A Third Finalist is Announced

On Saturday, Deerfield announced that Margarita Curtis, Dean of Studies at Andover, is under consideration to become Deerfield's next head of school. She was scheduled to arrive on campus this evening with her husband and will be at Deerfield until Tuesday morning. Here is what I have been able to learn from the Andover website:

Margarita Curtis, a native of Cali, Colombia, immigrated to the United States to attend high school. As a student at Tulane University majoring in French, she spent her junior year at the Sorbonne in Paris. She received a B.A. degree from Tulane, a B.S. degree from Mankato State University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. Her award-winning dissertation on Benito Perez Galdos was published in Spain in 1996. Curtis was awarded the Certificate of Distinction in Teaching for four consecutive years by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, where she taught before coming to Andover.

Curtis joined PA’s Spanish faculty in 1986 and was named head of the Division of World Languages in 1997. In 2004 she was selected to be dean of studies and a member of the eight person Dean's Council at Andover.

Candidates for Headmaster

To the Great Class of 1969:

I received word today that the Academy has announced two candidates to succeed Eric Widmer as Headmaster. A third candidate is under consideration as well, but has not been announced. Please see below a description of each of the candidates which I excerpted from Peterson's Online Guide to Private Schools.

Drew Casertano was appointed Headmaster of Millbrook in 1990. He is a graduate of the Choate School and Amherst College and holds an Ed.M. from Harvard University. Prior to his appointment at Millbrook, Mr. Casertano served as a teacher, a coach, a dorm parent, and the Director of Admissions and Financial Aid over the course of his ten-year tenure at the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. (See Millbrook School.)

Fountain Valley's sixth headmaster, John E. Creeden, assumed the leadership of the School in 1995. He graduated from Holy Cross College and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin (doctorate in educational administration). Prior to his appointment as Headmaster, he held several teaching and administrative positions at Phillips Andover; the University of Sussex, England; the University of Wisconsin; and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where he served most recently as Associate Provost for Faculty Personnel and Planning. He serves as president of the Association of Colorado Independent Schools (ACIS). (See Fountain Valley School of Colorado.)

October Musings

To the Great Class of 1969:

I just returned from a rain-drenched weekend at Deerfield where I had gone for a series of meetings on Volunteerism and the financial state of the school. This is the sixth of such annual get-togethers and the second that I have attended. On account of the standout performance of the Class last year, I was strategically seated for dinner on Friday next to John Knight, the Director of Annual Support, who had asked me in advance to speak to the other class representatives on the topic of communications. While we did not achieve the exemplary status of the legendary classes of 1961 (112 donors), 1964 (94 donors) or 1966 (70 donors), we clearly are on the path to redemption. Thank you for your support this past year, which I am counting on you now more than ever to renew since I have agreed to serve on the Steering Committee for Annual Support.

The deluge on Saturday forced cancellation of most - but not enough in retrospect - of the day's scheduled contests. As I drove down Albany Road on my way home, the bus carrying the Hotchkiss football team ominously arrived. This year's game represented a reversal of fortune from last year's shut out win, and Hotchkiss swam back to Lakeville the victor, 21-0. For an account of the game, see Deerfield Athletics. For more pictures of the athletic fields, go to Ten Inches of Rain in One Day.

Today I took my son Nick to the Audio Engineering Society's annual show at the Javits Convention Center in NYC, courtesy of Tee Johnson, who demonstrated for us the professional quality microphones he is producing in Buenos Aires at a booth for his company T.H.E. Audio. In addition to exhibition booths for over 1,000 companies, there also were seminars for the true believers on such arcane topics as "The Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers", "Delta-Sigma Converters" and "Planar Magnetics". Tee will explain all of that and more at the next reunion.

Over and out.

Beach Heading for the Beach

After 16 years as artistic director of The Performing Arts Center in Purchase, New York, Christopher Beach has accepted the position of President and Artistic Director of the La Jolla Music Society. Since 1989, Christopher guided The Center through 16 years of uninterrupted growth. He grew the budget during that time from $1.2 million to $5.2 million, and expanded The Center’s Season from 21 performances in 1989 to over 120 in the 2005 season. Under his leadership, The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College has grown from a local venue for primarily classical music to the largest professional performing arts series in the SUNY system.

The La Jolla Music Society is one of the West Coast’s leading presenters of world-class performing arts and is heir to a distinguished tradition reaching back to the Musical Arts Society of La Jolla founded in 1941 by Nikolai Sokoloff, the former conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Christopher has wisely decided to leave New York just before winter sets in. To view the news of his appointment, see the article in The San Diego Union-Tribune.