“Nottage and Clark talking movie business. Nelse had just finished a day of movie location scouting, his current gig; and Sean heads back to The Bahamas at the end of the month to start filming a TV series in which he has a principal role.”
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Monday, August 15, 2022
Happenstance
Great picture from a chance meeting this weekend: Whit Sheppard and Chris Flagg on Martha's Vineyard!
Wednesday, August 3, 2022
DA1983 virtual Golf Tournament is LIVE
Knight isn't sure if he has to invite players to join the tournament or if they can join on their own - but if you're game - play a round between Thursday 8/4 and Sunday 8/7 and post the score to the 18Birdies tournament he set up:
Tournament: DA1983
Codes: Tournament Code 1425 / Gallery Code 5031
Full Handicap - 18 holes
If you are tech savvy enough to join the tourney, that's already a win. If not, Knight will certainly claim victory as the only participant.
Good Luck!
Here's a screen shot of the page to enter the tournament code...
Monday, August 1, 2022
What a Day...
Great to see Chris Day back on Facebook...and now on the blog!
With Cormorants near his home in Florida...
Monday, July 25, 2022
Travelling?
Congratulations to Rob McGill for getting out of the house and hitting Paris!
and to Jon Bernstein - Congratulations on your 25 years working for American Airlines! Lord knows you've travelled far and wide!
Oh, and Knight went to Tahiti from Australia, so here's a gratuitous "winter in Tahiti" shot:
Saturday, July 2, 2022
Fortune of War
Sydney Australia's oldest pub, Fortune of War, was the scene of John Knight's furthest DA reunion to date. Rob McCreery '82 played host to "the first person I met at Deerfield as we both moved in to Plunkett West 1 in the fall of 1980" and many memories were shared. Rob is now a full time math teacher at a nearby public school and while exhausting, he adores his new profession. Good on ya, Rob!
Sunday, June 26, 2022
Townsend hosts Patton and Knight to kick off golf events
Ben Patton drove from NYC, dropped his son at camp in Maine then returned to his homestead of Hamilton, MA to catch up with his old pal Peter Townsend. John Knight drove up from Rhode Island and the threesome enjoyed a lovely Sunday of golf at Essex County Club (1893, Donald Ross was head pro for 7 years starting in 1910 and redesigned the course).
A dozen members typically gather on weekend mornings at 7:30 am and politely divide into groups and tee times, so our golfers teed off about 8:00 am with the warning that they must be off the course by 11:30 am - the start of an 80 golfer shotgun tournament.
The morning was warm but clear and the golf was crisp! Lots of fun with the challenge presented and Pete, Ben and John were putting the 18th green as the 80 golfers headed to their assigned tees right at the appointed hour.
Find a classmate and go golfing! (or dining, or bowling, or drinking or...)
Remember the virtual golf tournament currently scheduled for the first weekend of August. The tournament link on 18Birdies will get posted on the blog and you can play anytime that weekend!
Friday, June 24, 2022
National Champs!
Congratulations to Boys Varsity Crew for their FIRST PLACE finish at Nationals in Florida! Girls finished FIFTH in the nation! GO BIG GREEN!
ATHLETICS NEWS (Click here for this same story with links to the other media mentioned)
Today, the Big Green boys and girls rowing teams completed their quest at the 2022 US Rowing Youth National Championship held at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, FL. The boys boat crossed the finish line in first place of the men’s youth 4+ in the Final A to be crowned National Champions. In the women’s youth 4+ Final A, the Deerfield girls crew team rowed to a fifth place national rank.
The boys boat surged ahead in the final meters of the race to over take second-place finisher Greenwich for the victory with a winning time of 6:24.415.
Congratulations to the entire boys team and coach: John Patton ’23, Oscar Patton ’23, George Fauver ’22, Casey Smith ’22, Darien Chiang ’23, and Coach Spencer Washburn.
In the closely contested women’s youth 4+ final race, the Big Green crew crossed the finish line with a time of 7:21.252 to claim the title of the fifth fastest boat in the country in their division.
Visit the US Rowing Youth Nationals results page for complete race results. For a recap of the Youth Championships, click here.
Watch the past-race recap by clicking here (minute mark 19:34).
Congratulations to the girls team and coach: Larrabee Pollack ’23, Natalie Meyer ’23, Rachel Mark ’23, Lila Nottage ’22, Nicole Xing ’22, and Coach Parker Washburn.
This is remarkable achievement and it was an incredible season!
Here's a great video (< 3 mins) by US Rowing interviewing a DA rower...
Consider praising these great kids with a gift to the ANNUAL FUND by June 30 if you haven't yet.
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Van Sullivan movin' on up!
From LinkedIn:
So I guess it’s time to let this cat out of the bag… will be taking on a new role at Stony Brook at the end of the summer. Super excited for this new adventure and can’t wait to tell the incredible SBU story to our corporate partners!
On August 1, Van Sullivan will be joining our team as executive director of corporate relations. In this role, Van will serve as the single point of University contact for the needs of corporate partners as he develops and manages strategic partnerships, focusing on sponsorships and brand partnerships. He also will identify, qualify, cultivate, solicit, and steward corporate philanthropic relationships. Van will report directly to Scott Barrett.
Van is currently serving as executive director of Stony Brook’s Faculty Student Association (FSA), where he successfully maintained the FSA’s operations through the pandemic, upgraded campus dining options and elevated many other programs and services to enhance campus life for students and faculty at Stony Brook. He earned a BS in behavioral sciences from New York Institute of Technology.
Thursday, June 2, 2022
and Still Highly Rated!
Congratulations to Peter Geary on his new career and his demonstrated excellence!
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
"Nothing Is Accomplished Alone"
Greenfield Recorder recap of DA graduation and listing of local graduates...
https://www.recorder.com/A1-DeerfieldAcademyGraduation-46577683
‘Nothing is accomplished alone’: Deerfield Academy celebrates 223rd commencement
DEERFIELD — Deerfield Academy’s Class of 2022 convened for a moment of “history” that Head of School John P.N. Austin said was “just beginning to be written” during their commencement on Sunday.
Hundreds clad in fine attire enjoyed the sunlight as they congregated outside the event tent in anticipation of the students’ arrival at around 10 a.m. The Deerfield Academy String Quartet played a rendition of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Spring” before yielding the day’s sounds to bagpipes, trumpets, drums and fifes ushering in staff and graduates. Following a brief invocation courtesy of Dean of Ethical and Spiritual Life Jan Flaska, speeches were delivered by Austin, Board of Trustees President Brian Simmons, seniors Camryn Purinton Howe and Dominic Sessa and keynote speaker Judge Victor Wright.
Flaska opened the ceremony by emphasizing to students that what they had gained during their time at Deerfield Academy would be versatile and serve them continuously.
“Your reach is wide,” he said. “Your gifts are many. Your presence is a celebration and your gifts are secure.”
When Simmons took up the microphone next, he highlighted the necessity of community togetherness as he acknowledged what each student gained at Deerfield Academy.
“No one who walks upon this stage and shakes the head of school’s hand and receives their diploma can say they did it by themselves,” he said.
Continuing, he said that feelings of community extended by this class would serve future classes well as the school’s legacy grows.
“The example you’ve set and the leadership you’ve provided helps the younger classes perpetuate the values (of Deerfield Academy),” he said.
Austin carried this theme forward even further during his subsequent speech.
“All of these moments and many, many more that come to mind are acts of collective achievement,” he said of the students’ accomplishments during their time at Deerfield Academy.
He concluded his speech by stressing the notion that contributing to the journeys of others should double as an act of self-fulfillment.
“Nothing of meaning or lasting significance is accomplished alone and no joy is complete unless it is shared,” he said.
The senior addresses each balanced elicited laughter with powerful reflection, with Howe comically contrasting her experience as an unsuccessful water polo player with the beauty of dedicating flowers to loved ones and Sessa comparing his student experience to the life of his former hamster.
“Spinning, spinning, spinning, am I worthy yet?” he yelled, lining up his hamster’s seemingly directionless and boring wheel-running to the fatigue of his routine studying and forced socialization before he made a lifestyle change.
Wright, who graduated Deerfield Academy in 1984, comically and ironically used his speech to “challenge the notion that crime doesn’t pay.” The California Superior Court judge recalled being a young boy in Compton defying the law, racial barriers and parental expectations in order to take his SSAT exam and mail in an application to Deerfield Academy.
“What I had to do to get counted amongst you was all worth it,” he said.
Toward the end of his address, Wright reiterated that the school’s impact will be felt within each student long after graduation as they “see echoes of (themselves) all over this campus.”
“As you have learned, if you work hard, you will learn a lot,” he said. “Enough to stick with you the rest of your lives.”
Chase Cherewatti of Sunderland, Tynan Creagh of Deerfield, Julia Hioe of South Deerfield, Camryn Howe of Deerfield, Kelly Howe of Deerfield, Blair Huang of Deerfield, Benjamin Martino of South Deerfield, Morgan Moriarty of Deerfield, Claire Patton of South Deerfield, Granger Savage of Deerfield, Julia Shulman of Sunderland, Holden Woodward of Northfield and Gabriel Zaccheo of Greenfield.
Grace Arcoleo of Amherst, Jake Fillion of Granby, Gabriella Foulkes of Amherst, Millie Gu of Amherst, Quinn Hampson of Amherst, Edward Hathaway of Northampton, Sara Ito-Bagshaw of Hadley, Kylie Kittredge of Amherst, Samuel Thiel of Amherst and Anna Zusi of Leeds.
Joseph LoChiatto of Feeding Hills, Robert Miele of Westfield and Lauren O’Donald of West Springfield.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Heading to College in the Fall?
More sound advice from Adam!
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/15/perspectives/graduation-college-freshmen-tips/index.html?utm_source=LIVE%20-%20Denison%20-%20Adam%20Weinberg&utm_campaign=87376a579a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_05_10_08_54&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f35b2fd67a-87376a579a-494029565&fbclid=IwAR3phFZZw8fAdomcZJ83MRyyzKLC-UxUqIAxUYGdcYbJ0rO6v9OFYgzGAuI
Adam Weinberg is the president of Denison University in Granville, Ohio. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.
High school students and their parents devote an extraordinary amount of time and energy to the college search process. But then an odd thing happens once a student is accepted. Families tend to exhale — "All done!" — and mostly put college out of their mind until late summer, when it's time for the incoming freshmen to start classes.
The truth is, much can be done between now and late August or early September to help prepare you for your upcoming educational journey. Students tend to worry so much about whether they will they get in and not enough about how best to take advantage of where they wind up going.
It matters far less where you go to college and much more about how well you take advantage of the place you are going. For example, most studies show that having a college degree more than doubles how much you will earn in your career. But for this to happen, you must finish college and you have to use college to acquire the attributes needed to succeed in your chosen profession.
If you're starting college this fall, keep these tips in mind to ensure you get the most out of your college experience:
First, you need to keep learning everything you can about the college you will attend. Sure, you already know quite a bit about the institution — that's why you selected it — but now's the time to do a deeper dive.
Every college offers a wide array of academic majors, co-curricular activities, arts and athletics. Dig around the college website for more information on these offerings. Check social media to see what other students are doing. Spend time exploring all the opportunities you will have and getting excited about the options. Have fun with it.
Don't stop there. Reach out to current students to get their input. Ask them: What do you like most about the college? What's been your best experience so far?
Talk to people in your hometown who are recent alums. What do they wish they had known before they started? Which are the best clubs to join? What are the experiences most students miss and don't take advantage of? You'll be amazed at the little tidbits of advice you can pick up.
Also, be sure to ask: What are the best local restaurants? What are the best outdoor hikes or day trips in the vicinity?
By gathering all this information ahead of time, you'll avoid the common lament of many college students that they only started to feel like they really knew the place in their junior or senior year. You will also move from "being nervous" to realizing what an amazing opportunity you have in front of you.
College is generally eight semesters, and maybe 40 courses. They go fast. To get the most from each semester, you want to have a strong sense of what you want to accomplish with the investment of time, work and money you will put into it.
The second thing you should be doing before the school year begins is taking full advantage of anything and everything your university offers in terms of orientation.
If the school offers an in-person orientation, go. If they're offering an online Zoom orientation, attend. If they have pre-orientation trips, participate. If they're offering parent orientations, your parents should aim to attend.
Also, don't just skim the orientation materials that are sent to you and toss them aside. Take the time to digest them carefully, and maybe even read through them a second time.
Whether it's meetups or mailings, take advantage of what the school is doing to help you get oriented. They're trying to provide a roadmap, so you don't get lost before the journey even starts.
When the fall semester bill arrives, make sure you understand the financing. If you are receiving financial aid, make sure you understand the package and how it works. Don't be afraid to call the financial aid office and ask questions. If you need to work during college, ask about work-study opportunities. On-campus jobs can be a great way to get engaged on campus, acquire job skills and even develop an important relationship with your supervisor and co-workers
But perhaps most importantly, make sure you're mentally, physically and emotionally ready to hit the ground running come the start of the school year.
College is awesome, and it is hard. Professors will expect a lot from you, and your peers will be smart and engaged. You will get the most from college when you show up in a place in your life when you are ready.
Too often, students start college as soon as they graduate from high school instead of when they are ready to maximize the experience. Too many students go off to college before they are ready, leading to either bad outcomes or wasted opportunities.
Be honest with yourself if you have health issues. You may benefit by using the summer to address them and work with others to develop the tools you will need to manage them in college. If you have study habit issues, use the summer to figure out a plan for how you will stay organized and on top of things as you navigate a new place.
If you need more time, ask for it. That's what gap semesters and gap years are for. It doesn't matter when exactly you start college or when you finish it; what matters is how you show up when you are in college. Your time here is relatively short, so make the most of it.
The next few months are a way of exploring pathways to take full advantage of all that college can offer. Getting ready for it should be half the fun.
Monday, May 16, 2022
Golf Anyone?
Inspired by the fun times and meaningful conversations that occurred on the recent '83 Ski Weekend, an impromptu committee has formed to try and replicate some of those interactions...on a golf course or twenty...
Spence Brown and Pete Townsend and John Knight chatted recently and came up with two ideas. This post is to elicit feedback and opportunities. It's possible some of these early communications will also be emailed to make sure they are seen by as many classmates as possible.
MINI OUTINGS: Some of us have access to golf clubs that might allow a few foursomes of classmates to golf on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday and maybe even host a meal of some kind. We'd like to build a list of those classmates, the clubs and the rough parameters if known. Then we can just try a date and a club and see who is game... Costs would vary by course obviously.
VIRTUAL TOURNAMENT: By using the same golf app on the same weekend, it's actually easy for us to hold a Class of 83 Golf Tournament! The app we're considering was actually created by a fellow Deerfield golf addict (Eddie Lui '79) and is called 18Birdies. The free app can handle 100 classmates playing in the same tourney and each participating classmate would play a round on a course of their choosing on the same weekend. We could use full handicaps and give awards for all kinds of things. Entry fee would relatively small and would be used for Deerfield merch for the category winners...Would be fun to have a nationwide or worldwide tournament to our credit!
Tentative timing for a virtual tournament is August 4-7, 2022. You would join the tournament through a link and record one score on one of the days that weekend. Like golf itself, this is "on your honor" so you would be expected to post the score from the round you intended to be for the tournament and not see if you play better the next day.
What do you think? Send an email to JK (jgknight83 "AT" gmail.com) with your thoughts and any options for a mini-outing that you might have. Committee members welcome too!
Sunday, April 3, 2022
Head on a swivel!
Congrats to Sean Nottage for recognizing a random passerby in Nassau Bahamas as Joe Lotuff '82!
Monday, March 14, 2022
Mini Reunion - slopeside!
From weekend organizer Craig Pattee:
A small but mighty crew of our classmates are only now recovering from our First Annual Class of '83 Ski Weekend. Peter Crow, Adam Feiges, Geoff Bennett (and son), Doug Cruikshank, and Hank LeMieux joined Craig Pattee and son Mack in Jackson Hole recently for a few days of skiing and shenanigans. Conditions weren't great — more reminiscent of the old days skiing at Berkshire East (read: “icy and mediocre”), but the skiing was still excellent — after all, skiing only has a little bit to do with the snow!
All had a blast reconnecting: Hank taught us all about expensive tequila; Adam taught us all about fine ribeyes, Peter brought a urologist and an ER doc with him (always handy), Geoff brought his son (helping reaffirm our faith in the future) and Doug brought his wit (of little value). Great meals were had as well as plenty of laughs. Stories were told. Parenting and marital advice was shared. Putin was psychoanalyzed. Politics was avoided.
So we plan to make this an annual tradition and will move it up a few weeks to find a date that works better for more of our brethren. Stay tuned!
Monday, March 7, 2022
Adam's latest
https://chiefexecutive.net/liberal-arts-colleges-a-missing-piece-in-the-search-for-talent/?fbclid=IwAR2vdv5EzyUYXgeUDbfYVOujqlwU2wAPBR7SoFlsRl6G3j0y7ps_-BC8g3c
Liberal Arts Colleges: A Missing Piece In The Search for Talent
Companies need a workforce that is adaptable, flexible and can learn new ways of thinking and doing things—which is precisely what a liberal arts education trains students to do.
However unintentionally, the pandemic has unearthed an opportunity that benefits both employers and liberal arts colleges.
A recent report by Bain & Company starts with a well-known observation —employers are struggling to fill jobs, especially those that demand “specific skills and experiences that can be hard to acquire and demonstrate.”
The report calls for higher education to “rise to the challenge by elevating career outcomes, aligning what they teach with workforce needs, improving the quality of their programs, and partnering with employers to create hands-on work experiences for students.”
Traditionally, employers (especially larger ones) have gravitated to public universities and community colleges to get this work done, often neglecting the smaller private liberal arts colleges.
In some ways, this approach makes sense. Those institutions tend to be closer to urban areas and offer scale. If you’re going to send a team to the halls of higher education to forge partnerships or recruit some talent, it’s easier to send them to a larger institution within easy striking distance of corporate headquarters.
There is also a perception that the liberal arts colleges are not providing much in the way of career preparation and are somewhat slow to change, reluctant to try new things, and difficult to engage with.
The pandemic has created a moment to rethink these assumptions.
For starters, the pandemic reduced the importance of location. Experiments in remote work and learning over the past 20 months have shown that it does not matter where you are located. Technological advancements around videoconferencing, messaging and collaboration make it possible to easily find and connect with talent whether someone is in the big city or rural college towns. Our faculty have also learned to use technology to create more ways to connect with our classrooms and our students.
At my own institution, we have students working with companies during the semester. We have established The Red Frame Lab, an entrepreneurship and consulting lab, where students learn design thinking and then do consulting projects for businesses and organizations. Our students are gaining valuable skills and companies get to know our students.
We are also in the early stages of a partnership with the experiential learning platform Riipen that has also allowed us to provide real-world internships that can take place throughout the entire school year, not just the summer, providing a deeper and more valuable internship experience, including virtual internships that are embedded in courses.
Second, contrary to a lot of thinking, liberal arts skills have never been more aligned with much of what employers need. Burning Glass data on the foundational skills of the digital economy feature a list of liberal arts skills like critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and analytic abilities.
Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, put this well in a recent Wall Street Journal article when he stated that the biggest skill challenge of a more remote/hybrid work environment is, “clarity of writing. If you don’t have that, you can have people thinking they’re on the same page when they actually have different understanding.”
What Mullenweg describes is not just writing skills, but also clarity of thought and the ability to communicate with a wide range of people.
Additionally, the changing nature of work and markets has raised the stakes for companies in developing a workforce that is adaptable, flexible, and can learn new ways of thinking and doing things. That’s precisely what a liberal arts education trains students to do.
Further tipping the scales in favor of liberal arts colleges, our students are hard workers. A common lament among companies is that they are desperate to attract recent college graduates with a good work ethic. A common strategy has been to hire athletes, who have a track record of showing up on time, working as a team, and pushing through adversity.
Walk onto any liberal arts campus and you will be impressed by the students and amazed at all the things they are doing. Our classes are small and taught by full-time faculty who push our students and unlock their potential. We are residential because we want students to learn how to engage with the full community and engage in extracurricular activities. On our campuses, nearly everyone is involved outside the classroom developing skills, developing a strong work ethic, and learning how to deal with challenges.
And we are diverse, which means that our students show up able and excited to work with people who are different from them. Sure, large universities are also diverse, but on a small residential campus our students have to learn to live and work in diverse teams.
Finally, most liberal arts colleges are devoting significant resources to their career centers and to other career-related activities. This creates willing partners for employers who want to partner more closely. At my institution we have multiple centers focused on preparing students for careers, including our Knowlton Center for Career Exploration and Denison Edge, which we have actually opened up to students from other liberal arts colleges.
The bottom line? There are a lot of smart, talented, motivated students in liberal arts colleges—and now companies have more access to that talent than ever.
As HR directors at big companies are thinking about this looming issue around talent acquisition, development, and retention, they would be doing themselves a favor by taking a close look at liberal arts colleges. It’s never been easier to discover the talent there. Now presidents, provosts, CEOs, and corporate HR departments must work together to seize this opportunity.
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