“The collaborative spirit of this work is important,” Okafor says, admitting that cooperation among competitor schools is “a little countercultural.” Still, he says, their engagement has been most successful as coordinated outreach rather than recruitment for specific schools. 

The schools that send representatives in person to discuss the commonalities among U.S. boarding environments all benefit from increased visibility. Families from these regions, with stronger ties and easier travel to the United Kingdom, also benefit from learning about additional educational options in the United States. Aware that some African families may be familiar with America predominantly through the media, which often shows the country at its most extreme, Okafor and his colleagues spoke about holistic student care, safety and security, and the breadth of academic, artistic, and athletic engagement in their school communities, as well as varied college pathways.

“In order to change the narrative, we have to be proximal,” Okafor says. Initial data reflects an approach that’s working: Some of the first schools that sent representatives to meet Nigerian and Ghanaian families face to face saw a surge of applications from these countries within a year. Okafor hopes that soon the group will be able to expand its reach to Nairobi, Kenya; Dakar, Senegal; and Kigali, Rwanda.

With a deep appreciation for the strong value placed on education in the communities he visited, Okafor could also share his personal experience as a Nigerian who went on to study at an independent school. Born and raised in Lagos, he emigrated to the United States at 8 with his family, who settled in New York City. Having previously attended private schools, he says the public school he first encountered in the South Bronx, a couple of blocks from Yankee Stadium, was “a huge culture shift.” While he adjusted to different weather, food, clothing, and religion, his Igbo family kept a traditionally Nigerian home.

Okafor did well academically and began to paint and draw. His aunt was an architect, and he’d often dabble with her tools. Thinking that would be his pathway, he applied to the three most prestigious art high schools in the city and was disappointed when he wasn’t admitted. But Christopher Columbus High School introduced him to basketball, a sport that opened the door for him to attend the Berkshire School in Sheffield, Mass., the following year. On that rural campus, another adjustment for a city kid, he found a global cohort of peers, made lifelong friendships, and continued playing basketball.

When several colleges offered him scholarships, his mentor, coach Jim Couch, who founded the Dyckman basketball program in New York City, wisely and realistically reined in Okafor’s NBA hopes, advising him to attend Holy Cross, the school with the strongest academic program. Okafor says the support of other mentors during his undergraduate years there changed his life. While earning a master’s of science from Northeastern University, he became the inaugural director of wellness at Codman Academy, a public charter school in Dorchester, Mass.; for his work there, the Boston Globe named him one of the “top 100 innovators in education,” and he also earned a Gold-Level Massachusetts School Wellness Award. (He currently serves as president of the academy’s foundation board.)  Starting a family led him back to the independent school world and into admissions, first at the Fessenden School in Newton, Mass., where he coordinated multicultural recruitment, then at Phillips Exeter Academy, where, as the associate director of admissions and multicultural outreach, he led a strategic effort to scale outreach to nontraditional families and historically underrepresented communities.

Okafor was drawn to CA by the opportunity to lead his own office. “I had a lot to learn about CA’s character, personality, and how it functions,” he says, “but I knew the school was nimble and thoughtful and that it had a transformative leader” in Head of School Henry D. Fairfax. 

At CA, recognizing the intersection of diversity and institutional sustainability, Okafor shifted the admissions framework to center a student-seeking focus and introduced a new role coordinating multicultural outreach. He mentors his team in actively recruiting students who can strengthen the community across any number of academic, artistic, athletic, and social parameters. “Parents are sacrificing something for their child to be with you for three or four years,” he says. “We have a contract with them to take the whole child. We’re not asking you to come and assimilate; we’re asking you to come and transform the school.”

He says that it’s readily apparent to prospective students who spend two or three hours on campus whether it’s a good match for them, but that, for families who aren’t able to visit in person, “a website can’t help you meet the people.” So he takes seriously the responsibility of representing CA, particularly in other countries.

���ϳԹ� offers students a great deal of flexibility; it’s a school where students can find success in many different ways, Okafor says. But he sees some commonalities in students for whom CA is life-changing. “Someone willing to take some risks and put themselves out there will get the most out of the CA experience,” he says. “They will discover new things about themselves that they didn’t know, and they’ll grow in ways that they never imagined.”

Similarly, he points to students who value diversity. “A student who’s willing to understand that their viewpoint is just one of many” tends to benefit from the CA community’s emphasis on listening, he says. “They embrace the complexity of who we are, the complexity of the world, and the complexity of the students around them.” 

He adds that CA’s academics are rigorous, and a growth mindset helps. “You’re going to work hard, not for the sake of rigor itself but because you love learning, and there’s a depth and breadth you need to follow if you truly want to understand these concepts,” he says. “Those who get the most from CA and go on to impact the world are those who truly go deep and go wide.”

The post Reconnecting With His Homeland, CA’s Mbakwe Okafor Spearheads an Innovative, Collaborative Approach to Seeking Students in Africa appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

Meet the students helping shape ���ϳԹ�’s digital presence. Working alongside the Marketing and Communications Office staff, CA’s student social media interns bring their creativity, ideas, and unique perspectives to the stories we share. Their work reflects our commitment to purposeful collaboration and creative engagement, offering new ways to highlight the people, experiences, and moments that make our community special. Follow CA on , , and to stay connected.

Yolanda Fan ’28

Yolanda is a junior boarding student from Zhengzhou, China. At CA, she is a co-head of the yearbook, plays guitar, and is especially interested in engineering and STEM. One of her favorite parts of the CA experience is having the freedom to explore various interests and be involved in different groups within the community. She also values how many opportunities there are to try new things and meet people with diverse interests and backgrounds. As a social media intern, she hopes to help share an authentic view of life at CA. Since she’ll be focusing mainly on photography, she’s especially excited to capture important events as well as smaller everyday moments that show what the CA community is really like.

Taylor Haddad ’28

Taylor is a junior day student from Wellesley, Mass. At CA, she is involved with a variety of sports such as girls varsity soccer, all-gender sailing, and Alpine ski racing. Additionally, she is the co-head of Women Advocating Financial Literacy (WAFL) and BRAIN Club (Behavior Research, Awareness, Insight, and Neuroscience), as well as a founder of a new club that prepares students for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management. Outside of CA, she volunteers through nonprofits, rides horses, plays club soccer, and is interested in advertising and business. She loves CA for the community values of common trust and the attention to each individual’s diverse interests and backgrounds. As a social media intern, she is excited to showcase the CA experience as a student and share what makes the CA community so special.

Noelle Lee ’27

Noelle is a senior day student from Newton, Mass. At CA, she has pursued her interests in visual arts as a co-head of the Ceramics Club, Film Club, Architecture Club, and CLAAM (the literary and arts magazine), where she loves seeing her peers’ creative work. Noelle has also enjoyed being a part of athletics at CA; as a captain of the volleyball team, she particularly values the team bonds that come out of hard-fought games and practices. One of her favorite aspects of CA is the community, especially how welcoming and open faculty and peers are to all students. As a social media intern, she hopes to bring her passion for visual arts and her love for CA to the role, documenting real student experiences to showcase to the rest of the community.

Monica Meng ’28

Monica is a junior boarding student from Dalian, China. At CA, she is a co-head of Studio 102 (a drawing and painting club) and a staff writer for the Centipede (the student newspaper). She is also a visual artist in drawing and painting and a pianist and cellist. One of her favorite aspects of CA is the freedom students have to pursue their interests, along with the strong support they receive from faculty. Through the social media internship, Monica hopes to develop her skills in visual storytelling through art and to share the vibrant CA community with others.

Isabella Suarez ’27

Isabella is a senior boarding student from New York City. At CA, she is part of the cross-country and track and field teams, and she enjoys singing in both the chorus and CA Singers. One of Bella’s favorite things about CA is the emphasis on community engagement, whether in the classroom or the boarding houses. She is excited to build valuable communication skills through the internship and to share bits and pieces of what it’s like to be a student at CA through social media.

The post Meet the 2026–27 Social Media Interns appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

This summer, Faith brought that spirit of collaboration to the inaugural School at Jacob’s Pillow program, Dance as Social Transformation: Kinetic Visioning. Among a cohort of 24 dancers, Faith was the only high school student. 

The process-driven program, rooted in street and social dance traditions, emphasized inquiry, improvisation, and composition rather than preparation for a formal performance. For Faith, that difference was transformative. 

They described the experience as having “tailwinds” in a community that encouraged and supported creative exploration. “No matter what I experimented with, I had people who had my back and were pushing me forward,” Faith says. 

Faith says they left the program with a new understanding of what it means to be a dancer: “I began to see dance as social change, dance as sort of a tool to fight injustice.” The program emphasized embodied activism and cultural equity.

Faith is bringing that mindset back to CA, where their passion for dance has deepened over the last three years. They remember watching the winter ���ϳԹ� Dance Project (CADP) performance as a 9th grader and being captivated by the dancers on stage. The experience inspired them to join CADP the following year. 

Their first CADP performance, in 10th grade, was �����·��·���ǰ�·����·������, where they experienced the physical and emotional intensity of performing in a large-scale lyrical work. That winter in Chicago, they challenged themselves further by serving as dance captain and assistant choreographer for the play’s sharp jazz choreography.

Last year’s dance project, Kinetic Echoes, was an intimate contemporary dance showcase. Faith credits dance teacher Patrick O’Neill as a mentor and advocate. With O’Neill’s support, Faith worked as both a dancer and choreographer on the piece, developing their leadership skills. “He’s really helped me scaffold choreographing and teaching,” Faith says.

Also a writer, Faith sees a natural connection between language and movement. Poems they wrote for a queer literature course taught by Nancy Boutilier, a now-retired CA English teacher, have found their way into choreography. As part of an eight-month fellowship with the Foundation Trust and Urbanity Dance, Faith worked with a coach to develop their artistry. The result was Patchwork, a 15-minute piece performed in Boston. Recordings of the poems in their own voice became part of the soundscape.

“I do think of dance as a language, and I do think of language as a dance, and I find playfulness and thoughtfulness and sincerity in all of that,” Faith says. To them, both English and dance are forms of communication that use structure and pace to convey ideas.

The connection between language and movement also shapes Faith’s work in theater. This fall, they are serving as movement director for CA’s Macbeth. The production keeps Shakespeare’s original script while placing the play in a futuristic setting, with the witches reimagined as predictive AI. Faith has helped develop the robotic movement that gives the characters their distinctive physicality, using dance to convey what words alone can not. 

Faith’s senior project will continue their study of how movement can communicate meaning by exploring the relationship between Buddhism and Butoh dance, an avant garde Japanese dance-theater form. Through studying Buddhist texts and dance traditions, they will examine how mindfulness and motion can come together as a form of spiritual practice. 

Faith imagines a future that spans multiple artistic disciplines. They are considering majoring in English in college while continuing to choreograph. For Faith, the power of dance comes both from individual expression and from what happens when people move together. Reflecting on the collective energy in working with a group of dancers this summer, Faith finds the simplest way to describe it: “It felt like a heartbeat.” Everyone was moving in sync, connected by the same organic rhythm.

The post Faith Woodberry ’27 Sets Stories in Motion appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

Head of School Henry D. Fairfax welcomed returning community members, 121 new students, and 18 new faculty and staff members. Normalizing first-day-of-school nerves, he urged students to “trust the integrity of your work and to value the process over the result.” He introduced this year’s community theme, “Common Trust in Action,” encouraging everyone to practice small “stretching exercises” throughout the year—from being fully present without phones to extending grace and listening for understanding.

Jen Burleigh ’85, co-president of the Board of Trustees, reflected on CA’s enduring culture of “curiosity and love of learning; incredible breadth of academic, artistic, and athletic offerings; … kindness and mutual respect; and a powerful tradition of giving students voice and agency and room to shape their own journeys.” Describing the first day of school as an “electric time” with countless possibilities for how the year ahead could unfurl, she reminded students that every small decision—to speak in class or not, to try out for a sport or run for a leadership position, or to advocate for someone who could use support—is like a tile in a mosaic. With so much freedom to choose, she said, “you all have the power to give each other these moments” of unexpected kindness or recognition.

Student Head of School Lily Kim ’27 encouraged her peers to appreciate the routine aspects of campus life. “Our mundane is actually kind of extraordinary,” she said. “Most people don’t get a mundane this good. And I believe that privilege bears a responsibility.” It’s in everyday moments that we enact common trust, she argued—what we do when we think no one is watching and “whether you genuinely sit with what someone is telling you, teacher or peer, instead of already drafting a response in your head.” She asked everyone to visualize one small detail they appreciate about CA, then to continue noticing it throughout the year with gratitude. “The mundane version of CA, exactly as it stands right now, is worth showing up for,” she said.

Convocation speaker, Melody Rosas-Granda, associate director of admissions and coordinator of multicultural outreach, likewise framed common trust as a “conscious, daily practice” but also as a “large but limited resource.” She drew an analogy to the tragedy of the commons—when individuals acting from self-interest deplete a shared resource—warning against taking the freedom that common trust affords for granted. 

“There is a quiet decay that occurs when a shared pasture is savored by all and yet no one takes responsibility for it and assumes someone else will keep that grass alive,” she said. She traced this phenomenon to our human tendency to keep looking toward the next stage, setting, or accomplishment even after we have arrived where we once longed to be. “Sitting in that zone of restless and relative uncertainty, we may slowly forget about the very thing we once asked for at the exact moment we are living it,” she said. “In that forgetfulness, the trust begins to lose its safety, its culture, its power.”

This is not inevitable if we recognize that common trust must continue to be mutually earned and shared, she said: “Common trust is not just about the ability to be yourself and create authentic relationships. It is about your ability to ensure that where you stand leaves room and helps lift others up.”

As an example of “CA at its finest,” Rosas-Granda shared her experience watching three 9th graders perform Bad Bunny’s “NUEVAYol,” a song sampling a Latin American anthem from her childhood. “When the P.A.C. erupted with applause and a standing ovation for that performance, tears streamed from my eyes at the beauty of the inclusion, of the acceptance, of the pride in one another for being ourselves,” she said. “‘Common Trust in Action’ is our invitation to protect that celebration—that this freedom, joy, and community can feel like the dream you once hoped for when handled with respect.”

Reflecting on her upbringing in East Hartford, Conn., as the daughter of Peruvian immigrants, she described how she learned to value her cultural heritage through her parents’ “fierce love for one another, their children, and music,” her mother’s cooking, and her father’s unwavering work ethic. When she visited Peru with them, after a 30-year absence from their families there, she finally understood the depth of their sacrifice and resilience, and the faith and trust that taking such a leap had required. This perspective, in turn, shaped her belief in the power of opportunity to provide a transformative education and, along with it, a community that supports “potential for progress and success in many forms.”

As a common resource, common trust will naturally ebb and flow, Rosas-Granda said, but it is in the moments when we get busy, distracted, tired, overwhelmed, or overexcited—the times we all need to take a little more to fuel ourselves—that we must remember to “replenish the resource and honor our identity as a school.”

In taking to heart this collective responsibility, students can “live this opportunity for yourselves, the people around you, and the people who helped you get here,” she said. “You live this opportunity for many who cannot, and in doing it well, you honor them too.”

The post 2026 Convocation Sets the Tone for Common Trust in Action appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

At CA, a day doesn’t get off to a good start without a chat with Jackie Decareau. That widely shared sentiment has reflected Decareau’s approach to her role as assistant to the Student Life Office. Given her deep respect for students and families, her unwavering attention to detail, and the warmth and compassion she brings to every interaction, it’s no surprise that many students have thanked her in their senior chapels. Decareau has also left a lasting impression on her colleagues, who wish her well in retirement after 23 years at CA.

Annie Bailey P’25 ’27, director of residential life, calls her a “beacon of light.” To Renee Coburn, chief of staff, she’s been “the heartbeat of this school.” And Student Life Office Manager Georgia Cassidy says she “communicates with so much grace, kindness, and patience; she has truly inspired me and brought so much joy to our team.”

With a background in human resources, Decareau has always been focused on people. Before coming to CA in 2003, she administered benefits at a marketing company; previously, she was an employment counselor for a regional bank. She initially joined CA part time to track student attendance, and over the years she extended her hours as her duties expanded to include coordinating everything from bulletin boards and class rings to laundry services for boarding students and commuter-rail passes for day students traveling from the city.

Decareau says that when she first arrived, she didn’t feel like she was dealing with high school students: “They were so mature, they felt more like coworkers.” That hasn’t changed, she says. The check-in systems she initiated have adapted over the decades, thanks to her diligence in ensuring students were safe and their whereabouts known. 

“She made sure that every student knows someone cares where they are—that literally every student at CA is seen, every day,” says Grant Hightower, assistant head for student life.

Decareau says she couldn’t have asked for a better job: “The kids kept me feeling younger. And getting to be here every day with wonderful, smart, educated individuals who are always learning—for me, that hasn’t felt like work.”

While she looks forward to a slower routine with more time for walks with friends, book group chats, and volunteering at her local food pantry, her quiet influence at CA can’t be replaced. And it won’t be forgotten.

“Jackie is a beautiful person, a beautiful soul,” Hightower says. “She is selflessly devoted to service and has been one of the most significant binding agents when it comes to the spirit of our institution. I’ll miss her dearly.”

Sue Johnson P’20

After more than a decade at CA and 40 years dedicated to sport and education, Athletics Director Sue Johnson P’20 has hung up her jersey. “Her impact on the CA community and the field at large has been significant,” says Head of School Henry D. Fairfax. “Sue was disciplined about making sure every decision was made through an equity lens. Not only did she support student-athletes of all genders at CA, but she was instrumental in ensuring that same equity in the Eastern Independent League (EIL). This is legacy work that will live on for many generations to come.”

Johnson evolved many facets of CA’s athletics program after arriving in 2015. She expanded the physical education, intramural, and subvarsity offerings and created a supervised, well-equipped fitness center. During her tenure, CA saw marked improvement in competitive success within EIL play and in New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) postseason tournaments. While serving on the NEPSAC executive board, Johnson also helped draft its original gender identity inclusion statement, and in her first year at CA, she guided the EIL’s transition of wrestling to an all-gender sport. 

Under Johnson’s watch, the school amassed a fleet of banners and trophies, but she remained focused on raising the caliber of the athletics program in alignment with CA’s mission. Throughout her tenure, she prioritized the life skills and values learned through athletics and centered the transformative experience of team sport.

“Sue fostered a positive and supportive environment that made staff, coaches, and students feel valued,” says Laurie Baker, former assistant athletics director. “Her leadership will truly be missed.”

Nancy Boutilier and Christa Champion

Nancy Boutilier joined CA’s English Department in 2016 following a career teaching and coaching in independent schools on both coasts of the U.S., as well as at Oberlin College. Before long, she became integral to CA athletics and residential life as well. A poet, activist, and fierce competitor, Boutilier encouraged authentic engagement and expression, inspiring students and colleagues alike to approach the world with a sense of wonder. She helped establish CA’s Writing Center, laying a foundation for peer mentorship and writing feedback. And her famous “sophomore letters” have been a treasured delivery to senior students as they near graduation. 

“Coaching is teaching, and teaching is coaching with Nancy,” says Sarah Yeh P’24 ’27, associate head for teaching, learning, and faculty. “In the classroom, everything she does is in the spirit of helping a student find their place, their confidence, and their voice. On the basketball court, she models what it means to be an athlete, a teammate, and a community member at every step of a practice or game.”

The CA community will also greatly miss Boutilier’s partner and fellow house faculty member, Christa Champion, whose boundless energy and zest for track and field infused her coaching of throwing and pole vaulting. Former track and field coach Jon Waldron says Champion’s expansive vision of sport and ability to integrate her experiences as an athlete, engineer, poet, and teacher made her a transformative coach and mentor at CA.

The post CA Bids Adieu to Retiring Staff and Faculty Members appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

Featured utopias included Zoar, the Shakers, Oneida, Fruitlands, Modern Times, New Harmony, Brook Farm, and early Mormonism. Expo booths distributed themed giveaways, served food that their community members would have eaten, and engaged guests in conversations about each group’s philosophy to recruit new members. Posters around campus declared that “humanity is perfectable” and invited visitors to “come find your slice of paradise.”

Guests selected from a variety of 19th-century personas at the entrance and remained in character as they explored the expo. These personas represented people from different social and economic backgrounds, including skilled and unskilled laborers, men and women, and both free and enslaved people. Students then attempted to recruit them to their utopian communities. 

Frederick said she developed the project to give students a more hands-on understanding of the historical movements they were studying: “I wanted students to dig into the reasons that people would have been motivated to step away from regular society to try these experimental communities.” 

The eight interactive exhibits at the expo made the event engaging and participatory. For example, at the Shaker table, students dressed in simple linen gowns and white caps and promoted communal living, pacifism, and gender and racial equity. They distributed clothespins and Shaker lemon pie created from whole lemons, inspired by the community’s innovations and “waste not” philosophy. 

Frederick first launched the Utopias Expo project in 2019, and this year marked the third installment. She says each iteration has become more spirited, with students investing more effort into costumes, props, and presentations. 

The course begins with an exploration of the American Revolution and asks students to revisit the founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of 1787, and the Federalist Papers. Students are pushed to consider the motives and intentions of the framers and then asked to look at the society of the early Republic and how the Revolution changed government, the economy, and society. By turning to the question of why Americans in the 1830s and 1840s joined utopian communities, students can bring another critical lens to the question of what the Revolution accomplished. 

The course asks students to analyze how these antebellum communities challenged mainstream society and how the American republican experiment both supported and limited their goals. While students practice analytical writing and are taught how to marshal evidence, construct arguments, and write persuasively, Frederick says the expo often leaves the strongest impression on members of her class. 

“The thing that they will remember is the expo, because they were the authors of themselves as their historical characters and brought their understanding to how people thought about important things in the past—governance, the economy, social relationships. The past is a foreign country, and the expo is a way to try to visit it for an afternoon.”

The post Utopias Expo Brings 19th-Century Communities to Life appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

���ϳԹ�’s Commencement Exercises for the class of 2026 unfolded beautifully in the Academy Garden on May 29. The morning was bright and breezy as 101 seniors processed in to the strains of a Bach concerto played by student chamber musicians. On the Senior Steps, they sang their class song, the Beatles’ “In My Life,” before taking their seats in front of families, faculty, staff, and friends who had gathered to celebrate them as individuals as well as the spirit of community they had cultivated as a class.

Beginning the speaking program, Jennifer Pline P’13 ’15, co-president of the Board of Trustees, recalled this year’s “deeply reflective, introspective, and self-aware senior chapels” that demonstrated “a level of maturity that feels beyond your years.” She said her favorite way she’s heard this class characterized was as “graceful disruptors,” adding, “I can’t think of a better phrase to describe CA grads.” She urged them to return home to CA and never lose their commitment to making the world a better place.

Head of School Henry D. Fairfax shared a unique aspect of CA’s Commencement, a tradition dating back more than 70 years, of bestowing no awards, prizes, or diplomas with distinction, in recognition of the love of learning the entire student body shares. He advised the seniors, “Run, don’t hurry. This means: Engage in everything you do with a sense of purpose, and have integrity in your effort. Explore and take calculated risks, but don’t rush into anything.” Fairfax also acknowledged the shadow cast this year by the loss of their classmate Louis Montagut ‘26, whose “magnetic spirit revealed a deep sense of community, honor, and love at CA.”

Learning through loss was the theme of the remarks by May Zheng ’26, student head of school, who spoke next. From the countless small items lost and returned—pens, water bottles, hoodies—that reflect care for fellow students to irreparable, larger losses, she said, “somehow, for everything I’ve lost, it seems that experiencing it with my class has made it bearable and meaningful.”

Preparing to leave CA, she addressed the fear of leaving behind “the person we’ve had the space, privilege, and community to become here … that we have grown into, and used to, and proud of.” Yet she imagined recognizing in others some “undeniable, unapologetic” characteristics her classmates embody today. In this way, “losing is learning,” she said, “To lose this place, this home, is to see it appear again a million times in a million different places. … To ‘commence’ now, we are really saying, ‘I will see you again, because I have known you now.’ That within every absence we experience, there is a celebration of what was once there, what we have lived.”

Following a CA Chorus performance of Adele’s “When We Were Young,” Veerawit Sirikantraporn ’26, senior class president, introduced the commencement speaker, Amy Rosenfeld ’84. As the senior vice president of Olympics and Paralympics production at NBC Sports, she led efforts to expand visibility and accessibility at the 2024 and 2026 Games, after overseeing ESPN’s World Cup coverage. In addition to her extensive experience in sports broadcasting and production leadership, Veerawit said, it’s her reputation “as someone who leads with integrity, care, and unity” that embodies characteristics reflected in the CA community.

Rosenfeld shared, with a zingy delivery and a knack for comic timing (she said she once wanted to be a late-night television writer) how honored, humbled, “and quite frankly, a bit shocked” she was to have been selected as this year’s commencement speaker. “Let’s just say I was not the model ���ϳԹ� student,” she said. To much laughter, she read a few illustrative comments she had saved from CA teachers concerned about her ability to succeed. Despite those “scathing reviews,” she added, she always had the sense that the faculty was rooting for her, “that they believed that I had something that would resonate and have an impact.”

As a career sports television producer, she has a special place in her heart for global sporting events that can, for just a few weeks at a time, unite the world. She suggested she’d been asked to address this class in alignment with this year’s community life theme, “Building the We,” because community, and one’s ability to contribute to it, “can be one of the most rewarding aspects of life.”

Rosenfeld advised the class of 2026 that the relationships they formed at CA will likely play important roles in any future endeavors—precisely how she landed her first sports broadcasting internship. She said she still wears her CA ring every day; it reminds her of where she learned “how to have confidence, how to deal with success and, certainly, failure, how to work together as a collective group to get across any finish line … and to have the strength of my own convictions.”

Among other qualities instilled in her at CA, Rosenfeld said, was a sense that “I could just be me, that I didn’t have to follow any particular group to fit in,” and that she could take her own path.

“Embracing individuality is what makes a true and honest community—that is what you have here at CA,” Rosenfeld said. 

She’s often asked what it’s like to be a woman in sports television. “My answer is always the same,” she said. “‘If you believe you belong, you belong.’ It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t be doing precisely what I was doing. CA taught me that.”

Rosenfeld told about a time she “failed miserably” in a very public way. Producing a U.S. women’s soccer game, she was too focused on replays, and she missed showing a goal. Afraid her broadcast career was over, she talked herself down out in the parking lot. “I fiddled with my CA ring and remembered all the mistakes I had made back then, and despite it all, how that community still believed in me,” she said. She didn’t get fired. She produced enough important soccer matches in the years that followed to be inducted into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame.

It’s in adversity that we recognize the value of community, Rosenfeld went on to say. As the members of the class of 2026 go their separate ways and begin new adventures, she advised them to continue leaning on one another and not to worry if they don’t have all the answers—or even if they don’t know what the questions are. While she certainly didn’t always know what decision to make, she says, because of CA, she knew who she was and the value she could offer the next community she encountered: “Because of CA, I promise you are ready for what’s next.”

In the final portion of the ceremony, diplomas were awarded in random order—a CA tradition that both honors every individual and keeps the audience engaged. The final student to be called took home the coveted “commencement sock,” a tube sock filled with cash donations from the class, with a little extra thrown in by alums. 

Afterward, the new graduates made their way through a receiving line, sharing parting hugs and handshakes with faculty and staff, before joining their families for a reception behind the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel. The ceremony concluded the 2025–26 school year on a note of gratitude for the space to cultivate individual expression and, above all, the enduring bonds of community.

The post CA Celebrates the Class of 2026 and the Value of Community with Commencement Speaker Amy Rosenfeld ’84 appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

This November, Rhee and Hettinger helped organize Reimagining Elite Higher Education, a three-day conference in New Haven, Conn., that brought together around 300 students, alums, and faculty members from 68 colleges and organizations. The event examined how universities could rebuild public trust while addressing inequality. At CA, the discussion connected directly to themes explored in Dasgupta’s class, including governance and political theory. Rhee, a chemistry major, said he felt disillusioned with the culture of corporate recruiting at college. He expressed a desire for more students to prioritize community impact over maximizing the return on their investment in their degrees. 

After taking a gap year to organize for the 2024 election in rural Pennsylvania, he began thinking more critically about the relationship between elite universities and civic leadership. While canvassing far from his college campus, he realized how few residents had been contacted or engaged at all. 

“It was really interesting to realize that people graduating from a lot of these Ivy League schools have a disproportionate amount of impact on this country, despite their limited interaction with their immediate communities,” he said. For Rhee, leading the conference became a way to push back against that dynamic and help reshape campus culture. 

He collaborated with co-chair Hettinger, a senior from California studying psychology and education. As the first student from her public high school to attend Yale, she said perceptions of being an Ivy League student often felt polarized. Through co-leading the conference, she hoped to create space for more balanced discussion. 

“It didn’t feel like there was this nuance to be critical of the universities and understand their role and responsibility in building a lot of distrust in higher education while also recognizing the value of these institutions as places of learning,” Hettinger said.

Throughout the conference, participants revised a draft document titled “An Academic Social Contract for Our Time,” proposing reforms such as ending legacy admissions, providing need-blind acceptance, encouraging investment in local communities, and preventing career funneling—where students are encouraged to be oriented towards certain types of careers from their first year of college.

Students in Dasgupta’s classroom raised questions about whether elite education increasingly determines social status in the United States. One student asked what happens to democratic life when educational prestige replaces other forms of status and belonging. 

Dasgupta connected the conversation to Marx’s critiques of institutions that reinforce class inequality. Students and speakers debated whether universities today continue to function as engines of social mobility or instead reproduce existing social hierarchies. 

The visit challenged students to think beyond higher education as a pathway to individual success and instead consider its broader role in shaping citizenship. Rhee and Hettinger represent a growing movement of student scholars advocating for greater societal accountability within collegiate learning environments. 

The post CA Philosophy Students Discuss Higher Education Reform with Alum Advocate appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

Will Tucker, Science Department head and senior project coordinator, said the initiative encourages students to “pursue love of learning in a whole new venture and direction.” This year’s 32 senior projects required technical analysis and artistic exploration, with many projects combining multiple disciplines.  

Aleksandra Zdraveski ’26 explored the neuroscience of visual art. Inspired by her longtime interest in painting, drawing, and ceramics, she researched how creative practices can support emotional healing. Aleksandra studied how the brain perceives color and art, and the neurological effects of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. 

The project culminated in an independently conducted on-campus case study examining the effects of art therapy on stress levels. Twenty CA student participants were divided into an art therapy group and a control group, with stress measured through heart and breath rates and self-reported anxiety scales over three weeks.

The art therapy group showed statistically significant decreases across all three measures, supporting Aleksandra’s hypothesis that creative activities can reduce stress responses. She also created an interactive ceramic sculpture of a human head containing removable brain structures, allowing viewers to engage directly with the concepts behind the research. 

William Frabizio ’26 developed and taught a course to CA peers about robotics and autonomous systems, designed to introduce students to engineering through hands-on lessons. Driven by his own experience learning robotics independently through clubs, internships, and personal projects, William wanted to create a classroom environment where students could build technical skills. 

The course began with lessons on robotic quadrupeds using the Unitree Go2 Pro AI robot dog.
Students learned about LiDAR mapping, obstacle avoidance, mobility systems, and the use of robotics as a social outreach tool.

The class later expanded to aerodynamics and remote control aircraft engineering. Students designed and tested paper airplanes using the principles of lift, drag, thrust, and gravity before progressing to using flight simulators and constructing a laser-cut foam remote-controlled airplane. Through the process, William gained experience in curriculum design and classroom instruction.

Eliya Ganot ’26 used fashion as a form of literary interpretation to deepen her understanding of William Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.” Inspired by a CA course on British Romanticism, she expanded her exploration through independent research into the literary movement, which emphasized emotion, individualism, and reverence for nature.

Written during the Industrial Revolution, Wordsworth’s poem reflects on his personal development over five years, presenting the Wye Valley, between England and Wales, as a site of reflection and respite from urban life. Reflecting on the poem’s themes, Eliya created two garments representing Wordsworth’s youth and adulthood. She constructed the pieces by weaving together burlap and fabric to represent the narrator’s integration of past and present selves.

One garment features the quote “Flying from something that he dreads,” while the other includes the phrase “Who sought the thing he loved,” emphasizing the author’s transformation over time. 

Rodolfo Wang ’26 researched how commercial aviation systems could be adapted for smaller aircraft such as drones. He designed a custom flight computer around an ESP32 microcontroller. Rodolfo integrated motion sensors, wireless communications systems, and advanced motor controls into the computer to create a more reliable system. 

Rodolfo initially aimed to implement collision avoidance and stall protection. After encountering technical setbacks, including hardware incompatibility, he shifted his focus toward making the system more fault-tolerant—ensuring the aircraft could continue operating even if one component failed.

Inspired by the backup systems used in commercial airplanes, his final design employed three separate microcontrollers and sensor groups operating simultaneously. Each system verified the others’ data, allowing the remaining two to override incorrect readings if one failed, helping maintain flight stability. 

Reflecting on the iterative problem-solving that shaped his project, he offered this advice to students looking ahead to crafting their final semester of self-directed study at CA. “Don’t be afraid to fail,” he said. “Senior projects are really based on how much work you put in and what you learn, versus whether you accomplish the goals you originally set out to.” 

The post Senior Projects Spark Artistic and Scientific Innovation appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.

Directed by Patrick John O’Neill, Kinetic Echoes ran May 15–16, 2026, featuring choreography by O’Neill and members of the CA Dance Project: Bella Li ’27, Eva Peregudov ’28, Jenny Wang ’27, Foster Woodberry ’27, and Sophia Zhou ’26. 

The piece explored how the mind holds onto the past, inspired by O’Neill’s personal experiences. “I was moved by watching the impact of my grandmother’s memory loss on my family,” he said. “I found myself asking two questions: ‘What happens to me when I forget?’ and ‘What happens to me if I can’t forget?’ Life is a constant balance of the things we want to cherish forever and the moments we wish we could let go of.”

O’Neill invited the dancers to contribute directly to the choreography. To encourage experimentation, O’Neill created a judgment-free environment, reminding students that there are no bad ideas. He then asked them to translate a cherished memory into dance, guiding the process through questions and feedback. “As we weaved different dancers’ phrases together, they were forced to physically ‘remember’ complex transitions and sequences in real-time,” he said. 

Although each student choreographed an individual section, recurring motifs created a strong sense of unity throughout the contemporary dance piece. Gestures such as lifts or reclining spirals reappeared with slight variations, echoing the fluid nature of recollection.

That sense of repetition also extended to the production’s visual staging. Scenic designer Jessica Cloutier-Plasse and technical director James Williston P’28 created the draped environment inspired by the set from �����·��·���ǰ�·����·������, the first CA Dance Project show O’Neill choreographed at CA in November of 2024. 

The score featured haunting ambient music, including original tracks by digital music production teacher Nate Tucker. Eytan Ko ’26 also contributed an original improvised composition created entirely through memory and musical intuition. Lighting by Elmer Martinez transformed the dance studio into a hazy landscape of shadows and warmth, alternately obscuring and sharply revealing movement. Together, these technical elements evoked the fragmented atmosphere of memory. 

For O’Neill, the power of dance lies in creating a shared experience that lingers in the mind and body long after the movement itself disappears. “I wanted the audience to feel the tangible weight of memories that are usually purely internal,” he shares. “I hope they saw fragments of their own journeys in the dancers. No matter their personal history, I want them to leave feeling just a little bit closer to themselves than they were before the performance began.”

The post Spring Dance Project Performance Sets Memory in Motion appeared first on ���ϳԹ�.