Transitions 2018

May 31, 2018

Dear Cate Families,

It’s strange how in a year where at times we felt frozen in time we find ourselves suddenly with so little time left before the end of school. Life can be a blur, especially in hindsight. And in truth, we are preparing for a good deal more than simply the coming Commencement Exercises. Next year is very much on our mind as well, and we have been preparing actively for 2018/19. You have seen evidence of that already in our missives about our new schedule. Today I write in reference to the human transitions we acknowledge, not simply for the members of our senior class but for several faculty members as well.

As some of you may already be aware, Emilie Griffin will conclude her 33rd year on the Mesa in June, having served this community in virtually every imaginable capacity: teacher, advisor, college counselor, admission officer, and most recently as Director of Financial Aid. Though Emilie prefers we make relatively little of her coming retirement, we plan to honor her at Camp Cate in June, where Emilie will be surrounded by the alumni whose lives she so dramatically enriched.

Don Barry will also conclude his year of teaching on the Mesa, and he and his wife, Roxy, will head back to their home in Minnesota. Don came to us after a career teaching mathematics at Andover and we cannot imagine a better capstone experience than finishing things off on the Mesa.

Although he will only be away for a sabbatical year, Jamie Kellogg will also be taking a big step in June. He and his family will leave for Edinburgh, Scotland where Jamie will be continuing his educational odyssey as he and his wife, Susannah Porter, a professor of paleontology at UCSB, contribute together to a paper they will be researching and writing.

Also leaving us are Jose and Mari Powell, who will be returning to the east coast to work at Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts. Jose will continue to focus on Equity and Inclusion while Mari expands the scope of work in Brooks’ College Counseling Office. Though we will miss the Powells greatly, we are pleased to announce that our own Stephanie Yeung will step in to the role of Director of Inclusion, with a focus on program, school culture, and mission. Stephanie will lead a small team of faculty including Oscar Urizar, Rebekah Barry, Kyle Mason, and John Knecht whose commitment will surely advance our efforts to be supportive of and responsive to the many voices and perspectives that distinguish and enrich our community.

Colin Donovan, who has been the Director of the Cate Fund for the last six years is stepping down to pursue his Masters in Divinity. Colin will remain on campus and will play a role in the life of the school: running Schoolhouse dormitory, likely coaching and perhaps in other areas while he pursues his degree.

Wendy McFarland, who has been teaching in our Human Development Department and working as a School Counselor will continue in her counseling role but will step back from the classroom work. And Angela Herrera, one of our nurses in the Health Center will be retiring.

In response to these transitions, we have been doing some hiring. In Admissions, we have hired Vanessa Cruz Santana ‘06 to become our Director of Financial Aid. A graduate of Cate and Hamilton College, Vanessa spent several years as a member of our Admission team before heading to New York, where she is currently Director of Admission at the Rudolf Steiner School. She returns with her fiancé, Julio Monterroso, to whom Vanessa will be married on campus next summer.

Also joining our Admission team as an Assistant Director is Faimie Kingsley. Faimie is a graduate of Hotchkiss School and the University of Denver, where she was a star player on their Division I Volleyball team. Faimie actually played professional volleyball in Poland – just ask her about that experience if you want to hear some good stories – before returning to her home in New York to serve as an Assistant Coach of the Columbia University Women’s Volleyball team. Though Faimie will focus on Admission work at Cate, she will also play a role in our athletic program as a coach and in Schoolhouse, where she will live.

Tobin White, a mathematician and current professor at the University of California Davis, will join our math department, both as an instructor and as an expert on computational thinking. Our hope is that Tobin, who has done extensive work with teacher training in higher education and significant research on the benefits of cross-curricular opportunities for instruction will help us to build opportunities for collaboration, coding, and other forms of mathematical problem solving both in the mathematics department and elsewhere. Having grown up at Hebron Academy, a boarding school in the northeast, and studied at Bates College, Virginia Polytechnic, and Stanford University, Tobin seems uniquely positioned to support our efforts at Cate.

John McFarlane, father to Ian ’18 and Dylan ’20, has also agreed to join the faculty to work specifically with our computer scientists. The founder of Sonos and a former academic himself, John has been working with Jamie Kellogg throughout the Spring to build familiarity with our current offering in computer science so that he might build off of that foundation next fall. John will also be partnering with Tobin White, Chair of the Math Department Annalee Salcedo and others to advance computational thinking initiatives in other disciplines as well.

Finally, Katie Convoy will be stepping in to lead our Cate Fund. Katie comes to us from the Buckley School in Los Angeles, where she has led the Annual Fund. A skilled fundraiser and enthusiastic friend-raiser, Katie seems especially well-suited to the work ahead at Cate as we seek to build on Colin’s success in that critical office of the school.

I hope you will join me in celebrating the Cate tenures that come to a close this year and welcome those new to the Mesa or new to their responsibilities in the coming year. That is one of the great things about schools, that the people within them are constantly renewed as the never-ending learning and growing process continues.

Servons,

Ben