Meet a Saint

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.”
 

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.”
 

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.” 
 

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. 

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. 
 

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.”
 

Amanda Meng ’25 is not afraid to send a cold email. It was one she sent to a researcher that landed her a summer internship working in Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Center for Nanomedicine. 

“You don’t know what life will give you,” she says. “Sometimes [someone will] say, ‘Yeah, of course, come in.’”

She worked under scientists researching Acriflavine—a drug that is used to control Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), a cause of blindness and vision impairment in older adults—and how loading the drug into microparticles (MPs) may allow for sustained release of the drug. 

Hours spent in the lab with the researchers sparked questions for Meng about how to improve the efficacy of the microparticles, and those questions informed what would become an award-winning science project at two local science fairs. 

Though she knows that her project, titled “Effect of triethylamine (TEA), homogenization speed, and extended release of acriflavine poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microparticles,” is a mouthful and might elicit a few head-scratches, she says that the project is simple in concept. 

“I had a really good relationship with the project director and I learned a lot about the techniques and the procedure, how they did stuff,” says Meng. “And then one day I was like, ‘Wait, I think we could do better than this. I think we could take this a step further,’ because they were really limited in the drug loading, which means how much drug the particle contains. And I read up on previous literature and asked around the different researchers, and [the research says that] basically adding this substance called triethylamine is able to allow for the [microparticles] to be bigger and contain more of the drug inside.”

Additionally, she considered how homogenization speed in the preparation of the microparticles may affect the size and drug loading of the microparticles. 

Meng collected data on how adjustments in homogenization speed and the addition of TEA may affect the Acriflavine microparticles in her time at the lab. Months later in her St. Andrew’s dorm, she analyzed the data, wrote her research paper, and constructed her trifold poster for the science fair. 

“MP size is found to increase with TEA amount increase,” writes Meng in her research paper. “[However,] MP size and drug loading decreases with an increase in homogenization speed.”

At the New Castle County Science Fair, she says the judges were curious about her project and asked her questions that challenged her. She remembers a particular conversation with one of the judges that touched on a niche interest in science she wishes to pursue. 

“[The judge] majored in chemistry and philosophy, and we had a great conversation about how those different disciplines interact,” Meng says. “That’s what I’m looking to study—biology, philosophy, and chemistry.”

At this fair, she won second place in the Biochemistry Category, and at the following Delaware Valley Science Fair, she received an Honorable Mention in the Biochemistry Category and the Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association - Greater Philadelphia Song Li Award.

Aside from the research team she worked with over the summer, Meng extends huge thanks to her St. Andrew’s community and, particularly, biology teacher Adam Toltin-Bitzer, for the hours they spent together in the Mein Common Room and Dining Hall discussing the project. 

“The mountain of love and effort that he gives this community is awesome,” says Meng. 

Ever since her III Form year, Meng has been eager to dive head-first into research. The Curiosity Quest, an ecology project she remembers from that year, ignited her desire for hands-on experimentation. 

“You could pick your own field of study or a question to pursue that has any interest in the environment,” she says. “How do animals interact with the environment? How do plants interact with the environment? I did my study on plants, leaves, and how the cells duplicate … That really got me excited about doing research. I love problem solving.”

Meng says a genuine love of learning, a love that is not just confined to the science laboratories but to all the different disciplines she studies at St. Andrew’s and beyond, motivates her to get her hands dirty with research and learning outside of the classroom. 

“I really, really enjoy the process of getting to learn about something new, getting to just dive into an area I know nothing about and try to piece things together myself,” says Meng. “I’ve had very long conversations with a lot of teachers about how education is not only an end, but it’s also a means to an end. You’re not just learning for the grade, you’re learning for the content. You’re learning for your curiosity. And that’s something that has brought so much meaning to the work I do.”