sometimes what is solemn is also funny. Sometimes what is beautiful is also a bit ragged. All these things can be true at once—and that dissonant truth is often what art can show us so clearly. The painting at the Met that made me laugh out loud—which I find amazing, that a 700-year-old message is still funny because it is true, it is human, and it is divine—was Simone Martini’s 1342 painting “Christ Discovered in the Temple.” Any parent or boarding-school teacher would recognize the subject immediately: an adolescent who has traversed a boundary, arms crossed, annoyed with one parent who is angry and worried, and another parent who is trying to reason with them both. Luke tells us in this moment, Mary said, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you!” We have all been there. God was made human; he was a teenager; he was sometimes a bit challenging. What is the message? Love. Love is what makes us human, and love is what makes us divine. Love is what allows us to reconcile within us and among us what is superb and what is hard. Love makes us family and it makes us a community. And although our community includes those of many faiths and those of no faith at all, I hope all of us who share a connection to St. Andrew’s will, this season, embrace, embody, and deliver the message of approaching, hopeful, redeeming love.

Thank you, Joy, very much for that very thoughtful and humbling introduction. First, I need to make a confession. I went to St. Andrew’s from 1970 to ’74, and I never attended Sunday chapel. And I never got marks for that absence.

Usually about 10 young men from St. Andrew’s took a van to Old St. Joe’s Catholic Chapel on West Cochran Street in Middletown every Sunday morning. The service there had something special that we could not get in this chapel. Now, it wasn't spiritual. St. Andrew’s had great liturgies, thoughtful homilists, much better choir, even better organists. But there was something more that the young men of St. Andrew’s were longing for and could not find in this chapel at that time. And that was girls.

So now it’s apparent I’ve never done a chapel talk before. I was told by my trusted advisor—my wife, Marianne—that my talk needed a theme, and it should be personalized without being boring, and mostly, make it short. Based on Ms. McGrath’s introduction, you could think I will talk about soil health, water quality, carbon sequestration, pollinator habitat. That’s all good stuff. Very personal to me, but it wouldn’t be short for you. I thought of various themes that would relate to this assembly. Likely some have been used before for themes of talks: carpe diem; Saints and Sinners; what would Jesus do with a cell phone? And then I found the theme right in front of me on this campus. The school motto, Faith and Learning.

Even though I did not attend chapel here, this chapel was very important to me. In my first year at this dreary time of year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I often sat by myself in odd times of the day, alone and lonely in the very back pew of this chapel, right behind that pillar, where I hoped no one would see me. I was a confused freshman, not having great success, and I really just wanted to go home.

This chapel was a place of solitude where I could think, meditate, and pray. With the support of family and faculty mentors here, my great classmates, I got through this rough patch, and I continued these chapel visits regularly until I graduated. Now, in the third form, we not only had Sunday chapel, we had mandatory Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening chapel. But in the fourth form, they eliminated Mondays and Fridays, and they became voluntary. But Mondays, different organizations or people could volunteer to lead a service.

When I thought about this talk tonight, I said, “Well, I've never done a chapel talk, but I did do a chapel service.” Unfortunately, my reason for that chapel service had little to do with spirituality or faith. I was struggling with my grades in fourth form, and if I could just get a few more points to bring some low seventies into the mid-seventies—that's a C—I could get into fourth group and get out a mandatory study hall, which was held in a room accurately called “The Pit.” Now The Pit was where the library is now on the first floor. There were 60 or so wooden top desks in neat rows. Overlooking them was a raised platform with a desk where the Master of the day would sit and monitor the study hall every evening, watching over us poor performing students from the third and fourth forms.

The heavy wooden desktops opened up and underneath, carved over multiple years, were the names and dates and sayings of us past poorly performing students. My inscription read “Hick was here 1970- 1971.” It was the Shawshank Prison of study halls.

If I could get a few higher points in my weaker subjects, geometry and sacred studies, I could get out of study hall. So the most logical way to get out of The Pit would be by making and studying flashcards for geometry to memorize theorems, or writing a more thoughtful essay on the Sermon on the Mount.

But this 14-year-old mind had an easier way to achieve this success by currying favor with my gentle, easygoing, sacred studies master, Reverend Sandy Ogliby, by volunteering to do a chapel service. That should get me some points for my grade. My roommate Greg and I planned this together—although he was already out of study hall, but he sorely needed someone to play cards with on D Corridor during study period.

The Vietnam War was going on, so we chose an anti-war theme where we would play musical snippets on the turntable, right here at this lectern, from albums from Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills. Then we would stop the turntable, pick up the needle, come up here, read an anti-war verse from the album jacket cover, then sit down, have meditation, and we rinsed and repeated this for 30 minutes at the chapel service.

Not a lot of hard work with it. As we filed out the chapel, this chapel with Reverend Ogliby and the six or so other students who came to the voluntary service, he said he was pleased that we had volunteered to lead a chapel service, and he “found it interesting.” My thoughts as a 14-year-old were, “I’ll be out of The Pit by next semester in January when the grades are posted.” Yes, they publicly posted everyone’s academic grade group in the front foyer—very humbling. When the grades were posted in January, I was back serving time in The Pit, knowing that I would have to get to work, or I would be “NIB-ed”—or not invited back—for my fifth form year.

During Covid, when many of my generation were stuck at home, we began purging attics and basements. And during that time, I found letters my mother had kept in a trunk, which I had never seen.

There was a batch of letters from St. Andrew’s. The first in the spring of 1970 from William “Bull” Cameron—Do you know his name? From the old gym? Assistant head of school, and I think he was the entire admission staff—welcoming me as a third former to the Class of 1974, and most importantly, with a full scholarship. About two months later, another letter from Bull Cameron, apparently which was in response to my mother who had asked for more time to assemble all of the clothes required for the St. Andrew’s dress code. I was a growing boy, and had no black suit—no suit at all—no blue blazer, no summer blazer, no gray wool slacks, no black shoes. I had clothes, but I didn’t have the St. Andrew’s clothes.

In that letter, Bull Cameron said he put $600 in my school blue checking account. Yes, we had school checking accounts. They wanted us to all be bankers, I think. And I don't believe Bull Cameron would’ve used Venmo, even if it existed. This money could be taken out by my parents to buy my dress clothes. I never learned this from my parents who may have been embarrassed by this gift, and I also learned we were poor.

Another letter from my advisor Bob Moss wrote, “Joe is doing well in the sciences and English, but “was not working up to his ability in other subjects and could risk not being invited back.” I am sure my mother was embarrassed. Her son, an altar server, a youth leader at our home church, would flunk out of St. Andrew’s for failing sacred studies.

I learned by piecing other letters together from close family members who were serving and suffering in that horrible war in the South East Asia, what her true worry was. And that was this—a SSS Form 7, a Selective Service Status card. A draft card. She was worried I was going to be NIB-ed, and I would not likely be able to go to college, and would be eligible for the draft with no options for an educational deferment.

I learned as I reflected on my childish attempt to improve my sacred studies grade with a poor effort to protest Vietnam War, my mother was praying that I’d never be drafted.

I did make it to fifth form, and with support of many great faculty here, including Bill Amos, Bob Colburn, and of course Sandy Ogilvy, and there were many more of them. But these masters had faith in me and made me learn that I could work up to my ability. I cannot be more thankful for what St. Andrew’s has done for me and my family.

As I end this talk, I hope all of you find your place for solitude here, for prayer or meditation or thinking on this campus. Whether it’s in the woods, down on the grass docks, or better yet, walking along those beautiful farm fields, or on a kayak. I love all those places, but for me, when I visit, I'll find my place in that pew in the back. Thank you.

 

The sounds of basketballs bouncing, squeaky shoes on the squash courts, weights clanging in the Stuart Fitness Center, and coaches’ whistles blowing is beginning to grow louder as we approach our winter season of athletics. Here’s a quick look at St. Andrew’s winter programs, and a rundown of what to expect as these teams bring the heat in competition.

Boys basketball kicks off their season in the beginning of December at Christiana High School. “The team is coming back older, wiser, and more experienced this season,” according to head coach Terrell Myers. Part of that is due to a strong off-season, in which Myers says the team was either lifting or getting shots up in the morning. “Year after year, our players have gone up against some of the biggest schools and most challenging opponents, often coming within just a few points of victory,” Myers says, a point made explicitly clear in last year’s game against Salesianum, when the Saints came just five points shy of winning the 41-46 game. Darnell Lloyd ’25, a senior center, captain, and 27th-ranked player in the state by Yahoo Sports, is ready for the rematch. “I am most excited about the game against Sallies,” he says. The team enters the season with high expectations, which Myers made clear. “This season feels different,” he says, and that his team has been “battle-tested … they’ve put in the hard work to turn close games into wins.” 

GAME TO WATCH: Check out Lloyd and the rest of the Saints in action as they tip-off in their first game at the Sipprelle Field House on Dec. 17 against William Penn High School. 

 

Girls basketball opens with five home games in a row. Their first foe? First State Military Academy, a team they missed playing last year due to snow in early February. Coach Paul Clemons says, “There is a foundation that will return, allowing us to build on our growth a bit from last year.” The foundation Clemons mentions is bolstered by the “three experienced seniors … [all of whom the] young players will have to look up to.” Clemons is also “blessed to coach year-round so I feel I bring more wisdom and experience as a coach compared to last year.” His added experiences, the addition of three first-year players that “can contribute,” and the senior leadership should prove to make for an exciting season for the girls basketball team. 

GAME TO WATCH: Look for a strong fight from the girls against rival Wilmington Friends, who only narrowly beat the Saints in their last match up 37-40, on Jan. 9.

 

Boys and girls squash are nearly underway this winter, after going 8-3 and 5-3 respectively last year. These teams are preparing for another successful season after they both went undefeated in the state of Delaware last winter. The girls program graduated five seniors on the varsity ladder, and Head Coach Doug Whitaker, who oversees both programs, acknowledges the loss.“The team will have a different make-up than last year,” he says, although he remains unfazed. “With good additions, the strength of the team is still there.” Additions like Charlotte Green ’27 and Marion Lindsay ’28, who Whitaker says should “make impacts and be contributors.” Both new students, Green and Lindsay will add to the great depth and talent” that Whitaker says his team has. On the boys side, there was a loss of only one player from the varsity ladder. “The whole team is back in a way,” says senior Gray Veague ’25, who notes that the addition of many new students should bolster the boys to another level of talent. For both teams, Whitaker says, “The theme is performing better under pressure [which] was instilled in the players as we moved through [last] season.” Whitaker hopes those principles will come to fruition this season.

GAME TO WATCH: Look for both teams in their first match at home on Dec. 7 against Episcopal High School.  

 

Swimming went on a hot streak last season, boasting an 8-1 record and a Delaware Independent School Conference (DISC) championship. This year, they’ve added a new coach in Caroline Towne, a former NCAA Division III Swimmer of the Year and a 13-time Division III National Champion, to the mix. “It’s been fun to watch all the kids as individuals, getting to know their strengths and their weaknesses,” says Towne, who knows her way around a successful swim program. She highlights the importance of leadership. “We have great leaders,” she says. “I think other teams are jealous of our senior leadership.” These coveted captains and seniors will try to lead the Saints swim program to another successful year, which kicks off Dec. 7 at home against five different DISC teams. 

MEET TO WATCH: St. Andrew’s versus Tower Hill on Dec. 14, a rematch after the Saints convincingly won 103-44 against the Hillers last year.
 

Indoor track was extremely competitive last season, earning the No. 1 spot on the podium at the DISC Championship meet. This season, the team is still in good shape, as they have continued to grow.  “I’m excited about the fact that for the first time ever, our girls crew is larger than the boys crew,” says head coach Jon Tower. “[That means both teams will be] competing in the long jump and the high jump ... for the first time ever.” Tower believes this will add to the team’s success this season. “You score points by competing in all the different events and placing in those events, so when you don’t have people in them, you can’t score,” he says. Now that the Saints have added jumping to their practice routine, Tower hopes it becomes just one more weapon for the indoor track to utilize. 

MEET TO WATCH: Although indoor track has no home meets, you can find the Saints sprinters, jumpers, and throwers three times this year at Tower Hill, on Dec. 14, Jan. 11, and Feb. 13 for the DISC Championship. 

 

Wrestling will continue with themes of cohesion and fierce competition this winter. The team, which finished 3-5 last season, keeps a “family-based atmosphere approach” that head coach Phil Davis emphasizes on and off the mat. But while family is first, technique is only a close second. “We’re emphasizing a more attack-style wrestling, which consists of scoring first and keeping opponents playing catch up,” he says. Keep an especially sharp eye out for the senior wrestlers, whose commitment to the wrestling program Davis recognizes. “I am blessed to have watched the newbie-to-senior transformation several times in my tenure,” he says.

MATCH TO WATCH: Catch these Saints on the mat, especially at home for their tri-meet on Jan. 23, when they face off against Sanford and Wilmington Christian. In the same meet last year, the Saints won 52-18 and 48-30 against each respective team. 

On the evening of Friday, November 15, St. Andrew’s students gathered in the Warner Art Gallery for a gallery opening featuring the oil paintings of renowned local artist Lauren Peters. Throughout the evening, about 80 students, dozens of employees, and Peter’s friends and family came to marvel at her portraits, which are bold and vibrant, often featuring brightly colored hair, animal inspiration like snake skin, feathers, and horns, and clothing from flannel to flamboyant. In her artist’s statement, Peters writes, “My practice is an examination of the construction and performance of identity and gender through self-portraiture.” 

Students milled about the gallery and discussed the nuances of different portraits and singled out their favorite pieces. Each portrait is a different interpretation of Peters, but she says she draws inspiration from both fashion and classic works, noting her work “ … springs from a dialogue with the past and present, internal and external influences, a healthy dose of mythology, and the struggle to form a cohesive sense of self.” 

Mythology was one of the inspirations for Peters’ “Amazonian Introvert,” which showcases a Greek design across the border. Classical influence seems to appear in “Woman’s Work” as well; this version of the artist has her wearing a  lion head that appears to draw from Heracles, often featured wearing a cloak made of the slain Nemean lion. A student favorite, “Cut ‘Em Off,” is six feet tall, and features Peters as the Queen of Hearts, wearing a petite golden crown that peeks out of tightly coiled red curls. 

After taking in the work, students gathered around Peters, listening to her tell her artist’s story. “I know it's so easy to get stuck into the details,” Peters told students when asked about the technical side of her process. “That's something I've really had to learn, to develop the backgrounds at the same time as the figures.” 

More than technique though, Peters was able to share her experience about how she came to find art. While Peters was a studio art major in college, it wasn’t until 10 years after college that she took on being an artist full time. Peters says that she originally rented a studio place as a reprieve from a chaotic home, but quickly realized how much she loved painting. 

Following her first show, she was given a grant by the state of Delaware to help her leave her job in the gallery and pursue a career in creating art. “I thought I had landed my dream job working full-time in a full-time gallery.” But, Peters notes, “All I learned from that was seeing other artists [create]. I realized, ‘I want that. I want to be able to do that for myself.’” 

Now she does. “I can't believe I'm doing this earlier than I thought,” she says. “I just thought about [painting] every day when I wasn't painting.”

Joshua Meier, photography and printmaking instructor and director of the Warner Art Gallery, says Peters was an artist on his radar for a couple years. 

“I was drawn to her work for a couple of reasons,” he says “I am really fascinated with the whole self-portraiture genre in art. There's a lot of other artists that I really admire that have worked in that way of using themselves as … this character within their artwork to explore much bigger themes and different things and to communicate those themes.” 

Meier believes that it's important for students to see different kinds of artwork, self portraiture specifically. “Often most people are probably pretty shy about using themselves,” he says. 

Peters is one of three artists slated to install their work in the gallery this school year; others include Brandan Henry in the winter and Gregg Deal in the spring. Meier says having artists exhibit in the Warner gallery adds to the holistic education St. Andrew’s seeks to provide. 

“It falls in line with what we try to do as a school,” Meier says. “If you look at all the different types of people we bring to the school to do lectures or to visit classrooms, like authors and politicians and scientists, [we can] present ideas from different perspectives and expose our community to different ways of thinking.” 

Meier sees these art exhibitions as “an exchange of ideas” that offers students the opportunity to wrestle with the stories that the artists are trying to tell, which ties into how Peters interprets the message of her own work: “They’re all telling the story of how complex it is to be a human being.”

 

In the past weeks, I have had many occasions to reflect with gratitude on the finest aspects of this community, our values, our spirit, and our accountability to each other and our purpose. Most of all, I am grateful for this being a place filled with joyful people who are committed to building. Everyone here, our students and the adults who guide them, is constantly asking, what is constructive? What will heal? How can I mend? Rally? Build up?

This practice makes St. Andrew’s a place out of step with a world where discourse can quickly bend to what breaks down, undermines, and destroys our right relationships with each other and even with nature itself. Your children deserve a lot of credit for taking this on, because it is so easy to disintegrate and unravel the world with our carelessness, much less our intention. Positive effort, consistent work is required for us to be builders.

Mary Oliver once again provides us a lens to understand this work, in her minute attention to nature and her uncanny ability to communicate its meaning. I share with you her poem, “Song of the Builders,” which has inspired me this week:

Song of the Builders
By Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early: New Poems
 
On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God—

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

Imagine the Front Lawn where it pitches down to the side of Noxontown Pond, a hillside made of uncountable grains of sand and soil, and teeming with life. How can a single insect move “the grains of the hillside”? How outrageous even to attempt such a task! Life is full of big challenges, and it is easy sometimes to feel hopeless in the face of them. We can move only one grain at a time in what we sense—but perhaps cannot see—is an impossibly large universe in need of building up. In Mary Oliver’s poem, she shows us a model in nature, the work of a cricket: “how great was its energy, / how humble its effort.”

The juxtaposition of great energy and humble effort recalls to me the wisdom attributed in Pirkei Avot* to Rabbi Tarfon, “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it.” We are called to radical work: to knit and heal and build constantly, without concerning ourselves with whether we might ever finish. In this, faith will be required, for it is in the words of Hebrews 11, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And so, we keep going.

The Oliver poem captures my attention as we head away from school for a break because it begins with the speaker sitting on a hillside to reflect—“to think about God”—which she calls “a worthy pastime.” Although the poem is about the unceasing, simple, and daunting work before us, the diligence that is required of us, it is equally about rest and reflection. I hope that you and your children and families and friends will find opportunities for the “worthy pastime” of contemplation during the break, reflecting with happy satisfaction on what we have done together, preparing to return to St. Andrew’s and the good work we share with good people, energized and humble. More than anything, enjoy having them at home and circling them with love and warmth.

* Part of the Mishnah, Pirkei Avot is a book of wisdom and ethical principles gathered in the third century from Jewish Rabbis.

On Monday, Nov. 11, the Fall Athletic Awards Ceremony celebrated the amazing work of SAS athletes. Across the board, from thirds to varsity, fall athletic teams found tremendous success. Football embraced an entirely new team of coaches, varsity volleyball and field hockey posted winning records–for field hockey in particular, the team recorded the most wins in two decades. Both cross-country teams were runners up in the DIAA DII State Championship, and varsity soccer had an unbelievable run to the DIAA DII Boys Soccer Championship Finals for the third time in St. Andrew’s history. Although collectively, our teams secured historic milestones this season, the evening celebrated the individual contributions of athletes who left it all on our fields, courts, and courses.

During the ceremony, Director of Athletics Neil Cunningham and fall coaches expressed their immense gratitude to all of the people who make athletics at St. Andrew’s possible: the grounds team, for keeping our fields and facilities in good condition; their fellow coaches, for all the knowledge they offer; Al Wood and his team of trainers, for helping athletes recover and keeping them healthy; and Head of School Joy McGrath ’92 and all of the employees who consistently show up to support SAS athletics. The fall coaches voiced their appreciation for Cunningham, too, who keeps the program running.

St. Andrew’s athletes continue to bring the values of St. Andrew’s into all of their arenas of play, Cunningham told the students gathered in Engelhard Hall. “I’m proud of the way you represent the school on and off the field,” he said. Throughout the evening, coaches praised their athletes’ resilience, determination, and sportsmanship. This historic fall season proves that St. Andrew’s athletes are committed to improving and lifting each other up, and that the school community has a lot to look forward to in athletics.

You can watch the full event here.

Boys Cross-Country

“Our team has a simple three-word guiding principle that what we’re all about is challenge, fun, and support, and those are the principles that we try to live. We want to challenge ourselves at every practice, we want to have fun, and we want to support each other.” Head Coach Dan O’Connell

• JV, Coaches Award: Jack Grant ’27
• Most Valuable Runner Award: Peter Bird ’25
• Most Improved Runner Award: Henry Bird ’27
• Varsity, Coaches Award: Chris Onsomu ’25

---

Girls Cross-Country

“To arrive on campus and have my very first coaching experience with all of you was a gift. You showed up mostly on time, you ran hundreds of miles, sang during long runs, and returned with lots of bugs plastered to your faces. You ran 200s, 400s, digging deep when it got hard and always supporting each other.” Head Coach Kat Celata

• Most Valuable Runner Award: Leah Horgan ’25
• Most Improved Athlete Award: Pope Brown ’25
• Varsity, Coaches Award: Claire Hulsey ’26
• JV, Coaches Award: Amanda Meng ’25

---

Varsity Field Hockey

“To coach a team that fostered spirit, resilience, tenacity, and grace—on and off the field—truly, it was wonderful to be a part of. There was a real sense of togetherness and belonging on that team, and I’m grateful.” Head Coach Kate Cusick

• Most Valuable Player Award: Lindy Black ’25
• Most Valuable Player Award: Ember Theeke ’25
• Varsity, Coaches Award: Piper Langston ’27

JV Field Hockey

“[This team] brought a distinct energy and light to my life that I am grateful for, so thank you.” Head Coach Anabel Barnett

• JV, Coaches Award: Grace King ’25
• JV, Most Improved Player Award: Kadence Sun ’27
• JV, Most Improved Player Award: Eva Griffin ’27
• JV Most Valuable Player Award: Charlotte Green ’27

---

Football

“Every week was a battle, and you showed up. It is a difficult thing to put pads on and to hit another human being, yet there was never a complaint. You showed up ready to go, you competed, you embraced a brand new coaching staff, and a new philosophy. … The memories I hope my seniors take from this season is that they can still line up every day regardless of the wins and losses, that they have that heart and that integrity to keep playing hard. That’s  important, and it will carry you beyond the game.” Head Coach Rick Barron

• Dedication and Commitment Award: Luke Ketzner ’25
• Most Improved Player Award: Ted Williamson ’25
• Virginia DiGennaro Award: Grey Durham ’25
• Most Valuable Player Award: Spencer Fairbanks ’25
• Robert M. Colburn Award: Spencer Fairbanks ’25

---

Varsity Boys Soccer

“I could talk about results and wins, but I want to focus on how much joy I find from being at practice and around this squad every day. ... This squad is resilient. We've been kicked down at times in this year, but ... they never split apart. They stuck together, trusted, and believed in one another. ... this group never quit, and they especially did not quit on each other.” Head Coach Ben Horgan ’19

• Varsity, Coaches Award: Porter Read ’25
• Most Valuable Player Award: Nanda Pailla ’25
• Most Improved Player Award: Ethan Williams ’26

JV Boys Soccer

“I am immensely proud, and am excited for the growth of these athletes that they’ll undergo in the coming years.” Head Coach Connor Doughty

• JV, Most Valuable Player Award: Jacob Smith ’28
• JV, Most Improved Player Award: Lewis Stiles ’28
• III, Most Valuable Player Award: Alden Arndt ’28
• III, Most Improved Player Award: Byers Corrigan ’28

---

Volleyball

“From the first day that I came into the gym with this group, I could tell that it was a really special group. Each and every player showed up every day ready to work and strove to be the best teammate they could be. … I think the defining trait of our team was their grit and their determination.” Head Coach Jonah-Kai Baker

• Varsity Most Valuable Player Award: Catherine Foster ’25
• Varsity Most Improved Player Award: Bahar Bekirefendi ’26

• JV, Most Improved Player Award: Josie Denny ’26
• JV, Most Valuable Player Award: Juliet Klecan ’25

• III, Most Valuable Player Award: Jessica Tian ’27
• III, Most Improved Player Award: Faith Taylor ’28

The St. Andrew’s student and employee crowd, gathered over 265 strong at the soccer stadium at DIAA tournament host school Newark Charter, was anxious throughout the semi-final match between St. Andrew’s and Tatnall on Nov. 13. Students, all bundled up against the low 40 degree weather, jumped up and down, kept checking the clock, and seemed almost hesitant to celebrate even the smallest of events on the field, worried they might jinx the result. But the Saints boys soccer team left little for their fans to fear as they battled against the Hornets, winning back possession, controlling stoppages in play, and keeping the intensity high. The Saints back line, Ian Cairnduff ’26, Liam Robinson ’26, Jack Myers ’25, and Lucas Sturges-Moyne ’27, kept a clean sheet, along with Saints’ goalkeeper Liam Wilson ’27. 

The Tatnall strikers were given few opportunities to get to goalkeeper Wilson, and even when they did he stood strong, recording five saves throughout the match. However, on one play, Tatnall broke through and the ball leaked past Wilson as he challenged a striker. It looked like a sure goal. Enter Liam Robinson ’26, who made a play that Ian Cairnduff says was  “season saving … a play that practically sums up [the] entire year.” Robinson came flying into the box and made a sliding kick save, preventing Tatnall from scoring and forcing the ball out of bounds. Cairnduff believes the season swung on that play. “We haven’t been given anything,” he says. “We have [had] to work for everything that we’ve gotten.” Robinson’s quick-thinking hustle play kept the score nil-nil, and was punctuated by a roar from a rowdy Saints fan section.

After what was, for the fans, a stressful nearly 70 minutes of the kind of nervous energy that comes on the heels of a 0-0 match with 10 minutes to go, another Robinson—Luke ’28—joined his brother and made a game-changing play of his own. The freshman scored after securing a rebounding shot off of a defender from William Bido ’25. A team celebration in front of the sea of red in the Saints bleachers followed; the crowd and players seemed to sense Robinson’s goal could be the one that sent their squad to the championship.

Tatnall made a last-ditch effort at the end of the game, bringing their keeper up to the midfield and attempting to force a free kick or a corner, but the Saints kept the Tatnall offense to a minimum. Finally, after nearly 82 minutes of play, and a bit of contact between keeper Wilson and a Tatnall player, the referee blew the final whistle, which sent the Saints sprinting across the field to celebrate their victory with the hundreds of fans who packed six buses to come cheer them on. In attendance were also several proud alumni from the 1981 St. Andrew’s soccer state championship team.

Head Coach Ben Horgan ’19, who is also part of a St. Andrew’s brother duo—his brother, Alex Horgan ’18,  teaches science and coaches St. Andrew’s crew and cross-country—says that the Robinson brothers, and their play, is a testament to how the whole team operates. “Luke and Liam so well-represent the family that the soccer team is,” he says, while pointing out that, of course, “the older brother [does] the dirty work and the younger brother [gets] the glory.” Horgan’s statements speak to what he’s observed from watching his team play: the Saints are willing to work together and do whatever it takes to help their brothers—biological or not—win. The next stop for this family? The DIAA DII State Championship match, this Saturday at 1 p.m., at Dover High School. The No. 11 Saints face No. 1 Sussex Academy. You can find ticketing information here.

 

 

Good evening and welcome!

Welcome, distinguished guests, students, faculty, administrators, alumni, friends, and a special welcome to family in attendance. First off is Dave Murray. Dave has been a family friend and has known me since I was a young teenager. He has witnessed my growth and transformation and was ecstatic about coming. So welcome to him and his friend “Anthony,” who turned out to be my aunt who surprised me by flying all the way over from Seattle just for this. I welcome as well Mrs. Juanita Wilson and Ted Wilson. I will go into much greater detail about their impact on my life, but for now I welcome my surrogate parents who looked after me during my time here at this special place. And it is special.

Now some of you may be wondering, visibly, “Uh, Suli, that can’t be your family.” But that’s where I’d say you’re wrong. You may have relatives, but not every relative is family. Family are those who nurture, who support, who love, who encourage, who aid. Not blood, not wealth, not color, not clan/tribe. Family for me runs deeper than the superficial meaning. That’s something I’ve learned over the years.

Until today, at my tender age of 43—and yes, I say tender because 43 believe it or not is not old haha—SAS remains the brightest, happiest memory in my entire life, and hopefully tonight I will be able to share with you the tremendous impact this school and its amazing people had on my life and its trajectory. Thank you, Stacey [Duprey ’85], Chesa [Profaci ’80], Joy [McGrath ’90], and Danica [Tisdale Fisher], for inviting me to speak here tonight, and I hope what I share is in the worst case insightful, best case inspirational. It’s profound to me to be standing here now when it seems like just yesterday I was sitting just where you were. Of course, much more hair on my head. Less hair on my face. Fewer forming love handles. And much less stress. Enjoy your youth because no one said getting old looks like this.

I’m going to try to fit 43 years of life into 45 minutes so bear with me, but ever since Stacey asked me to speak back in June, I have been preparing. On my commutes to work, on the weekends when I relax, at night when I often reflect on things before going to bed. That’s because I’m a firm believer in the adage that failing to plan is planning to fail, and I wanted to ensure that I crafted a speech that was intentional in its approach and covered the most defining moments of my life so far. I say “speech” but think of it more as a family discussion because at the end of the day St. Andrew’s is, and forever will be, family. It doesn’t matter what year you are or what state or country you live in, if you are a part of the SAS community, then you are my family. That said, please know that Uncle Suli is from Brooklyn. And I’m very proud of that. In fact, I mention in my SM bios that my blood type is BK+; that’s how serious I take it. The reason why Brooklyn is so important is that it has shaped me into who I am today, and it is a foundation built on authenticity and genuineness—or as we affectionately like to call it, keeping it real. So this conversation is meant to be real, and that’s what I will do. I will share my moments of strength and courage as well as vulnerability … my successes as well as my failures and setbacks.

The focus or title of this discussion is Resilience in the Pursuit of Excellence. That is because there is no excellence without adversity, and adversity requires resilience. As it regards adversity, I was immersed in it before I even left the womb. I was born to a loving mother, whom I cherish, in Crown Heights Brooklyn, a part of New York City whose troublesome history is well documented. Whether it was drugs, crime, racial tension, or senseless violence—you name it—Brooklyn had it. I was also born and my father left us before I even got a chance to meet him. Imagine that. I’ve never met my father. And for those of you born with both [parents], I’d like you imagine a world where one of your parents isn’t there. From a young age, I had to figure out this world and my place in it. I had to figure out how to be a man all by myself. And not just any man. A Black man in the United States of America, something that comes with, let’s just say, a unique set of challenges. So according to statistics, I’m not supposed to be here standing in front of you right now.

According to statistics, I shouldn’t have gone to SAS. I shouldn’t have graduated from Amherst and NYU. I shouldn’t have been a director at Johns Hopkins, nor currently at Yale. But this is a common refrain in my life that you will come to recognize all night. Barriers and obstacles are only there to be broken. Adversity should not define you; it should motivate you. That is to say, one should not wallow in their own misery, crying woe is me, when adversity strikes. Don’t get me wrong—adversity is not pleasant to deal with, and its spectrum varies from manageable to unbearable. But at the end of the day, a good friend of mine, Lindsay Lowa (now Roznowski) used to remind me 30 years ago: whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Thus, you should look at every bout of adversity as an opportunity. Opportunity to reflect. Opportunity to grow. Opportunity to make your comeback greater than your setback.

Another significant obstacle early in my life was when my mother was diagnosed with MS back in 1989. It’s still unknown how people obtain the disease, and its effects can be devastating. My mother, who was a career-oriented woman, had no choice but to be sidelined, rendered disabled and unable to work for the rest of her life. It was upon me now to become the breadwinner for our immediate family, and having realized this very early, I became hellbent on making sure I took care of my mother. The funny thing about her is that although I know she suffers in silence, she’s never once complained or showed distress. She just simply gets it done, and growing up with her I have internalized perhaps an uncanny perspective on adversity. There’s nothing that I don’t think I can face, and there’s no problem too great; if my mother can suffer and do it with a Coke and a smile then, child, I have absolutely nothing to complain about, regardless of what it is.

Although I was born into adverse conditions, I was blessed with something that would become a defining characteristic and trait: intellect. From a young age my mom saw that there was a little something different with her child. Whatever toys or puzzles she gave me, I ate them up. Whatever books I was given were devoured. And we’re talking four or five years old here. It was clear that I had an insatiable appetite to learn, even until today, and it was this appetite that singlehandedly changed the trajectory of my life. The beauty of intellect is that it is not confined to color. It’s not confined to a specific region. Not height. Not wealth. Not political affiliation.

Nothing. Intellect is intellect, and in this rapidly evolving world of ours, you cannot understate the power and currency of intellect and academic study. Knowledge truly is powerful. William Wallace famously said, “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom.” I add to that, that a person can say whatever they want about me, do whatever they want, but they’ll never take away my secret weapon: intellect.

As I stated, my mom recognized this early on and her main mission became trying to feed this appetite in the best way she could. Fast forward to my 7th grade year at IS 383, a school for gifted and talented students in Brooklyn, and it was here that I learned about an organization, Prep for Prep. Prep for Prep is an incredible and highly selective organization which seeks out talented and gifted underrepresented students in New York City and if accepted, prepares students for a rigorous academic program that lasts a grueling 14 months. And I say grueling because until now, it remains the most difficult thing I had to do in my life. No joke. I still have PTSD some 30 years later.

Imagine being 12 years old but having to go to summer school five days a week, from Monday through Friday, on a 1-hour city train ride, mind you, for the whole summer. And not just studying 7th grade material. We were studying pre-calculus, trig, reading Shakespeare and Chaucer, and we had two hours of homework every night. In the summer! I did love learning, but c’mon! I also wanted to chill with homies, play basketball, and enjoy the summer. Not in 7th grade. That was my life for 14 months. During my 8th grade year, I also had to go to Prep for Prep every Saturday in addition to 8th grade studies. And every Saturday, trust, that we would receive enough homework to last the whole week. Brutal. But something that was comforting was knowing that I was considered among New York City’s intellectual elite—I think a few hundred students, maybe even thousands, apply—they only gave out 60 spaces. I was truly amongst the best of the best. But as you can see being the best of the best necessitated assuming tremendous responsibilities. Excellence requires resilience.

If I simply looked at the road I had to traverse for the next 14 months, it would’ve been enough to make someone think twice. But this program singlehandedly changed my life. And I recognized that graduating from St. Andrew’s would put me in the best position to have the authority to steer my life in whatever direction I wanted it to go. If I wanted to be president, SAS would equip me with the tools to do so. After successfully completing this program, students are placed in the top boarding schools in America: Choate, Hotchkiss, Deerfield, Andover, and Exeter. I chose St. Andrew’s. My visit was so amazing. I had never seen so much green. So many trees. So many cornstalks. So many smiles. I had only understood frowns up to then and was taught to mistrust smiles back in NYC. People are only nice when they want something from you. But that mentality changed when I came here. I realized, it’s ok to smile. It also didn’t hurt that Good Morning America had just so happened to be filming here that day too. So it was all a sign. I fell in love with St. Andrew’s from the very first moment. That love has only increased since I recognized its true value when I departed.

It’s important at this juncture to contextualize just how crazy my experience was being transplanted from Brooklyn to a leading, exceptional, not to mention affluent, boarding school. I mean Dead Poets Society was filmed here. How much better can it get, right?! The contrast in the double life I was now leading was salient. While some of my friends went to the Hamptons, Jackson Hole, or Switzerland for Thanksgiving break, I returned home, usually by Greyhound bus back to Brooklyn. The summer after my freshman year, I came home to the news that a childhood friend, Oscar, was just locked up for being an accessory to murder. Wrong place. Wrong time. But as a 14-year-old his life was essentially ruined as he was facing a 30-year prison sentence that would commence when he became an adult. That could’ve easily been me. While I analyzed the literary genius of Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson with [Bobby] Rue, [Jon] O’Brien, and [Darcy] Caldwell at SAS, I’d equally analyze the lyrical genius of Tupac and Biggie verses when I went home to my friends. Navigating two such disparate worlds was a very challenging experience. It often forced me to painfully question my identity. Am I loyal and Black enough for the hood? Am I not too Black at SAS so as to avoid being stereotyped and placed in a box? It was NOT easy, but my friends and family here at SAS made the experience as pleasant as you could possibly imagine. I’ve never found such a loving and welcoming community. It was here that I was able to grow, nurtured by the genuine concern and care of faculty and administrators alike. For that I thank you from the depths of my soul. In such formative years, my experience at St. Andrew’s laid the groundwork for how I would conduct myself in the world moving forward.

St. Andrew’s was absolutely amazing. I made great friends, many of whom are still very close today. I got exposed to different types of music, although I was hesitant to like any of it for fear of having my Black card taken away back home. Dave Matthews, Cher, Enya, and U2 were some of the bands I’d hear on a Saturday afternoon strolling through the halls of Sherwood Forest (do y’all still call it that?). This bridging of cultures was critical for me because people back home had perceptions of white people that weren’t accurate. I was able to dispel any weird notions.

Similarly, at SAS there were misconceptions of Black people that I was able to dispel. My presence here was the only thing that made that possible. THIS is the value of inclusivity. Not just to meet a quota. But to really enable the conditions where different people can meet and share and learn from each other.

While SAS was truly amazing, there were two life-defining moments that were not. The first one was when I tore my MCL in the second game of the football season my sophomore year, and the second one was when my dear roommate of four years, Chris Wilson, the wonderful son of Mr./Mrs. Wilson here in attendance, tragically passed away in a car accident. The pain and shock of that still lives with me to this day. With regards to sports, I had just started learning to play basketball in the 7th grade and quickly fell in love with it. This was due to watching MJ do amazing things on the court. My coach, Coach Rue, never liked him as a Pistons fan, but unfortunately MJ was the one I chose for inspiration and whom I modeled my game after. He taught the world a relentless pursuit of perfection, demanding only the best in himself and of his teammates. And as a result of his body of work, he is arguably considered the best player to ever play. He didn’t just become that overnight. He worked hard. Extremely hard, and so that was what I taught myself too. I would spend 6 to 8 hours in the gym on a Saturday just practicing by myself, and I was developing at a fast rate. After my freshman year, I was able to dunk, which forecasted a major breakout year my sophomore year. That came to a grinding halt when I tore my MCL in the second game. I’m not going to talk about the pain, or how it swelled to a balloon, or how I had to wear a cast for weeks and a brace for many months thereafter. It was difficult. And I felt my childhood dream of playing basketball professionally somewhere was in jeopardy. Again, I thank Mr./Mrs. Wilson because they were the first to come to my aid as they were at the game and they took great care of me, especially with those wonderful baked chocolate chip cookies. Lord knows one of the most important things you can do after tearing your medial collateral ligament is to chow down on some delicious cookies. It helped ease the pain.

Adversity is like a Skittles bag which comes in all different flavors and colors, except the colors are often darker and the taste more bitter. However, I was determined. I rehabbed and rehabbed and rehabbed because there was no way I was going to miss the sophomore basketball season.

Long story short, once I got better, I continued to practice and elevate until I started getting noticed and recruited from top D3 schools. When it was all said and done, I held multiple records my senior year (some of which have been broken) but my main accomplishment was to be the first player in SAS history to score 1,000-career points, and I was also the second leading scorer in the state my senior year at 23.3 points a game. (No, I’m not an MJ fanatic to that degree where I purposely averaged that amount, but it is a pretty cool coincidence). I was also invited to the Delaware All Star game, not something that St. Andrew’s basketball was known for. Not bad for someone who tore their MCL. Looking back, I may not have had that burning desire to excel had I not torn my MCL, and I was able to use that as a motivational tool. It taught me a very, very powerful lesson in my teenage years. In the words of the late great Jim Valvano who died from cancer: Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.

The other more tragic moment was when I learned that Chris had passed away suddenly. We were roommates for four years. I’ve never met a sweeter, funnier, goofy-at-times kid than Chris. He also had an infatuation with Coca-Cola, and we’d have weekly re-up visits from his poor mother and father who had to lug these cases and cases upstairs for us. Chris was a true homie, and where I come from being a homie is a big thing. There are friends, and there are homies. A homie is someone who you’d do anything for. That was our relationship. I was looking forward to seeing how he would develop and contribute to the world. That all ended one day when I got a distressed call from Mrs. Wilson informing me that Chris has gotten into a horrific accident that ended his life prematurely. The range of emotions was unbelievable. Sheer grief and sadness that a beautiful soul like this was taken so early. That a loving mother and father lost one of two children. An older brother who also went here, Josh Wilson, lost his only brother. That we would never know where Chris would’ve ended up today and what contributions he would make to the world. The greatest emotion I felt at the time was shock. I just couldn’t believe he was gone, and it was the first time in my life that someone my age had passed. It taught me the fragility of life. And it only invigorated me to live by the adage YOLO (you only live once). I was determined to be the best that I could be, if not merely for the simple fact of honoring Chris and his life story, and not being wasteful with life and the opportunities it presents. While we make plans for next month, next year, and the next several years, tomorrow is not promised to any one of us. Chris’ death taught me that at a young age.

After an amazing time at SAS, I thought I would have an equally pleasant time at Amherst. I was wrong. No shade on Amherst, but it was not the best experience for me, socially. Academically it was great, but socially it was weird. Not as warm, physically, and as a Black man, I’m sorry, I love the sun. Winters are brutal, but Northeastern winters can be exceptionally brutal. Don’t ask me why in the world I decided then to buy a house in Rochester, NY, but that’s a discussion for another day. Maybe I’ll leave that for a next talk which will be entitled Silly Life Mistakes that Every Sane Person Should Avoid. The most painful part of Amherst was basketball. While I was a high school standout, I mostly sat the bench at Amherst even though I routinely outperformed teammates during practice. I’d even have teammates ask me why I wasn’t playing. My only response was, “Ask the coach.” I will never know why my coach didn’t play me, but it was painful nonetheless. Once again, I had to sit by and watch my hoop dreams fall deeper and deeper into the toilet.

However, I used that as an opportunity to focus more on being professional and preparing for a career. Even in St. Andrew’s, I had internship opportunities. I worked at law firms during the summer at SAS and that progressed to investment banks during Amherst. I was all about getting that schmoney. If a translation is needed that means a whole lot of money. The summer before my senior year, I got an incredible opportunity to work at Deutsche Bank. I earned 10k that summer and was on the path to success. If I performed well, I’d have a job offer. And that’s exactly what I did. While other summer analysts were busy on their phones all summer, I took tremendous initiative while I was there, always asking for work and asking to learn something.

That quickly caught the eyes of associates, and then vice presidents, and then managing directors. By the end of the summer, I was working directly with a vice president as a measly summer intern. Look at the power of conviction. Look at the power of intellectual curiosity. Look at the power of pushing oneself to excel. I performed well and was indeed the only one in my summer group to be offered a job, which I initially accepted. I was all set to make around 80k right out of college which in those days was significant. I was all set, or so I thought.

It turns out that during that summer, I began to question many things, namely because I had so much time to think sitting in my office on Saturday afternoon. You see, I had to work 60 to 70 hours a week, and that amount of commitment begged me to question the value of money and material things. Yes, I’m making a lot of money—but what is my quality of life? I don’t even have time to enjoy it. Additionally, my bad time at Amherst pushed me into a very dark personal place. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t fulfilled. I had everything in my hand, but my heart was empty. You have to understand the magnitude of this. As a poor Black kid from Brooklyn who’s already beaten tremendous odds to be in the position, and now I’m questioning everything. I started to question life itself. Was my purpose here only to get schmoney and be comfortable? Or was it to make an impact? I realized at 20 years old that the corporate world was too cold and empty for me. And so after long deliberations, I decided to turn down the job as I needed to do important spiritual work on myself. I needed to get me back, and all the money in the world wasn’t going to achieve that. It was as if I had gotten to the mountaintop only to realized it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It was then that I had to channel my Brooklyn upbringing and be brave. Where I come from you cannot be afraid. People smell it, and if you’re identified as weak, then you’ll be taken advantage of. So I’ve always been the courageous type and what is more courageous than following what your heart tells you in the face of criticism, disbelief, and doubt.

People thought I was crazy to turn down that job. People thought I was crazy to return to my Muslim heritage and practice my religion. People thought I was crazy for growing a beard, which is absolutely hilarious because now Messi, Lebron James, and even politicians rock beards. What do you do when it seems like many people don’t get you? When many people see what you’ve done as a failure? As though you’ve thrown your life away? The first thing to do is not pay any attention to any of it. It is your life. You only have one. Live it for yourself. Don’t live it for other people. But now it was senior year, and I didn’t have a job. I needed to figure this out real quick. I decided to lean back on something that was extremely familiar to me. Can you guess what it was? Teaching and learning. I decided to learn how to teach English. For me, it would be a great way to learn how to teach; I would be interacting with other cultures; and I was excited about this new career. I also had a mountain of student loans so I needed to earn as much money as I could. It turns out the Middle East was the region that was paying the most, and so after I got my M.A. at NYU, I headed to Saudi, another major chapter in my life.

I begin this section of the talk by saying I’m a lover, not a hater. I love all people. I truly do. And while my experience as a Black man has been documented tonight, it’s just that. I was born Black and that was the hand I was dealt. But I never welcomed nor accepted any ideas or ideologies that preference one group of people over the other in any form. A human being is a human being. And we should be judged by the things that are in our control, not by the things that we cannot control. No one comes into this world asking to be a certain color, come from a certain lineage or family, or have a certain amount of money. All of these things are predetermined, and so how could I judge someone on something they had no control over? It’s oppressive and makes no sense and will never make any sense to me.

Biologically I recently read that humans share 99.9% of the exact same DNA. That leaves .01% to account for all our differences. Yet the world would have you believe that we are 99.9% different. Let’s go one step further. If you remove the skin of every human being, guess what, we all look identically the same, so using inductive analysis we can determine that things like race and beauty are literally only skin deep. Racism is a mental, emotional, and spiritual disease that I will never understand, but that I will fight until the day I die. The only colors I care about are black and white: of the heart. Is your heart black or is it white? And the other color of love is green … because being from New York, it’s all about that schmoney. I diverge.

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, is an interesting country. They have developed much in the past few decades, and it was interesting to witness this. Equally interesting, or disturbing depending how you look at it, was the treatment I received there. Islam is a religion in its essence that promotes equality, and that was another reason I was excited to live there. Although I had not experienced explicit racism in the U.S., I knew it was all around me. I thought that a country that in principle was supposed to uphold great virtues would welcome me with open arms. I was wrong. And I’m not going to generalize because there are people there that I met who had hearts of gold. But I cannot shake these other experiences which unfortunately defined how I was going to be living for 17 years. As for the experiences themselves, let’s see. I was called a slave in public. I was spit at in public. Someone threw my groceries from the conveyor belt in public. Why you might ask? Because I was an African. And Africans got little to no respect.

The funny thing is as soon as I spoke in my Brooklyn accent that behavior changed real quick. Wait? He speaks clear English. He can’t be African. But often times when I said I was American, they refused to believe me. No. Where are your parents from? Your grandparents? Your great great great grandparents? What the hell does that have to do with the price of beans? I would often go into a diatribe about the history of slavery and how actually no one in America are actually Americans except the indigenous people. But that wasn’t enough. Over time I simply got tired of explaining myself and said, “If you don’t believe me, then that’s on you.” But what difference did it really make? Unfortunately in Saudi, a lot. People are judged by their wealth. Their color. Even their tribe name. It was disturbing to witness. All of this will come back full circle as I explain my transition back to the U.S.

Living in a society where you’re not wanted, where you’re judged based on everything else but your ability, was beyond disheartening. However, I chose to fight and deal, rather than cower and walk away. I would spend the next few years focusing on developing myself because I’m in constant pursuit of excellence, regardless of the context. Even though I was a teacher, at every job I assumed administrative positions. I wanted more authority and input on the direction of programs, so I volunteered to do so. For how much more you ask? Zero dollars. For 17 years I assumed a tremendous of extra responsibilities. Why you ask? Because I’m a sadist and just love pain and torture. No. It was because I knew that I’d be gaining valuable administrative and leadership skills that will serve me in the further should I return to the U.S.

Over 17 years, I became a coordinator and a program supervisor for the entire country. I published many articles, the majority of which were in Oxford University Press, whose acceptance rate was only 10%. I met princes. I worked directly with the Ministry of Education on a five-year strategic plan to address teaching quality. So essentially I used my time in Saudi not to wallow in the abhorrent racism I swam in on a regular basis, but rather to develop myself and excel, because that is the single most important thing to me. I could not waste a SAS, Amherst, NYU education. To whom much is given, much is required—and I was given a lot. I had to give a lot. I had to produce. The one moment in Saudi that allowed me to do that, on a level that I was satisfied with, was when I met Mutah Beale.

Mutah Beale is formerly known as Napoleon of the Outlawz, a rap group started by Tupac Shakur. In the absence of a father, Tupac, believe it or not, was a central figure in my life as a teenager. Beyond his poetic brilliance, he spoke up for justice, and more importantly explained for me what it meant to be a Black male in this world. His main message, among many, be Black and proud regardless of what society says. He defined himself. He didn’t need validation from external sources. That was how I was going to live my life. Tupac was a tremendous inspiration and anchor for me during the lowest, darkest, most challenging times in my life, so naturally I would listen to this new rap group, the Outlawz. Amongst my favorite members was Napoleon. It was the crafty way he played on words that captivated me. It was also clear he suffered a lot, and I was happy that he escaped many of the dangers of urban life and was successful. Little did I know, we would meet, in Saudi Arabia of places, become best friends, and that he would honor me with getting to tell the world the story of his life.

I’m not going to get into too many details, but for anyone who needs a real-life example of battling and surviving adversity, it’s the story of Mutah Beale. His parents were murdered in front of him when he was three, and over the course of his life many of those closest to him were murdered or passed away. Yet, he turned his life around and is doing very well. We entertained the idea of writing a biography on his life in 2019. He knew I was a writer, and after reading some of my work, he was impressed. But I warned him, I said, “Mutah, I don’t do things on a small level, and you’re a celebrity, so I hope you’re ready for what I’m going to try and attempt to do.” I explained to him that his message and story is one that needs to reach masses of people, not just people in urban environments or casual rap fans. No. This is a human story, and it needs to reach as many people as possible. So, my task was to package his story in a way that is readable, accessible, but academic and authentic. This was a tremendous opportunity to communicate to the world, vicariously through Mutah, some of the things that I was exposed to as a Black kid growing up, and I would be able to do it in a way that it would be celebrated. Let’s be frank: there’s nothing glamorous about guns, drugs, violence, and substance abuse. But I had the opportunity to convey this unpleasant world in a way where casual fans can enjoy a good read, while intellectuals can delve deep into examining many of the problems that plague our society.

I used my research skills to make sure his anecdotes were supported with evidence so as to increase the veracity of the book. It was also important for me to write the book in such a way that it may be even taught at college. In the end, I pulled 257 citations from 150 sources, the book was well received, and I became a published author of a book entitled Life is Raw: The Story of a Reformed Outlaw. Not only that, but the book was so well-received that it earned an entry as an exhibit in the Hip Hop Museum, the first of its kind dedicated to the preservation of hip hop history. Mr. Rue, Mrs. Caldwell, Mr. O’ Brien, I think I was paying attention in your English classes and thank you. Mr. O’Brien, I told you I thought I deserved an A- on that paper instead of a B+. Additionally, on a serious note, the book is currently being converted into a movie, which is set to release next year. But I didn’t tell you that. I mean I did, and I technically shouldn’t have but you’re family. You all get that exclusive access.

That book opened up many doors, including meeting other celebrities, and as of right now I’m working on my second book which is also a celebrity biography about a rapper named Loon, who used to rap coincidentally with none other than Puff Daddy. No comment, and no Loon didn’t attend any crazy events. However, here is yet another opportunity to write a book and showcase my academic talent on the world stage. My challenge is to make it even better than the first. Excellence. That is what you should always be targeting.

So as I’m wrapping up here, Mutah was the shining light of my experience in Saudi, and it was necessary because simultaneously while I was enjoying the success of our book, those clouds of darkness that hung over me in Saudi had gotten darker.

My director at the time was moving on, set to return to Canada after many years in Saudi. He was so impressed with my work ethic, competence, and leadership that he recommended that I succeed him as director the following year. He forwarded my name and gave me a tremendous endorsement. However, the Saudi administration told him to his face that they would never allow a Black man to run an English department that was 90% white. That was it. I had had enough of Saudi, and it was time to come home. When I arrived back in the U.S., I returned with a much deeper appreciation for America and its value.

While we get a lot of things wrong, one thing for sure is that legally, you have opportunity. Legally you are only judged on your performance. Legally there is no discrimination. I applied to many jobs when I returned, and I was fortunate to be appointed Director of Academic Programs at Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology. So wait. You’re telling me that I wasn’t qualified to lead an English department in Saudi, yet I’m qualified to be a director at a world-renowned, elite academic institution? Make it make sense please. It was then that I realized that all the extra responsibilities I had assumed with no extra pay finally paid off. I came back to the U.S. and my landing spot was Johns Hopkins. You couldn’t write a better story. After two and a half years at Hopkins, I decided to move on, and I applied for a director position at Yale, where I was accepted yet again. Wait. You’re telling me that I wasn’t qualified to lead an English department in Saudi, yet I’m qualified to be a director at a world-renowned, elite academic institution, not once but twice? Make it make sense. Well, it makes perfect sense. Here in the U.S., in principle you are only judged on your ability and performance and for that I was certified; I was accepted into the upper echelons of American academia because I belonged there. And rightfully so.

I end this by leaving you with some pearls of wisdom from Uncle Suli. Seek out opportunities and make the absolute most of them because they may never return. When life punches you and knocks you down, don’t cower, for we all get knocked down at some point and in one way or another. It’s not a matter of getting knocked down but how fast you can get back up. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t do something. Belief in yourself is the most powerful weapon you possess. Don’t seek external validation. If you work hard and are committed to excellence, your achievements will validate you. Be kind, be generous, be courteous. Regardless of where you ascend to in life, be humble and treat others as you would like to be treated. Humility is a sign of intelligence just like arrogance is a sign of stupidity. Cherish your years here. When you’re 43 like me (and I’m not even going to do the math of what I’ll be when you’re 43), I’m almost certain you will look back at your time at SAS and these years will be the best of your life. Always learn. It is through learning that you make impact and succeed in life. The world is truly your oyster, and no one can stop you except you.

This speech wouldn’t be complete without thanking the many family and friends who supported me throughout my journey. Thank you, Stacey and Danica, for arranging this for me. Huge thanks to Tad Roach, the former headmaster here. He taught me how to be a man, he pushed me intellectually, and more importantly, he believed in me. Thank you to his wife Elizabeth. Thank you to my family and friends who’ve been so supportive and loving throughout. Look at my aunt, who’s like my second mother; she traveled all the way here from Washington state which is a testament to her love and support. Thank you to all my teachers here: Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien, Mr. Hyde, Mr. Rue, Mr. Colburn, Mrs. McTaggart, Mrs. Ramírez, Mr. Austin and Mrs. Matouk, Mr. Bates, Mr. Duffy, Mr. Speers, and Joy and Hope McGrath. I thank Mr. and Mrs. Wilson who have been my surrogate parents throughout my life. I thank Dave for coming. I thank Mutah and Loon. I thank all the haters, doubters, and naysayers. I thank Brooklyn. And lastly, I thank adversity, for without it I wouldn’t be the man I am today.

Be yourself, be brilliant. Pursue excellence and be resilient. With that I drop the mic and open the floor up for any questions, if there are any.

Since we last saw many of you at Fall Family Weekend, a lot has happened. The students had two free days (the second one was a surprise that resulted in a three-day school-week), Halloween, Haunted Trail, a national election for which we programmed many discussions and gatherings, and now this weekend we have the UNITED program, the last football game of the year, both cross-country teams at the state meet, and soccer in a quarterfinal match of the state tournament. (GO SAINTS! I am one super-proud head of school!) Sunday, we will host Model United Nations, in which many students are involved, hold Chapel, and offer a variety of activities and trips. Among other opportunities, this weekend features theater and museum visits, hayrides around the farm, food trucks, movie trips including Harry Potter, disc golf, and a “Sunday reset.”*

I am looking forward to all of it, including wrapping up on Sunday night with a gathering of all the students on K, L, M, and Pell dorms at our house! On Sunday after Chapel, and before the dorm gathering, I am taking a van-load of students to see the permanent collection as well as the Mickalene Thomas show at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. I try to take students to museums as much as I can. I am a museum-obsessive and find that the observation and appreciation of art is a wonderful way to get perspective on the daily business (and busy-ness) of life. As you know, our students are wonderful artists themselves, and I see many features of Thomas’ work that persist into their artistic endeavors—whether they’re conscious of it or not.

Above all, whether it’s at the museum, on the Front Lawn, in an audience, or in a common room chat session, I hope all of us will be able to take a breath this weekend. As I shared with the students on Wednesday night, I am truly in awe of them as they take in all that school offers alongside the layers of a contentious election in a divided country. When I was a St. Andrew’s student, I was politically aware and engaged. Here is how that looked back then: Every day we would go to the library to see if Mrs. Trabaudo had clipped the papers onto their wooden rods for us. (Some of you remember those.) We would read the papers. And then that was it. No more news to process until the next day when Mrs. Trabaudo replaced them the next morning!

Tsunami isn’t the right word to describe the cascade of information buffeting our kids all the time. I would love to turn back time, so they could take it all in reasonable doses, but there is no point in imagining that. Some schools, I know, have opted to provide no election programming at all. What we decided is to do what we always do: allow students to learn, engage, build their own ideas, test them against each other, discuss, and debate, all in an environment purpose-built so that we all encounter folks whose experiences and ideas differ from our own. Your children are learning how to do this together, here in this special community built on critical thinking, grace, and empathy. And that is the best we can do for them, the best you can do for them, as they find their voices and add them to the discourse that will build our country’s and the world’s future. It’s never going to be perfect, but they have done a beautiful job and I am so proud of them.

I hope you’ll have a chance to connect with your children at some point during the weekend, and I hope this message gives you some fodder for those talks! I know you keep all of us at St. Andrew’s close to your hearts, and your support is felt and appreciated. We are so fortunate to be by your side in bringing up these strong, funny, decent, joyful young people.

*Here is the “Sunday reset” description, facilitated by alumna Lucinda Caldwell ’10, which sounds like something we all could use! “In this 45-minute session, you will use writing and creative reflection as a tool to go into your week feeling organized, grounded and giddy. These sessions are broken up into three parts: reflection, setting priorities for the week, and then mindset work.”

Hello, everyone. My name is Lamar Duncan, and I’m a member of the Class of 2020 here at St. Andrew’s. I just recently turned 23 years old—which still feels weird to say—and I received my degree from Boston College this past May. I will start this chapel talk using some words I said into the same microphone as a sophomore here in 2018 in Mr. Mufuka’s religion course.

I quote, “I used to believe every boy needed some sort of male figure or role model in his life to be a man, but I didn't have one. I only had my mom. My mom is my dad. Sometimes without her I wonder where I would be right now. Where I’m from—Chester, Pennsylvania—opportunities like St. Andrew’s are not even thought of. My experience at St. Andrew’s right now would have been unimaginable to me back in middle school. As of right now, I have literally beat the odds in the perspective of a boy from Chester.”

Let me remind you guys. I am 16 years old here saying I had beaten the odds. Crazy.

In this chapel talk, I said, “I pray where I am today in my journey can someday show that a boy from Chester can break those societal norms.” I wanted to define the word change, becoming a first generation college student and my biggest co-op in college is to get back to my community. Now, I stand here today as a first generation college student and look where I am now, giving back to my community who helped get me here.

Now, a lot has happened since this chapter talk. Let’s go back a bit.

At St. Andrew’s, one of my biggest accomplishments was a leadership role I held in my senior year. As a senior, I was a captain of the basketball and the football teams, which meant a lot to me. I was a residential leader on freshman dorm. Shout out to Fleming. I was the head of Guys Group and I was the co-head of Onyx.

Having these goals taught me what it took to be a leader and what it meant to have the younger guys looking up to me. I remember coming and saying to you as a freshman that I was so confused. Mr. Mastrocola—who you may not know—told me, “Hey, freshman boys, put your phones outside of your dorm.” And I was like, “What? You’re taking our phones?”

It was these times where it was the older guys I looked up to for assistance—whether it was getting shocked up in the morning or telling me to go see academic support when my grades weren’t the best. It was those moments of uncertainty and not feeling ready or prepared that other Onyx members gave me reassurance. It was Onyx who brought barbers on campus so we could get haircuts that reminded us of home.

In my common app essay for college I wrote, “The end of August starts my transition. My new home. St. Andrew’s School is my outlet, my second home. At St. Andrew’s, I learned there’s more to life. There’s more than the small city I grew up in. St. Andrew’s has shown me what proximity looks like and has given me a community that cares about me and my wellbeing unconditionally.”

Getting accepted into St. Andrew’s back in eighth grade was like a miracle. My middle school posted on Facebook, “Lamar Duncan in eighth grade at Chester Community Charter School was recently accepted to St. Andrew’s School in Delaware. Lamar received full tuition assistance totaling $57,000 per year.” This wasn’t normal. This was like some type of supernatural aid.

In comparing Chester, my hometown, to St. Andrew’s, already two different homes, both home, one place where your single mom is all you’ve got. Be safe are the last words every time you leave your house. Another place that the only sounds you hear are laughter on dorm and applause after performances on Arts Weekend. Home is one place for nine months, then another place for the remainder. And as different as they are, they reflect me and I reflect both.

From this young kid from Chester who had never seen the world before, St. Andrew’s has helped change the trajectory of my life. Before St. Andrew’s and creating the bonds I made here, I might have never seen the world the way I’ve seen it today. Just two years ago, I went on Christmas vacation with my brother Jack Lauer, who’s here today, and his family to New Zealand. I’ve never flew out of the country before and that was my first time. Nearly 20 hours of travel.

Last summer, I lived rent free in Stanford, Connecticut, for three months, working at Synchrony Financial in their business leadership program—my first time living outside of Chester and not at St. Andrew’s. Last winter, I was awarded the Benjamin Gilman Scholarship to study in Amsterdam for six months, while also being able to travel with Belgium, Paris, and Denmark, and seeing all the complexities and diversities of life abroad. These experiences would not have been possible without my experience here at St. Andrew’s.

You can ask me, who is Lamar Duncan? Whether it’s at work,or it’s in college, or it’s on the street, and I can’t even answer that question without mentioning St. Andrew’s. Whether it is me using the school filming Dead Poet Society as my fun fact for icebreakers. Or if it’s me convincing my friends that we would’ve won the state tournament in 2020 if Covid had never happened—we would have! I’m a firm believer of things happening for a reason, and in a singular moment, changing your life. And for me, that is stepping on campus here at St. Andrew’s.

At [work] today, I sometimes pull up my desk like this, press the button, and I look around. And I see no one who looks like me, no one my age, no Black guys. And I sometimes question, am I supposed to be here? Still, as I look around, I’m reminded that my life, the place that I work, the network that I have built professionally, personally, and all of the friends that I have made so far would not be possible without the values and opportunities St. Andrew’s has given me.

Mark 10:46-52

Thank you first to Joy McGrath, Rev B, and Rev G for the invitation to speak this morning. Also, a thank you to the faculty and staff who love and care for our students every single day. And to all of the students for showing up for each other day in and day out. Our family is so grateful to be part of this community.

Please join me in prayer:  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I happen to be  a born and bred Presbyterian, but for the last few years, I have had the opportunity to spend time with a really cool 5-foot-nuthin’ Catholic nun who is about to turn 80 years old. Year after year, Sister Marcy takes a small cohort of people under her wing for a three year program to learn the art and practice of spiritual direction.

What is spiritual direction you may ask? The quick answer is that spiritual directors accompany people as they seek to deepen their relationship with God. Sister Marcy uses the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola as the guiding framework for this practice.  Ignatius was a 16th century Spanish soldier who later founded the Society of Jesus (aka the Jesuits), and he had this radical notion of “finding God in all things.” He even dared to suggest that when you read scripture or pray with scripture, you could imaginatively place yourself in the scene. So this is my invitation for us today—that we imagine ourselves in today’s story from the gospel of Mark—as we look to find God in all things.

Jesus and his disciples and a crowd of people are leaving Jericho, and from the side of the road Bartimaeus begins to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And, did you notice what the crowd tried to do?

They ordered him to be quiet—basically they tried to shush Bartimaeus. Now, I don’t know what happens in your family, but if you happen to know our daughter Quinn, or anyone else in our family, you can imagine the response. There might be a chin tilt, furrowed eyebrows, and a quizzical look, … “Did that person … (did that crowd) … just try to shush me?” The response to being shushed may also be the same in your family as it is in ours and as it was for Bartimaeus when he cries out all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

What happens next? Jesus stops.

He stands still and says, “Call him here.” In my imagination, the crowd starts murmuring, and people start waving their hands and calling out to Bartimaeus, “Take heart. Get up! Jesus is calling you!” I’m seeing Tyrus’s mom in this story. I don’t know if you have ever seen Dotty on the sidelines of a football game, but she is in the crowd, waving her hands and calling to her baby and all of those football players out there some version of “Get up! Take heart!” Basically, Don’t. Miss. Your. Moment. (Find God in all things.)

Bartimeaus is ready and he is not about to miss his moment; in a flurry of motion, he throws off his cloak, springs up, and comes to Jesus who is standing still, waiting. And the crowd goes silent. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”

My sense is that this question is not just for Bartimeaus but this question is also for the sake of the crowd. I imagine this crowd is full of people who Bartimaeus has never met. But there are also people who have known him since he was child, and they have been faithfully present throughout his life.  This is where Ember’s dad, Adam, shows up in the story: he who has never missed one of his kids’ games. Consistently present, week after week, year after year, Adam has seen the good days and the bad days as a steady, quiet witness in the crowd.

So whether the people in the crowd are strangers, or whether they have known Bartimaeus from the time before he became blind—all are bearing witness to this Loving Presence that responds to the request: “Lord, have mercy!”

Sometimes in order to have a fuller understanding of a 2,000-year-old text, I find it helpful to read different interpretations of scripture, or read it in Spanish. Where we read, “have mercy,” la biblia dice, “ten compasión”—have compassion.

Jesus is asking, What is the compassion you need? For all we know, Bartimaeus may have a broken heart; he may want to regain his sight; he may want to be understood for who he is beyond what other people see and assume about him.

What is the compassion you need? Each of us carries something that feels vulnerable or a piece of us that may be suffering and seeks compassion. We are also connected to various communities that may suffer and seek compassion.In big and small ways we are all seeking a Loving Presence that will bear witness to who we are in that moment and participate in our healing.

That Loving Presence doesn’t just exist on the page of some holy book, but in the people here. In this place I have witnessed and heard stories about the compassion and loving presence that has been shared here at St. Andrew’s.

It’s the advisor who says, it seems like you’ve had a hard week, can I take you to ice cream? 

It’s Al, the athletic trainer, who tirelessly wraps yet another injured body part of one of our kids.

It’s the student who drops of a note or flowers at your door.

It’s the parents/families who host students over breaks and give them a home away from home.

It’s Mr. Stan in the dining hall who gives you a warm smile.

It’s the colleague who invites you for a walk.

Their loving presence is felt and a seed of healing is planted.

So we return back to Bartimaeus facing Jesus with the crowd all around him and Bartimaeus speaks the desire of his heart. He isn’t afraid to share his vulnerability with Jesus, “My teacher, let me see again.” And with compassion, Jesus replies, “Go, your faith has made you well.” And what is faith? Scripture tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.

Bartimeaus has faith that this Loving Presence that he couldn’t see, had the power to heal him. And he is made well. And I imagine that the crowd that could see, that was able to bear witness to the tender mercy of God, was made well too.

So dear crowd, keep showing up with compassion—whether you are enthusiastically waving your arms or quietly standing still—because your loving presence has and will continue to bring tender mercy and healing to the people in our midst.

May it be so and may we see God in all things. Amen.

Good morning, everyone! Welcome back to St. Andrew’s! Welcome to Fall Family Weekend. My husband Ty Jones, and the entire faculty, join me in welcoming you back here. And I would like to thank those faculty, who are just doing an incredible job with your children, for their tremendous efforts this weekend. You will see them in conferences, you will see them onstage and backstage, you will see them on the sidelines, and you will see them on dorm. And no, I do not know how they do it! But they are inspiring, and they are called to this work.

Thanks, too, to our parent trustees, for all you do as volunteers for St. Andrew’s, and our Saints Fund parent co-chairs, the Halls and the Odutolas. We truly couldn’t do it without your support.

I know you are tremendously excited to see your children and so I thank you for coming to hear me for a few of your precious minutes on the campus. I hope this weekend, you will discover that your child’s education is turning out to be a defining experience in their lives. My St. Andrew’s education was the most transformative time in my life—and I am lucky enough that it continues to be, thanks to my teachers, my friends, my colleagues, and your children. I hope you are finding that your children are making the most of this opportunity for a great education, one that is opening their minds, making their worlds larger. That growth, I hope they recognize, is to fulfill their promise and potential. To find out who they might be, to discover they have everything they need inside of them, and to have the courage and confidence to be that person.

You may recently have read about the passing too soon of Gavin Creel, a celebrated Broadway actor. To be honest, before he died, I did not know much about him. But, like many people raised in small towns, I am an avid reader of obituaries, and in the New York Times, I found a statement in his obituary that I’ve been thinking about a lot: he attributed his phenomenal success in life to his upbringing by Midwesterners. He put it this way, that his parents “instilled in [him] that ‘you’re a part of something, you’re not the something.’” Essentially, Gavin Creel said, this is the formula for how to be successful—how to be happy, how to make a meaningful life full of friendships and accomplishment. To understand that “you’re a part of something, you’re not the something.’”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot—that we are part of something, but we are not the something—because Ty and I, and a few of our colleagues, have recently in our travels been hosting dinners with St. Andrew’s graduates in colleges. And the main thing Ty and I noticed is that they seem—and they genuinely say that they are—happy. As one recent graduate put it, “It’s a learned skill to make something of the circumstances you find yourself in, to be happy—SAS taught us that.” We are part of something, but we are not the something. It’s a powerful thing to know, a home truth.

The qualities you have built in your children, and that we have sought to reinforce here—humility, moderation, curiosity, empathy, the giving of grace, gratitude—they circle this idea and are fundamentally connected to our ability not only to adapt to the circumstances in which we find ourselves—but to thrive in them and triumph over them. But what is in the middle of this circle? What else is present when we can be part of something, but not be the something? Agency. Choice. Power. What we might call self. What is inside us and what we have done to cultivate and strengthen it.

You have heard me say this so many times, but your children are powerful. They are. And when we hear from our graduates in college that they are happy because they can make something out of the circumstances in which they find themselves—circumstances they do not necessarily control—they are claiming for themselves who they are and the choices they will make. And doing that, yes, with humility, gratitude, moderation, empathy.

But they are also saying: it begins with me. Before we can make the world better, or even the people around us better, we must know ourselves, we must better ourselves, we must be ourselves. A friend of mine who is passionate about education often reminds me of the story of Rabbi Zusya. Rabbi Zusya was a famous 18th century rabbi who was said, on his deathbed, to be nearly as great as Moses. To these assertions, it is said he replied, “In the coming world they will not ask me why I was not Moses; they will ask me why I was not Zusya.” The ultimate judgement on a life is whether we were ourselves, whether we—meticulously, relentlessly, doggedly—did what was required to unlock our god given potential.

And so, education must serve that purpose, it must first help us learn ourselves—who we are and what we are capable of; it must develop in us the courage and confidence to be that person in whatever situation arises; and then, and only then, can we imagine what we might do in this broken world. And that is where—I think—a St. Andrew’s education is making a difference. It is so easy to criticize others, to lay blame and find fault. But it is hard—incredibly hard—to examine ourselves, to hold up a mirror, and say, can I be better? Can I do more?

What your children are doing here together with us, authentically engaging in this kind of education, takes an enormous amount of courage. We practice this in our classrooms—and you will hear from teachers about the phenomenal academic work going on this weekend. In chapel, in arts, in athletics. In person, face to face, without phones—that makes it harder. That fearless and unflinching dedication to what will make us better and make us who we are.

When we hear what Gavin Creel said of himself, how crucial it was to understand he was part of something, but not the something, we hear selflessness and generosity and empathy in that. But what is equally true is that the power of the individual and the agency of the person must first be present as well. When our young graduates say St. Andrew’s gave them the gift of finding happiness in whatever circumstances they find themselves, that to me is a great endorsement of this cultivation of self in the service of what is larger.

I am so proud of our students, your children. You all must just be bursting with pride. They are working so joyfully on themselves, and they are doing that in service to something big, and something that matters. They inspire us every day. I know you will hear that from their teachers, but I wanted you to hear that from me. We are so grateful that you share your kids with us and allow us to be part of their story. What a privilege it is to work with them. Thank you for being here, and all you do to support the school.

Have a beautiful weekend and enjoy lunch!

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I know some of you. But for those I don’t, my name is Christian Wilson, and I’m an alumnus of St. Andrew’s Class of 2001 and a board of trustee member.

When Joy invited me to give the Chapel Talk, she mentioned that one of the aims was so that the community could get to know the board members better. For me, the Chapel Talks always served as a way to reflect on our spiritual growth as individuals and as a community. This invitation coincided with something I’ve been thinking about recently due to the current state of our world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about kindness, and furthermore, the lack of kindness I see in and around me. So I figured why not come to you today and talk to you about how kindness has touched my life in different ways and how we might think about being kinder people day to day.

Reflecting back on my time at St. Andrew’s, I began to realize that acts of kindness have played a major role in guiding me to where I am today. It was kindness when a work colleague reached out to my mother—a single mother raising three children—to give her information about a program that could introduce her children to some of the best schools in the country. It was kindness: the kindness of Mr. Caldwell showed me during my interview and tour of St. Andrew’s so many years ago that swayed me to choose St. Andrew’s to spend my formative years. It was the kindness of the teachers and the staff at St. Andrew’s that helped to develop me into a person that cares about people, cares about our communities, and ultimately cares about the world we live in.

I think you see where this is going.

When I was an investment banking analyst, it was the kindness of one of my bosses to take me under their wing and mentor me. It was his sage advice that in the end helped me to find my career in medicine. The thread that seems to tie many of my life events together is a simple act of kindness from another.

This exercise has shown me that kindness comes in many forms, but once you know how to look for it, it is surprisingly easy to see when it is there. And more importantly, for this talk and our spiritual growth, where it is not in my view, we as a society have decided to prioritize convenience over kindness. As an aside, in the first version of this talk, I said people have given up kindness for convenience, but I actually don’t think that is fair. Kindness still exists in our society, just often when it is convenient to be kind.

People want things to come easy these days, and shouldn’t they? With our technological advances, nearly anything can be at the tip of your fingertips in seconds. We earned our modern day conveniences, didn’t we? To some degree, I would say yes, but should convenience come at the cost of kindness?

One of the things I’ve learned throughout my journey in life is that kindness is hard work. Now, is it possible to come across situations where kindness is easy. Kindness is convenient, sure. But to move through life actively making the choice to be kind—even when it’s inconvenient for you—now, that’s hard. And I’m not talking about being a martyr for kindness either, but rather recognizing the situations where it takes a few extra seconds or minutes to be kind to another, or yourself for that matter, to begin to recognize those situations. Now, that takes effort.

Now, is that a bad thing? No. It is through doing the hard things that we ultimately grow and start to realize our potential. Just like pushing through a tough practice on the sports field or working through a tough math problem helps us grow in athletics or academics, it’s through starting to put effort into being kind that we can start to work on our spiritual growth.

Now, convenience is not the only reason that being kind is hard work. Kindness can also be unpopular. When I say kindness can be unpopular, I mean that in a few senses. But don’t worry—we aren’t going to go through them all. Though I did want to touch on one I think is most relevant for many of us in this room. So let’s take an example.

As technology advances, more and more of our actions are online, and more and more of those interactions have become depersonalized. Furthermore, with the ongoing use of AI, these depersonalized interactions will only continue to increase. The problem is it’s easy to be unkind when you depersonalize—when you dehumanize—your interaction with someone else.

Go to the comment section of almost any social media page, and you’ll see what I mean. The negative comments and bullying have become an epidemic. Not only that, the sheer number of these unkind comments is astonishing, such that negativity has become the norm, has become the popular opinion.

The same concept of dehumanization has been used for centuries to justify unkind acts on one another. And frankly, it is still today, as is obvious in today’s news. But I digress. Therefore, to stop and take a minute to say something kind can be seen as going against what is popular.

Now, I think many of us in this room believe we wouldn’t think that way or behave that way, which I believe is true. St. Andrew’s does a great job of bringing together thoughtful, kind people.

But would you stand up and be outwardly [kind] when everyone else is silent? When everyone else is doing the convenient thing? That’s where kindness becomes hard. Again, it’s hard to stand up and be kind when everyone around you is being mean or silent. But as I mentioned before, it’s in doing the hard things that we find growth.

At this point in the talk, we are at about a thousand words, which is the guidance Joy gave me when thinking about length. So let’s bring it home.

In summary, living a life of kindness is hard. It’s inconvenient and sometimes unpopular. But doing hard things is ultimately how we grow and start to realize our, in this case, spiritual potential.

Thank you.

At St. Andrew’s annual Book Talks on Sept. 6, students explored the idea of “slow productivity” with their French teacher, chatted about popular science fiction novel Dune with their religion and philosophy instructor, and pondered the psychology of money with their math teacher. 

On a designated day once a year, St. Andrew’s students and faculty gather to chat about what they read this summer—not for a grade, not for an upcoming quiz, but to prepare for a lifelong love of reading. 

“The idea of this approach to summer work [is] to really be simultaneously fostering a love of learning and a lifelong love of reading,” says Interim Dean of Teaching & Learning Emily Pressman. “We want to make sure that students are having the opportunity to just be encouraged to read for fun and to just expand their own horizons on their own.”

This is already happening at St. Andrew’s in the classrooms throughout the year, Pressman says, as well as in the student-led Book Club, which recently read and discussed Charlotte’s Web in honor of Banned Books Week over Sunday-morning French toast on Sept. 29. This format of summer reading, however, drives home the importance of reading for enjoyment. 

Over the summer, students choose two books to read from a list of nearly 50 recommended by faculty. Faculty are free to pick any book of their interest—whether that’s a book they already love and can’t wait to share with students, or a book at the top of their to-be-read list. Then, during the first week of the school year before classwork kicks into high gear, students gather in small groups—the average group size being 13 students—with the faculty recommenders. The groups identify parts of the book they connected with, share what surprised them about the book, and discuss other topics that you might hear about at a book club meeting.  

The timing of the Book Talks at the beginning of the school year serves as an opportunity for new and returning students to develop community. Faculty sit down with students across forms who they might not teach or coach or have on dorm this year, but with whom they may share a common love for sci-fi or mysteries.

“[St. Andrew’s] is a place where learning is always a communal and community act,” says Pressman.

These conversations go beyond this singular day of the Book Talks and serve as an ice-breaker during the early days of the school year, whether that’s between roommates who discovered they read the same book over the summer or between faculty and students. 

“I loved at the picnic that the faculty had with the seniors on one of the first nights back, there was a student who came over and talked to one of the faculty members because he had read the book that she had suggested,” Pressman remembers. “Even before we got to the Book Talks, it was this moment of connection and this opportunity to say, ‘Oh, I read that book that you suggested, and I’m so excited to talk about it.’”

Director of Library Lisa Myers takes care of the behind-the-scenes work of organizing the Book Talks, keeping track of what students read and assigning them to discussion groups. Myers and the other librarians assist in ensuring that students have access to the books over the summer, which Pressman hopes also serves as an introduction for students to the services of the library. 

This year, Myers says that the most popular books were A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, recommended by Spanish instructor Valerie Vitalo, with a total of 60 students, and All the Light We Cannot See, recommended by IV Form Advisor and Director of Community Service Kelly Lazar, with 50 students.

Pressman is excited for this St. Andrew’s tradition to continue to evolve over the years to address the needs of each particular student body, but hopes to maintain the same spirit of choice and enjoyment when it comes to summer work. 

“We are always asking the question of, ‘How do we create something that’s going to best serve these goals that we have for continuing to cultivate outside of the classroom a love of learning in our students?’” says Pressman. 

 

The Front Lawn is many things for the St. Andrew’s community—playground, classroom, event venue, and more. On Sept. 29, it took a new shape: that of a barber shop. 

Organized by Austin Macalintal ’26 as the culminating event of a fundraising and awareness campaign for pediatric cancer, Saints gathered to watch 13 of their own, including faculty and students of all forms, shave their heads in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

“I just wanted to help raise money to give back, but it’s also [about] the awareness aspect—just understanding the things some kids go through and being able to acknowledge that fact and then empathize,” Macalintal says. “It was nice because a lot of the kids don’t really have a choice, and [by shaving your head,] you’re kind of going through the same thing [and] choosing to shave your head in support [of] them.” 

Macalintal introduced this initiative to the school community during the first School Meeting of the year on Sept. 5. He shared his personal journey going through a diagnosis with osteosarcoma. 

“I was somewhat nervous [about] being very open to the whole community about this,” he says. “Everyone was really supportive. I know a lot of people thought it was nice to be informed, or just… to know the story behind it and understand it rather than being in ignorance and not knowing what truly happened.” 

Diagnosed before the start of fourth grade, Macalintal spent the year going through treatment and surgery, with his treatment ending in April of that year. 

“A big thing when going through it is just all the people there to support you,” he says. “You don’t really remember how tired you were … [but] you really remember the people that were there for you and [how] they gave time to help you feel better and make the most of your time in the hospital or your time during treatment.” 

Macalintal’s people: his family. He remembers the unending time and support they gave him, and how his family took care of each other through this difficult time. 

His family also connected during this time to the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund, a foundation which helps families tackling childhood cancer through financial, emotional, and practical support. Macalintal particularly remembers the programs put on by the organization which lightened his mental load in and out of hospital. 

Macalintal and his family have kept the organization and its mission close to their hearts in the years since, and his older siblings, Zach ’24, Madison ’22 and Katie ’20, first fundraised for it at St. Andrew’s before Macalintal began his own boarding experience. Now a V former, Macalintal spread awareness about and encouraged donations to the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund within the SAS community with his announcement at School Meeting and follow-up emails to the student and faculty body, a dress-down day in which students wore yellow in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month—with the $2 cost of dressing down benefiting the foundation—and the head-shaving event on the Front Lawn. 

Dean of Student Affairs and Macalintal’s advisor Gregory Guldin says Macalintal’s initiative, and the subsequent community response, has been “St. Andrew’s at its best.” He was eager to show Macalintal his support by buzzing his hair, and hoped to get other Saints on board by doing so. 

Throughout the entire month, Macalintal aimed to give back to the organization and community that gave so much to him and his family. But he says that “giving back” is about more than just raising funds, but about showing up for others with your time. 

“I didn’t really expect that many people to shave their heads,” says Macalintal. “It was nice to see all of the people that were willing to shave their heads, but also to see all the people that were willing to watch and support the whole thing [and] just be there. It showed me how much people care.”
 

Dear Families,

As we head into Homecoming weekend, it’s a time to focus on the fundamentals of the school—the things that haven’t changed and make us who we are. One of these is that we are cell-phone free since 1929. I was on the podcast “Harvard Thinking” to talk about our cell phone culture, along with Yale Professor Laurie Santos and Harvard Professor Susan Linn. Have a listen, or read the Harvard Gazette story, and share with anyone interested in this topic. As you know, we are passionate about the face-to-face culture your kids are leading at St. Andrew’s! My colleagues are excited to have a book talk with you next week on this topic and our all-school summer read, Jon Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation. Join the conversation!

Speaking of Homecoming, and home truths, I write from a school whose hallways are filled with green-faced Shreks, clowns, cupids, and who knows what. Today is “dorm theme” day of Spirit Week and each dorm has chosen a theme around which they have coordinated their attire. (I use the term “attire” loosely.) Dorms are important at a boarding school, and especially at St. Andrew’s, where we are all living on campus. (We are one of only three coeducational all-boarding schools.) Dorms are home, they are where friendships are built, where we develop empathy, listen, and appreciate each other.

It takes special people to orchestrate dorm life and live with adolescent students. Yesterday, The Association of Boarding Schools recognized one of our own—and one of the all-time greats—Stacey Duprey ’85 P’04,’10 with the Burch Ford Kaleidoscope Award for Excellence in Student and Residential Life. Hundreds of boarding schools are TABS members, and Stacey stood out as an inspiration and leader in student and residential life. Your kids immediately rocked all of Engelhard (I hear the vibrations were felt all the way to Founders Hall) as they leapt to their feet to salute their beloved teacher. It was such a beautiful moment, and I wish you could have been there. I met Stacey when she became an SAS parent nearly 25 years ago, when I was still new on the faculty, and her fierce love for St. Andrew’s and our students was apparent from the start. We have all felt the force with Stacey, and it’s one of the blessings of this school. Read more about Stacey, “the heart of St. Andrew’s,” and the award here. Please congratulate her when you see her!

For those who might not know the impact of Co-Dean of Residential Life and Senior Associate Director of Admission Stacey Duprey ’85 P’04,’10 on the St. Andrew’s community, her distinction as a 2024 awardee of the Burch Ford Kaleidoscope Award—an honor from The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) to leaders in residential and student life at boarding schools across the U.S. and Canada—might illustrate just how many SAS lives Duprey has touched. But perhaps an even better indicator of her impact was the outpouring of love for Duprey at the Sept. 26 School Meeting during which Duprey was surprised with this award. 

Executive Director of TABS Susan Baldridge paid a visit to St. Andrew’s to present Duprey with the award, which recognizes three to four educators every year for their commitment, creativity, and excellence in the area of student and residential life. Welcomed to the stage with a commanding performance from the Saints Steppers, Baldridge shared a portion of the moving nomination of Duprey for this award.

“When people talk about Stacey Duprey, they often describe her as the heart of St. Andrew’s School,” read Baldridge.

The nomination noted Duprey’s long list of roles at St. Andrew’s throughout the years: an alumna of the Class of 1985; an alumni parent; a dedicated faculty member for nearly a quarter of a century who has served as a dorm parent, advisor, coach, diversity coordinator, admissions officer, and co-dean of residential life; and a “fierce champion of this school and its mission.”

“Her commitment to diversity, inclusion, and belonging is the hallmark of her tenure in all aspects of residential and student life,” Baldrige read. “In many ways, she helped build the foundation for inclusive practices that center equity and inclusion in St. Andrew’s. Stacey’s work with boarding school prep programs and with students of color particularly has helped create a robust pipeline for diverse students. For many years, Stacey unselfishly [has given] up her time to make sure that every member of this community—including the Black women, faculty, and staff who see her as a role model—feels seen, heard, and knows that their work is appreciated … This ability to build a beloved community is her true gift and a blessing to all of us who know and love her.”

Duprey, caught by surprise, shared the thoughts running through her head when Baldridge described the award.

“So many different names came to mind,” said Duprey. “I did not expect it to be me. I hope I continue to live up to all that has been poured into me. This is truly a labor of love. I love this place. I love each and every one of you. I love all of my colleagues, and I just thank you for this incredible award.”

Awardees receive a handcrafted, engraved telescope, which signifies a combination of practicality, courage, creativity, playfulness, and conviction of what is right—all qualities of awardees and the award’s namesake, Mary Burch Tracy Ford. Ford started her career at Groton School, and served as dean of students at Milton Academy and as Head of School at Miss Porter’s School. She died in 2019, and was known for her down-to-earth quality but idealistic point of view, her practical approach coupled with her imaginative view of student experience at boarding schools. 

Duprey will be honored at the TABS Conference in Washington, D.C., which will take place Oct. 30 to Nov. 2. Congratulations, Mrs. Duprey! 
 

Head of School Joy McGrath ’92 recently sat down with Harvard Thinking, a podcast produced by her alma mater Harvard University, to speak about something deeply significant to the St. Andrew’s community: the SAS phone culture, which has inspired St. Andrew’s students to intentionally leave their phones locked in their dorm rooms since the era of the flip phone in the late ’90s. 

In a conversation facilitated by Harvard Thinking host Samantha Laine Perfas, McGrath spoke about the origins of St. Andrew’s view on phones. 

“I’m the beneficiary [as a student] at St. Andrew’s of a school where we did not impose [phone] restrictions,” McGrath said. “My predecessor [Head of School Tad Roach] was very slow to put Wi-Fi in our dorms. Students started out with flip phones and they weren’t very interesting, so they didn’t carry them around. What happened was there was a rule that flip phones should stay in the rooms. And then … the rule never changed. But the rule never changed because of a discussion among the students of continuing to embrace this policy. So we have what I would say is a student-led phone culture. It’s led by the kids, and every year, our seniors—who do a lot of leadership in the school—rearticulate to the younger students why this matters, and why this is so important at St. Andrew’s.”

Almost thirty years after St. Andrew’s “out-of-step” approach to phones, the rest of the nation is now wrestling with this question: Should schools ban cell phones?

The episode, “Why School Cellphone Bans are Spreading,” included guests Dr. Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale and host of The Happiness Lab podcast; and Susan Linn, a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of Who’s Raising The Kids? Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children.

The trio discussed the hard numbers: 97 percent of U.S. students have a phone, and, according to the National Education Association, 83 percent of teachers think that schools should ban cell phones. Also, according to data from Common Sense Media, an agency that researches kids’ use of technology, over 50 percent of tweens and almost 70 percent of teens say that their phones distract them from schoolwork during the school day.

It's not just the intersection of classrooms and phones at the crux of the issue for McGrath—it’s the other communal spaces where students are supposed to be enjoying the last fleeting years of childhood and creating authentic connections. 

“If you think about your cafeteria or your dining hall, that is a really important place to preserve for kids that human interaction time around meals,” McGrath says. “That is an ancient human way of forming relationships and overcoming the boundaries we may draw between ourselves and what today we would call polarization in society. I think we think about classrooms as a knee-jerk for a quote-unquote ban, but I always advocate for if you’re going to do it in one place, also think about that dining hall or the cafeteria, the hallways.”

By all accounts, not only does the phone culture work for SAS students, McGrath noted, it lives on in them.

“[Our alumni] are thankful for it, and they’re innovating solutions in their college context that are making that situation better,” she said.  “One student, a young woman, told me that she took an Amazon box very early in her time in college, decorated it, put it in her room, and when kids come to hang out, all the cellphones go in it and they put them under the bed for that hangout time. Everybody’s happier and she feels really good about that. My hope, of course, as an educator, is that students who’ve had those experiences are able to go on to their next context and maybe share some of these tactics or skills that help other people put their phones down and have some meaningful connection.”

The conversation, which you can listen to and read the full transcript of here, is an ongoing one which the school has engaged in with all faculty and staff with our all-community summer 2024 read, Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How The Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. The school will have this conversation with parents, too, who are important stakeholders in upholding school phone culture. On October 1, St. Andrew’s will host a virtual book talk to discuss the book with parents. (If you are a parent but missed the RSVP window, please click here if you’d like to attend, we may have room for a few more.)
 

St. Andrew’s was the name to be remembered after the White Clay Creek Classic, with three Saints finishing first in their races, 14 in the top ten, and seven in the top five.

Reporter Brandon Holveck of The News Journal found three top-performing Saints after the race—Leah Horgan ’25, Peter Bird ’25, and Henry Bird ’25—to share their thoughts on this early-showing of Saints starpower on the hilly trails of White Clay. 

“I was just trying to go out to race today,” said Peter Bird, who placed second in the senior race, in the interview. “Really, not with a time in mind, not even really with a place in mind, just to go out with a good effort and try and stick with it … I remember seniors when I started who I looked up to so much and I just really hope [our newer runners] can get that kind of experience from the older guys on our team.”

Seth Gerdeman ’28, Henry Bird, and Horgan finished first in their races, split by grade and gender. Horgan, who finished at 19:10.6, shaved 40 seconds off her time from her performance last year at the same race, hosted annually by Newark High School.  

Henry Bird’s first-place finish put him on the ballot for Delaware Online’s Week 2 Athlete of the Week. He set a school record for the course at 16:48.8 seconds in the sophomore race, breaking the 16:55.75 school record set by his brother Peter Bird the previous year. 

But that record only lasted about an hour—Peter Bird set the school record again in the senior race at 16:35.0. 

Chris Onsomu ’25, too, matched the previous school record with his time of 16:55.5 and, according to head coach Dan O’Connell, has continued to raise the bar for team culture as captain. 

Maggie Baker ’27 also impressed with a 20:56.8 third-place finish in her first race with St. Andrew’s. Claire Hulsey ’26 took home a third-place medal in the junior race at 21:30.9. 

Boys cross-country placed third out of 10 teams, and girls cross-country second out of seven, with the top 20 runners in each division earning points for their team. 

O’Connell points to “tremendous devotion” to summer training from a number of Saints as a reason for the day’s success. 

“Summer training is the most difficult aspect of running cross-country, and one of the most vital,” he says. “Their summer mileage has made it possible for them to tackle long and intense workouts with gusto and without injury.”

Read the full results of the boys race here and girls race here. Only weeks into the season, a bright journey remains ahead for Saints cross-country.

When 2024-2025 co-presidents Leah Horgan ’25 and Nanda Pailla ’25 ran for their elected positions, 20 other students in their form were on the ballot. The competition among their form for this top leadership position at the school, however, wasn’t a cause of anxiety for the two, but a source of comfort in knowing just how many students in their form were similarly “bought into” the St. Andrew’s mission and culture. 

“They have your back,” Pailla says of the Class of 2025. “As soon as I got up to speak, everyone was clapping. It was special. You’re not sure if you want to [run], you’re kind of nervous to go up there and give a speech, but everyone there has your back and they’ve continued to have my back throughout the summer and coming into this year.”

The co-presidents will juggle many responsibilities this school year, including heading Form Council, giving daily announcements at lunch, running weekly School Meetings, working with faculty to serve as a voice for the students, and sitting on the Honor Committee and Discipline Committee. However, when their term ends, Horgan and Pailla will measure their accomplishments by not how many boxes they checked off on their to-do lists, but by the size of the positive impact they left on the people and places that make St. Andrew’s what it is. 

”It’s [about] just striving to make everyone here love this school as much as possible,” says Horgan. “And we obviously want to make [St. Andrew’s] a better place. We want to have people’s voices heard and opinions shared.”

For the seniors, this purpose is the reason they chose to run in the first place: they wanted to give back to the school by sharing their love for it. They both say they came into St. Andrew’s not knowing quite who they were, and that this community provided them the tools and the support system to mature and grow into the people they are today.

And who are they? They’re three-sport athletes, captains, leaders, and volunteers. Pailla, from Chantilly, Virginia, captains the boys soccer team and swim team, and rows in the spring. Horgan, a Wilmington, Delaware native, captains the cross-country team, runs indoor track, and plays soccer in the spring. Over the course of their time at St. Andrew’s, Pailla has given tours as a member of the Cardinal Society and served as a Chapel usher, and Horgan has volunteered for Adaptive Aquatics and served on the Student Vestry and Honor Committee, among other commitments.

Since being elected as co-presidents in the spring of 2024, the two shadowed 2023-2024 co-presidents Charlie Lunsford ’24 and Riya Soni ’24, and since, have homed in on the core values they want to preserve and build on this year, including the no-phone culture and adherence to dress code. 

“All of those different rules that we have in place, [we buy] into because we know that it’s not just dress code, but it’s the way that we all present ourselves to each other,” says Horgan. “So things like that [are about] understanding the bigger picture.”

They also hope to set the standard for the “little” ways that students show up for each other on campus that build school culture: cheering loud when someone goes up at an Open Mic Night or School Meeting and paying attention when others make announcements.

Additionally, Horgan and Pailla aim to strengthen the relationship between students and faculty and staff so that everyone is a part of the St. Andrew’s experience. Progress is already underway on this front: over the summer and through the beginning of the school year, they’ve worked closely with the new faculty as points of contact for the student body. They hope to become touchpoints for the staff of the school, as well. 

“Obviously, we see all of the faculty at lunches and in classes … but there’s so much that happens behind the scenes, and we’ve been lucky enough to be able to see a lot of that stuff,” says Horgan. “But I think sharing that with the rest of the students will be so important throughout the year [in terms of] just making those relationships [and] building those relationships. Knowing [staff] by name is really important.” 

The people—from Pailla’s younger brother, Tejas Pailla ’27, for whom he hopes to leave a positive impact on St. Andrew’s; to the underformers Horgan lives with in Pell, for whom she hopes to serve as a mentor; to the rest of the senior class, on whom they will both lean as they grow as leaders—are what makes serving in this role so special, they say. 

“The people that are here, they all chose to be here and they all want to be here,” says Pailla. “They want to adapt to what they’re not used to. They want to be out of their comfort zone and they want to just thrive as well as they can.”
 

Old St. Anne’s Church
September 15, 2024

This week we have just had, I might call it the end of the beginning of the year. Our first full week of classes. Our first full week of dorm, of study hall.

You have, by the way, been marvelous! I am so lucky to be able to live and work with all of you. Thank you for all the good you have done, all the grace you have given, all the energy you have invested. I can promise you one thing—you always get out of St. Andrew’s more than you put into it. That’s why we opt in! It benefits all of us, but it also benefits the most those of us who put the best of ourselves into this place. I see you doing that, and I am so grateful. I never take it for granted. Thank you.

According to the words we have heard this morning, the world is full of contradictions. So, as we end this beginning, have you experienced those contradictions? I just mentioned how much good you have done in the past week. Have there also been moments of mistakes, of neglect, of anger, or disappointment. Of course there have been! We are only human.

The writer of our epistle today, in the third chapter of James, deals in these human contradictions. The writer points out that an enormous ship is guided by a tiny rudder. A powerful horse is directed by a small bit in her mouth. A great forest is set ablaze by a minute spark.

Our writer wants us to know this: tiny human moves can lead to great destruction or, equally possible, great achievement. And our writer wants us to know that as humans, the smallest organ—our tongues—can unleash the greatest powers we possess. The power to pull apart, and the power to bring together. High school—and growing up—is about discovering our power. And it’s about understanding how to use it to build up, to bring together, to heal, and to love.

No one will be flawless in this, at any age. How many of us have said something we regret? Everyone! And so, perhaps the most comforting part of this passage is the sentence: “For all of us make many mistakes.”

But to avoid mistakes, should we stop talking? Absolutely not! If one thing is clear throughout the Bible—you will learn as we work our way through it—speaking is power! God speaks creation into being in Genesis—“Let there be light!” In the book of John, God is referred to as “the word.” Jesus speaks, and miracles occur. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit presents itself in the form of tongues of flame anointing the gathered followers of Christ with the gift of speaking many languages.

So, for sure we want to be able to speak. As we begin this year, or at least, end the beginning of this year, how do we speak more for good than in error? If speaking is power, then how can we wield it for good? Our Epistle writer in James is at pains to point out, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.” Reflect on your week. Have both blessing and cursing come from your mouths?

Of course, they both have! “For all of us make many mistakes.” We are full of contradictions. As we grow up, how can we reconcile this central contradiction, acknowledging the incredible power we have, and learning to govern it for good?

Our passage from Proverbs may have an answer. The book of Proverbs is said to be written by Solomon. Perhaps you have heard he was a wise man. It is not surprising, then, that this first chapter of Proverbs reflects on the role of wisdom in human society. In this passage Wisdom is personified, and she, too, has a tongue.

20 Wisdom cries out in the street;
in the squares she raises her voice.

21 At the busiest corner she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

22 “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?

Now, here is a passage fit for the beginning of the school year, no!? As we seek to learn at St. Andrew’s, we seek not just knowledge, but wisdom. It is important to have information, but to use it well and for the betterment of many requires perspective. That combination of knowledge and perspective adds up to wisdom. It is a lifelong journey to become wise. You must seek knowledge and perspective to grow wise, especially during your time at St. Andrew’s.

So, how can we hear the words of Wisdom? Solomon says she is speaking to us. How do we gain both knowledge AND perspective?

1. Listen!
   Both Solomon and the writer of James admonish us to listen more than we speak. Yes, our voices matter, but wisdom is found in listening carefully, especially to things with which we disagree. This takes time and it takes humility! But I think you will find if you listen more, those you wish to influence will pay more attention when you do speak.
    
2. Be curious!
   If as the passage says, “fools hate knowledge,” then we must love it! Yes, we must read many books and study many theories, observe nature and art. But knowledge also comes from all kinds of places and from all the people around you. This is why boarding school is an amazing opportunity! We are surrounded by so much knowledge and perspective in the people around us. Be curious about those people, ask questions, and listen to them carefully! Stan, Tyler, Amy, and Parris in the dining hall; Anna, Ron, Chuck, Coop, or Tony in facilities; Megan Whittaker, Melanie Keenan, Cynthia Poarch on the administrative team; your teachers, coaches, and dorm parents, your chaplains—faculty children, the littlest ones, the senior citizens at the MOT Senior Center, the people you meet at Friendship House and Andrew’s Place; your grandparents and parents. I could go on and on. We are fortunate to be surrounded by so many who have experienced and learned so much. I have always found that perspective comes in the conversations you’re least expecting. Be open and be curious!
    
3. Be patient.
   This last one brings me back to our passage from James, and it may be the hardest, at least for me. As the writer characterizes the evil we can do with our tongues, the comparisons all indicate speed is the enemy of good. What moves faster than an unbroken horse, a rudderless ship in “strong winds,” a blazing fire, a fast-moving poison in the blood? Our writer is counseling patience. Mistakes are made in haste.

So let’s listen. Let’s be curious. And let’s be patient.

Let’s assume we still have a lot to learn. Let’s practice restraint. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s assume good intent in others around us. Let’s observe, and gather, and reflect. Let’s ask more questions. And in all of this, let us harness our considerable powers for good.

These are the habits of the wise, and habits we would all do well to practice. How lucky are we to have this opportunity to practice these habits of the wise together?

With God’s help, may it be so.

Dear Families, This is the first full week of classes at St. Andrew’s, and your children are incredible! I will write to you on intermittent Fridays with updates or reflections, and this is the year’s first such message. Sometimes I will share tidbits that I hope will help you have more substantive phone conversation with your children on the weekend—a good time to catch up and find out how they are doing. This week, I’ll give you a sneak preview of what this coming Sunday holds. We will worship at Old St. Anne’s, the 18th-century Episcopal parish church (that still has no electricity or running water) where St. Andrew’s students worshipped on Sunday from 1930 until our present chapel was built in 1936. I always think of this service as marking the end of the beginning of the year. We return to Old St. Anne’s each May, a service that marks the beginning of the end of the year. It is a nice symmetry in the calendar that hearkens to the earliest days of the school’s existence. The homilist for this coming Sunday—me!—appreciated that the Episcopal lectionary calendar (the regular rotation of scriptures read in services throughout each liturgical year) provided good fodder for starting the school year! In the assigned passage from Proverbs, Solomon reflects on our human tendency to ignore Wisdom at our peril, even though she is shouting at us in the streets. And the text from James reminds us how powerful we are as humans, especially in our speech, which in many ways projects and propels a central contradiction of human nature—our ability to do great good and great evil. Spoiler alert for families: I will propose to the students that the path to Wisdom lies through three wise practices suggested in our texts—listening, curiosity, and patience. Perhaps you can ask them, when you speak, which of these three presents the biggest challenge for them. For me, it’s definitely patience! As the texts also remind us, we are not perfect, and so we practice. We are fortunate to be able to practice these things in this community, together. Thank you for making it possible.

Megan Altig – Girls Varsity Soccer Head Coach

Girls and boys soccer coach Megan Altig, who also works in the school’s advancement office, is still riding high from what was a magical season for girls soccer, in which the team broke the school’s record for most regular-season wins and made it to the semifinals of the state championship.

“I think the thing that I'm most excited about is just continuing to build what we’ve been working on,” says Altig. “We’re very fortunate to have had a lot of success last year, the kind of success that was unprecedented for the girls team. I think that the girls will come in with just as much excitement to hopefully repeat what we did. It’s also been nice to see the overall school community’s excitement about the program grow.” She’s particularly excited about the new crop of senior leadership, which she says will be “phenomenal,” as well as a few new players on her team that she thinks will be difference-makers.

Called up to the head coaching job this year after former head coach Matt Carroll departed St. Andrew’s, Altig says a lot of her flavor is colored by Carroll, with whom she had a strong relationship as assistant coach for the last four years.

“I might be a bit wilder with some crazier ideas, but a lot of my coaching philosophy comes from working with Matt. I’ll carry that with me,” she says. “I also got a piece of advice from [Director of Athletics] Neil [Cunningham] who said, ‘If you’re not coaching your team, who is?’ That was something I took to heart because there are a lot of things that are going to happen in the game that we can’t control, and my focus needs to now be more on the team than worrying about some of those things that we can’t control. Okay, fine, the refs aren’t calling things in our favor. Things aren’t going well for us. How can I focus on what our strengths and weaknesses are to make sure that we’re fixing what we need to fix instead of focusing on what I can’t control?”

As a Penn State Nittany Lion, Altig was a four-year starter on the soccer team and served as captain her senior year. During her tenure, her team won four Big Ten championships, one Big Ten Tournament Championship, and made four trips to the NCAA tournament. Competitive by nature, the way the season ended for girls soccer has left Altig wanting more for her team. “I don’t feel pressure like, ‘You must be in the state championship,’ but do we want to be? Absolutely,” she says. “Is that my goal? 100 percent. But my focus this year isn’t going to be, ‘What seed will we be in the tournament?’ My focus is that we put the best team out there, that we have excellent team culture, and making sure that the things we’ve put in place are the things we all continue to believe in and build.”

Jonah-Kai Baker – Varsity Volleyball Head Coach

Two moments come to mind for Jonah-Kai Baker as the most magical of his athletic career. He remembers his junior year of high school, when his varsity basketball team appeared in the 2019 California Interscholastic Federation Division 3 state championship game. His second memory is more recent: early in 2024, Baker led the Carleton men’s volleyball team as club president to the team’s first ever national championship tournament. “It felt like a fantastic culmination of all the time and effort that I had put in on and off the court to grow our program,” he says.

Baker grew up as a multisport athlete, but homed in on basketball in high school, where he earned two league championships, one section title, and one state championship appearance. As a student at Carleton College between 2020 and 2024, he transitioned to the club volleyball team, taking to the sport quickly and serving as team captain for three of those years. In his senior season, his team won an unprecedented third-place finish in the Northern Intercollegiate Volleyball Conference, with Baker recognized as an All-Conference middle blocker.

From the minute Baker first engaged with the St. Andrew’s community, he knew that this would be a truly special place to begin his career as a coach. “I was struck by the positive energy and motivation of the students,” he says. “The hardest thing as a teacher or coach is to make students care, and I have no doubt that St. Andrew’s students care and want to succeed in a multitude of ways.”

Baker will bring a fresh start to the volleyball program as head coach of the varsity team, but also will build off the momentum generated during the fall 2023 season, in which the varsity volleyball team earned its first league win in two years. He hopes to empower players to push themselves to new heights by building a strong foundation of trust between coach and player, and forge a line of clear and direct communication through the team. “[To be successful on the court], we are going to have to prioritize the mental aspects of the game in addition to the physical,” he says. “Volleyball is a sport that requires immense amounts of mental fortitude as momentum can swing so much from point-to-point and set-to-set. A big goal for us as a team will be to instill a level of preparation and confidence such that we can trust and believe that, as a team, we have what it takes to win points, sets, matches, and championships.”

Rick Barron – Football Head Coach

Rick Barron, new head football coach and English faculty member, says two specific words define his mentality as he heads into his first season of Saints athletics: gratitude and passion. “I am grateful for the opportunity to coach, teach, and live on campus,” he says. “And I am passionate about sharing a love of football to my players and fellow coaches, while providing them with the skills and confidence they need to compete this season.”

Barron brings to bear a deep bench of coaching experience at various schools, including Portsmouth Abbey in Rhode Island, Robinson McLean in Virginia, and Savannah Country Day in Georgia. He’s also a proud former General, having played collegiate football at Washington and Lee University as a defensive lineman.

After an emotional, up and down season last year, Saints football is poised for promise, thanks in part to a leadership core of almost a dozen seniors, whom Barron has been communicating with prior to the start of fall camp. “This upcoming senior class has me the most excited about taking over this program,” Barron says. “There is an awesome group of seniors returning. While I have only interacted with them from a distance [so far], I have already been impressed by their sincerity, hunger to succeed, and leadership. As a group, they also have a ton of playing experience. I will be looking to them to set the tone for the team.”

In terms of Barron’s tone, he looks to grit, selflessness, and passion. “These are the pillars of my coaching culture,” he says. “These are the qualities I hope to instill in my players, and that I hope fans see on game day. We will take joy in working hard and leaving everything we have on the field.”

Although Barron says the move he and his family have made from Leesburg, Va., to Middletown has been a “little bit of a whirlwind,” he’s ready to settle in and get to work, and is counting down the days until the daily grind begins.

“I really enjoy the daily repetition and competition of practice,” he says. “In particular, I am looking forward to developing the technique of each player on the team. Whether it’s blocking, tackling, getting lined up, passing, catching, I want each player to feel like they know how to do their job and do it well. Great technique allows players to have confidence on the field, to play the game safely, to play the game fearlessly, and to handle more physically imposing competition.”

Barron says he’s looking forward to working with his entire coaching staff, but that there’s another, somewhat surprising “assistant coach” that’s already been doing the work in his absence: the culture of St. Andrew’s.

“In football, coaches work tirelessly to create a sense of team chemistry throughout the season. They know that strong relationships pay dividends in a game driven by a team-first mentality. But at St Andrew’s, this chemistry is already built into the fabric of the school,” he says. “We live, work, play, eat, worship, and study together every day. To me, this lifestyle offers the players, teachers, coaches, and staff a true camaraderie that cannot be fabricated. I am excited that my family and I get to take part in it.”

Kat Celata – Girls Cross-Country Head Coach

When science teacher Kat Celata was an undergraduate student at the College of William & Mary, she spent her time after classes running outside a local K-12 school. One day, the school’s athletic director approached the speedy college student and asked her if she had any interest in coaching. From there, Celata spent her afternoons at cross-country practice and weekends at meets—the beginning of a coaching career that has brought her to St. Andrew’s, where she’ll serve as head coach of the girls cross-country team.

“I really love the sport of running,” she says. “I can be kind of a nerd about training and the science behind athletics, but at the end of the day, it’s the life lessons that come from showing up and being part of something that makes cross-country and track a pretty special community.”

Celata comes to St. Andrew’s after eight years of teaching and coaching at Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Mass. She started running long before she became a coach, as she competed in cross-country and indoor and outdoor track in high school, and completed her first marathon her freshman year of college. She says she knew when she visited St. Andrew’s for the first time that there was something special about girls cross-country: she felt the strong sense of community that initially drew her to the sport.

“It was clear that the girls cheered on and supported each other and were deeply committed to their success and the success of others,” she says. “The St. Andrew’s cross-country team has a history of success and greatness in the state, but the girls seemed more focused on making cross-country a positive and inclusive environment. The fact that they celebrate both state champions and girls running 5ks for the very first time really stood out to me.”

Coming off two successful years for Saints girls cross-country, with a 2023 first-place finish and a 2024 third-place finish at the DIAA Championship, Celata hopes to propel the team even further into greatness with a simple coaching philosophy: that hard, consistent work matters. She also aims to foster the sense of community and joyfulness that characterizes the girls cross-country team.

“I’m looking forward to walking through all the small and large moments with this team—the daily practices, workouts, and long runs; the days that don’t feel so great; and the days [where it] all comes together,” she says. “It’s being part of the whole story and getting to know each and every girl that will make this season special. ”

Greg Guldin – Swimming Head Coach

At the conclusion of the winter 2024 swimming season, then-assistant swimming coach Greg Guldin, along with assistant coach Mark Hammond, performed exit interviews with every member of the swim team. Among other questions, they asked, “What value is most important to a team?” The responses they heard drove the creation of what Guldin, now head coach for the winter 2025 season, calls “The Five Cs.” “By caring, being competitive, remaining committed, exercising camaraderie, and being capable of telling our teammates anything, we will come as close to being as perfect as a team can be, recognizing that individuals will make mistakes and need support along the way,” he says. “The Five Cs” will serve as the foundation for the team that Guldin hopes to build this year.

Guldin brings a lot to the table. He swam at Dickinson College and served as captain during his senior year of college. Before St. Andrew’s, he coached at Woodberry Forest School for 12 years, 11 of which were spent as head coach. He also was the interim head coach of Tennessee Aquatics, a USA club team, in Knoxville, Tenn., for one year, the president of the Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association (VISAA) Swimming & Diving Committee for four years, and won VISAA Swimming Coach of the year in 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020. He coached swimmers to the U.S. Open, Pro Series, and Junior National Championships, several of whom also made National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association All-American.

Since his arrival at St. Andrew’s in fall 2022, he held the title of assistant coach, an experience that he says allows him to understand the distinct dynamics of the SAS swim team. “Most swimmers and most teams have the benefit of training year-round,” Guldin says. “We do not. So we have to make up for that lost time by practicing better and smarter than our competitors. We do that by being a closer team than all those against whom we compete.”

Along with assistant coaches Hammond and Caroline Towne, a new addition to the admissions team, and team captains Amanda Meng ’25 and Nanda Pailla ’25, Guldin is excited to build the type of team that arrives early and stays late, and shatters the physical, mental, and emotional barriers that can only be broken in the pool.

Alex Horgan ’18 – Boys Rowing Interim Head Coach

As a former St. Andrew’s rower, Alex Horgan ’18 understands how storied the school’s crew program is. “The history of crew at St. Andrew’s has me really excited about being involved in this role,” says Horgan, who, in addition to coaching boys cross-country, has also served as an assistant coach for boys crew. “Having rowed with St. Andrew’s, and just knowing the long legacy of rowing [here] has made me really thrilled to be entering the head coaching role and being able to have an influence on the direction of the program going forward, and to have a role in that history.”

Horgan counts himself a big fan of the Noxontown Navy, those avid St. Andrew’s alumni rowers from the classes of the 1960s who, for the past 15 years, have shown up on Noxontown Pond for their annual “reunion crew camp” to prepare for the 2024 regatta season, which includes head races near and far, as well as rowing on the Thames at the Henley Regatta.

“I really enjoy rowing with and speaking with a lot of the alumni rowers past and present, and understanding their history and dedication to the program,” he says. “I think it’s helpful for me to have that perspective and to share it with the rowers of today.”

As interim head coach, Horgan will oversee the boys side of the program, working specifically with varsity coaches, as well as collaborating with the novice-program coaches.

Horgan, who owns some of the fastest race times in school history from his days running cross-country at SAS, ran for Boston College, too, and he’ll be bringing that running mentality to the boathouse. “I plan to put a lot of my experience with endurance racing into my coaching,” he says. “Although they’re different sports, I think that the base of the training philosophy is pretty similar. It’s a lot of long endurance pieces: endurance workouts early in the season, with a lot of speed work and sharpening up of those skills to get ready for racing. It’s the same in cross-country.”

After an incredible showing at May’s Stotesbury Cup Regatta in Philadelphia—the nation’s largest and oldest high school regatta—in which St. Andrew’s School was the only scholastic program to send its top two girls and top two boys boats into the finals, Horgan can’t help but look forward to that moment again.

“When we go to Stotes, there is an immense amount of pride and excitement when, at the start of every crew race, they say the name of every crew on the starting line,” he says. “And to hear St. Andrew’s name called for the final, for me, it just really brings together all the hard work of the season that starts in the winter with kids on the erg, up into preseason with those long, cold days on the water. To get to May, and to be in Philadelphia, and to see the red St. Andrew’s blades out on the water is such a unique feeling. I think that’s where it just carries on that legacy for me. We’ve had that same oar pattern for the history of the school, and to see them in a Stotesbury final decades later, that’s something incredible to be a part of.”

Ben Horgan ’19 - Varsity Boys Soccer Head Coach

While a student at St. Andrew’s, Ben Horgan ’19 wore 18 on his chest his four years playing varsity soccer. He cherishes the memories of van rides, team meetings before games, and teammates looking out for each other on and off the field. “It was the highlight of my day, playing soccer with my best friends,” he says. Those four special years for Horgan were also exceptional ones for the St. Andrew’s soccer program—each year, the team made a run in the state tournament, and in 2017, they achieved a particularly remarkable 14-1 record in the regular season.

Horgan took his talents from St. Andrew’s to Washington College’s men’s soccer team, captaining the team for two years before graduating in December 2023. Among other awards, Horgan won the 2023 Alfred Reddish Award, an honor given to the senior male with a Washington College varsity letter who achieved the highest cumulative GPA, and was the 2020 team MVP. In 2021, Horgan led Washington College to its first conference championship in program history. In 2023, the team made the semifinals of the NCAA DIII tournament.

Since, Horgan got some St. Andrew’s coaching experience under his belt by helping coach the girls soccer team to the semifinals of the 2024 state tournament. Now leading the boys soccer program as head coach, he’s excited to get back on the St. Andrew’s fields and strengthen the legacy of Saints soccer. “My goal is to build on and grow the positive culture of the group,” he says. “Players need to feel supported by their teammates and coaches. They need to feel supported to make mistakes and be creative.”

He points to a philosophy of teamwork, loving one another, and developing leaders that will guide him and the team through the season. “For practice, we are going to play a lot,” he says. “I believe playing the game is the best teacher.”

He is ready to jump back into the rivalries and the energy of Saints athletics that drew him in as a player, and to support the relationship-building that made his time at St. Andrew’s so impactful. Last spring, the experience of seeing just how much excitement and support there was about the girls soccer team’s success reminded him just how much love there is to go around at St. Andrew’s. “The bonds and care between teammates here is unlike anything else I have experienced,” he says. “I hope students here enjoy the journey and appreciate going through the ups and downs with each other.”

Grace Saliba ’12 – Varsity Girls Lacrosse Head Coach

In what feels like a quintessential St. Andrew’s story, Grace Saliba ’12 was inspired by her former coach Jenny Carroll (then Jenny McGowan) when Saliba played Saints lacrosse—a team that appeared in back-to-back state championship games during Saliba’s playing time. Later, when Saliba joined St. Andrew’s as assistant director of admissions, she was empowered by Carroll, whom she joined as an assistant coach of the lacrosse program. Now, as Carroll has departed St. Andrew’s, Saliba feels called to carry on her mentor’s legacy as she takes over the lacrosse program as head coach this year.

“I’m really excited because this school means a lot to me, and this program was a huge part of my life as a student,” Saliba says. “Taking over for [Carroll] is a huge honor for me. I am so grateful to her for all she’s done in terms of culture and making the program feel exciting. As head coach, I’m thrilled to step into that next level of leadership, but also, quite frankly, just continue to build off of what she’s done.”

A core takeaway for Saliba from the Carroll era of St. Andrew’s girls lacrosse is balance. “You can be both goofy and fun while also being super competitive and taking the sport very seriously,” she says. “That’s the balance I feel like I’ve always had, and it’s something that feels important to me to carry on. As these girls are competing and pushing themselves, finding that room to have fun and be authentic is something that really grounds you as a player.”

Saliba, a two-time All American who helped lead her squad to two NCAA Final Four appearances while at Franklin & Marshall, knows what it’s like to compete.

“I think the program is in a really cool place where the girls are really committed and excited and dedicated, and I feel like I have a great relationship with them,” she says. “I know what it feels like to be on a team and compete for a title and be a competitive team in this state. Maybe that’s not the goal you set on day one, but I can see that potential in these girls. So much of the foundation is already there. It was really cool for me to hear a lot of the girls saying last year that they want to be pushed and want to take it to the next level—they’re ready for that.”

When Saliba leaves the pitch at the end of her first year as head coach, she hopes that the girls walk away with one overriding sentiment: that the game, and this team, is an opportunity to be part of something bigger than themselves.

“Sure, things might go wrong. You’ll make mistakes. But it’s not just about you. It’s cool to be part of something bigger than yourself,” she says. “I think that’s something people feel generally at St. Andrew’s, but our team is its own nice little microcosm. I think it’s so easy to think, ‘This is hard’ or ‘I’m going to shy away from this.’ But to see these girls push each other to heights they didn’t think was possible, that’s pretty rad.”

Lauren Urbont – Varsity Girls Tennis Head Coach

For new head girls varsity tennis coach and history teacher Lauren Urbont, tennis has always been a family affair. She grew up with her father and her grandfather sharing their passion for the game with her.

“My father and grandfather taught me to play tennis because they felt it was a lifelong sport that will allow you to meet wonderful people throughout your life,” says Urbont, who graduated from Stanford University with an M.A. in history in 2023. “I remember seeing my grandfather on the court with his friends near our house throughout his entire life, even on holidays, and even when it was difficult for him to walk and run.”

So far, she says, the two were right. “Tennis is a sport that will stay with you your whole life, and I am so excited to be a part of that lifelong relationship for our students,” she says.

As a tennis standout in high school in New Jersey, she and her team at Dwight-Englewood School celebrated back-to-back county championships in 2010 and 2011. Along the way, she met some coaches who have fueled her perspective.

“Some of the best coaches I have had managed to balance a sense of fun and lightheartedness with constant improvement and hard work,” she says. “When I coach, I always think about how to make sure that everyone on the court feels comfortable and excited to be there, but to also make sure that there are tangible improvements at each and every practice. I want players to feel comfortable and confident on the court.”

Urbont looks to focus on consistency, strategy, and mental toughness, as well as explore how best to work together toward a shared goal. “I really hope we can discuss how we want to improve as players, and think about how to help each other get there,” she says. “In my experience, working together toward concrete goals is the best way to build friendship and trust within a team.”

Befitting a new addition to the history department, Urbont wants to dig into the story of each of her athletes. “Everyone comes to tennis with a history—how they picked it up, what they love about it, worries about weaknesses in their game, and goals for the future,” she says. “Every player will have their own unique relationship to the sport, and as a coach I love getting to know what these are. It only makes the team stronger to incorporate each person’s approach into the team culture.”

As not only a new coach, but a new member of our academic community, Urbont relishes the dual relationship she is set to embark on. “I am so excited to work with students both in the classroom and on the court,” she says. “I really believe that a true education has so many different components—not just the traditional academic ones.”

Head of School Joy McGrath ’92 announced and welcomed the new faculty who will join St. Andrew’s in the 2024-25 school year. The school is grateful to Emily Pressman, Ana Ramírez, and the many department chairs and faculty members who engaged in the faculty hiring process this year. 

---

Jonah-Kai Baker joins St. Andrew’s as a history instructor, head volleyball coach, and assistant basketball coach. Originally from San Francisco, California, Jonah-Kai graduated magna cum laude from Carleton College in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in Religion and a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. At Carleton, Jonah-Kai was awarded the Bardwell Smith Prize for Excellence in the Study of Religion, and was recognized for distinction in his major based on his thesis paper “Un-Orthodox Icons: Adaptations of the Byzantine Iconographic Tradition in the Contemporary Christian West.” Jonah-Kai’s studies have been wide-ranging, but he is particularly interested in the intersection of art, religion, and history as a lens for understanding how people live and what matters to them. His teaching experience includes a summer as an assistant first grade teacher at the Ventana School (Los Altos, California), and as a seventh grade literature teaching fellow at Breakthrough San Francisco.

Outside of the classroom, Jonah-Kai plays and coaches both volleyball and basketball. As a basketball player in high school, he won two league championships, one section title, and appeared in the 2019 CIF Division 3 state championship game. In college, Jonah-Kai transitioned to volleyball, where he served as team captain for three years. In his senior season, Jonah-Kai led his team to an unprecedented third place finish in the Northern Volleyball Conference and was recognized as an All-Conference player. He has also worked for three years as a student assistant coach for the Carleton women’s basketball team.

In his free time, Jonah-Kai loves watching movies, chilling outside, spending time with family and friends, playing and watching sports, and reading. He loves the San Francisco Giants more than just about anything.

Rick Barron joins St. Andrew’s as an English teacher, head football coach, and assistant boys lacrosse coach. He earned his master’s degree in English from Middlebury College and his bachelor’s degree in English from Washington and Lee University where he also played football for the Generals.

Rick has taught English for 14 years in boarding, public, and private day schools before coming to St. Andrew’s. He has also served as an administrator, head lacrosse coach, assistant football coach, dorm parent, advisor, and English team lead. While he considers himself a Virginia native, his career has taken him up and down the East Coast from Portsmouth, Rhode Island to Savannah, Georgia.

In the classroom, Rick enjoys blending coaching and teaching philosophies and encourages dedicated practice, enthusiasm, and an attention to detail when it comes to the written and spoken word. Outside the classroom, Rick enjoys spending time with his wife and two kids, having weekend adventures, reading a good book, watching a good movie, studying coaching strategy, and trying to stay in shape.

The son of educators, Chris Bates is originally from Katonah, New York, a suburb of New York City. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.A in psychology and played lacrosse as a two-time All-Ivy attackman. After a brief stint working in New York City, Chris began his career in education by establishing the first lacrosse program at Archbishop Ryan High School in Philadelphia and then went on to work at Drexel University, both as an assistant and then head lacrosse coach for 10 years. He helped build the Dragons into a perennial CAA conference contender, winning two conference championships, as well as being named the CAA Coach of the Year twice. Chris moved on to become the head coach at Princeton University for seven years where he guided the Tigers to three Ivy championships and two NCAA tournament appearances.

Chris most recently worked at Episcopal Academy where he helped create and lead the school’s auxiliary programs, including athletic camps and clinics, summer academic offerings, and Lower School enrichment classes and aftercare. He served in the role as a liaison between the college counseling and athletic departments helping students with the college recruiting process and also served as an advisor for the freshman class. As head lacrosse coach of Episcopal’s boys’ varsity program, the team was a top three Inter-Academic Athletic League competitor each season with many of his players going on to compete in college. In his first season leading the St. Andrew’s lacrosse program in 2024, the team recorded 10 wins and made the quarterfinals of the state tournament for the first time in six years. 

Chris has a M.Ed. in school psychology from the University of North Carolina. In addition to his work at St. Andrew’s, Chris is also the head coach of the 2023 Premier Lacrosse League championship team, the Archers Lacrosse Club. Chris is married to Melissa, who is pursuing her master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling through Wake Forest University. Together they have three children: Eliza, Charlie, and Nicholas. Chris lives on campus in the historic Lewis Farmhouse near Rodney Point. 

The Reverend Thomas Becker, St. Andrew’s new associate chaplain, was born and raised in Newark, Delaware. He holds degrees from Centre College (B.S., Economics), Vanderbilt University (M.Ed., Leadership & Organizational Performance), and Sewanee: The University of the South (M.Div.). Prior to his ordination, Thomas worked for his entire career in school settings in areas adjacent to Appalachia, including stints in both higher and secondary boarding education. In addition to admission roles at Vanderbilt and Centre, he served in a variety of positions at The Webb School (Bell Buckle, Tennessee) and Christ School (Arden, North Carolina) including teacher, coach, lay chaplain, college counselor, and dorm parent.

During seminary, Thomas completed over a year and a half of field education at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. After graduating, he accepted a call back to his “chosen homte” of Kentucky where he served as Associate Rector of Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington. Thomas worked as the clergy coordinator for Christ Church’s Pastoral Care, Outreach, Pride (LGBTQ+), Youth, and Young Adult ministries.

Thomas is absolutely thrilled to be returning to his Delaware roots with his appointment as Associate Chaplain at St. Andrew’s School. He will serve alongside the Reverend Michael Giansiracusa, incoming Chaplain, in supporting and enriching the Chapel program. Additionally, Thomas will be a member of the Religion and Philosophy faculty, teaching a variety of courses, and a coach on the men’s and women’s soccer teams.

Joining Thomas on campus will be his beloved and lovable mini Aussie Maggie, his Green Bay Packers and Tennessee Volunteers paraphernalia, well-worn hiking boots, a growing Blenko glass collection, a needlepoint project in some stage of completion, and more books than any one human needs to own.

Khadijah Bell joins St. Andrew’s as a Math Teaching Fellow and a member of the basketball coaching staff. Khadijah is from Mississippi and is a recent graduate of Dartmouth College where she earned a BA in Mathematics.  

Khadijah’s time at Dartmouth was marked by diverse roles and significant contributions. She excelled as an academic tutor and a member of various committees, including the Dean Search Committee and the Black Student Events Planning Committee. Her leadership was recognized when she was nominated as a Dartmouth Emerging Leader.

Khadijah’s international experience is extensive; she has traveled to 13 countries and completed internships at American Express in New York City and the American University of Kuwait. She also studied German in Berlin as part of a Language and Culture Immersion Experience and visited Canada as part of Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Global Leadership Program.

Her teaching experience includes roles as a substitute teacher and lead math teacher for Phillip’s Academy (MS)^2 program. In her free time, Khadijah enjoys spending time with friends and family, traveling, reading, and baking. 

Katharine Celata joins St. Andrew’s as a science and math teacher and cross-country coach. She graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Geology. After graduating, she moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, teaching science at an outdoor school. In 2015, Katharine received her Masters in Education from the University of Washington. For the past eight years, Katharine has been a dorm parent, science teacher, and coach at the Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Katharine spends her summers on Sebago Lake as the assistant director of an all-girls summer camp. In her free time, she enjoys running, reading, and sailing.

As head chaplain, Michael Giansiracusa will lead spiritual life at the school, direct the school’s chapel program, and be responsible for defining, preserving, and promoting the school’s Episcopal identity to all constituencies. In overseeing the school’s chapel program, Michael will preside at services three times each week, and manage the student-led chapel guilds and vestry, as well as the chapel team.

Michael joins St. Andrew’s with extensive experience in spiritual leadership and campus ministry. He served as chaplain at Doane Academy, an Episcopal K-12 school where he also taught World Religions, and as vicar at St. Gabriel’s, a mission church in Philadelphia. Prior to Doane and St. Gabriel’s, Michael spent 13 years leading urban and suburban parishes, including Episcopal Community Services (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), where he engaged in a variety of nonprofit work; the Romero Center (Camden, New Jersey), where he led college and high school mission retreats; and St. Mary’s (Ardmore, Pennsylvania) where he served as rector.

Earlier in his career, Michael taught religion, English, and film at various secondary schools including St. Mark’s (Wilmington, Delaware), Malvern Prep (Malvern, Pennsylvania), and Bishop Eustace Prep (Pennsauken Township, New Jersey). It was during this time he spent teaching that he discerned a call to the Episcopal priesthood, attended Episcopal Divinity School, and earned a doctorate in Ministry. Michael is an ordained priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Michael attended LaSalle University, where he studied communication arts with minors in philosophy and English; and Villanova University, where he earned an M.A. in religious studies. Michael is a rabid Philadelphia sports fan, enjoys film and cooking, and is an animal rights advocate. He is father to a son, Michael, who attends Villanova University as a VUScholar.

Ben Horgan ’19 joins St. Andrew’s as a math teacher, admissions fellow, head soccer coach, and assistant baseball coach. He graduated summa cum laude from Washington College in December of 2023 with bachelor's degrees in economics and business management, and a minor in finance. His senior thesis examined the economic, environmental, and cultural impact of the professional soccer industry looking closely at Dutch team AFC Ajax. While in college, Ben served as a residential assistant for freshman boys and a tutor for math, accounting, and economics courses.

Prior to joining St. Andrew’s, Ben worked for a private equity fund in Philadelphia. There he assisted the company’s community service efforts organizing employee volunteer events and helping determine where to distribute grants. Ben also spent time volunteering at a financial literacy nonprofit mentoring individuals from underserved communities on personal finance skills.

Ben captained the Washington College men’s soccer team his junior and senior years. He helped lead the team to the program’s first conference championship and first NCAA tournament appearance. The 2023 season saw his team reach the NCAA Division III Final Four for the first time. He was recognized on the all-conference team, awarded team MVP, and won the Alfred Reddish Academic Award. Ben is thrilled to return to St. Andrew’s where he captained and was an all-state player in both soccer and baseball.

Ben Knudsen joins St. Andrew’s as an English teacher and assistant soccer coach. Born and raised in South Burlington, Vermont, Ben graduated summa cum laude from Middlebury College in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in English and education. At Middlebury, Ben was a captain of the men’s club soccer team and an actor in multiple theatre department productions, as well as Freedom Dreaming: Envisioning an Anti-Racist Middlebury, a theater piece exploring race and racism on campus.

Prior to joining St. Andrew’s, Ben spent time working as a long-term substitute teacher in the language and literature department at Middlebury Union High School, where he completed his student teaching during his undergraduate studies. He also has experience as a place-based educator, spending his last three summers at Shelburne Farms and Cedar Circle Farm, two Vermont nonprofit education centers. Ben has also previously coached at Far Post Soccer Club.

Outside of his role as an educator and coach, Ben loves to hike, play soccer, read, and write creative fiction. You can often find him with a book in hand or a soccer game on the TV.

Gabe Perla joins St. Andrew’s as a math teacher, assistant tennis coach, and assistant indoor track coach. Gabe is from Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2023 with degrees in mathematics and environment and sustainability studies. Since then he has been working at The Island School on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. In this role, Gabe has taught math and sustainable systems classes and served as a dorm head.

Gabe went to and worked at summer camp for many summers growing up and is really excited to be coming to the strong all-boarding educational environment at St. Andrew’s.

In his free time, Gabe enjoys playing music and all forms of exercise. Gabe is excited to enjoy the outdoors on the St. Andrew’s campus through exploring running trails, playing tennis, and swimming in the pond.

Julia Poyato Montes was born and raised in the beautiful region of Andalusia, in the south of Spain. Her love for languages began at the age of 8 with English, which sparked a lifelong passion that has only grown ever since. Over the years, she became proficient in English and Italian, gained a basic understanding of Portuguese and French, and recently started learning German.

Her dedication to languages led her to pursue a double degree in Translation and Interpreting at the University of Granada (Spain) and the University of Bologna (Italy), with a later specialization in Audiovisual Translation. Although she worked as audiovisual translator for several months, her true calling was teaching. This passion drove her to earn a master’s degree in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language.

In 2022, Julia moved to the United States to pursue an MA in Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Pedagogy at the University of Delaware. There, she also taught Spanish undergraduate courses, served as the graduate student ambassador for her department, and was vice-president of the Hispanic/Latino Graduate Student Association.

Julia currently lives off-campus in Newark, Delaware. In her free time, she enjoys playing sports and cooking. She is not entirely sure whether she loves cooking because she enjoys eating, or she enjoys eating because she loves cooking. Whatever it may be, one thing is clear: what truly makes her happiest is preparing and sharing meals with others.

Karen Pupke ’87 is thrilled to return to her alma mater as the Director of Academic Support. A proud SAS alum, Karen has worked with students and families in grades K-12, serving as an administrator, a classroom teacher, and a reading specialist. At the Chapin School in New York City, Karen worked as the Upper School Learning Specialist (grades 8-12) and as the Head of Learning Resources (grades K-12) for almost 10 years. Prior to that, she was the Middle School Learning Specialist at The Town School also in New York. She taught elementary school at The Dalton School in New York City, and she began her career as a Kindergarten teacher at St. Peter’s School in Philadelphia. After a move to Maryland, Karen worked most recently as a sixth grade English Language Arts teacher at Centreville Middle School.

Karen earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Lehigh University, a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and a post-master’s degree in reading from Bank Street College of Education.

Karen enjoys spending time with her daughter, Elizabeth, their dog, Molly, and friends and family on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Caroline Towne joins St. Andrew’s School as a Senior Associate Dean of Admission, who will coach swimming and lacrosse. Originally from West Hartford, Connecticut, Caroline graduated from Williams College in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Aside from a sabbatical year in California to receive a Master’s in Education from Stanford University, Caroline has spent her time since college graduation as a faculty member at Blair Academy.

At Blair, Caroline primarily worked in the admission office, but enjoyed brief stints in the Student Life Office, College Counseling, and the classroom as an AP Psychology teacher. Most recently, she acted as the Director of Financial Aid, during which she helped create and implement an experiential equity program to better support low-income students’ access to all parts of boarding school life. Over her years at Blair Academy, Caroline has coached swimming and JV lacrosse, in addition to spending the last six years running a dorm of 75 ninth and tenth grade girls.

A four year member of Williams’ varsity swim team, Caroline was named NCAA Division III swimmer of the year in 2013, and she was a 13-time Division III National Champion and a seven-time Division III NCAA national record holder. Recently, she was named one of CSCAA’s 100 Greatest Women’s Swimmers & Divers of the past century, in addition to being inducted into the inaugural class of the CSCAA NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame.

Caroline is looking forward to moving to Delaware with her husband, Mitch, who is a law student at Villanova University. In her spare time, she enjoys running, cycling, hiking, and reading.

Lauren Urbont joins St. Andrew’s as a history teacher and tennis coach. She earned a BA from Yale University, where she majored in Literature, and an MSt in Medieval Studies from the University of Oxford. She is All But Dissertation in the PhD in History at Stanford University. Her research is devoted to exploring intercultural relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in medieval Europe and the Middle East during the Crusades. Her dissertation addresses how practices related to the commemoration of the dead were shared among these communities. She has taught courses on the global ancient world, medieval intercultural relations, and approaches to doing history.

Prior to starting the PhD, Lauren worked in college admissions as an admissions officer, and still loves to discuss possible educational paths with students. She also loves to play tennis, see new cities, and listen to classical music, especially opera.

Susannah Voigt ’13 joins St. Andrew’s as an English teacher, crew coach, and cross country coach. Susannah graduated from Colby College in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and creative writing. While at Colby she was a coxswain for the men’s and women’s crew teams, earning All-American honors her senior year. After Colby, Susannah earned her master’s in education from Lesley University through Berwick Academy’s Teaching Apprentice program. She is currently pursuing a Masters of Arts in English at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English.

Prior to returning to St. Andrew’s, Susannah was a teacher at Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts, where she was an English teacher, a cross country and crew coach, and a dorm head. Susannah’s husband, George, daughter, Lydia, and dog Tilly are excited to be joining the St. Andrew’s community!

Dear St. Andrew’s Alumni, Parents, and Friends,

Although our summer is spent busily preparing for the return of students, it is also a time of reflection. Early August seems like a good time to share some thoughts regarding this past year with all of you: the community of people who love and support St. Andrew’s School. I hope this letter will become a yearly tradition for us; the Report on Philanthropy, our annual report, always arrives in mailboxes in the fall, but I am grateful for this moment in which I may share my thoughts about the character of the year.

St. Andrew’s is a school that matters: we are a place of building up, bringing together, and daring to listen and learn. In a world that is fractured and “remote” it takes enormous courage for young people to come together, give grace, put down their phones, show up in person, learn from each other, and take the risk to grow, admit mistakes, persuade others and change their own minds. It requires a brave and devoted faculty to create the conditions necessary for growth in intellect and character—to have the perception and dexterity both to inspire and support in the requisite measures. Countless selfless acts make daily life at St. Andrew’s happen, and we can never take that for granted. I hope this note will highlight some of those moments.

Students and Faculty
The people are always the heart of our school, and the 2023-2024 school year was no different in that St. Andrew’s gathered a group of remarkable humans to learn together. The year began in mid-August with new faculty orientation where we welcomed a total of eight new colleagues. We also marked the first fully fledged year of the Teaching Fellows Program, designed by Emily Pressman. We welcomed four fellows into the program, which you might have read about in the spring St. Andrew’s Magazine. All four will return to the faculty next year, and we are absolutely thrilled to continue to help these outstanding faculty members grow and develop as boarding school teachers.

The VI Form arrived a week before Opening Day for their leadership meetings, where they established their values as a class and considered the kind of leaders they need to be for the school, the students, and each other. They did some incredible work together, and with their values of care, trust, passion, effort, servitude, communication, empathy, engagement, awareness, and adaptability, the Class of 2024 made a meaningful impact on the school. Their enthusiasm, joie de vivre, and commitment to this institution made it hard to say goodbye to them after graduation. The Commencement celebration included a remarkable address by alumna Halimah DeLaine Prado ’93 P’27, general counsel of Google, which none of us will soon forget.

The signature event of the fall was the kick-off of a two-year 50th Anniversary Celebration of Coeducation at St. Andrew’s. The “first girls” returned to campus in October so that we could celebrate them at Homecoming. Despite a massive thunderstorm, an hours-long power outage, and flooding across the region, alumnae gathered in our living room for a dinner with girls who are leading the school today. The stories and advice the “first girls” shared were invaluable, and Ty and I enjoyed staying up late with them to learn as much as we could. It was an unforgettable celebration of an important chapter of the school’s history. The next morning, with the skies glowering and generators feeding power to the chapel, the entire school gathered to hear a few alumnae share their recollections of the dawn of coeducation. (There were not only profound truths and powerful advice, but students also learned about things called “record players” and “pay phones” that apparently existed in 1973!) The perspective, the friendships, the laughter, and the honesty these women brought back to campus helped us think about how much the school has changed and how much potential our future holds as we stand on the shoulders of these giants. Progress is not inevitable—it is hard won with the goodwill, good humor, and good work of many. What a wonderful lesson for all of us to hear again so early in the year.

This has also been a major year of achievement in sports at St. Andrew’s, even as we remain committed to our model that eschews specialization and requires competing in multiple sports as an essential part of education. This is where we learn to “empty the bucket”—as well as practice teamwork, communication, grit, sportsmanship, and how to quiet our egos in the service of a greater goal. We are the rare school that fields JV teams in nearly all our sports (and occasionally thirds), and at those levels, competition can be hard to find. Many, if not most, schools in Delaware allow each sport to operate year-round, meaning that our teams often begin their seasons slowly compared to others. However, no one can beat the Saints when it comes to camaraderie, and that unified spirit and can-do attitude mean that by season’s end, we are surprising others (but not ourselves) with our late-season and post-season success. Following our athletics core values of commitment, teamwork, sportsmanship, accountability, excellence, relationship-building and an all-in attitude, the Saints had phenomenal success. This year, girls and boys cross-country came in second and third in the state, respectively; field hockey tied for most wins ever in a season (since 2016); in swimming boys won the DISC tournament; in indoor track the boys won their first ever conference title and the girls finished second in the conference by a nose; boys lacrosse made a state tournament run for the first time in six years; girls lacrosse had the most wins since 2017; girls soccer powered their way to the state semifinals; boys and girls tennis went deep into state competition, finishing overall third and fourth in the state respectively, with our second boys doubles coming in first in the state and the first doubles runners-up. In crew, we were the only high school that had all four top boats—the two girls varsity and two boys varsity—in the finals at Stotesbury.

School leadership continues to evolve. Early in 2023-24, we searched for new head and associate chaplains, and appointed Rev. Michael Giansiracusa and Rev. Thomas Becker to these critical posts of spiritual leadership. (A highlight of the 2023-24 years was the return of Rev. David DeSalvo P’00,’04 as interim head chaplain.) Last year, I convened a faculty advisory committee to help search internally for a dean of faculty, and was delighted to appoint Wilson Everhart ’95 to this crucial role of faculty stewardship, retention, and renewal. Greg Guldin will be our dean of student affairs, overseeing residential and student life, student discipline and honor, and advising. We also appointed a new CFO, Bill McClements ’81 P’12, who will oversee school finances and operations and lead our efforts to define the financial model that will sustain St. Andrew’s into and through its next century. 

Hold the Phone
Time is so precious, and perhaps no time more precious than the fleeting years of adolescence, which also happen to be the years when humans have the neurological window to experience so much social and intellectual development that, when done right, will serve us for our entire lives. We should all be proud that St. Andrew’s continues to be known for our “cell phone culture,” which has received national attention in the last three years, and which ensures that we are preserving critical time for community, play, friendships, attention, and discussion during the adolescent years. For those not familiar, our culture is simply that phones must stay in students’ rooms and cannot be used anywhere but inside the room, except when listening to music while in the gym. Students must check their phones into the hallways when study hall begins in the evenings, so they are not in the room with their phones, which also remain in the hallway overnight for third, fourth and fifth formers. Only seniors are allowed to keep phones in their rooms overnight if they wish, although internet service is disconnected for everyone at 10:45 p.m. to ensure students can rest without distraction. Students embrace and own the policy as an essential foundation for community and friendship-building.

Jon Haidt’s book, “The Anxious Generation,” reignited a national conversation about the incredibly damaging effects of smartphones for adolescents—damage to their development of friendships and social skills, their academic work and schooling, and their mental health. This book is our all-school read and I invite everyone receiving this note to join us in reading it. The data are convincing, although I wish I could say they are astonishing. What I know is what you read last year about St. Andrew’s in the Atlantic, on this topic: we are so fortunate to be in the vanguard of schools in recognizing that high school is part of childhood, and in fostering student-led community norms that allow kids to have the best chance of flourishing and happiness in adolescence.

A Framework for Discourse in Independent Schools
The public discourse in our country and the world around is fraught with discord and plagued by cowardice, fueled by short attention spans, online anonymity, distrust, and a zero-sum mentality around political decision-making, whether the decision in question is existential or trivial. Our schools must be places of openness and exchange, where a variety of voices and virtues are gathered, and where listening and speaking are practiced and prioritized. If our students can learn these skills in their adolescence, it should give all of us hope for the future.

Therefore, I was privileged this year to be invited by John Austin ’83 P’18,’21,’23, head of Deerfield Academy, to participate in a task force of heads of independent schools to advise him in creating a framework for independent schools around these issues. Although many sets of principles exist to guide universities—which have a mission distinct from independent schools, particularly in their commitment to research—no such framework existed for secondary schools. John received funding from the E. E. Ford Foundation to support this work, and it was a highlight this year to be in conversation with the heads of so many other schools around free expression and, crucially, how it serves a great education.

As the framework itself states, it “rests on a simple assumption: that schools are, first and foremost, places of inquiry and exploration, preparing students for the freedom, rights, and responsibilities they will enjoy as adults. Teaching and learning are distinct from advocacy and activism, and nonpartisan teaching is vital to creating an intellectual climate within schools that promotes, sustains, and deepens courageous inquiry.” The framework uses a graphical representation to describe a foundation in our schools of learning and inquiry with a goal of student autonomy and self-determination, supported by three pillars—expressive freedom, disciplined nonpartisanship, and intellectual diversity. The report provides a good deal of detail on how these elements can be understood, and it is my expectation that many schools will embrace the framework, debate it, and some will discard it. Whatever schools decide, the intent was to create a basis for this important discussion in independent schools, and I hope the document will encourage many schools along this path of discernment, especially in a contentious election year.

We will always promote what we value as an Episcopal school in a nonpartisan manner. Beyond those tenets, there is a necessary balance in schools as teachers exercise their freedom to teach and design their curriculum ever mindful of the goal of supporting the freedom of students to learn, inquire, and find their distinct voices. At St. Andrew’s the considerable gifts of our teachers and the small size of our classrooms mean we can pursue and achieve this balance. For my part as a head of school, I have taken care to refrain from public comment on partisan and political matters and show restraint and moderation in my own speech, in the hope of allowing many views to flourish and for students to feel confident in their own voices and the primacy of their place in this community. We can all be proud of the incredible work taking place in St. Andrew’s classrooms, and I invite you to visit us and join a class or two.

Nature for Nurture
Our built and natural environment are the critical context for the St. Andrew’s student experience. Without our 2,200 acres of Eastern deciduous woodlands, wetlands, waterways, and farmland, an education in this place would be so different. With the board and school leadership, especially in facilities and the business office, we have begun this past year to plan for the future of the facilities and ecosystem, including studying what it will take to be a zero-carbon school someday. The Urban Land Institute convened a “Technical Assistance Panel” of experts to help us plan, and the Stone House Group, our energy and facilities partners, has worked on several linchpin projects, including a carbon dashboard that will debut before the calendar-year end.

It is always remarkable to Ty and me how the school becomes such a hive of activity in the summer—just the opposite of what you might imagine during this time of rest. Our facilities team has been working very hard to keep the campus in shape, with cleaning and small construction projects to create more student-facing office space in Founders, as well as a student gathering space above the Kip duPont Boathouse, thanks to major gift support.

The grounds crew have been hard at work as well. Everyone in the state of Delaware knows we have the best grass fields, and this doesn’t happen without a lot of planning and effort. After an early dry spell, the rains have been more abundant this year than in recent summers, and our grounds have flourished. Since my arrival, we have embarked on a reforestation and tree management program on the campus. As our stately trees reach 100 years, they require regular maintenance to do well, particularly in the suffocating heat of the summer. Working with an arborist, we are underplanting critical areas such as the Main Drive to ensure that the view of Founders Hall emerging from a grove of majestic trees remains a key feature of your arrival on our campus.

Opening the Doors
Finally, it was an enormous delight to end the year by announcing that we met and exceeded, for the first time in school history, a goal of $3 million for the Saints Fund. I must express my profound gratitude to all who contributed. Your love of St. Andrew’s, your devotion to and meaningful support of this place, make everything we do possible. We exercise enormous discipline in our spending, but the cost of one student’s education for one year at St. Andrew’s exceeds $86,000. Therefore, even those paying full tuition receive substantial support—and the Saints Fund and endowment income make up the difference, approximately half of our budget. Thank you for all you did to open the doors of this school to all the families who require scholarship support to accept an offer of admission. Scholarship assistance remains essential to our identity as a school “open to all, regardless of means,” and it benefits every single one of us, whether we receive a scholarship or not.

And remember, our doors are always open to you! Please come visit and experience St. Andrew’s today if you have the chance. Until then, you have my sincere gratitude and warmest wishes for what remains of your summer.

A science teacher advising a Model United Nations (MUN) team may present a combination of duties that raises eyebrows at other schools. But at St. Andrew’s, it’s not so weird for teachers to touch seemingly disparate aspects of school life—teaching chemistry, checking dorms as co-dean of residential life, coaching cross-country, and advising the Model UN program is just all in a day’s work for Will Rehrig ’11. 

As an undergraduate student at the University of Delaware studying chemical engineering, Rehrig was a member of the university’s Model UN team. He brought that passion for history back to St. Andrew’s as a faculty member in 2017, and facilitated the first Model UN conference hosted at St. Andrew’s in November 2018. 

Model United Nations allows high schoolers to engage with and debate world issues, both current and historical, furthering their understanding of the United Nations and international relations, while also strengthening their skills in debate, cooperation, critical thinking, and research. MUN conferences are organized into numerous committees where students consider specific issues of global importance, representing member countries as delegates. 

The sixth-annual St. Andrew’s Model UN conference, known as SASMUN, was held on Nov. 5, 2023, with 140 students from local schools, along with nearly 20 St. Andrew’s students, in attendance as delegates. 

Months of planning go into the conference, and Rehrig says that student leaders are at the helm of the organizing. 

“It’s an incredible leadership experience for them in terms of having to plan and put together a committee, and thinking about what a whole day of this looks like,” says Rehrig. 

Two students, Zachary Macalintal ’24 and Caroline Adle ’24, served as secretary general and executive director, and they worked with Rehrig to prepare the logistics for the conference, as well as lead a team of students in planning the content for the committees they chaired. Over the summer of 2023, the students started writing background guides for their respective committees.

“Zachary and Caroline worked tirelessly to bring the conference to fruition, supporting each committee in developing their content and training the staff in chairing and running their committee,” says Rehrig. 

Macalintal and Adle both joined the MUN team during their III Form year, with Macalintal looking for something new to get involved in, and Adle encouraged to join by two upperclassmen who were both passionate about MUN. 

“This club gave me the resources and experience to represent something greater than myself,” says Macalintal. “Whether it was reading some of the most amazing background guides, sending back-and-forth emails to Caroline about MUN… each moment [of SASMUN 2023] felt like the culmination of my [Model UN] career.”

The conference also aims to provide St. Andrew’s students with a low-stakes opportunity to check out if Model UN is something they may be interested in, since the conference is on their home turf with their friends leading the charge. 

The SASMUN conference, says Rehrig, is committed to distinguishing itself as the premier, one-day Model UN conference in Delaware. The student leadership aims to focus on teaching, learning, and guiding, while also balancing a competitive environment for the more experienced delegates. He adds that thorough background guides and challenging topics at the SASMUN conference push the expectations of a high school Model UN conference. 

“Delegates and advisors commented on the high-level committee content, smooth organization and logistics, and competitive and supportive atmosphere,” says Rehrig of the response to this past year’s SASMUN. 

The delegates also were simply into it. 

“I love how deeply invested the delegates get,” says Adle. “Many delegates continue to debate over lunch, so I loved walking around the lunch room and picking up on little snippets of conversation.”

This upcoming school year, returning members of the St. Andrew’s MUN team—including SASMUN Secretary General Peter Bird ’25, MUN Co-President and SASMUN Deputy Director General Amanda Meng ’25, and MUN Co-President and SASMUN Director of Registration Grace Anne Doyle ’25—will pick up planning for the fall 2024 SASMUN conference, and continue to build bonds with each other and the delegates from neighboring schools. 
 

In the summer of 2022, Chris Hunter ’26 and Emma Hunter ’25 sat, cards in hand, sizing up each other, their dad, and their older brother, Billy Hunter ’23, in a heated game of Hearts. In a world of endless options for streaming and scrolling, the simple activities—like playing board games and card games—remain a staple in the Hunter household. 

The trio of siblings got to thinking: why don’t we play cards more often at school? 

Chris, Emma, and Billy, going into their III Form year, IV Form year, and VI Form year, respectively, kept this thought in the back of their minds as the school year approached, and once the time came, they got the ball rolling on the kernel of an idea: Cards Club. Emma and Billy were the founders of the club—in a typical sibling fashion, they wanted Chris to get some St. Andrew’s experience before he became a leader of the club. 

“We just wanted a lower key, lower commitment club that actually met,” says Emma. Chris adds that they wanted people to “connect” through a deck of cards. 

They set their sights on Tuesday nights for Cards Club meetings, as they thought this was often the least busy night for students during weeks where schedules are packed with classes, extracurricular activities, and sports. They wanted to give students who aren’t Spikeball and lawn game fanatics a chance to do an activity that could help them relax and have fun. 

With two school years having passed since the club’s founding, and with Billy having graduated in the spring of 2023, Cards Club is still thriving and keeps students coming back. Chris and Emma attribute a few reasons to why Cards Club has gained popularity amongst the student body. 

“While it is low commitment, it’s not something where [there’s] no meeting,” says Chris. “It’s just for the purpose of hanging out and playing cards … and so it allows a fluidity of membership where you don’t have to be part of the club. It’s not something that you have to do, it’s something that you want to do.”

Director of Student Life Kristin Honsel thinks that in addition to Chris and Emma’s “friendly and energetic” nature, Cards Club is successful because of its consistent presence on campus. 

“If things come up that interfere [with Cards Club] … [Chris and Emma are] respectful of that because they don’t want to take away from the culture of the school. They want to add to the culture of the school, so they find another time,” says Honsel. 

Chris and Emma emphasize that playing cards is an easy way for students to get to know people they haven’t hung out with previously. Students from every side of campus, from every class year, with diverse interests and passions, can get together and share a common activity.

Cards Club also brings a piece of home to St. Andrew’s for Emma and Chris, keeping them connected with their family traditions. However, they don’t want to dominate the club with their favorite games—they want all students, of all levels of experience, to learn each other’s “random home card games.” Emma talks about one of her favorites, which she refers to as “Nerds,” a game of competitive solitaire that she taught and now frequently enjoys with her friends during Cards Club. 

The siblings don’t take for granted how Cards Club gives them a shared project, keeping them close at school even though they are separated by grade years and interests. The elaborate announcements they make at Tuesday lunches to alert the school of Cards Club gatherings take quite some thought, which forces them to set some time aside from their busy schedules and have dinner together to plan. 

“I would say pretty much everyone in the school knows about Cards Club because of our Tuesday announcements. And those are almost, I would say, more beloved than the club itself, because we get up and do a funny skit,” says Emma. 

On Halloween 2023, Emma and Chris got up in front of the whole school at lunch to make, or rather, perform, their weekly reminder that students should join them that night at the Cards Club meeting. 

“L’eggo of your ego when playing cards,” joked Chris, providing the packed Dining Hall a moment to smile, or at least to break out into a reluctant grin, before students and faculty headed off to a busy St. Andrew’s day of classes, sports, arts, and extracurriculars.

The “just for fun” nature of Cards Club provides students an essential opportunity to truly relax, yet still, in St. Andrew’s character, stay phone and digital-distraction free. 

“There’s absolutely no pressure, and kids can just plop down and it takes five minutes or 10 minutes, or they could stay for a half an hour,” says Honsel. “It’s a good way to kind of just de-stress and socialize.”

In a few weeks, Cards Club will be back in action on campus, with returning Saints like Chris and Emma inducting our newest students into our community with SAS traditions like the Frosty Run, the Opening of School Square Dance, and this blossoming yet beloved tradition of playing cards on Tuesday nights. 
 

A beam of light streams through the window and spills across a gray Marley floor. Three ballet bars stand against the wall. A bird decal sticks to the glass window, wings stretched skyward. 

Kayden Murrell ’26 snaps a photo of the scene, a moment of peace in the usually bustling dance studio. Though the angle of the photo conceals the rising V former’s image in the wall of mirrors, the scene is a reflection of Murrell’s identity and most authentic sense of self. 

Murrell’s photo is one of 28 by the 2023-2024 IV Form students in Kate Cusick’s English classes as part of an inter-school project in which SAS students explored places on campus that feel like home to them through photography and poetry, and shared their work with school communities beyond St. Andrew’s for dialogue and feedback. 

The idea for the project took root in the summer of 2023, which Cusick spent with the Change Fellow Cohort at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. The fellowship tasked Cusick and her fellow educators with creating a project that brings communities together and bridges divides. Cusick collaborated with Rebecca Rose, a teacher at Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pa.; and Nora Britton, a teacher at the Academy of American Studies in Queens, N.Y., for the project. Although the trio was inspired by their shared classroom reads like Nested Interculturality, which centers on creativity and immersive cultural experiences, they didn’t know precisely what their project would become. They did know the pieces they wanted to incorporate: letter-writing, mapping, and creative expression. 

As they built out the details of how to bring these ideas into harmony, they developed the structure of the project: a cross-school exchange of photography, poetry, and reflection centered around “a sense of place”—the places in which the tenth-grade students at each school find comfort and belonging. 

“Who are our students?” the teachers wrote in their reflection of the project in the Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal. “How can we develop students’ sense of belonging to, and ownership over, their school/local community? What relationships can we forge with distant places, individuals, and communities?” 

The educators aimed to foster understanding between the students whose senses of place might be wildly different—from the rural settings of Middletown and Mercersburg to the urban cityscapes of Queens—with a dialogue about personal and shared experiences and identities. 

“We wanted to work through that channel of breaking the barrier of their understanding of us and us of them,” says Cusick. 

This project took place over four months of the school year, and it started with the St. Andrew’s and Mercersburg students trekking around their campuses and photographing the places that resonated with them, from the shining floor of the basketball court to a leaf-covered trail nestled by the woods.  

The students then virtually sent their photos to Queens. There, the Academy of American Studies students looked through the photos—which had no personal identifiers—and selected those photos that they wanted to ask questions about, and sent responses to the photographer.

“We gave them a frame of questions, of things to consider,” says Cusick. “[They asked questions and made comments like,] ‘I noticed in your picture you chose the pond or water,’ or ‘I’m curious, why did you choose this angle, this color?’”

The Academy of American Studies students also shared their own photos, capturing corner delis, rainy highways, quaint bookstores, and more with the same students with whom they corresponded previously.

“The first thing that struck me was that we were outside for my partner’s picture, I think it was a bridge and there was a body of water and there was the sunset,” says Murrell. “Compared to my picture, which was bright and indoors, their picture was dark and outside. Yet, I still felt that this is an important place to them … I thought that was really interesting to see how there’s two different spaces, but they invoke the same feelings.” 

Murrell also felt an odd sense of familiarity looking at the photo, recalling memories of visiting the city with family—as the New Jersey-native’s mom works in New York City. 

“They’re closer to home, to my home, than I am,” says Murrell. “It felt refreshing in a way, being grounded there again.”

After the initial feedback of their photos, the students wrote poems about their senses of place associated with their photos. After getting feedback from their peers at their school, they sent their poems to their inter-school partners. 

Though the Academy of American Studies student will never know the face or name behind Murrell’s poem, it touches on a deep sense of identity that has blossomed within the dancer and actor in the studio. 

In the following excerpt, Murrell explores the warmth of the spotlight: 

I wouldn’t go out of my way to garner attention

But,

There is something in that room splashed with sunlight,

Black birds surrounded by a halo of sky,

The far wall covered with advice from stage legends old and new,

A large mirror filled with performers, training to be on stage.

There is something that makes me want to try

Harnessing the sun.

I’m no Icarus.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to garner attention

But,

There is something in the spotlight that makes the attention worth it.

“I learned to take command of the spotlight [with performance], and it’s helped me lose my shyness,” says Murrell. “The story of Icarus is that he flew too close to the sun. So when I say ‘I’m no Icarus,’ I’m not going to just venture out to the spotlight, not normally, but because of my experience in that studio, I’m learning to step further into the spotlight. I’m learning to allow myself to shine.” 

Sending the poem off to Queens was even more scary than handing in an assignment to a teacher, Murrell says. Murrell didn’t know the student that would read the poem, nor how they would react to such a personal piece. But when Murrell received the feedback, the Queens student recounted her own memory of dance, and the shared connection eased Murrell’s fear.

Students opening themselves to an audience greater than their teacher and their classmates was just the point, says Cusick. 

“When we write just to a teacher, it’s so insular,” says Cusick. “[The project] is breaking the barriers of what it means to be a student.”

Breaking the boundaries of instruction was just one goal of the project, another was to make campus part of the curriculum. 

“When I think about Mary Oliver’s poetry, and I think about Robert Frost, and I think about even Mark Doty, who we’re learning in 11th grade right now, places are embedded in our memory and in our sense of identity,” says Cusick. “And this place is four years of these young people’s lives. It’s such a part of who they are. So [this project helps] them both use that as a tool to find their voice in their writing, and articulate who they are, but also embed that then into the work that they’re doing with the literature outside of them.” 

She says the project also aimed to bridge identities rooted in place to something larger than our campus, a goal which culminated in a creation of an interactive map which includes the students’ photography, poetry, and reflections. Students can explore the interactive map of all the participants’ work and physically see where each picture was taken in connection with the other photos. 

Cusick says that this project deepened her understanding of her students, as she discovered unknown passions for rowing or art or students who got up early just to watch the sun rise. It also helped Cusick connect to her personal mission and identity behind education. 

“Oftentimes [as teachers], we get stuck in this rote aspect [of teaching] assignments and grading and the literature,” says Cusick. “And we forget that at the center of everything we’re doing is the student. And this project placed our students at the center of everything we did … their exploration, their desire, their images, their choices.”

Murrell says that this was more than just an assignment. The assignment “elevated” the classroom experience by giving Murrell a taste of what it might be like to be a professional writer, getting feedback from other writers and providing it. Your work may be different from others’, but that’s nothing to be afraid of, Murrell says. 

“It’s a good different, it’s an eye-opening different, and I think that’s something people have to learn,” says Murrell. “You’re not all the same. You’re all different. … [but] you’re all different with the same goal, with the same feelings. I think this Sense of Place project really helped bring that similarity to light, because in different places, you have the same feeling of comfort, the same feeling of home away from home.” 
 

Good afternoon everybody.

Last Saturday, Mary Troy and I walked around the pond. Or at least we tried, got lost halfway and Ms. Kerrane had to pick us up and drive us back to campus (again, thank you so much, Mrs. Kerrane). Not our brightest moment… Mary and I had always planned to go on this adventure since the very beginning of the school year, but we never really seriously considered doing it—until the day before graduation. When I woke up that morning, I felt like I was missing out on something so crucial to my experience at St. Andrew’s that I wouldn’t be able to leave here without doing it. So I texted Mary, “Do you want to walk around the pond?” and she answered with, “Yeah, let’s try it.” We packed snacks, water bottles, and a speaker and started walking towards the unknown, equipped with a Strava map, a guide made by Daisy and Madeleine, and the excitement for what would turn out to be one of my key memories this year.

When we entered the woods down by Ms. McGrath’s house, I had a similar feeling of joy and fear of the unknown that I had when I left my home on August 15th, knowing that I would not come back for another 300 days. I remember my mum standing in the doorway that morning, waving goodbye with tears in her eyes. I remember crying myself when I hugged my sister in the airport and I remember my dad’s bald head sticking out of the airport crowd as I walked through security. I always knew that I wanted to go abroad, but at that moment, I wondered whether I was doing the right thing. I was leaving everything and everybody I cared about behind, only because of some random boarding school in the middle of nowhere (no offense, of course). For me, spending a year in the U.S. meant a time difference of six hours, having to find new friends, and getting used to a completely new environment. Suddenly, the English language would be my only way to communicate (of course except for D-Block French with Mme Pears - merci pour ça). And it also meant measuring everything in teaspoons, cups, gallons, inches, feet, yards, miles, or Fahrenheit—something I’m still not used to. 

But I was as ready as I could, I had worked my way through the handbook and I finished my summer readings. So when the airplane took off to this new world, I was really excited. Around eight hours, several movies, and an eternity of staring out of the window later, I finally arrived in the U.S.. After a four-day-long orientation in Connecticut, I arrived at New Jersey airport, where Mr. Steve, one of the school drivers, picked me up. Because I was completely exhausted, we didn’t talk much during the ride, but he gave me one piece of advice that is still with me today: He said, “When you’re in America, never talk about politics.”

Before coming to St. Andrew’s, I spent ten days at Peter and Henry Bird’s house in Sea Bright, New Jersey and I was immediately struck by the beauty of the beaches, the fresh and salty air, and, most importantly, the people. As soon as I saw the Birds waving in their doorway, I knew that this year was gonna be amazing. In those 10 days, I ate my first lobster, ran a two-mile race with Peter and Henry (which was maybe not the smartest idea, but back then, I didn’t know about their passion for cross country), we got stranded in a little boat because the motor broke, I visited New York, and I also tried surfing. After those 10 amazing and eventful days, I wrote in my diary, “The Birds are the nicest people and the best host family I could have ever imagined.” Tomorrow, they’ll pick us up and I will, now for the last time, spend 10 more days with them. I am so incredibly grateful for them and their hospitality—thank you so much!

Then, on August 31st, we arrived on St. Andrew’s campus. After having registered myself in the Field House, I carried my suitcases up to Schmolze and stumbled into Luke Ketzner, one of my future roommates. He excitedly asked me, “Are you Vincent?” I responded with “yes” and he showed me to our room. Shortly after, I bumped into a—and I am quoting him here right now—“tall, dark, handsome man” and with Tyrus, Schmolze 303 was complete. They always say that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and I think that I will leave here with one-fifth of Tyrus’s American charm and great advice, and one-fifth of Luke’s determination and grit. And seriously, Tyrus and Luke, the past nine months felt like a never ending sleepover and I will miss our after-lights-out talks and, even more so, our Middletown Monopoly gaming sessions. You taught me how to sleep like a stone, how to bribe somebody for their food, and how to be a good friend. Even though I was afraid when I was told that I would have two roommates, I couldn’t think of any better duo than you guys.

The days of preseason flew by, and suddenly, school started. A normal day here at St. Andrew’s was so much different from what I had been used to in Germany, and it honestly took me a while to fully master the routine of breakfast check-ins, dress code, and table rotations. What first looked like a simple lunch break soon became one of my favorite parts of the day and every family-style meal, I looked forward to getting to know everybody at my table. Not knowing what to expect from an American high school cafeteria, I found myself surprised with the hundreds of delicious meals I had, and of course, Pizza Friday was my absolute favorite. Thank you, SAGE!

One of the most transformative events, though, were my classes. I was afraid of not being able to keep up with my peers and of not being able to express all my thoughts and opinions in an understandable way. But my worries were for nothing. Every teacher and every classmate was so welcoming and would repeat a word even four more times until I would understand it. I asked hundreds of stupid questions and received thousands of helpful answers. During a chemistry quiz at the beginning of the year, I remember writing ‘firelighter’ instead of ‘fire extinguisher,’ and ‘handcuffs’ instead of ‘gloves.’ Thank you, Mr. Guldin, for being patient with me! In other classes, I had similar experiences, but soon, I started to feel like a part of the class, and this attitude helped me a lot. Dr. Geiersbach’s chamber music block was one of my favorite classes this year. Ms. Cusick’s English class was probably one of the most challenging ones. In Mr. Edmond’s public history class, I first learned how to participate in an academic round table discussion, and the memories of math with Mr. Kwon (including the late-night study room sessions for the next quest) will remain with me for a long time. In the second semester, Mr. Finch, my data science teacher, taught me how to predict the future with the help of big data, and in Dr. Hyde’s nuclear physics and ethics [class], which was probably my most interesting class here at St. Andrew’s, I first encountered Einstein’s relativity theory and argued for and against the prohibition of nuclear weapons. All the courses that I took were incredibly engaging and insightful, and I will miss the St. Andrew’s teaching style. Thank you so much to all of my teachers, for helping me push my boundaries and broadening my horizon.

Another essential part of my St. Andrew’s experience was the orchestra and the chamber music guild. Every week, I was looking forward to sitting down in the rehearsal room and creating beautiful, and sometimes not-so beautiful, melodies. I enjoyed playing in Engelhard Hall and I can’t believe that I won’t be here for the next concerts (of course I’ll be watching from the livestream!). Since the beginning of the school year, I’ve been begging Dr. G to play Dvorak’s 9th symphony, and on Arts Weekend, we finally did it! The Czech composer Antonin Dvorak came to the U.S. in 1892 and composed his “New World Symphony,” describing his experiences in a new and strange, but beautiful country. Playing the piece with everybody else that night was truly special, because I could resonate with Dvorak’s experiences. So thank you to everybody in the orchestra for helping make this wish come true.   

When I looked at the afternoon activities, my parents told me to do something to get out of my comfort zone, so I signed up for the fall play. I had never done anything related to acting and theatre, and yet from the moment I stepped into Forbes Theatre and met Mrs. Taylor and the rest of the cast, I was amazed by the atmosphere and this sense of enthusiasm in the room. Surprisingly, I got one of the main parts in one of the plays, and I completely loved it. The feeling right before the curtain call was incredible; joyful anticipation mixed with a ton of nerves. I was so thrilled by this feeling that I also signed up for the winter musical, knowing pretty well that singing was not part of my talents. After auditioning, I got the role of Shermy, a character in the Peanuts comics that soon got taken out, because he didn’t have a personality. However, I took it as a challenge and even got a little solo! In total, those two performances helped me discover a new part of myself, and on another note, also contributed a lot to my diction. Thank you, Mrs. Taylor. 

Coming back from spring break, I was thrown into my first 2k erg test ever, something I will never forget. I remember this feeling of everybody being super nervous, the feeling of accomplishment after it’s over and Tyrus and Luke chanting “SCHMOLZE 303” while I was pulling for my life. However, after my first practice on the water, I realized that literally every second of pain and suffering would be worth the beauty of gliding on Noxontown pond, feeling like a part of something bigger and more powerful than myself. This crew season has taught me so much and even got me a rowing medal! I am so grateful that I was able to row in the Colburn with Eliza as our crazy and amazing coxswain, and seven other guys that pulled for the same goal. I want to say thank you to Coach Gilheany, Myers, and Porter for introducing me to this beautiful sport, and for believing in me. It was an incredible and unique season and I really hope to continue to row when I go back to Germany!

In the past couple of weeks, many people have come up to me and asked whether I was sad to be leaving soon. My answer would always be something like, “Of course I am sad, but I am also looking forward to seeing my friends in Germany again.” And even though this is true, I wasn’t completely honest. Yes, going back to Munich will be great, but leaving St. Andrew’s and this amazing community behind is horrifying. In the little book, The Story of Us, a quote from Azar Nafisi says, “You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. You’ll not only miss the people you love, but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you know you’ll never be this way again.” This is exactly how I’m feeling today, because St. Andrew’s and this amazing community allowed me to be my true self, and I will miss every single one of you. 

Now just a short disclaimer: Tyrus and Luke helped me write this last part of the speech.

Thank you, St. Andrew’s, for having me this year. Thank you, Tyrus and Luke, for being so incredibly amazing. Thank you, ASSIST, for making this incredible adventure possible. Thank you, Schmolze, for being the best dorm ever. And, of course, thank you to the best roommates ever, Tyrus and Luke. Thank you to everybody who put up with my whistling and thank you to every single person that was part of my exchange year and contributed to making it the most special time in my life—please stay in contact! I can’t believe we’re all leaving tomorrow, and I can’t believe I won’t be back in the fall. And the worst thing is, of course, that I won’t see Tyrus and Luke again in a long long time. I will miss them because they are so amazingly amazing. 

Ok, but seriously, this year has taught me so infinitely much, and I will forever treasure every single moment in my heart. And even though I ultimately didn’t make it all the way around the pond, I enjoyed every single moment of this journey.

Thank you. 
 

This year’s spring trustee weekend was a bit different than that of years past. The board came together at the end of April to effectuate a long-planned leadership transition and discuss plans and initiatives for the school year to come, but they also spent time celebrating Scott Sipprelle ’81 P’08, who this June will end almost 25 years of service to the board, nearly a decade of which he served as board chair.

The weekend of celebration included a Chapel Talk by Sipprelle, a dinner, student performances, and even a ceremonial first pitch thrown on the Saints diamond by the former St. Andrew’s pitcher himself. 

“I sort of recoil at personal celebration,” Sipprelle says. “So, at the outset, I was resistant to the celebrations, as I said at the dinner on Friday night. But somebody much wiser than me said, ‘This isn’t about you. It's about the school, and the process and the celebration and the symbolism.’ One of the hallmarks of St. Andrew’s is very stable and long-tenured leadership, both at the head of school level and at the board level. Pausing to reflect on that, I think the significance of transition is worth celebrating.”

Vice Chair Richard Vaughan Sr. ’88 P’24,’27 will succeed Sipprelle for the 2024-2025 school year. 

Sipprelle says the transition has been a thoughtful, strategic process. “Having done a lot of leadership and management transitions over my years in business, there’s a right time and there's a wrong time,” he says. “The best way to transition is slow and deliberate and planned. This was a two-year process from the time I announced I was going to step down, and I think it has been pretty seamless.”

A critical priority of Sipprelle’s as he prepared to pass the torch to Vaughan has been to help Head of School Joy McGrath ’92 firmly establish her position as the school’s fifth head. “Managing a head of school transition in a really tumultuous environment for all educational institutions—and frankly, for all of society—has required much board focus,” he says. 

McGrath, in her Friday night dinner remarks, thanked Sipprelle for his support during that transition. 

“It is rare for a new head of school to have a board chair who is unfailing in his support of those decisions that will move the institution forward, and unflinching when those decisions occasionally are really tough,” McGrath told a crowd gathered in the Sipprelle Field House. “So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I know how lucky I have been to work with you the past three years, and I am looking forward to the next chapter of your deep connection to our school. Your leadership, wisdom, and support—your love of this place and, not least, your love of what is right for this place—have been an incredible bulwark to me during these first three years of headship.” 

Vaughan credits Sipprelle for ensuring both men navigated the transition in close partnership. “The board weekend was a remarkable few days that had been planned for over a year,” he says. “In terms of the chair role, Scott and I have been doing everything jointly while I was vice chair.  He has very much included me in virtually every conversation that he was having. Much of trustee weekend was to celebrate and thank Scott for tremendous leadership during his chairmanship, but also since he joined the board in 2001.”

Vaughan, who joined the board in 2005, is thrilled to get to work as chair. “In five years, we’ll be celebrating our centennial,” he says. “That is a natural time for both reflection on the past, but more importantly, thinking about the future. I think we're going to want to look at the long-term financial sustainability of the school. A lot of that comes from our mission to provide a first-class education regardless of means, which is an even more challenging mission to achieve in an ever-increasing cost environment. We’re going to be very focused on that financial sustainability. We’re also going to have to continue to invest in the faculty experience, both attracting and keeping faculty, and making sure there is a career path and work-life balance that is set for the next century.”

Sipprelle’s three key words for Vaughan as he navigates the next chapter of St. Andrew’s board leadership are “balance,” “growth,” and “sustain.”

“The balance is about keeping an even keel on the school and not reacting too dramatically to any stress or change in the environment,” Sipprelle says. “Grow is just having a growth mindset to always ask, ‘What could we do differently and better?’ And sustain is to never forget the core values and culture that make St. Andrew’s unique.”

Other new board appointments for the 2024-2025 school year include Kellie Doucette ’88, P’18,’18,’21, current chair of the board’s advancement committee, who was named vice-chair. Parent trustee Aaron Barnes P’21, ’24 will become a regular trustee. 

The board offers its deep thanks for the service, contributions, and perspectives of departing trustees Mercedes Abramo P’18, ’22, John Eisenbrey Jr. ’74, P’05, ’05, ’07, and Grace Gahagan ’10.  

The board is pleased to elect the following new trustees, all of whom will join the board in the fall of 2024:

Kiran Kalsi Chapman P’21, ’23, ’28
Charlottesville, VA and Houston, TX

Kiran is the mother of Amrit ’21, Ford ’23, and Hank ’28. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Kiran was raised in the Sikh faith in the diverse National Lab community of Oak Ridge, Tenn. Kiran holds a B.A. in economics from Vanderbilt University and a M.B.A. from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. She started her career in the chairman’s office of Bankers Trust in New York City, and subsequently moved into private client services. After earning her master’s degree, Kiran worked in brand management at Johnson & Johnson on the iconic Johnson’s Baby brands.

She and her husband, Jim, moved from New York to Hong Kong in 2005 where Kiran served on the Hong Kong International School’s development team, managing its annual fund. In 2013, the family relocated to Charlottesville, Va., where Kiran spent many years working as development director and grants manager for a national independent abortion provider.

Kiran sits on the board of trustees for Peabody School, a small independent school in Charlottesville for academically advanced children; and The Emily Couric Leadership Forum, which each year awards $250,000 in scholarships to a graduating female student from each of Charlottesville’s 11 high schools. She also serves as co-head of the Georgetown University Women’s Rowing Team’s parent booster club.

Kiran and Jim regard joining the St. Andrew’s community as unequivocally the best parenting decision they ever made. Kiran looks forward to serving St. Andrew’s, which has shaped their children and their family in countless ways. She and her husband split their time between Charlottesville, Va., and Houston, Tex.

Bruce McEvoy ’95
Vero Beach, FL

Bruce is managing partner of NorthSands Capital. Prior to founding NorthSands, Bruce was a senior managing director in Blackstone’s private equity business, where he worked from 2006 to 2022.  Before joining Blackstone, Bruce worked at General Atlantic and McKinsey & Company. 

Bruce received an A.B. from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Bruce and his brother both attended St. Andrew’s. While a student at St. Andrew’s, Bruce was a member of the soccer, wrestling, and rowing teams.

Penn Daniel ’07 
San Francisco, CA

Penn has spent nearly a decade in the technology industry building and advising early-stage businesses.

Penn joined DoorDash in 2015 and spent over seven years at the company, launching its first major markets across the U.S. and building new products. Penn also pioneered the company’s autonomous vehicle strategy and led its subsequent acquisition of a robotics startup. Prior to DoorDash, Penn was a producer at ESPN’s Emmy-winning show, Pardon the Interruption, and served as a fellow at Bryanston School in the United Kingdom, where he taught history and Spanish and created the school’s first basketball program. 

Penn holds a B.A. in Spanish and a minor in history from the University of Virginia, where he was the recipient of the Gray-Carrington Memorial Scholarship. At St. Andrew’s, Penn served as co-president of Class of 2007, captained the football and lacrosse teams, and was a recipient of the Headmaster’s Award. 

He lives in San Francisco with his partner, Erin, and their dog, Lola. 
 

The Class of 2024 said their goodbyes (for now) to St. Andrew’s on Sunday, May 26, at Commencement, which was the culmination of a week’s worth of events celebrating the successes of this special class, a group of Saints that together, overcame first-year pandemic interruptions to forge deep bonds in the classrooms, in the dorms, and on our fields and trails.

Google General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado ’93 delivered this year’s Commencement keynote, exploring a lesser-known component of success: failure.

“Now if you’re lucky, and I truly mean this with all sincerity, you’ll have been afforded the opportunity of failure during your time here,” said Prado. “Yes, I’m being deliberate with that word, failure. Losing a game, failing a test, letting yourself or others down, some experience in which you didn’t quite hit that mark. But here’s the beauty in that—in that failure, a door of possibility was unlocked for you.” 

From an initial rejection letter to St. Andrew’s to “pretty spectacular fails” in her professional career, Prado noted that failure provided her with resilience and fortitude, the qualities that the Class of 2024 needs to rely on as they navigate a new era of their lives, and a new era of society’s relationship to technologies such as artificial intelligence. 

“While AI will have a tremendously positive impact on society, its power can also be used for malintent,” said Prado. “That’s where you, Class of 2024, come in. You are the next generation of leaders—researchers, educators, politicians, scientists, and artists. You have the distinct advantage of coming of age with this new, powerful technology and you are in the position to dutifully guide where AI and other social and technical and creative innovations will take us. Embrace that opportunity.”

Click here to watch Prado’s entire address, or read the full address here.  

Student body co-presidents Charlie Lunsford ’24 and Riya Soni ’24 reflected on their time at St. Andrew’s in their individual addresses, asking a packed Front Lawn what success really means, and detailing how SAS support systems allowed each to reach their goals. Listen to their talks here, or read Charlie’s talk here and Riya’s talk here. 

A gallery of Commencement photos can be viewed here. 

During Commencement, members of the Class of 2024 and underformers were recognized with a number of time-honored St. Andrew’s awards, which are listed below. 

Before Commencement, seniors delivered speeches about academics, athletics, arts, student life, and community service at Awards Night. Members of the faculty also bestowed awards onto VI formers, as well several underformers, for significant contributions to the St. Andrew’s community across disciplines and aspects of campus life.

The following students were recognized at Awards Night and Commencement:

Commencement Awards

Christopher Wilson ’99 Award & Scholarship - Katherine Simonds ’24

Given by his parents in memory of Christopher Edward Wilson '99, the award recognizes seniors who best embody Chris' virtues and personal qualities: a love of St. Andrew’s, a quiet and authentic appreciation of life, friendship, and community; a devotion to service and to children; and a kind and generous spirit.

Cristin C. Duprey ’04 Diversity & Inclusivity Award - Sasha DeCosta ’24, Shawn Li ’24, Zachary Macalintal ’24

Given in memory of Cristin C. Duprey ’04 to the VI Form student/students who have provided exceptional service in the cultivation of a diverse and inclusive St. Andrew’s School community.

John McGiff Fine Arts Award - Elyot Segger ’24, Sophie Mo ’24

Awarded to the student who has made the greatest contribution in the fine arts and demonstrated a depth and quality of talent that demands our recognition.

Henry Prize - Talan Esposito ’24, Channing Malkin ’24

Awarded to a VI Form boy and girl who have been of the greatest service to athletics. It recognizes not only personal athletic skill, but also service to the teams of which the students were members.

Jonathan B. O’Brien Head of School Award - Charlie Lunsford ’24, Riya Soni ’24, Avery Vaughan ’24

The Jonathan B. O’Brien Head of School Award celebrates the brilliant and courageous leadership and vision of St. Andrew’s third headmaster, Jon O’Brien, who led the school from 1977 to 1997. The Award recognizes seniors who contribute to the ethos of the school with integrity, humanity, generosity, and love.

King Prize - Victoria Yin ’24

Awarded to the leading scholar during the VI Form year.

Founders Medal - Celina Bao ’24

Awarded to the scholar in the graduating class who, during his or her career at St. Andrew’s, has achieved the best academic record in the form.

William H. Cameron Award - Olivia Costrini ’24, Zoey Honsel ’24

Given to VI Form students who have performed outstanding service to the school.

St. Andrew’s Cross - Marie Dillard ’24

Given in honor of the late Bishop Cook of Delaware, who was associated with the founding of the School, in recognition of the student whose contribution to the school has been distinguished by Christian qualities of concern for others, humility, and high principle.

Robert T. Jordan Award - Claire Hulsey ’26, Abe Perry ’26

Given by his classmates and former teachers at St. Andrew’s in memory of Robert T. Jordan, Class of 1986, who died September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center attack, to the IV Form boy and girl who display the qualities that made Robert so memorable and distinctive: a love of humanity, an appreciation of friendship, a willful perseverance and resolve amidst adversity and opportunity, a unique and refreshing perspective on life and all its possibilities.

Awards Night Awards

Cresson Prize - Frank Nasta ’24, Marie Dillard ’24

Awarded to the VI Form students who have demonstrated the greatest improvement in athletic skill, sportsmanship, and leadership.

Larry L. Walker Music Prize for Orchestral Music - Sophie Mo ’24, Gabriel Day-O’Connell ’24

Awarded to the students who have made outstanding contributions to the Orchestra.

Larry L. Walker Music Prize for Jazz Ensemble - Hugo Butler ’24, Avery Vaughan ’24

Awarded to the students who have made outstanding contributions to the Jazz Ensemble.

Choir Prize - Elyot Segger ’24

Awarded to the student who has contributed the most to the success and development of the choral program.

Drama Prize - Finn O’Connell ’24, Akeelah Romeo ’24, James Owens ’24

Awarded in memory of John Fletcher Hinnant, Jr., Class of 1953, to the students who have made the most significant contribution to the Theatre Program, and have shown exceptional growth as actors.

Hoover C. Sutton Drama Prize (Tech) - Victoria Yin ’24

Awarded in honor of Hoover C. Sutton, drama teacher at St. Andrew’s School from 1980 to 1993, for the greatest contribution to the Theatre Program in technical work.

Dance Prize - Olivia Costrini ’24, Tamia Ferguson ’24

Awarded to the students who have shown exceptional leadership, dedication, and artistry in dance.

Keri J. Advocat Photography Prize - William Lin ’24

Given by the Class of 1991 in memory of Keri J. Advocat, whose love and passion for the arts will always be remembered by her classmates. Awarded to the student of photography who has shown a strong mastery of technical skills and presented a portfolio of creative images.

Film Prize - Will Finch ’24

Awarded to the student who has shown extraordinary creativity, technical skills, and dedication to the study of the moving picture in all of its forms.

Art Prize - Aleah Thomas ’24, Gibson Hurtt ’24

Awarded to the student who has contributed the most to the Art Program in effort, originality, and technique in various art forms.

Purchase Prize - Gibson Hurtt ’24

Awarded to the student who has created an outstanding piece of artwork in either a minor or major plastic arts course. This work is chosen by the school to enter its permanent collection.

Chester E. Baum Prize for English - Hannah Gilheany ’24, Sophie Mo ’24, Angela Osaigbovo ’24
 
Given by the members of the English Department in honor of Chester Earl Baum, for 29 years an outstanding teacher of English at St. Andrew’s School, to the VI Form students who have excelled in English scholarship.

Charles H. Welling, Jr. Prize for Writing - Cy Karlik ’24

Given by members of his class in honor of Charlie Welling ’45, writer and raconteur, to the student who has produced exemplary non-fiction writing in all disciplines throughout his or her career at St. Andrew’s.

Amanda Leyon Prize for Creative Writing - Claire Louise Poston ’24

Given in memory of Amanda Leyon ’95 by her classmates, to the student who has excelled in creative writing.

Louis C. Mandes Library Prize -  Cy Karlik ’24, Rylie Reid ’24

Given in memory of Louis C. Mandes, Jr., school librarian, to the student who has demonstrated a love of books and a deep appreciation for the library.

Sherman Webb Prize for History - Hannah Gilheany ’24

For outstanding work in history.

W. Lewis Fleming Prize for French - Katia Papadopoulos ’24

Given by the alumni in memory of W. Lewis Fleming to the student of French who is most deserving in interest, effort, and achievement.

The Nancy K. Hargrove Prize for Spanish - Tamia Ferguson ’24, Channing Malkin ’24

Given by Joe Hargrove, Class of 1967, in memory of his wife, who was a great admirer of St. Andrew’s. Awarded to the student doing outstanding work in Spanish.

Chinese Prize - Ruth Hilton ’24, Nadia Lee ’24

Awarded to the student doing outstanding work in Chinese.

G. Coerte Voorhees Prize for Classical Languages - Mac Gooder ’24, Elyot Segger ’24

Given by his children in memory of their father, G. Coerte Voorhees, Latin teacher at St. Andrew’s School from 1935 to 1962. Awarded to the student who has done outstanding work in Latin and/or Greek.

Walter L. Harrison Prize for Mathematics - Keizen Ameriks ’24

Given in memory of his mother by Walter L. Harrison, Class of 1966, to a student of high achievement, whose work in mathematics is distinguished for its depth of interest, imagination, and creative thinking.

John Anthony Higgins Award - Celina Bao ’24

The John Anthony Higgins Award is given by members of the Math Department in honor of John Higgins, beloved and legendary Math teacher at St. Andrew’s from 1980 to 2012. Awarded to a student who shares John’s joy for learning, who appreciates the beauty, precision, and utility of mathematics, and who seeks to infuse this passion in others.

The Computer Science Prize - Griffin Patterson ’24

Awarded to the student of Computer Science who has demonstrated exceptional skill, understanding, and depth of interest in the field.

William Day Scott Prize for Science - Hugo Butler ’24

Awarded to the student who has taken at least two science courses and, through performance in these courses, has demonstrated real promise in the field of science.

William H. Amos Prize for the Life Sciences - Kieran Bansal ’24, Sasha DeCosta ’24

Given by William H. Amos, member of the faculty from 1947 to 1985, to the students who have demonstrated exceptional interest and ability in the life sciences.

Virginia Layton Orr Prize - Hannah Gilheany ’24

In recognition of Virginia Layton Orr’s efforts to preserve Cape Henlopen State Park and other natural areas, this award is given to a student who has made significant contributions to the environment.

Walden Pell Prize for Religious Studies - Katia Papadopoulos ’24, Haoyuan (Kevin) Tu ’24, Avery Vaughan ’24

Given to VI Form students whose work in Religious Studies is distinguished by their understanding of the relationship between faith and learning.

Francis L. Spalding Award - Josie Denny ’26, Richard Zhu ’26

Awarded to IV Form students who have achieved a commendable academic record by distinctive effort.

Harry C. Parker Prize - Tristan Kalloo ’24

Given by Harry M. Parker ’64 in memory of his father, Harry C. Parker, to the VI Former who has achieved the greatest academic improvement in their St. Andrew’s career.

DyAnn Miller Community Service Award - Kieran Bansal ’24, Olivia Costrini ’24

Named in honor of DyAnn Miller, exuberant teacher and counselor at St. Andrew’s from 1984-2005, who helped build and develop the community service program, and then by her example dedicated her energies and spirit to the service of others.

Calder Prize - Liam Wilson ’27, Divya Bhatia ’27

Given in honor of Dr. Joseph R. Calder and Virginia Calder and awarded to two III Form students who combine the qualities of good scholarship and a commitment to the service of others.

J. Thompson Brown Award - Bridget Daly ’25, Gloria Oladejo ’25

Given to the students below the VI Form who have made the greatest contribution to community life.

Malcolm Ford Award - Ray Quinones ’25, Lila Lunsford ’26

In memory of Malcolm Ford, given to the boy and girl below the VI Form who best combine the qualities of leadership, good sportsmanship, and a cheerful spirit.

Robert H. Stegeman, Jr. Award - Nelle McVey ’25, Daisy Wang ’25, Chris Onsomu ’25

Given in honor of Bob Stegeman, inspirational history teacher, academic dean, assistant headmaster, and dean of faculty at St. Andrew’s from 1978 to 1999, awarded to students in the top academic ranks of their class who have demonstrated intellectual leadership and who have made exceptional contributions to the life of the school and community.
 

My dad always says I should not let failure discourage me. I have interpreted his words in two ways: “Failure should not discourage me from being brave enough to try, or strong enough to try again.”

That was a direct quote from my application to St. Andrew’s, which I received last night during the senior wall carving. Upon reading that, I immediately thought to myself, “Why was a 14-year-old version of me kind of smarter than me right now?” 

I go on to say, “Truthfully, whenever presented with a new opportunity to explore an interest, the thought of failing always initially crossed my mind. But now, I know failing is okay and a part of life, and if I don’t fail, how will I learn, grow, or better myself?” 

While this was well said and absolutely resonates with me today, I can’t help but feel that 14-year-old me was simply saying what sounded good in her head, rather than preaching what lived experiences have taught her. 

I can now say with the utmost confidence that during my three years at this school, I’ve reached lofty goals through all adversity by knowing I have an abundance of support through the Class of 2024 and the greater SAS community. 

One moment I felt this immense support was in the winter crew season—if you know you know—where we completed an annual triathlon. 

Now, this triathlon entailed a 4,000-meter erg piece, followed by a two-and-a-half mile run around campus. And if that wasn’t enough, it was met with sprinting up and down 10 flights of stairs in the field house. 

On this particular day, despite going into the triathlon with as strong of a mentality I could muster, I felt defeated in every component of this workout. 4,000 meters felt like 10,000, a typically do-able run had me stopping halfway through, and where I could usually tap into my remaining energy for stair sprints, said energy was nowhere to be found and I ended up stopping immediately after the running portion. 

Now, we’ve all had these moments during which we don’t reach our fullest potential and feel down on ourselves as a byproduct. However, that feeling fueled my motivation in not only wanting to complete the next triathlon, but also shoot for a personal best in each test. 

My teammates on both the Founders and Constellation side saw my determination and wanted to help me reach my goals, so thank you for that. They showed their support by erging next to me, staying with me after practice to supplement the occasional ab workout, and pushing me to load more weight on the bar despite my reluctance to do so. 

In the end, our combined efforts helped me reach the personal best I sought after. 

Judging from my experiences in this community, I find that all of the students here have extremely high expectations of themselves—not just as athletes, but as intellectuals, performers, and role models. What I’ve also learned is that the people in life who have the highest expectations also tend to “fail” the most, especially when being stretched across multiple disciplines in the way we are here. 

That being said, I’ve never considered myself a failure during my time here. Instead, I think St. Andrew’s students, particularly the Class of 2024, are resilient, hardworking, and extremely capable individuals. I urge you all to keep your goals lofty and your expectations high, and to lean into each other’s support when the going gets tough. 

The loyalty we have for one another, as well as the responsibility we feel, is something I truly have never experienced anywhere else, and I want to thank my class specifically for being so willing to accept me as a new sophomore. As we embark in different communities in the fall, I find peace in knowing that over the past three years, I’ve retained little bits and pieces of all of you through our interactions and experiences—such that the person I am today is the person you all have pushed me to be. 

I will always feel close to this class because no matter where I go, I carry a piece of you all with me. And for that, there are no words to express my gratitude.

This day is a celebration of all we’ve accomplished together, and I’m truly honored to be a part of this class. Thank you. 

Thank you, Joy. 

Good morning, students, faculty, trustees, family, and friends. Let me be the latest in a long line of folks to say congratulations to the Class of 2024! 

It is truly an honor to be here with you today as you graduate. 

I have fond memories of St. Andrew’s—perhaps, not my alarm clock—but I credit much of my success to my formative years that I spent here on Noxontown Pond. 

As Google’s general counsel, I have the privilege of leading a global team of legal professionals who grapple with some of the hardest legal issues to face us as it relates to technology. That’s a fairly lofty statement, but frankly, it’s a pretty cool gig and I’m extremely lucky to have it.  

Class of 2024, you also stand at an exciting intersection in life—one filled with unknown challenges, twists, and turns that, while they may seem daunting, your time at St. Andrew’s has prepared you with everything you need to not just take on those challenges, but to do so and thrive.

So, what does a healthy dose of preparedness look like? It is a solid helping of failure mixed with an authentic embrace of change. 

Now if you’re lucky, and I truly mean this with all sincerity, you’ll have been afforded the opportunity of failure during your time here. Yes, I’m being deliberate with that word, failure. Losing a game, failing a test, letting yourself or others down, some experience in which you didn’t quite hit that mark. But here’s the beauty in that—in that failure, a door of possibility was unlocked for you. 

For me and my experience with SAS that started on, shall we say, day zero. 

Now taking a step back, if someone had said those same words to me decades ago when I sat where you are and then added the spoiler alert that I would one day deliver the Commencement speech here, I would be a little perplexed. 

And that may be because the first time I applied to St. Andrew’s, I was soundly rejected. 

When I toured St. Andrew’s in the eighth grade, I was instantly struck by the campus’s beauty, the brilliant minds of the teachers and students, and the vibrant community that makes St. Andrew’s the special place that it is. 

So while I was disappointed to have received a thoughtfully worded rejection letter, I do admit, I was slightly relieved. I was terrified to leave the cushy comforts of home. What at that time felt like a rejection I may never recover from, I now see as a pivotal moment in my life. 

After dusting off my ego, I had largely accepted the fact that St. Andrew’s would not be a part of my journey. I entered ninth grade at a different school and tried to forget about what could have been. But just as I was settling into that routine, my mother launched her campaign to reframe that rejection as a challenge to re-apply. 

Buried in the text of my rejection letter was a sentence actually encouraging me to apply again next year—something that I had overlooked, but that my mother saw as an opportunity. 

A quick aside about my mother, who is here with us today—she is tenacious and never takes “no” for an answer. At 17 years of age she left her hometown of Philadelphia to study engineering in Chicago. Now, she didn’t love engineering, and she didn’t like Chicago—sorry to the midwesterners in the house, my apologies. She did love fractions and numbers. She turned that passion into a successful career as an options trader. In fact, becoming the first Black woman options trader on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. My mother has heard the word “no” a lot in her life, and she has made a habit of not letting those moments hold her or her loved ones back.

Now fast forward to 1990, my mother made me re-read my rejection letter and asked if “no” was really the final answer. She then asked if I could see myself at St. Andrew’s, to which I replied “yes” without hesitation. 

And the rest, to embrace the cliché, is history. 

Failure is a part of life. No matter how successful or intelligent you are. We all fail, repeatedly. It is part of the human experience. It is ok to fail. Failure is, shall we say, encouraged. 

How you respond to failure ultimately dictates the kind of life that you will lead. In fact, most of the time failure teaches us more than our successes do. In moments where we have “failed” we are forced into introspection and to learn from these experiences. Now that doesn’t just happen when we’re young. I can chart some of my most impactful achievements as outcomes from some pretty spectacular fails, which I’m not going to get into here. 

Put simply though, there is a profound power and opportunity in failure. Moving through failure generates the kind of resilience and fortitude that will take you far in life. This was the very first lesson St. Andrew’s taught me, and I hadn’t even gotten here yet! 

St. Andrew’s has truly shaped me into the woman I am today. I didn’t take one day here for granted. Whether that was playing soccer, butchering the French language, geeking out about U.S. jurisprudence, sharpening my leadership skills as a prefect, or, frankly, the many nights I spent with my roommates making mix tapes and eating Top Ramen—each experience enabled me to deepen my intellectual curiosity, broaden my understanding of myself and those around me, embrace the academic, athletic, and social changes and opportunities throughout, and, most importantly, continue to seek out the same in college and beyond. 

St. Andrew’s has built you into adaptable, resilient, curious, and empathetic young adults. These qualities will take you far in life and will serve as your guiding principles through every obstacle you face. 

Almost no one takes the exact path that they had originally laid out for themselves, and it is those unexpected bumps in the road that build character, make memories, and teach us to appreciate the little moments, as I hope each of you do when you look back on your time here. 

But it’s important to remember that not only is failure a part of life, so is change. 

On her 65th birthday, poet Nikki Giovanni said, “A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you’re in and take advantage of it. You still bring to bear all your prior experiences, but you are riding on another level. It’s completely liberating.” 

Class of 2024, you stand at the precipice of a new era—and I mean this in a multitude of ways. 

Not only are you beginning a new chapter of life, but society is grappling with a variety of things that will result in its evolution—from the economy to new technology like Artificial Intelligence. 

Change and innovation can be daunting, but it has the power to lead us to new opportunities that we may have never envisioned as possible. Innovation brings new challenges and, most of the time, new responsibilities. 

Much like my graduating Class of 1993, the Class of 2024 stands at the edge of a technological revolution. 

For me and my classmates, it was the invention and proliferation of the internet. 

For you sitting here today, it’s AI. 

It is hard to imagine life before the internet, Google, and cell phones. How did we look up questions like “What time is sunrise today?” or “Who won the Celtics game last night? ” 

Some of you in the audience will recall flipping through the encyclopedia to find information for your American history paper or using, sorry folks, the Yellow Pages to find the phone number for your favorite pizza place. 

All of this is probably a foreign concept to today’s graduates who grew up in a world where information is at our fingertips and accessible in less time than it took me to read this very sentence. The world is very different from when I was a student here. 

Like many of us cannot imagine a world without the internet, there will come a day, potentially soon, where we say the same thing about AI. 

AI has almost unfathomable potential, and has already done so much good, from powering tools to help medical professionals make lifesaving diagnoses faster to helping firefighters accurately predict the pathway of wildfires. 

While AI will have a tremendously positive impact on society, its power can also be used for malintent. 

That’s where you, Class of 2024, come in. You are the next generation of leaders—researchers, educators, politicians, scientists, and artists. 

You have the distinct advantage of coming of age with this new, powerful technology and you are in the position to dutifully guide where AI and other social and technical and creative innovations will take us. 

Embrace that opportunity.

Your time here at St. Andrew’s has prepared you to be leaders in an ever-changing world and to make your place in the world authentically, with conviction and courage. 

The community, relationships, and lessons learned here will take you far in life. Your teachers and classmates challenged your frame of thinking while you learned to juggle responsibilities and discover your passions. Through each chapter in your journey you have learned how to be more inclusive, engage in civil discourse, become more curious, and lead in a way that is accepting with respect for all. 

These principles have prepared you to lead with grace and bring a set of core values into a changing world that will badly need it. 

All of this being said, trust in yourself, speak up for what is right, and bring your experiences with you and do not be afraid to fail. 

St. Andrew’s has taught you skills that you will take with you long after you leave campus for the last time—from solving complex math problems to building lifelong friendships that will extend far beyond your years on campus.

Remember, change is a constant—it brings new beginnings, experiences, and invaluable lessons. 

As you remember the opportunities that you took advantage of here on this campus and led you to this very moment, reflect about how that happened over time—through family-style meals in the Dining Hall to Chapel to cheering on friends on the field and on the stage. Cherish these moments, as they will soon be but fond memories. 

These time-honored traditions weave a golden thread across generations of St. Andrew’s alumni. It is a common bond. Remember, we all still call St. Andrew’s home long after we’ve departed these halls. I know I do. 

You are about to embark on an incredible journey. Embrace those failures and challenges, tackle them head on, and lean on your time at St. Andrew’s to guide you through your next chapter with grace, faith, and courage. 

As Nikki Giovanni said, and I wholeheartedly agree, that journey will be so very, very liberating. 

Thank you once again for having me, and one more time: Congratulations, to the Class of 2024!
 

I feel so much pride and joy to be standing up here today representing the Class of 2024. 

To all the teachers and faculty who have helped me along the way, my advisor, my friends, my family, thank you for pushing me to be the man I’ve grown into today, and most of all for believing in me. 

To my friends, thank you for teaching me how to laugh so hard that I cry, and for the memories we have made here. 

To my siblings, Liza, Will, and Jordan, thank you for making mistakes first, so I did not have to make them. I love you three. 

And finally to my mom and dad, I love you and truly cannot thank you enough for every single thing you have done for me. 

One of my favorite freshman boys, Barack Tillard ’27, comes up to me every single day with a new question. “Hey, Charlie, is my tennis forehand form correct?” “What's for lunch?” “Can you take me fishing?” He drives me insane, but I still love him. 

One day, though, he asked me a peculiar question that I pondered for a while. He asked me, “Charlie, how do I be successful at St. Andrew’s?” At first, I laughed, not really knowing how to answer, but then I realized the importance of his question. 

How do we define success at St. Andrew’s? Now, I think this may differ for many people, but I will tell you why I’ve found myself to have actually had much success at St. Andrew’s. Being here, we tend to obsess over the numbers or the letters, whether it is ACT SAT scores, quarter grades, passing or failing, As or Bs, or 12% acceptance rates. We might obsess over the numbers and letters that initially we believe define us. I’m guilty of this, as well, as I have found myself many times stressing over these numbers that I think are miniature reflections of myself. 

But when I ask myself, why did I come to St. Andrew’s, I remember it was never for the numbers or the letters. I came to St. Andrew’s to build connections, to find another home, to foster relationships between friends that would last a lifetime. I came to St. Andrew’s to figure out how to be a better man and to take steps to better myself. Numbers never contributed to this. 

I have 78 people who I love with my whole heart, an advisor who is like another father to me, teachers who I think would take a bullet for me, teammates and coaches that have pushed me towards my limits ever since my first practices here, roommates that will be best friends for life and one who will likely be my best man at my potential wedding. 

To me, this is success. I define success not by letters or numbers that are printed onto a piece of paper every two-and-a-half months, but instead by relationships I built here that will last a lifetime. 

So yes, strive to be the best you can be academically and work hard in class, but ask yourself, what does it mean to be successful at St. Andrew’s? Underclassmen, your time here will fly by, and soon enough you’ll be at your own Commencement like us. I hope you are all able to look back on your four years like I have and say success. Thank you. 
 

If you missed our Arts Weekend chapel on Sunday, you missed one of the great sermons of the year. Jeremy Day-O’Connell, Gabe’s father, offered a reflection on the connections between art and faith. Many things he said remain with me, but one seems particularly relevant this morning of Pentecost. He said—and I’m paraphrasing his elegant prose—that through both art and religion we find that there is more to the world than what we can see with our eyes.

“Your young people shall see visions, and your old folks shall dream dreams.” There is more to the world than what we can see with our eyes.

Now, it is Pentecost, and so today’s scriptures tell the story of the visitation of the Holy Spirit, coming “like the rush of a violent wind,” causing the Galileans to speak in many languages. Prior to the arrival of this wind, the Galileans all spoke their own language, which scholars today believe was Aramaic. After the spirit rushed through them, they could speak many tongues, in preparation for spreading across the land to tell the story of the resurrection, the central event of what would become the Christian faith.

Everyone present wonders what has happened. And Peter explains by quoting the prophet Joel, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young people shall see visions, and your old folks shall dream dreams.”

“Your young people shall see visions, and your old folks shall dream dreams.” There is more to the world than what we can see with our eyes.

On this day, we also read from Ezekiel about the Valley of the Dry Bones. The writer is shown a desert valley filled with skeletons, and the wind rushes in, and the bones join together, and are covered with flesh, and yet—they are still dead. But God sends the wind, and says, “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” And only then do the flesh and bones come to life, the writer says, “a vast multitude.” Spooky!

“Your young people shall see visions, and your old folks shall dream dreams.” There is more to the world than what we can see with our eyes.

You are more than flesh and bones, you are spirit: divine breath and love and wonder. Over 99 percent of your body—your flesh and bones—is made up of six elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus. But what you are made of is spirit: Love, courage, joy, curiosity, tenacity, humor.

“Your young people shall see visions, and your old folks shall dream dreams.” There is more to the world than what we can see with our eyes. What are your visions? When you are old, what will be your dreams? Summer is an incredible gift for you to reflect on these questions. What makes you feel truly alive? What animates your spirit? Is it art, as Mr. Day-O’Connell suggested? Is it faith?

What animates our school relates to our motto, “faith and learning.” And last year, we meditated frequently on a passage from Hebrews 11, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” So, as we scatter to the four winds like the apostles for the summer, like the apostles you should pay some mind to your spiritual lives. Some of you practice a formal faith with your families at home in various ways, and many do not. But every one of you has a spirit. You are all filled with breath, with life—there is more to you than what we can see with our eyes. Take time to nourish that spirit, to contemplate what you cannot see with your eyes—“the evidence of things not seen.”

As your teachers, what we cannot see about you is our entire professional concern. Because yes: you are flesh and bone. You are oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus. But there is a power within you that is not generated by a chemical reaction, and you must never forget that—your power comes from what we cannot see with our eyes—features of life that are just as important as breath, those qualities you have that arise within community and are expressed, refined, and perfected in community.

If you think of some of the ones I mentioned—love, courage, joy, curiosity, tenacity, humor—these are not aspects of your life that exist in a vacuum. They only exist in relationship and community with others. You practice and develop these through art, athletics, chapel, and dorm life. Reading, painting, competing, worshiping, performing, singing, living together is how we get better, and ultimately do better.

Our school is built for this, to practice and develop what makes you truly human. During the year, I think it’s fair to say our plates are very full. I hope this summer you will take advantage of a stretch of unscheduled time and consider those things that matter so much, but which you cannot see. Read widely and imagine other worlds. Look at great art and dream of new ways of understanding. Listen to great music and hear the wordless language of beauty. Consider what is sacred—and believe that what is sacred is around you and within you.

There is more to the world than what we can see with our eyes. “Your young people shall see visions, and your old folks shall dream dreams.”

On this day of Pentecost, of all days, let it be so.  

During an Advanced American History class her senior year at St. Andrew’s, Halimah DeLaine Prado ’93 learned about the inception of the Supreme Court, and was charged with writing a legal brief and arguing in front of her peers. The result of that exercise was a “brain on fire and hurting in a really, really good way,” Prado says. Now Google’s general counsel, Prado considers this classroom moment as the one that further hooked her on the law. “Yes, this is what I want,” she says she remembers thinking. 

We spent an afternoon sitting down with Prado, who is this year’s Commencement speaker, across the table of a Silicon Valley conference room (virtually, that is). We talked about entering St. Andrew’s as a new sophomore, her front-row experience to the first Frosty Run ever, the “North Star” of St. Andrew’s, and how she “thoughtfully and authentically” leads the legal department of a global internet giant.

What comes to mind when you think about your St. Andrew’s experience? 

It was a pretty impactful, formative experience for me. I think anytime a teenager decides to embark on boarding school, it’s a fairly big deal. You’re sort of taking that step of independence that typically folks think of happening when you enter college. 

For me, having the experience of being independent, taking charge of how I approached my academic journey, being able to live in a community in a really unique and frankly stunningly gorgeous environment, it was pretty awesome. A lot of the experiences that I had during my three years there have definitely shaped how I’ve approached new experiences, be it personal or professional.

You came to St. Andrew’s as a IV former. What was that like? 

Entering as a IV former is challenging, right? You’re coming in after a full year of your classmates having had a chance to bond.

There was a weird sense of catching up. You feel a little bit on the fringe or kind of nervous. But what I found is, that [feeling] disappeared fairly quickly. The school did a phenomenal job of embracing the IV formers, and I felt that very acutely. 

About two months into my [IV Form year], I broke my leg, which one might call a tough situation … I had to go home for a week and a half. And then I came back to school on crutches, in a wheelchair. And what struck me was how truly the entire community made space for me to operate through campus, to check in on how I was doing.

For me, that IV Form year was this wonderful sort of ‘aha’ moment, that ‘Oh, right, this place is special. This place is a community.’

Do you have any other experiences that you feel particularly connected to from your time at St. Andrew’s? 

This is super silly, but the year that I was there was the first year of the Frosty Run. T-shirts were made and it was this massive event to watch the school … have an experience completely rooted in fun, but [everyone was] all in. There was a purity in that. There was a wonderful sense of excitement in that which I always loved.

In terms of individual experiences … My senior year, [former English teacher and Associate Head of School Will] Speers had suggested, ‘What would a perfect English class look like for you?’ I said, ‘I want to read a book once a week and then talk to somebody about it.’ He said, ‘Okay.’ And then he set that up for me. I sat in his office, he would give me a book. My goal was to read it, come up with an essay, and produce it. We would sit and have that conversation. That was my English class for half of senior year. What was amazing about that is that anything was possible, you just merely had to ask.

How did you begin developing as a leader at St. Andrew’s?

I think probably the most important thing [I experienced] is the comfort of trying new things and the comfort to fail and not have it work out and keep it moving. That’s been pivotal. 

I applied to St. Andrew’s for my freshman year and I didn’t get in. They encouraged me to apply next year. And even my entry into St. Andrew’s as a 10th grader was a pivotal experience for me because it taught me to go after what I want, even if I don’t get it in the first instance. 

If you are leading now, there is no example of being a leader who is always batting a thousand. It doesn’t exist. And so being able to lead others, to make decisions that embrace a growth mindset with failure and development is critical. I can very much attribute that mindset to my earlier days at school.

As Google’s general counsel, what is it like to work on cases that have such a large impact on the ways that we navigate emerging technologies? 

It’s a huge responsibility at the outset, leading a very large global legal team that’s helping Google launch its products and keeping them running responsibly. I don’t take that lightly. It’s humbling, to be honest, and I look at each day as a privilege, but one in which it’s important to authentically and thoughtfully lead, take the responsibility seriously, be very open and honest about that, and guide the folks on my team to do the same. 

What advice do you have for St. Andrew’s graduates, who are leaving a mostly “phone-free” environment for a world where technology may play a greater and greater role in their life? 

You’re going to have a North Star: the principles behind St. Andrew’s and the notion of faith and learning and how you show up to the community. Those principles remain true even when you walk out of Middletown and go into whatever next chapter of your world, whether that’s with a phone in hand, a computer with AI, or what have you. Really staying true to those principles of stewardship, curiosity, challenge, opportunity, and applying that into your every day. Don’t lose sight of that. That helps you step forth into something that is new or different with a bit more intention and a bit more openness.

What was your reaction to being invited to speak at Commencement, and how are you feeling as time ticks down to the big day? 

I was excited, hugely excited, and then I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m that old that I can be asked to come back to speak.’ Part of that is because [my time at St. Andrew’s] doesn’t feel like that long ago. There is something very perpetual as it relates to the St. Andrew’s experience. 

Frankly, I am humbled and honored that [Head of School] Joy [McGrath ’92] thinks that something I could say might be of interest to these phenomenal young adults who are about to embark on this next chapter of their career. So I’m thrilled, really.
 

I am so grateful to Richard for his remarks and to all the parent trustees and volunteers who are here today. Thank you, Richard. And parents, thank you for all of your support of the school. It is incredibly meaningful to all of us here that our parent body is so engaged and positive. We are so lucky to have you.

Welcome, everyone! Welcome back! It is good to be together at Arts Weekend as we start to feel the culmination of the year.

What a beautiful year it has been—your children should be very proud of themselves for all they have accomplished—and you of them!

The faculty have been absolutely amazing, and I am so grateful to them. Their dedication to the students and the school is unmatched by any group of adults at any school, anywhere. Their teaching, their coaching, their advising and parenting of your children—they have just been exemplary. I especially have to thank our magnificent Arts Department faculty, who have worked with your children throughout the year and brought out their very best in the works and performances we are going to see this weekend. I cannot thank them enough.

And welcome to this beautiful campus, which looks just fantastic thanks to our staff members, and we are so fortunate to be able to gather here this weekend in this setting.

I am looking forward to celebrating the seniors, the class of 2024, at commencement in two weeks—I am so grateful to them for their leadership. Recently, as you know, the seniors decided to have a phone-free weekend and they collected 100 percent of the students’ phones. It was an incredible weekend and on Sunday afternoon, everyone was looking so refreshed and happy and relaxed that I decided to call a free day for the following day. When I announced that we would continue to keep the phones, that decision received the biggest cheer of all.

St. Andrew’s is out of step.

Holly Whyte, Class of 1936, said this at the school’s 50^th anniversary and it’s still true today. We are out of step. People visit the campus and always say, “Something is different here.”

And when you are out of step, how do you feel about that? You can experience negative emotions like fear, despair, and anxiety, and let those emotions shape your life and experience. Is everyone looking at me? Should I just join the crowd? The weight of that can be very real, and yet I see our students responding with fearlessness and hope.

I see that fearlessness everywhere this Arts Weekend.

Getting on stage—or for that matter on a boat, court, or field—to perform is terrifying. Putting yourself out there, knowing you are not perfect, is enough to strike fear into anyone’s heart. I don’t care how experienced you are, getting up in front of the school and hundreds of parents is nerve-racking. And in many cases, we see students learning new instruments or taking up new practices entirely, such as dance, or painting, or crew.

Let’s pause for a moment and just say: this is incredibly brave! In fact, it’s no wonder that when we are profoundly stirred by a performance, we shout “bravo!” Literally: brave!

In some respect, this is what the arts are about as part of a liberal education: banishing fear. Knowing that we are not—and never will be—perfect means that we must never fear failure but rather live in the belief that our greatest fear should be of not trying at all.

But like everything else we wish to do well, we must practice fearlessness:

We fear that the world might come apart into tiny bits and so we bring people together.

We fear a breakdown in trust will paralyze humanity in the face of grave challenges, and so we believe in each other.

We fear the destruction of which human beings are capable and so we create.

We fear suffering, which we see everywhere around us, and so our art expresses love and brings joy.

When we talk about “resilience,” this is what we mean. Because when we face a world beset by serious challenges it is too easy to give in and sit on the sideline. The world is, sadly, full of cowards—and in one of the great ironies of our time, many of them are quite powerful, having an “audience,” a “platform,” and commanding the great currency of this era, “eyeballs.” We can retreat into our devices and feel that we are taking a stand, all the while lurking behind anonymity, chaos, and thoughtlessness.

Authenticity and integrity are part and parcel of the arts, and all elements of a St. Andrew’s education, and doing hard things that are not “virtual” and “remote” takes guts. But when we stand up in space and time, in real life, with our bodies, minds, and spirits, and respond fearlessly—yes, we may look out of step, and yes, we may be uncomfortable—but we definitely will inspire others, who might also banish their fear in service to something larger than ourselves.

And the upside? In doing this, we are never alone, we have not retreated into our pods and echo chambers. No, our artists have drawn on this community, worked together, reached out, communicated, asked questions, and spoken. They have found their voices. As artists they command, and touch, an audience. They make us look—really look—and challenge our assumptions and, quite literally, our perspectives. They ask of us, “Really? Are you sure?”

We know a liberal education that features the arts makes our worlds larger and develops our empathy, our openness to new perspectives, and our understanding of the world, other people, and perhaps even the sublime. But I think we underestimate how brave our children have to be to make the most of that education, to practice those skills, and step onto their stages and into their galleries and venues, not knowing how their audience will respond.

So, thank you for being here this weekend: supporters, critics, and cheerleaders—the all-important audience—that gives their performance a meaningful place to land. Let us honor their fearlessness with our awe at their gutsy accomplishments, and our joy in the fires they have lit, the windows and doors they have flung open, in their practice and performance.

May they go forth and do this in the world, using their voices, inspiring others, fearlessly out of step.

Good afternoon.

Did you know that studies show that 47% of you will be daydreaming at some point? Wait. Actually, I decided not to use that as my opening line.

It’s hard to remember that this day will never come again. No, no. Wait, wait, wait. That one’s not right, either.

I remember when I was a student at St. Andrew’s and sitting in the Chapel, sometimes I would pass the time counting … wait.

None of these lines are the opening lines for my talk with you today, and I didn’t actually write any of them. They were all manufactured by a large language model, AI for shorthand, based on the simple instructions to, “Write an opening line for a talk that would grab your attention.” It’s still in its early days, but it works well enough. GPT has trained itself by scrolling pretty much all the texts that have ever been written, and it knows good speeches.

AI outputs often start with a startling fact, an intriguing question, or a relatable anecdote, but there is a massive difference between the texts that a really smart computer regurgitates and the words that flow as the product of your own thoughts and your own experiences. 

Here’s what AI will tell you if you ask AI the question: I don’t have emotions. I don’t have subjective experiences. I don’t have personal preferences, and I shape my responses depending on my instructions. In other words, this incredible innovation expertly tells us what we want to hear. 

Post St. Andrew’s, many, or probably most of you, will spend half of your waking and work hours looking into a screen of some sort, and behind that screen is a really savvy software algorithm. It learns as it watches you and it curates what you see. It creates your lens onto the world, and that feels like reality.

But the world that is presented to you on that little screen or big screen is built on biases, and those are the biases that are evident in your past viewing habits. The results that you see are based on your search history and the people you meet. The stories you hear and the opinions that you encounter in this highly curated world will invariably confirm the beliefs and experiences that you already have. If you don’t actively fight it, you will fall into a world of rigid beliefs and shrinking perspectives. This software wants to map you, and to graph you, and to stereotype you based on your gender or your ethnicity or your age or your demographic profile, or your most recent experiences, or some other crude and limiting characteristic that it discovers about you. 

When I was young, I used to read a lot of science fiction, and one of the genres that fascinated me was the dystopian future when the machines conquered the humans. The reality that we are seeing develop today is only a little different. The machines are actually becoming part of us, like we’ve added a new alien organ to control our five senses. So here’s the punchline of my advice to each of you today. It’s just one word, sort of like the advice that Dustin Hoffman received in the movie The Graduate, which was also one word. It was a great movie. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. My word is “plasticity.” (Spoiler alert: In The Graduate, the word was “plastic.”) Neuroscientists now understand that your brain has the capacity to adapt and change over the course of an entire lifetime. It’s called “neuroplasticity.” Every new experience that you have is forming new neural pathways and pruning away old ones. Every time you meet a new friend or develop a new skill or go to an unfamiliar place, you are enhancing your cognitive function and fueling your potential for adaptation.

Every action that you take, that defies routine, that challenges stereotypes, that questions what you thought you knew, is making you more alive and less susceptible to the boring predictability of machine programming. My experiences as a student at St. Andrew’s were hugely impactful in helping me to learn to be plastic and not rigid. I remember my first night at sit-down dinner at Mr. Ryan’s table when he said out loud, “I see that your brother’s baby blue blazer has matriculated back at St. Andrew’s, along with you.” Of course, I was hugely embarrassed to be outed for wearing hand-me-down clothes in front of the other students, but that wasn’t the end of my relationship with Mr. Ryan. I later discovered he was just a lovable curmudgeon. I won the French Prize at graduation and I learned to be slow at taking offense. Sandy Ogilby, who was my advisor, JV baseball coach, and the assistant chaplain, convinced me to join the choir.

In spite of the fact, or maybe because of the fact I couldn’t sing, I think he might have also been a little tired of seeing the marks that I got for accidentally forgetting about Chapel. That’s a different story. I loved stretching my tiny music muscle back then, and sadly, it is still a very tiny muscle, but I learned to enjoy the process of trying things I wasn’t good at. Bob Stegeman constantly goaded me to take dissenting views in his history classes and his eyes grew huge and elated when I expressed an opinion that contrasted with my classmates. I learned that the best arguments are informed by seeing the other side. 

I had the very good fortune as a child to grow up living around the world since my father was a diplomat. Perhaps being exposed to all of these different cultures and having classmates every couple of years helped me to develop my plasticity. But I also believe firmly that this personal trait will be developed in my own life. I continue to try to learn new things and strive to change my habits. I took up yoga this winter. I actually own a yoga mat. I just funded the creation of a new venture capital business in Africa after spending an entire career focused exclusively on investing in America. After many years of feeling very confident in my political opinions, I’ve become active with organizations working to promote nonpartisan election reforms.

Every week, I spend several hours of what I call “stretch time.” It’s like the stretching you do for your muscles before an athletic activity, except it’s for your brain. Sometimes I read poetry or sometimes I read a dense and esoteric journal on something like neurology, which is very unfamiliar to me. Sometimes I will attend a random event where I know nobody. 

Each of you has a unique opportunity here at St. Andrew’s to build your plasticity, to take new risks, and expose yourself to new things just for the experience. You have an incredible faculty here, and they are here to help you with your stretch time. If you’re a three-sport athlete, sign up for a play or take a dance class. If you think your artistic team completely defines you, sign up for a road race. Do the Polar Bear Plunge. When you have a chance to have lunch with someone you don’t know, just take the seat next to them. If you have really strong opinions about something, seek out and talk to someone who thinks differently. Get outside and away from the autopilot of your screens as much as you possibly can. Go explore this incredible 2,200-acre campus, inhale life, and let your senses wander. During one of my recent stretch times, I read a bunch of poems by Wendell Berry. He describes the therapy you get from nature as the “peace of wild things.” I like how that phrase captures the gift we all have to experience a life.

I’m going to close now by telling you that I had no idea when I wrote this Chapel Talk that it would occur during your phone-free weekend, but it certainly is a happy coincidence. 

It’s been a joy to speak with all of you.

This year, Latin- and French-language students put their knowledge to the test in two national competitions, the National Latin Exam and Le Grand Concours. 

The National Latin Exam, an annual exam that all Latin students at St. Andrew’s take but don’t specifically study or prepare for, provides a chance for students to demonstrate their vocabulary, their understanding of how the Latin language works, and their critical reading skills. 

“The process of learning Latin or ancient Greek can feel solitary or unremarkable,” says Classics Department Chair Dr. Phil Walsh. “But when our students are presented with texts or questions that they have never considered and when many find success, they are reminded of how far they have come, how much they have learned.”

Le Grand Concours, a 75-minute optional exam for French-language students, evaluates participants’ written, oral, and listening comprehension skills in French. 

“Taking the Grand Concours shows them how they can use their skills beyond the classroom and in real life situations,” says French teacher Dr. Pam Pears. “I hope it inspires them to continue to take French, to study abroad, and to use their French in all the ways they can.”

The following St. Andrew’s students were recognized for their performance on these exams: 

The National Latin Exam 

Cum Laude 

• Joe Baker ’24
• Ethan Kim ’25 
• Oscar Ji ’24 
• Madeleine Lasell ’25

Magna Cum Laude

• Margaret Adle ’27 
• Sam Kwon ’26 
• Coco Holden ’27 
• Kayden Murrell ’26  
• Ben Auchincloss ’26 
• Julissa Hernandez ’25 
• Josephine Xie ’27

Maxima Cum Laude

• Sol Bean Lee ’26 
• Josie Denny ’26 
• Mac Gooder ’24 
• Elyot Segger ’24 
• Peter Bird ’25 
• Sofia Golab ’25

Summa Cum Laude

• Ian McDonnell ’26
• Alice Fitts ’27
• Erik Liu ’25

Le Grand Concours

Level 1A (9,445 total participants)

• Steele Malkin ’27: 18th nationally, 1st in the Delaware chapter, mention honorable
• Jessica Tian ’27: 21st nationally, 2nd in the chapter, mention honorable

Level 4A test (4,334 total participants)

• Sades Green ’26: 29th nationally, 8th in the chapter
• Sophie Parlin ’26: 24th nationally, 6th in the chapter 
• Finn Waterston ’25: 20th nationally, 4th in the chapter, mention honorable
• Angela Osaigbovo ’24: 14th nationally, 3rd in the chapter, Lauréat National: Médaille d’argent
• Eleni Murphy ’25: 9th nationally, 1st in the chapter, Lauréat National: Médaille d’or

Level 5C test (112 total participants)

• Saskia Hood ’25: 12th nationally, 2nd in the chapter
• Vincent von der Forst ’25: 11th nationally, 1st in the chapter
   

Like many budding engineers, Legos and Transformers were the building blocks of a growing passion for STEM within Yiru Wang ’25. The origin, however, of Wang’s engineering project that took him to two regional science fairs wasn’t found within these bins of legos, but on the Sipprelle Field House basketball courts.

Wang has been a presence in the St. Andrew’s basketball program since their III Form year, leading the varsity Constellation basketball team in three-pointers and remaining among the top scorers on the team each year. 

“I’m a basketball player myself, a student-athlete, and I’ve witnessed my teammates and myself and my coaches getting knee injuries really often,” says Wang. “And also my parents, as they get older, they are having trouble getting around, moving around, and being able to exercise their knees every single day.”

He watched as the people in his life utilized different types of knee braces to rehabilitate from their injuries, devices he classifies into two types: a cloth brace, “which is focused more on decreasing swelling in your knee and limiting blood flow,” and a “heavier, bulkier metal brace,” which he says “is mostly targeted on immobilization after surgeries to limit any kind of movement in your leg and knee.” 

Wang began to notice what he felt was a gap in these devices: What about a flexible, assistive rehabilitation device that helps an injured person facilitate gradual movements? 

Wang started to breathe life into their idea by talking to their St. Andrew’s community about it toward the end of their IV Form year. They discussed their concept with their friends on the crew team, their basketball coach, the athletic trainers, science faculty, and anyone else at St. Andrew’s with an ear to listen. 

“What definitely was the most helpful for me was their motivation and also their acknowledgement of how useful a device like this could be if I did carry out the research and manufacturing of this device,” says Wang. 

Emboldened by the community’s encouragement, Wang combed through research on pre-existing devices and materials. The summer after his IV Form year, he crafted his “pneumatic knee exoskeleton,” which consists of three sections of “airbag structures” which inflate and deflate to help the user bend and extend their knee. 

“I worked for around a month over the summer, and I worked really hard,” says Wang. “It was 10 hours per day, so that was a lot of work for me. But I really enjoyed the process. It was just a very independent research process.”

Wang learned by doing. They explored different two-dimensional and three-dimensional design software, and they learned how to sew to develop “a breathable outside layer” for the device. 

“I was able to gain so much knowledge about the medical and orthopedic rehabilitation field in general and also just learn random skills that I know will be helpful for me in the future, too,” says Wang. 

Upon his return home to China for Winter Break, Wang spent all his free time fine-tuning his project for the upcoming New Castle County Science Fair, in which he would be competing in the engineering category. 

As the science fair approached, Wang had to overcome a logistical hurdle, one that only a student attending boarding school would likely confront: How do you showcase a project that was developed on the other side of the globe? 

Wang calls the lead-up to the science fair a “chaotic“ time, as their disassembled project was shipped to St. Andrew’s from China, and they had to reassemble it on top of classwork, homework, afternoon activities, and all of the other responsibilities that come along with the St. Andrew’s experience. 

“It was really hard for me to find the time to put everything together and organize everything before the science fair,” says Wang. “I did have to stay up really late and wake up really early. It was a little bit hectic for me, but it was a really rewarding experience, finally seeing everything.”

Wang also credits his St. Andrew’s community with helping him with the little things as he prepped for the science fair, like running around campus trying to print all the materials for his poster. 

“I couldn’t have done anything without [the faculty who helped me],” says Wang. “Even though it’s an independent project, at the end of the day, it’s all those small things that other people around me helped me with that were really meaningful.”

In late March, Wang traveled to the Staton Campus of the Delaware Technical Community College for the fair, meeting other students from across the region and receiving helpful feedback from the judges. 

“It’s more than just a competition … but more of a socializing event and just being able to form those connections with like-minded people that are genuinely interested in STEM,” says Wang. 

Wang placed first in the engineering category, won the Agilent Special Award for Most Likely to Improve the Human Condition, and the FUJIFILM Special Award for Best in Show, advancing to the April 2-4 Delaware Valley Science Fairs. 

At this fair, Wang won the Office of Naval Research Naval Science Award and the West Pharmaceutical Services Engineering Award. Though this is the final fair that Wang will compete in this year, he says that this is not the end of the road for his research. 

“I still want to learn more about this area from different angles,” says Wang. “For example, maybe the biomedical angle to learn more about what can be done on the nanotechnology or micro-level. And then also more on the medicine, health side of things, like the anatomy of the knee. Knowledge in different areas can definitely help me create a more in-depth research project on top of what I already have. This is something that is going to be an ongoing process for me.”