Summer 2024
This issue of CA’s magazine places love of learning and common trust front and center. As you’ll see from these stories, Concord Academy is a laboratory for collaborative teachers, a launchpad for students curious about the world, and a home for alums who lead from their hearts.
Inspired by a student, Anghelo Chavira Barrera ’24, a new interdisciplinary bilingual class about the history of Mexico at CA is collaborative in every respect. Department X faculty endowment support allowed Spanish teacher Carmen Welton and history teacher Jeffrey Richey to create the course. Partnering from different pedagogical backgrounds involved learning with and in front of their class, and on a trip they led during spring break, students indeed encountered many Mexicos.
Students in the Tour Guide U.S. public history course created educational displays supporting the Concord Museum’s What Makes History? special exhibition, on view through August 18. Engaging with the objects on display, from textiles to timepieces, they investigated why they had been saved for posterity, helping visitors see history itself as a process.
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The sixth feature film from CA Films, a surrealist comedy called The Prototypical, Existentialist, “Mid” Life of Cassie Crowe, screened at Concord Academy in May. Students in the yearlong course The Feature Film Project studied acting for the camera, developed characters, and collectively conceptualized and filmed the story, and the Cutting the Feature class helped edit the film. This labor of love is now making the rounds for film festival consideration.
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Will Tucker, head of CA’s Science Department, aims to demystify science education and make chemistry accessible to learners of all backgrounds. To that end, he has written two open-access textbooks focusing on general and organic chemistry, to be published this summer by Taylor & Francis. He has also prioritized sustainability in their content as well as their distribution format.
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CA’s 2024 composer-in-residence, Láura Macias, composed a three-movement piece for the Chameleon Chamber Players this spring. The stark landscape and scuttling animals of the Sonoran desert inspired Macias to write Paisajes del Desierto, which challenged student musicians with extended techniques, changing meters, and unexpected harmonies.
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Recently appointed Philadelphia’s first chief public safety director, Adam Geer ’99 now faces the challenge of restoring public confidence in local law enforcement. It’s a charge he’s undertaking guided by values he embraced as a CA student.
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A consummate storyteller, 2024 Hall Fellow Caitlin FitzGerald ’02 captivated the campus community this spring. Reflecting on her career as an actor and filmmaker, she shared her emotional journey to becoming, as she said, “the gatekeeper of my [own] artistry.”
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Richard Read ’75 is the first journalist to receive CA’s annual Joan Shaw Herman Award for Distinguished Service. During his 40-year newspaper career, he reported from all seven continents and more than 60 countries and won two Pulizer Prizes, journalism’s highest honor.
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Dex Blumenthal ’15 and his sister, Connie Blumenthal ’11 spearheaded a 2023–24 year-end challenge that galvanized the CA community to support both the Annual Fund and the Centennial Campaign. Their gift spurred participation that far exceeded the goal, supporting CA today and into the future.
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