ljcds 360 viewbook 2012
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LJCDS Viewbook Magazine 2012TRANSCRIPT
Debbie Austria Graduation Day 2011
Contents 02 Editor’s Note
03 Letter from the Head of School
04 Board of Trustees
06 Commencement
16 Beware of False Dichotomies!
22 Passing the Torch
26 Guidance from on High
32 Middle School Promotion
34 Science: It’s a Crime
38 Lower School Promotion
40 Learning Before Reading
44 A Year in the National Spotlight
46 On America’s Greatest Stage
48 Alumni Review
TORREY 360 VIEWBOOK
EditorChris Lavin
ContributorsShannon Cleary, Gideon Rappaport, Scott Lafee, Tara Kern Kuehnert ’90 and Kathy Woods
DesignVisual Asylum
Principal PhotographyAndy Hayt
Additional PhotographyJohn Lyons, May Vukotich, Rob Tirsbier and Dan Trevan
PrintingZUZAPrinting
On the CoverElizabeth Bilsborough
44 Basketball Champions 50 2012 Distinguished Alumni
Summer 2012
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Educating in a time of volatility.
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by Chris Schuck
n many ways, a school like La Jolla Country Day represents one of the greatest challenges in educational management. Meeting the needs of 3-year-olds and 18-year-olds at one institution demands a longer view, a holistic approach that both nurtures, yet adapts as the student matures and approaches a time for indepen-dence on a larger stage. In a world in which “global village’’ is the dominant metaphor for where our students are heading, we began several years ago to gradually steer our ship in new directions. The goal: maintain the solid core of classic education while increasingly clothing this curriculum in ways that reach out to the wider world. And so, over time, we have added World Cultures I and II to our Upper School. We have expanded our language offerings to include Mandarin and Arabic. We have added a Persian Studies elective and are offering Farsi language enrichment lessons. World Geography, an advanced placement course, is now taught as well.
In our Lower School, in addition to early Spanish education, we have embedded traditions that reach out in their own way – the annual India Showcase and the Egyptian studiesare typical of the ways our teachers connect even our youngest students to a wider world. We have grown our foreign travel efforts to what now is a consistent, year-roundschedule of students coming and going from distant lands. We have community service travels to Africa each summer. We have regular trips to Spain and France, and one is in development for South America. Our Madrigal Singers this year toured Greece and Turkey, performing in venues new and ancient. Also, increasingly, the world is coming to
us. During the 2011-12 school year, 29 students from eight countries were enrolled as full-time students, enriching their classes and friendships with world-views developed outside the United States. There is more to be done. With communication technologies racing ahead, we will continue to look for ways to reach out more frequently to bring the richness of the wider world into our classrooms and safely into the lives of our students. Still, we know there is great comfort in tradition; confidence in an institution is rooted in its stability. So we approach change with measured care. At Country Day, we don’t consider the change we have embraced to be bowing to passing trends. Rather, we believe preparing to perform in a complex world is increasingly the concomitant of success for leaders in all fields. Preparing tomorrow’s leaders has always been at the core of the Country Day mission. “Change,’’ Steinbeck once wrote, “comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn.’’ We have been ruffling those curtains and will continue to do so, always with a clear-eyed apprecia-tion that no matter how much the world changes, rigorous adherence to our core values must remain.
The speed with which communication technologies and services are changing can be a source of excite-ment and frustration. While it is great to keep up with your daughter’s softball game pitch by pitch while still at work – something that can be done now – just when you get smarter than your “smart’’ phone, the new, cheaper-better-faster iPads arrive and the little phone screen just isn’t good enough anymore.
Here is a brief primer on current information sources and practices at Country Day:
E - B L A S T S• Country Day will occasionally send all-school electronic mail messages to all families and staff. These are generally reserved for major announcements or urgent messages. e-mail addresses are gathered during the registration process and can be changed online in the Family Directory.• Rolling memos: Each division sends out an e-mail newsletter with the latest division-specific information. Upper School’s is sent daily and goes to families and students; Lower and Middle School’s Rolling Memos go weekly to parents only.• Official “Room Parents” will occasionally send e-mail messages dealing with classroom specific announcements.
W E B S I T E S• LJCDS.ORG, the school’s official website, endeavors to bring all school information together in one place. Confidential information, including class lists and the school’s family directory, are organized behind a password-protected portal that can be accessed here as well.• TorreyTimes.org, the school’s news engine, gives a running log of the latest activities and achievements. Parents, students, staff and friends of Country Day can join Torrey Times and contribute content and comments. • Parents Association. The PA maintains its own interactive website, which can be found from links
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on LJCDS.ORG. Like Torrey Times, the PA site encourages parents to join and contribute questions and comments the PA can pursue on your behalf.
I N P R I N T• Report cards, event invitations, thank you acknowledgments and occasional major school announcements are sent by traditional U.S. Mail delivery with major announcements also repeated through website and e-mail sources for parents and students who have moved completely to electronic communication.• Country Day also publishes Viewbook 360, an annual print publication each July which captures the year’s highlights, and the Annual Report on Giving, also in print.• In October, a printed version of the school’s elec-tronic family directory. Families can request a copy of this book during registration in August.
E M E R G E N C Y C O M M U N I C AT I O N• In emergencies, Country Day employs an automatic telephone messaging system to keep families informed. Emergency numbers are gathered as part of online registration and are double-checked during the registration process in August.• In the event of circumstances that make phone use impossible, LJCDS.ORG, will use pop-up messages on the school website to communicate the latest information.
INFORMATION ON DEMAND02
TORREY 360 VIEWBOOK
By Chris LavinDirector of Communications and Marketing
Summer 2012
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Board of TrusteesFirst Row Beth Davidson, Lisa LaCorte, Sherry Mesman, President Howard Ziment, Head of
School Chris Schuck, Debby Jacobs, Barry Rosenbaum Second Row Manish Parikh, Kimberly
Goldman, Pat Hughes, Ben Badiee, Michael Rosenberg, Alex Roudi, Sherry Bahrambeygui-
Hosey ’82, Jing Wang, Angela Glynn Third Row Steve Morris, Lucy Smith Conroy ’90, George
Guimaraes, Peter Hamilton, David Ashworth, Jeff Church, Bob Gans
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TORREY 360 VIEWBOOK
There are always ebbs and flows in the life of any community. There are moments in time when things seem to be just a bit out of line. And there are times when everything comes together. The 2011-12 school year finds Country Day firing on all cylinders. Why do I say this? It is not because of any specific event or moment. Rather it is a combination of creativity and hard work, built on a strong foundation that rests on years of effort. Simply, we have gotten to the place where extraordinary is the status quo. Our seniors are once again continuing their education at some of the finest academic institutions in the nation, including Harvard, Yale, Cal Tech, Stanford and Princeton. (See the full matriculation report on page 20). Our Parents Association, now fully integrated as a part of the school, has led us in uniting our parent body in a new and powerful way. Our view has now gone beyond our walls into our community. We have partnered with the City Club of San Diego, The San Diego Opera, KPBS, the University of California San Diego and others in ways that have brought local, regional and national leaders to our community. Our athletics have reached new heights. We currently hold CIF titles in boys baseball, boys basketball, girls basketball, girls volleyball and tennis. Our Torrey girls basket-ball team won its third California state title and was nationally ranked among all schools. Our investment into new and better ways to prepare our children for the world beyond Country Day deepens through increased teacher development and a focus on how to bring the latest in new technologies, teaching techniques and philosophies to our school. Our children enrich our lives with beautiful music and inspired art. Have you listened to one of our orchestras (Lower, Middle, Upper) play? Our school continues to attract more and more applications, a sure sign that San Diego families looking for the best education possible want their children to benefit
from the total experience that is Country Day. Our Board of Trustees has tremendous faith in the terrific job Head of School Chris Schuck is doing in leading our institution in this, his fifth year. Our goal as a board, on behalf of all parents, continues to be to provide the optimal environment for our talented educators to flourish. We will continue to look for ways to keep the school ahead of a fast-changing world. That said, what we can do as your board is not enough; we need you. What drives all of what happens at Country Day? You do. The choices you make in engaging fully in this community will determine our shared success. We truly are the sum of all of our parts. I encourage you all to look for ways, big and small, to add to the life of our community. On behalf of the Board of Trustees, we congratulate our departing seniors and wish them luck as they carry the Country Day flag out into the wider world. Carry our colors proudly.
The 2012 school year at Country Day: Status quo. Spectacular.
Firing on all cylindersby Howard Ziment
Howard Ziment
Summer 2012
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Josh Richmond, below Alaciel Torres
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TORREY 360 VIEWBOOK Jonathan Brewster Summer 2012
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Kendall Peterkin, Megan Woods, Kaitlin Woods
Elizabeth Bilsborough
Katelyn Bishop, Max Rudolph and Kate Hamilton
Randall Harley Haley Moore
THE TRUSTEE AWARD FOR SCHOLARSHIP Sibo Cai
THE HEAD OF SCHOOL AWARD Lindsay Kostas
THE FACULTY PRIZE Derek John Messman-Hallman. Kaitlin Woods Megan Woods
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Student SpeakerAaron Mak Student SpeakerBelow: Madrigal Singers
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Kimberly Roesler, Sonia Dattaray, Nina Church Karen Elitzky faculty
Chris Schuck, Howard Ziment
Rod Jemison, Derek Mesman-Hallman
Lexi Kirby
Joyce Sparling Chris Schuck, Sibo Cai
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Jake Mack, Aaron Mak
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Samantha Staszak Savannah Dowling, Caroline Wagner
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Lindsey Kostas
Jake Mack
Kaitlin McCallum
Carly Schissel
Nicholas Schlossberg
Christopher Campbell
John Edman
Jack Farley
Randall Harley
Laurel Johnson
Mark Atkins
Frank Bamford
Katelyn Bishop
Jonathan Brewster
Margaret Taylor
Kai Tuites
Kaitlin Woods
Megan Woods
Lifers Congratulations to these members of the Class of 2012 who have attended Country Day from Kindergarten (or longer) through Grade 12. These students have fond memories of traveling from the east side of campus to the west as they experienced a “full” Country Day education. These students, and their families, take great pride in being “Country Day Lifers.”
Chris Campbell
Roman Valenzuela, Alex Lee Laurel Johnson
Summer 2012
1 am very grateful for the honor of being invited to speak on this festive occasion, on which we confer diplomas and celebrate the accomplishments they signify. We also mark the transition of the Class of 2012 from our protective care to greater academic and personal liberty, with which comes greater intellectual responsibility.
Considering this new responsibility, I want to address the intellectual challenge of false dichotomies. I mean those “either/or” alternatives, arising from mental laziness, that cloud rather than clarify our thinking — like “pro-life or pro-choice?” (which usually evokes from me a lecture on sex and human responsibility); or “screen addict or Luddite?” (surely not my only two options). Today I want to focus on the three false dichotomies I think most important for new college freshmen to beware of: science or religion, Western Civilization or Multiculturalism, injustice or utopia.
In college you will find friends and teachers who think that science and religion cannot both be true. I hope you have learned here to reason better, to understand that science and religion relate us to different aspects of reality. Science looks at what things materially are and how they physically work; religion involves us in purpose and meaning. In Aristotle’s terms, science considers material and efficient causes, religion final causes. To achieve the valuable ends of science, we become detached observers and make all things, including people, our objects. By contrast, religion draws us into communion and humbles us before ends beyond our own. Science determines whether the brain of an intensive care patient is functioning; religion
articulates the sacredness of that patient’s life. To imagine that science disproves religion is to be intellectually confused.
Some of you have told me you are atheists. To me this means that you don’t believe in the existence of what you imagine God to be. In this the atheist is in surprising agreement with the greatest spiritual thinkers in all traditions, who say that in reality God, being infinite and all-containing, is ineffable, beyond anything that a human being can imagine. As Wendell Berry writes, “we cannot comprehend what comprehends us.”
Yet to believe that nothing exists beyond what we can see or touch or measure, or that everything is random chance, is to make an act of faith as great as that of any believer in God. Leaving aside Shakespeare and Rembrandt and Mozart, if you have ever laughed at a joke, cheered for the Torreys, or loved a friend, you know that things of the spirit are as real as things of the body — Plato would say more real — and, to most people, more important. Moreover, science could not exist if it were not built on a foundation of faith — faith in the universality of physical laws, faith in the logic of mathematical axioms, faith in the trustworthiness of measurements. You have to believe that a ruler is a foot long before you can measure anything with it.
Since science can improve our lives but cannot exist without faith or account for things of the spirit, I conclude that both science and religion are valid human enterprises. So in college, don’t fall for the unreasonable argument that religion and science have mutually exclusive claims on reality. Using the scientific method to refute the creation story in
Beware of False Dichotomies!
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By Gideon Rappaport
TORREY 360 VIEWBOOK
Gideon Rappaport
Summer 2012
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Every utopian movement that has come to power in modern times has engaged in extreme violence against people and human rights in the name of its ideal future: the French Revolution; the Nazis in Germany; Communism in Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Cuba; the radical Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood, of Iran, of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Taliban, under whose rule, don’t forget, women not only could not vote but were regularly mutilated and murdered for crimes like appearing in public or speaking to a stranger.
By contrast, the oldest wisdom traditions in the world teach us to focus less on where we are going than on how we are getting there. In China, before the Communist revolution, the ideal society was thought of as being far in the past. In Judaism, the ideal Messianic age may come any day in the future. But about how to live, the wisdom of both China and the Jews uses similar language: The Tao in Chinese means the way or the path, both the right path for human beings to follow and the way the universe goes. To follow the Tao is to be in harmony with reality. The word Halacha in Hebrew also means the way to walk, the way one may best fulfill God’s commandments. In both traditions a better future can be attained only by living rightly now, and ideal ends cannot justify evil means. When I urge people who care about justice to stand up for Israel, it is not because I am pro-Israeli instead of pro-Arab — another false dichotomy — but because disputes over legitimate claims to land should be settled by negotiation, not violence, and because I am for justice, liberty, equality, and peace and against the use of delegitimizing propaganda and terrorism to achieve genocidal ends. I remind you that in no country in the Middle East but Israel can Muslim
and Christian Arabs vote their conscience, women marry as they please, and same-sex couples (including Palestinian Arab couples) dance in public without fear of persecution.
In college, whenever anyone tries to convince you that because the world is not perfect, we must compromise virtue in order to move forward, I hope you will remember the words of Rabbi Tarfon, who in the Ethics of the Fathers says, “It is not up to you to complete the work; neither are you at liberty to abandon it.” We all want a better world and must not despair or tire in working for it. But an imaginary perfect future must never be used to justify actual evil in the present.
To recap: Science and religion are not mutually exclusive; Western Civilization is the source, not the enemy, of our ideals of universal justice and equality; and utopian ends do not justify evil means. I will close with a few specific suggestions. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah says, also in the Ethics of the Fathers, “Get yourself a teacher, take yourself a friend, and judge every man by the scale of merit.” In college, find yourself a great teacher — not necessarily an easy or popular one, but one that upper classmen will tell you is honest, illuminating, and wise. There will not be many, wherever you are, but there will be one or two. Find those teachers, no matter what they teach, and make use of their office hours. Then, make at least one good friend. That will probably not happen before Christmas break, but along about March you may realize that it has happened already. Even if you’re having a tough year, unless you’re on the point of total collapse, don’t transfer before June. You might just miss a future BFF. And continue to judge others, especially in election years, not by race or religion, coolness or wealth, but by merit. Finally, I remind you that knowledge is more than information, wisdom is more than knowledge, and virtue is above all. Be brave, ask for help when you need it, and once in a while, instead of texting, call home. We are all very proud of your accomplishments, and more of your character. Congratulations.
Gideon Rappaport is an Upper School English teacher.
Genesis is like using a steak knife to cut up your soup. Genesis was never meant to be science but to evoke the right relation to the Creator, and science cannot tell us how to be good, or why we should be.
A second false dichotomy is Western Civilization or Multiculturalism. As you know, I believe strongly in the value of studying Western Civilization. That conviction is rooted in my own experience of college in the mid-sixties. All freshmen in my college studied Western Civ. for a year in five classes per week of history, literature, and art. The course was deeply enriching then and has served as an excellent foundation since. But my advocating the study of Western Civ. implies no demeaning of other cultures. As sophomores we also studied the history, literature, and art of India, China, Japan, and the Arab world. This invaluable two-year curriculum was an expression of my teachers’ esteem for Western Civilization at its best, for it is the West which, since Herodotus, has taught the value of learning about the cultures of others.
There is, however, a terrible price for the inabil-ity properly to value one’s own culture. American academic Multiculturalists who value all cultures except the West are busily sawing off the branch on which they sit. Out of a superficial notion of fairness, they condemn the civilization that brought us not only Greek philosophy, medieval cathedrals, the rule of law, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and Mozart, the idea of equality, and modern science, but the value of fairness itself.
It is true that the West, like the East, has had to overcome evils like the subjugation based on race that you have read about in Frederick Douglass and Joseph Conrad. Western Civilization does not magically make men good, any more than nature does. But it has also produced and honored the dream of Martin Luther King Jr., who wished his children to be judged not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
We are all the beneficiaries of that dream. One of the best things I have observed about Country Day students is a genuine affection that crosses the boundaries of diversity: gender, race, ethnicity, religion, language, sexual orientation, wealth, intellectual ability, artistic bent, athletic prowess, and looks. But you will find that the present fashion of many university academics is to condemn the very civilization whose founders are the source of Dr. King’s ideals: Moses, Socrates, and Jesus. The word “university” comes from the Latin for “entire” or “whole”: When the university is demoted to the diversity, emphasizing the secondary elements that divide us rather than the universals that unite all men, the result is not education but bitterness and conflict. So in college, don’t let anyone persuade you that the flaws of the West justify sneering at its ideals and accomplishments. One of its best products is your own affection for the people of different backgrounds sitting around you at this moment.
A third false dichotomy is unjust past or utopian future. “Utopia,” comes from the Greek u topos, no place. Every utopia is an imaginary place that cannot exist in reality. But modern age utopians have believed that it is possible for government to do away with the evils of the past — as if man’s sins were not perennial — and to establish an ideal world. The corollary is that any government not attempting to bring about utopia now is oppressive and unjust. Utopians want government to make sure that all human beings have not merely equal rights and liberty under the law but equal incomes, pension plans, schooling, health benefits, and nutritional balance. Of course I am for government safety nets, and all people of good will would like everyone to be healthy, wealthy, educated, and well-fed. But you all know the difference between community service done freely and that done under coercion. The effort to enforce a utopian ideal requires that government trample on the equality of rights and liberty for some in order to provide a phantom equality of outcome for others.
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21University of California at Merced
University of California at Riverside
University of California at San Diego (3)*
University of California at Santa Barbara (15)*°
University of California at Santa Cruz
University of Chicago (4)*
University of Colorado at Boulder (12)*
University of Denver (3)*
University of Hawaii at Manoa*
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Iowa°
University of Kentucky
University of Miami (2)
University of Michigan
University of Missouri, Kansas City
University of Nebraska at Lincoln
University of Northern Colorado (2)
University of Notre Dame*
University of Oklahoma (2)
University of Oregon
University of Pennsylvania (4)*
University of Pittsburgh*
University of Portland
University of Puget Sound
University of Redlands (2)
University of San Diego (10)*°
University of San Francisco (8)*
University of Southern California (17)*°
University of the Pacific°
University of Utah*
University of Vermont
University of Virginia*
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin, Madison
U.S. Military Academy at West Point*
Vanderbilt University (5)*
Villanova University (4)
Wake Forest University
Washington and Lee University*°
Washington College
Washington University in St. Louis (4)*
Weber State University*°
Wellesley College*
Wesleyan University*
Western Washington University
Wheaton College (MA)
Wheaton College (IL)*
Whittier College (6)*
Williams College*
Yale University (6)* °
° Indicates schools where Torrey athletes are currently participating in college sports.
College AcceptancesAdelphi University (2)*
Arizona State University*°
Azusa Pacific University*
Belmont University*
Bentley College°
Bentley University*
Boston College (7)*
Boston University (6)*
Bradley University
Brandeis University (2)*
Brown University (5)*
Bucknell University
California Institute of Technology
California Institute of the Arts*
California Lutheran University*
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo°
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
California State University, Long Beach
California State University, Los Angeles (2)*
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon University
Chapman University (4)°
Claremont McKenna College (3)°
Clark Atlanta University
College of Charleston (2)*
Colorado College*°
Columbia University
Cornell University (4)*
Cuesta College
Dartmouth College (6)*°
Davidson College°
DePauw University°
Dixie State College°
Dominican University of California
Duke University
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - AZ
Emory University (7)*°
Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles*
Fordham University (2)
Georgetown University (5)*
Grinnell College°
Harvard University (5)°
Harvey Mudd College (2)*
Haverford College
Humboldt State University
Ithaca College
Johns Hopkins University (6)°
Lesley University
Linfield College
Loyola Marymount University (7)*
Loyola University-New Orleans
Macalester College
Marquette University°
Menlo College
Miami of Ohio°
Miami University, Oxford*
Michigan State University
Middlebury College (6)°
Mills College
MiraCosta College
Mount St. Mary’s College (Chalon)
New York University (8)*°
Northeastern University
Northern Arizona University (2)
Northwestern University (6)*
Oberlin College (4)°
Occidental College (6)°
Oklahoma State University
Pace University, New York City*°
Palomar College°
Pepperdine University*
Pitzer College (2)
Princeton University (2)*°
Purdue University (2)
Rice University*
Robert Morris University
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (2)*°
Saint Mary’s College (2)*
Saint Mary’s College of California
San Diego Mesa College (4)*
San Diego State University (5)*
San Francisco State University
Santa Clara University (5)*
Sarah Lawrence College (3)°
Scripps College (4)*
Seattle University*
Skidmore College
Southern Methodist University (6)*
Stanford University (10)*°
Stonehill College°
Swarthmore College
Sweet Briar College
Syracuse University
Texas Christian University (2)
The American University of Paris
The Art Institute of California, San Francisco*
The George Washington University (5)
The University of Arizona (10)*
The University of Iowa
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2)*
The University of Texas, Austin
Trinity College (CT)
Trinity International University°
Trinity University (2)*°
Tufts University (6)*
Tulane University (3)
United States Military Academy
University of California at Berkeley (8)*
University of California at Davis (3)*°
University of California at Irvine (3)
University of California at Los Angeles (3)
OVER THE PAST FOUR YEARS, GRADUATES HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED TO THE FOLLOWING INSTITUTIONS. THE CLASS OF 2012 GRADUATES ARE ATTENDING THOSE SCHOOLS DENOTED BY AN ASTERISK.
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Passing The Torch.
Tuesday May 22nd was a historic day for La Jolla Country Day School.
A Generation of Country Day Leadership Takes its Leave.
Bill PollockPatti Wild
Keeping everyone’s routines going through the rebuilding of the campus
was a challenge, but we did it every day. Having my kids right here on
campus with me was a great perk too. -Bill Pollock
I will miss, most of all, the sense of community I have come to know and love at Country Day. – Bill “Doc” Stevenson
When someone has given you a lot, you don’t want them to say thank you back, so I thank my many students and their families for what they have given me over the years.– Nancy Eckenroth
Leaving Country Day is a bit like going off to college. I shall embrace the adventure, but I surely will miss the family!-Patti Wild
s the school day ended, as the sound of the bell tolling the last day of senior classes still echoed through the campus, virtually all of the staff and faculty gathered near the amphitheater to mark the end of eight extraordinary Country Day careers. As the ceremony unfolded, the audience grew as former students just back from college and retired faculty rejoined the community to express their appreciation for a group of retirees who collectively have given more than 200 years of joyous toil for this school.
It was a day in which the lines between past and present blurred, a reminder that the history of a school is not a long line of receding years, but in many ways is more of a valley – a place inhabited by students and teachers who, over time, are reminded that the impact of their time here resonates through years and generations.
– Chris Schuck
Bill Stevenson
Nancy Eckenroth
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Joyce Sparling
Madame Alice Thornton Schilling
Billy Simms
The kids are my favorite memory. Getting to know them and their
families as they made their way through graduation and onto college.
I will miss the energy they gave me. – Ginny Perry
Ginny Perry
In many ways, Country Day has shaped my life - meeting my lovely wife, working with my three closest friends, teaching wonderful students, and staying in contact with many alumni. For forty years time has been measured by the school year. Now, I move into a new phase where I can pursue the “physics” of gardening, cooking, reading, and life’s other pleasures. -Billy Simms
I will always be a part of Country Day, but it is time for other things. I will, first and foremost, be spending
a lot of time with my new grand-daughter. I would also love to take more international mission trips
with my husband, Ray, reconnect with old friends, become
a better cook, read more poetry, and join a gym to become healthier.
– Joyce Sparling
I have always loved my subject matter and my students; I have appreciated the supportive parent body and the outstanding students with whom I’ve worked. There are many of them who have left indelible traces in my heart. Now with some ambivalence but great anticipation, I join my many former students and colleagues who have created a new life after Country Day, confident that we will always be a part of the Torrey family and will meet again. -Madame Alice Thornton Schilling
Summer 2012
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building in which this talk was being held carries Jacobs’ name. His grandchildren, Country Day students, sat among his listeners. And of all the business leaders who had preceded him in these luncheon discussions, Jacobs had pioneered work that these students knew firsthand had transformed their own lives. The cell phones in their pockets and the many wireless devices crowding their homes stood testament to the impact of this man’s entrepreneurial idea.
Yet, Jacobs did not come across as a business tycoon. He was scholarly and, like a good teacher, began with the big picture.
he students arrived early and sat waiting quietly and with so much reverent attention that Irwin Jacobs, the one wearing the jacket and tie, had to help the students relax.
Grabbing a chair at mid-table, Qualcomm’s founder sat between two students, popped open a Diet Coke, tossed a few textbooks and a silicon chip on the table and began the kind of lecture you’d expect from the college professor that he was.
But it was clear from the start that this was a special episode of Head of School Chris Schuck’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Lecture Series. The
Irwin Jacobs and other leading San Diego entrepreneurs take time out to inspire Country Day students.
Guidance from on High
By Chris Lavin
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“I have always felt one needs to understand the very theoretical aspects of a subject to produce a product you can put out successfully into the market,’’ he told the students. He started with textbooks – on probability and random process theory; another written in collaboration with fellow M.I.T graduate students who were trying to make sense of a difficult professor’s lectures on communication theory.
Then Jacobs took the students along as he recounted his transition from University of California, San Diego professor into the early entrepreneurial years of the digital communication revolution. In many ways, it was a transition in substance, but not in style.
Jacobs described the collaborative style that he had mastered in academia and showed how he applied the same approach among colleagues and co-workers in business. Seemingly overnight they developed the methods for splitting the spectrum and managing the delivery of increasingly large amounts of data through the complex computer chips that made modern cellular phone traffic possible.
Of course, Qualcomm didn’t develop overnight, and Jacobs shared the details of the intense scientific work and competitive business challenges that needed to come together for a company like his to grow toits current 22,000 employees with more than $20 billion in annual revenues. He acknowledged once estimating to his wife, Joan, that perhaps Qualcomm would grow to 100 employees.
“Of course it takes a lot of work, a lot of drive and a little luck to make things happen,’’ Jacobs said.Jacobs traced the evolution of his company through its early days when smaller, initial products produced the revenues to fund the research and development on what would become the break-through cellular phone technologies. He recounted the details of the opening of the Chinese and Indian markets and the ongoing struggles against Europe’s competing technologies.
Jacobs encouraged students to study engineering. There is still so much work to be done, he said, as wireless advances revolutionize medicine and education the way they have changed the paradigms in more traditional forms of communication.
Jacobs’s appearance was part of the second year of Chris Schuck’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Lecture Series, which again this year included talks by a number of San Diego’s leading entrepreneurs: Ernest Rady, Judy Muller-Cohn, Jeff Church, and Tina Nova.
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Ernest Rady, who started insurance companies, oil firms and real estate investment companies to become one of San Diego’s leading philan-thropists, took the students through the art of the deal, but emphasized that the key to success is correctly evaluating the talents of prospective partners.
“ I have never met anyone who is successful who didn’t love what they do.’’
Judy Muller-Cohn
Judy Muller-Cohn, founder and chief executive officer of San Diego-based Biomatrica. Outlined the route she and her scientist husband, Rolf, took in developing a company that mimicked the chemistry of an insect to develop ways to preserve DNA/RNA at room temperature.
“ My life has never been boring; sometimes it is exhausting.’’
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Jeff Church, a Country Day parent and Board of Trustees member, recounted the highs and lows of his early business career and then shared with students his latest effort: Social Entrepreneurship in which success is judged against financial, social and environmental benchmarks. His newest product, Nika Water, generates profits that fund water projects in the Third World.
“ When opportunity presents itself, be ready to move on it.’’
Jeff Church Tina Nova
“ I do a lot of hiring... I’ll take drive over grades anytime.’’
Tina Nova, who is heading biotech startup Genoptix, traced her rise from a farm in Delano into the boardrooms of cutting edge bioscience businesses. Like many of these speakers, she told the students to find their passion and pursue what they love to business and financial success.
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n the criminal justice system, to quote a certain television baritone, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders.
This is not their story.
Rather, it’s the tale of another group of would-be crime fighters: the Middle School students of Diane de Sequera’s CSI Forensics Science class, who, in the course of a 12-week course, learn how to investigate and resolve all manner of felonious malfeasance, from mayhem to murder.
“We use CSI (short for Crime Scene Investigation) as a way to teach science and math,” said de Sequera, who has been teaching at La Jolla Country Day for more than 20 years and was named a “Teacher of the Future” last year by the National Association of Independent Schools. “It’s about learning how to think logically, to collaborate and communicate. It’s really cool.”
De Sequera debuted her CSI class in 2007. It began as a three-week summer school offering, a natural
extension of de Sequera’s life, experience and interests. Her father had been a criminologist in Vancouver, Canada. “I grew up hearing tales of true crime. He always came home with scary stories.”
Once, she recalled, her father took her to the city’s juvenile hall, locked her in a cell and asked her to reflect upon the experience. Her conclusion: Crime doesn’t pay, but it can teach.
De Sequera’s CSI class, which became an elective in 2008, is predictably rich in its own scary, if occasionally gross, lessons. Students spend a lot of time, for example, scrutinizing, measuring and analyzing blood splatter patterns on large sheets of paper (reproductions of actual sanguinary events). In the process, they learn a bit of trigonometry and how to reason.
“They learn how to think,” de Sequera said. “They learn how to not just take fingerprints, but how to analyze them, how to take different kinds of mea-surements and compare data.” On Fridays, the class watches an episode of one of the CSI TV dramas but stops before the revelatory ending so that the students can solve the crime themselves.
HOW DIANE DE SEQUERA SPARKS AN APPRECIATION FOR SCIENCE AND MATH IN STUDENTS WHO DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE INTERESTED IN SUCH THINGS.
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37them will ultimately choose a career in forensic science. “We’re always in looking for new blood.”
On this day, though, Ogino has the students looking at old blood. More specifically, reproduced splatter patterns from past crimes to determine point of origin, distance from source to surface, direction of movement and likely number of people involved.
After that, he begins a slide show: A series of photos from real crimes. There are some oohs and aahs, but mostly the students study the images, frowning with concentration.
“Actually seeing pictures of dead bodies kind of grosses me out, though once they’re decomposed, it’s OK,” declares seventh-grader Arielle Algaze. “When things do get too gross, I just look down. I suddenly find my calculator very interesting.”
Ogino peppers the class with questions about the images:
Q: What does the multiple number of stab wounds suggest?A: It was a crime of passion. The killer knew the victim.
Q: What’s the significance of the cigarette butts left at the crime scene?A: The killer was a smoker who didn’t immediately flee, further evidence that he was familiar with both the victim and location. Strangers don’t linger.
Q: What’s the significance of the right thumb print on the victim’s gun?A: That he wasn’t entirely innocent, but also that he wasn’t intending to shoot at the time of his death. The victim was a lefty. His suspected killer must have manipulated the crime scene, putting the gun in the wrong hand. It under- mines the suspect’s story of self-defense.
Ogino and the students shoot questions and answers back and forth like gunfire. The students eagerly raise their hands, brimming with supposition and hypotheses. De Sequera sits in the back, watching and smiling.
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One lesson they learn again and again is that real forensics isn’t at all like Hollywood, de Sequera said. There’s no tossing of vials of bodily fluids into shiny, humming, blinking machines that spit out complete genetic sequences in mere seconds. Real science takes considerable time and thought.
“I have to give them a lot of instruction, especially at first, because they tend to want to come to an immediate conclusion, which is usually wrong,” said de Sequera. “They’re very impulsive.”
But also enthusiastic.
De Sequera has been teaching for 30 years, always in middle school. She loves it because “the kids are so full of energy and open to everything. They’ve not yet become jaded teenagers. They’ll still jump up and down with excitement about a project, which makes me jump, too.”
Certainly the subject matter can make one jumpy. Lessons are typically based on real-life crimes. Class speakers include FBI bomb experts, Secret Service agents and a forensic entomologist who comes bearing the telltale bugs of his trade.
There’s nothing better than a jar of maggots to focus one’s attention, unless it’s grisly crime scene photos, which are part and parcel of any forensic investigation.
For the most part, de Sequera’s seventh- and eighth-graders take the imagery in stride. Acting silly or inappropriately sentences offenders to time served
outside in the hallway. “The students generally express a real curiosity and fascination with the material, but not in a macabre way,” de Sequera said. “I tell them it’s not about the bite marks on the victim, but how you measure them and use them as evidence to explain a larger picture.”
It’s not all classroom learning, of course. Forensics is as much about fieldwork as it is about working a microscope or conducting data analysis. There are excursions outside to hunt down culprit cars in the school parking lot based on tire tracks de Sequera has imprinted on butcher paper. She regularly sets up mock crime scenes on campus, complete with eyewitnesses, police reports and bagged evidence.
Student-investigators are tasked with conducting interviews, sorting out the clues and determining the miscreant. It’s usually an administrator.
And there’s the occasional field trip to the Chula Vista Police Department (CVPD), which de Sequera would like to make a regular event. On a recent sunny morning, de Sequera’s class – seven girls, nine boys – headed south to spend time with Craig Ogino, the CVPD’s forensic services manager, and his staff.
Ogino worked in the San Bernardino County crime lab for 29 years before joining Chula Vista three years ago. He has degrees in chemistry and criminology. “It’s really rewarding to solve a crime using science,” he said. Ogino admits to an ulterior motive for inviting the students. He hopes some of
“ It’s about learning how to think logically, to collaborate and communicate. It’s really cool.”
“You should give us tests like this,” one student says to de Sequera after a particularly unsettling set of images.
“The pictures are rather gory,” observes de Sequera.
“Exactly,” replies the student.
The class then adjourns to the police department basement, to a pair of evidence bays in which mock crime scenes have been erected. Ogino cautions the students not to touch the cars in the back of the bays. They’re real evidence in working cases. Instead, he focuses their attention on complex blood splatter patterns set up in three-dimensional dis-plays. The students crowd around, quizzed by CVPD staff. There is much debate.
“This is a lot harder than it looks,” says Alex Mow, a seventh-grader. “Crime can be very confusing.”But solvable with the right tools and mindset.
“This class is a great sort of mixture of science and problem-solving,” says Susan Algaze, Arielle’s mother. “They’re learning to reason deductively, just like Sherlock Holmes.”
For these middle-schoolers, that much seems elementary. Scott LaFee writes about science for the University of California, San Diego. He is a former science writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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eing three-years old used to be simple: You played with toys. You ran around a lot. Maybe you ate the occasional bug. You learned a lot from these things – like the fact most bugs taste bad – but your real schooling came later, in kindergarten.
Of course, this isn’t entirely accurate. From birth, children are knowl-edge sponges, undersized scientist-philosophers who are energetically intent upon understanding and making sense of their worlds. Long before age 5 – the official age of kindergarten – they’re often ready and eager to learn more than how to just make a good mud pie.
From its inception in 1926, La Jolla Country Day School has always welcomed the very young. But, like the rest of the campus, the “nursery school” of old has grown and changed considerably over the past 86 years. An education at Country Day’s Early Childhood Center (ECC) today is an education in how to get a modern education.
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“ So if they’re ready, why not expose them to things sooner than later. If they’re enjoying the experience and learning, why not?”
How early childhood learning at Country Day is very much about preparing young minds to learn.
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Those conversations quickly move beyond who gets which toy. “Children seem to learn things much earlier now,” said Dani Bonfield, who has been teaching at the ECC for eight years. “So if they’re ready, why not expose them to things sooner than later. If they’re enjoying the experience and learning, why not?”
Indeed, Bonfield and her fellow teachers work hard to prepare their young charges for the educational rigors to come. In kindergarten, for example, 5-year-olds will get serious about their letters and numbers, but Bonfield likes to get her students “thinking about them now.”
That effort might start, perhaps, with a self-portrait in crayon to “get them using the same movements they’ll use to create letters and numbers,” Bonfield says. It will continue with songs and stories, plenty of chances to write their name.
To be sure, no one expects every kid to get everything, Bonfield says. “They all have their ‘a-ha!’ moments at different times.” Rather, it’s about exposing very young students to at least some of the things that life and at least 14 more years of schooling will teach them. Under a bright Tuesday morning sun, recess is ending. The 14 students in Bonfield’s Tiny Torreys are being told to line up before returning inside. Bonfield launches into a song about lining up to help speed the process. The students chime in – and line up.
Bonfield, with her teaching partner Elaine Gain, try to keep their students busy, constantly moving from activity to activity. “That way nobody gets bored, including me,” says Bonfield, smiling.
The students dutifully file into the classroom and gather in a semicircle on the floor, each plopping down on a yellow paper star emblazoned with their name. Gain sits at the top of the circle and begins another song, this one about numbers: “When I was three, I skinned my knee on the day I went to space.…” It’s a funny song. The kids laugh and sing along.
“While they may feel like they’re just having fun,” said Curtis, who is also assistant lower school director, “there’s always something educational behind it.”
After skinned knees and other numeric adventures in space, it’s time for “secret share,” a regular event in which a student holds up a bag containing a mysterious object whose name begins with the letter the class is currently studying. The class must guess the contents from clues provided by parents. Today, it’s the letter O. Gain reminds the students that O has two sounds – a soft “ah” and a hard “oh.”
There are a few ventured guesses, but really, a lot of things start with the letter O, and some of them actually do fit inside a bag. Finally, Henry, who’s holding the bag, pulls out a plastic pink-and-yellow cephalopod.
“It’s a silly octopus,” he declares. The class agrees.The next mystery object equally flummoxes the class. Alex L. eventually displays an otoscope (hard “oh”), a medical device used to look inside ears. Naturally, everybody wants to stick it in their ear, but Bonfield suggests instead that Alex simply walk it around the room so that everybody can have a closer look.
It’s easy to find the ECC on campus: Listen for the laughter; look for the toys. But don’t be fooled by appearances, says ECC head Maria Curtis. This is a place of serious learning. Students here study music, science, the alphabet. Four-year-olds can even take Spanish. Indeed, the ECC experience is, in many ways, not unlike attending “big kid” school next door.
“Our students go to the music room for music. They go to the library. They have PE with coaches who also coach the varsity teams,” said Curtis.
They even go on field trips, first across the street to visit the guys at San Diego Fire Station 35, later to more exotic locales like the pumpkin patch in Del Mar and the strawberry fields of Carlsbad.
“It’s a much richer experience than you’d find in an ordinary preschool,” said Marna Weiss-Padowitz, the director of Country Day’s Lower School (ECC to grade 4).
Like most preschool programs, the ECC initially emphasizes socialization. The 3- and 4-year-olds in the “Tiny Torreys” program and Jr. Kindergarten program are just moving beyond the angst of parental separation. They’re just discovering that other kids their age can be quite interesting, if also occasionally annoying. “There’s a lot of early emphasis on practicing interpersonal skills, how to share and how to communicate with words, not actions, said Weiss-Padowitz. “Every child has lots of opportunities to have conversations with each other and with their teachers.”
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After secret search, Bonfield hands each student a long strip of paper. Pasted at one end of each strip are differing sequences of paper cutouts: Two yellow stars followed by an orange jack-o-lantern followed by two yellow stars, for example. One eye of each jack-o-lantern has been colored red to mimic the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. Bonfield asks the students to look at the stars and jack-o-lantern shapes on their paper strips and repeat the pattern with more shapes. “Just like the stripes of Jupiter repeat patterns,” she says.
The students bend to their task, some asking if they can create entirely new patterns. Absolutely, replies Bonfield. It’s all about learning, which in this case, is a gas.
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The Lady Torreys basketball program led the way for the 2011-12 school year, spending much of its 32-1 season ranked in the nation’s top 10 by USA Today. The team won the school’s first ever Division IV State Basketball Championship and ended the season ranked 7th in the nation.
And as the school year ended, Torrey golfer Alberto Sanchez turned in a stunning performance and won a spot in the nation’s national golf championship – The U.S. Open.
This was a banner year for other Torrey teams as 14 championship banners will be going up in Smith Gymnasium for boys and girls basketball, boys soft-ball, swimming, golf, boys and girls tennis, volleyball.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS• 2011-12 saw 116 students compete in 2 sport seasons for Country Day and 29 Torreys were awarded 3-sport athlete patches. Senior Mark Atkins won the coveted Iron Torrey Award for playing 3 athletic seasons in all four years of his high school career. Well over 90% of Country Day’s Upper School students participated in a team sport.
• Sixteen Country Day 2011-12 senior athletes will play collegiate sports, bring to 58 the number of former Torreys competing in college next year.
• The Big Blue football program returned to the powerful Coastal League, the most competitive small school football league in California, for the first time since 1999. The team went 7-5 and won at least a first round playoff game for a 10th consecutive year.
• Country Day won its first swimming championship, boys swim team won the Eastern League title.
• The girls volleyball team had a remarkable season returning to the California Div. IV State
Championship for an amazing 3rd consecutive year. The team posted a win-loss record of 33 -9 this year and had an almost unheard of 105-13 record over the past three seasons.
• The men’s basketball team was the school’s best ever and brought home the Torreys’ first ever Div. IV CIF title.
• After finishing 2010-11 as Pacific League co-champs, the Lady Torrey softball team moved up a league and finished with 21 wins and a Co-Coastal League Championship.
• The baseball team also won 21 games to cap off three 20+ win seasons. The program’s 68-28 record over the past 3 years is amongst the best in San Diego County.
• Country Day’s tennis programs continue to dominate as both the men and the women won Coastal League titles, the women took the CIF championship for a 3rd consecutive year and the men played their way all the way to the CIF championship match.
• The men’s lacrosse program finished with a 15-5 win-loss record, playing its way to the CIF Div. II semifinals.
• The Lady Torrey soccer team also played in the CIF semi-finals.
• Senior pole vaulter qualified for State Championships for the 3rd consecutive year. Kaitlin McCallum was the 15th ranked girls pole vaulter in the nation this year.
• The boys golf team captured its second consecutive Coastal League championship with a 25-8 win-loss record, and a few days after graduation, senior Alberto Sanchez qualified to play in the U.S. Open.
A Year in the National Spotlight
By Jeff HutzlerLa Jolla Country Day Athletic Director
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On America’s Greatest Stage
Twice in 2012, Country Day artists graced
the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Senior Samantha Staszak performed with
the American Honors Choir in February.
Junior pianist Danli Liang, fresh off a
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traveled in May, to Carnegie Hall where she
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Rashawn Allen ’01Healthcare Technology Sales
Scarlett Chang ’02Fashion Public Relations
Rex Covington ’78Artist (Ice Sculptor)
Kimball Denton ’92Deputy District Attorney
Allison Griffith Lovell ’92Mutual Funds Sales
André Lundkvist ’88Bioengineer
Tesse Roberts Rasmussen ’94Transportation Engineer/Planner
Anamara Ritt-Olson ’87 Professor/Preventive Medicine/
Writer
Evan Skowronski ’87Scientist
George Szabo, III ’88Professional Sailor and Sailmaker
Albert Wei ’88Urban Planner and Sustainability
Consultant
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Alumni Review
Anamara Ritt-Olson ’87 André Lundkvist ’88
Summer 2012
Halfway through his M.D.-Ph.D. program at Loma Linda University in San Bernardino County, Evan Skowronski was sitting in a lab in the wee hours of the morning waiting for some key data to develop.
“I was looking at some x-ray film, remembering my boss speculating that the results might be this way or that way. I looked at the data on the film and he was wrong on all accounts. The results were completely unexpected. All over the world, different research groups were studying this problem, thinking about it a certain way, and at that moment, it was like 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, I was the only one who knew what was going on.”
For Skowronski, it was a life-changing moment. He quit medical school to pursue science full-time, a choice that has taken the 43-year-old La Jolla Country Day School graduate (Class of 1987) around the world, from the jungles of Asia and Africa to the urban cores and suburban expanses of the American east coast.
The latter may be the scariest place he’s ever been.In 2001, Skowronski was a biologist with an already impressive résumé. He has worked in both private industry and for the government, including time spent as a production sequencing manager in the monumental Human Genome Project, responsible for helping map chromosome 19.
One Sunday, he got a call from an acquaintance asking if he could fly to Washington, D.C. His help was needed. It was hush-hush. Details would be provided later.
Skowronski agreed, and flew into a crisis. One week after the 9/11 attacks, letters containing anthrax spores – a deadly bacterium – had been mailed to the offices of two U.S. senators and several news
media outlets. Twenty-two people were infected; five died. The ensuing investigation became one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement, according to the FBI.
Skowronski was put in charge of launching a new and largely untested surveillance lab to search out other anthrax letters and threats. “We were handling real, live samples of anthrax,” he said. “It was scary – a lot more dangerous than what I was used to. I couldn’t tell my friends or family where I was or what I was doing. It was probably the worst three weeks of my life.”
The labs and surveillance effort proved a huge success, eventually evolving into BioWatch, an ongoing federal program in which labs scattered throughout the country continuously monitor for indications of a biological threat.
These days, Skowronski’s work is perhaps less dramatic, but arguably more profound and expansive. He is senior scientist at the Tahoe-Research Initiative, where he focuses on developing technolo-gies and systems to monitor and assess infectious disease threats in undeveloped countries. He spends much of his time designing new methods for identifying and analyzing real and potential microbial threats to public health and national security.
He also spends time, when he can, at La Jolla Country Day.
“Every time I’m in town, I make a point of stopping by the school. I still keep in touch with my teachers, mentors, classmates. I’ve been a tutor there. I’ve lectured and been a substitute teacher. I can walk into Mr. Perrotti’s class. He’ll hand me the chalk and the lesson will go on without missing a beat. It was a fantastic education.”
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Evan Skowronski ’87 2012 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipient
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Jacob Gelfand ’02, Susie Nordenger, Joely Pritzker ’03, and Thorin Tobiassen ’02
Doug Greiner ’92 and Kelli Teel Greiner ’91Former faculty Will Erickson and Roger Weaver with members of the Class of 1982 Alumni Reunions
Chris Schuck, Evan (’87) and Laura Skowronski, Anamara Ritt-Olson ’87 celebrate Evan earning the Distinguished Alumni Award at Spring Fling.
Class of 2002 (top) and 1967 (bottom) enjoy their 10 and 45 year reunions respectively.
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Andy Meyer ’72 Andy and his wife, Karen, have lived in Port Angeles, WA, since 1996. They have two children: Erika (22), who is currently living in Copenhagen, Denmark, for a year before pursuing a graduate degree at Emory University, and Thomas (20), who is a sophomore at American University in Washington D.C. Andy currently works for the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) in Olympia, WA, doing a variety of leadership training and coordination work for local elected officials in the areas of land use, economic development, and environmental protection. Prior to AWC, he worked for local governments in California, Maryland and Washington in planning and land use. Andy graduated from the University of Michigan in 1976, and then received an M.A. in urban planning from UCLA in 1978. He and his family love living in such close proximity to hiking, snowshoeing, kaya-king and other outdoor activities on the Olympic Peninsula. You may contact Andy at [email protected], or at [email protected].
Brian Barnum ’82 Brian lives in Pacific Palisades with his wife, Michele, and twin daughters, Katie and Megan, having moved there from Silicon Valley in 2004. He works for Rubicon Project, an Internet business which provides technology to online publishers to help them sell their available advertising spots on their websites. Michele is very active in the parents’ council board of directors and deeply involved in some of the fundraising programs at St. Matthew’s School where their children will attend Eighth grade this year. She is also the team mom for the girls “Sunshine Westside 13s” volleyball team. The Barnums enjoy having the opportunity to see Steve Royer ’82 and his family often. Brian had a blast visiting with old friends at the reunion in March 2012. All is well with the Barnums!
Marci Friedman ’87 For the past two years, Marci has been living in Neu-chatel, Switzerland, with her husband, Dave, and their twins, Jake and Avery, age 5. They love taking advantage of traveling, as well as outdoor activities like skiing, hiking and kayaking. While her children are in preschool, Marci has been slowly, but surely, learning French. Although Marci loves living in Switzerland, she often dreams of Mexican food!
Amanda Neborsky ’90 Amanda and Joseph Rothengast welcomed their first baby, Alana Rose, on March 27, 2012, at 9:42 a.m. in Palo Alto, CA. Alana weighed 5 pounds, 12 ounces and measured 18.9 inches. A few days later, Alana celebrated her first Easter and Passover (photo). Amanda and Joe are enjoying every moment with their precious daughter.
Alumni Class Notes
Andy Meyer ’72 and family
Brian Barnum ’82 and family
Marci Friedman ’87 and family
Amanda Neborsky ’90, Alana Rose
Melodie Eagle Anderson ’92 Melodie and her husband, David, are happy to announce the birth of their daughter, Lilah Elizabeth Anderson. Lilah was born on March 20, 2012, only 3 days after Melodie and David attended the Class of 1992’s 20-year reunion. Lilah weighed 8 pounds 7 ounces and was 19 inches long.
Liz (Marsh) Brown ’92 After living outside of San Diego for 20 years (Atlanta and NYC), Liz, her husband, Seth, and sons, Mark (7), and, Max (4), returned to San Diego… just in time for her 20-year reunion! In 2011, Liz celebrated her 10-year anniversary at IBM Corporation as a Senior Marketing Manager. She is thrilled to be back in San Diego reconnecting with her old classmates!
Aimee (Vadnais) Cochrane ’94 Aimee and her husband, Steve, announced the arrival of Nicholas Stephen Cochrane on April 18, 2011, at 10 a.m. He weighed 9 pounds, 3 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. He joins big brother, Christopher, age 4.
Antonella Pisani Vernier ’94 Antonella is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Musician’s Friend, a division of Guitar Center, based in Westlake Village, CA. Musician’s Friend is the world’s largest eCommerce retailer for musical instruments and equipment. After spending the last 12 years in San Diego, Antonella moved to Los Angeles in February 2011.
Jared Finegold ’97 Jared and Sabrina Finegold are proud to announce the birth of their second child, a son, Julian Paul, on Dec. 20, 2011. They live in Palo Alto, Calif.
Renee N. Galente ’97 Renee recently left a premiere plaintiff’s civillitigation firm in San Diego to start her own business with her fiancé, Eric Ganci; Galente Ganci, APC. Renee continues to practice civil litigation, focusing on real property, business and personal injury litigation, while Eric focuses exclusively on DUI defense. In addition to her trial work, she sits as the Alumni Association Board of Directors President for her law school, Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Renee is also the Secretary and Board Member of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association and SDLRLA Scholarship Fund, respectively. Outside the legal community, she is the San Diego Human Rights Campaign Federal Club Co-Chair, working on the local board as a volunteer for the nation’s largest LGBT rights organization. Renee encourages anyone who wants to catch up to contact her at [email protected] or on facebook!
Alumni Class Notes
Lilah Elizabeth Anderson
Seth, Mark Brown
Aimee (Vadnais) Cochrane ’94, family
Renee N. Galente ’97
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Arturo Kassel ’98 Arturo Kassel has founded a small restaurant group in San Diego by the name of Whisknladle Hospitality, which consist of four restaurants - Whisknladle and three Prepkitchens located in La Jolla, Del Mar and Little Italy. Each is known for seasonal and farm-to-table products as well as craft beers and cocktails. Arturo’s restaurants have been featured in Gourmet, Traveler Magazine, and Bon Appetit as “best restaurants” and “restaurants on the rise.” Future plans include growing the restaurant group throughout Southern California. To learn more about Arturo and Whisknladle Hospitality, visit www.wnlhosp.com.
Max Lin ’99 Max Lin and Huilin Jin were married by Mr. Schuck on April 28, 2012, at the Bahia Resort Hotel. Other wedding guests included Jasmine Kung ’99, Michael Blumberg ’99, Hiroshi McDonald Mori ’99, and Paul Paradise ’99. Coach Fleischhacker facilitated their ceremonial soccer match at LJCDS the morning after the happy nuptials. Max’s team lost, which meant he had to do the dishes for one month straight. Huilin is proud to share that she scored 5 goals to Max’s 0.
Amy Elghoroury ’00 Amy received her Ph.D. in French and Italian from Stanford University in June 2011. Her specialization is French and Italian novels of the 18th through 20th centuries. Amy’s dissertation, titled “The Descriptive Mode: Flaubert, Verga, Huysmans, D’Annunzio” is currently under review for publication as a book. Amy received a master’s degree in Italian Literature from Stanford in 2006. She graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with double majors in French and Italian in 2003.
Jenny Herman Der ’00 Jenny attended Whittier College, where she met her husband, Russell Der. Russell is from Canada, so they spent a lot of time apart from each other throughout their dating years. After happy hour one weeknight, he surprised her with a fake ‘Save the Date’ and popped the question! A year later, they were married at the amazingly unique Smog Shoppe in Culver City on January 21, 2012. It was every-thing they could have hoped for, surrounded by all of their best friends and family. They now reside in downtown Los Angeles, where they own and operate a boutique Advertising and PR firm.
Chris Swigart ’00 Chris and his wife, Mary, live in a seaside town south of Boston. Chris, Mary and Christopher “Hans” Swigart (1), welcomed Anna Jane on June 14, 2012. Anna weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces and was 18 inches long. Chris recently accepted a position as a Senior Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Alumni Class Notes
Max Lin ’99 and Huilin Jin Wedding
Jenny Herman Der ’00 Wedding
Carolyn Schlicht-Corbin ’01 Wedding
Chris Swigart ’00 and Family
Carolyn Schlicht-Corbin ’01 Carolyn was married to Chad Corbin in July of 2010 at All Hallows Catholic Church in La Jolla, during an intimate family ceremony while her brother, John, was on leave from Afghani-stan and before Chad deployed to Afghanistan. They renewed their vows and celebrated with family and friends in Louisville, KY, on April 14, 2012. Chad is active duty military (United States Army) and they are currently living in Germany. The family picture from their wedding includes: Captain John Schlicht ’98, Susanne Schlicht (mother), Captain & Mrs. Chad Corbin and Roger Schlicht (father).
Jeni Noerenberg ’01 Jeni is currently a third year anesthesiology resident at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, CA. She is hoping to return to San Diego in the summer, 2013 to be a regional anesthesia fellow (if they accept her!) or to start a career with aanesthesiology group. Jeni is also newly engaged! Her fiancé, Greg Bartley, is an IT guru currently working for the State Department of Technology and plans to transfer his skills to San Diego. Jeni and Greg will be married in San Diego April 2013. They are also proud owners of Shelby, an energetic Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever puppy.
Matt Mothander ’01 Matt is currently serving as a Lieutenant in the United States Coast Guard. He graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 2005 with a degree in Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering and spent the first two years after college serving aboard a Medium Endurance Coast Guard Cutter performing law enforcement, search and rescue, and national defense missions. Matt spent the next two years studying at MIT, graduating in 2009 with a dual master’s in Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering. While in school, Matt also met and married Colleen Howard of Wellesley, MA. They currently reside in Alexandria, VA, where Matt works in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Office of Naval Engineering’s Ship Design Division in Washington, D.C., and Colleen owns and runs an interior design firm. They are expecting their first child (a boy) in August 2012.
Alison Brooks ’02 and Casey McCracken ’02 After LJCDS, Casey and Ali-son both attended Stanford University, where Casey double majored in math and economics and Alison majored in biology. Post-graduation, Casey stayed at Stanford to attend law school while Alison headed up to Seattle to work towards a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Washington. After receiving his JD in 2009, Casey moved up to Seattle to clerk for a federal judge for a year before starting as an associate at a law firm in Orange County. Alison finished her program this past December and moved down to Irvine at the beginning of the
Alumni Class Notes
Jeni Noerenberg ’01 and Greg Bartley
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Alison Brooks ’02 & Casey McCracken ’02
Matt Mothander ’01 and his wife, Colleen
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year to start work in a cancer biology lab at UC Irvine. After more than 4 years of on-and-off long-distance dating, Alison and Casey were married on May 5, 2012.
Mateo Levy ’02 Mateo is engaged to Jessica Grossman. Mateo and Jessica met at Loyola Marymount University and have been dating ever since. They live together in La Jolla Shores with their puppy, Baxter. Mateo is a partner with his father, Isaac, in the family business, which focuses on life insurance and estate planning for their clients. To learn more about their business, visit www.levyfs.com. Jessica works in development for the Jewish Community Center and works very hard to keep donors happy and contributing to the various programs at the JCC.
Alex Zyman ’02 Alex graduated from the University of San Diego School of Law in Spring 2011. Since then, he passed the California Bar and got married to his beautiful wife, Stella Hernandez. In January of 2012, he began an LLM in Taxation at the USD Graduate Tax Law Program. He also practices as a tax attorney. In addition, Alex is working on an executive suite concept for attorneys and other business professionals (ExecutiveLawSuites.com).
Brian Geffen ’03 Brian lives in San Diego and is managing his own custom printing business, Duds by Dudes, LLC. He got engaged to Amanda Diamond in November 2011 after finishing his first half marathon.
Joely Pritzker ’03 and Jacob Gelfand ’02 Joely and Jacob are enjoying married life in San Francisco. Joely is in her first year of a family nurse practitioner program at UCSF. Jacob recently graduated with a JD/MBA from University of San Francisco. Jacob currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer for the startup GlampingHub.com and works as a holistic business coach.
Clara Saks ’04 Clara and Timothy Kenny were married in San Diego in the summer of 2011. Members of the bridal party included alumni Rosemarie Wagner ’04 and Shannon Mimnaugh ’04. Clara and Timothy met in Washington, D.C., and currently reside in the United Kingdom, where Timothy is pursuing a graduate degree in business. Clara continues her work in the field of applied behavior analysis focusing on early interventions for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Living abroad as newlyweds is the ultimate year-long honeymoon!
Sarah Swigart ’04 Sarah competed on the Country Day track and cross country teams for four years, and then attended Georgetown University where she studied chemistry and raced with the Triathlon Club. She is now taking that energy across America. Through her nonprofit organization, Motion Commotion, Sarah will be biking 4,100 miles from California to Washington, D.C. and delivering fun health education to students. The Motion Commotion message emphasizes physical activity as a means of building confidence and friendship. Follow her journey on MotionCommotionUSA.org
Sergio Martinez ’05 Sergio joined the Army after graduating from Notre Dame. He is currently assigned as an intelligence officer to 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, KY. Sergio recently completed an intensive language course in Pashto in preparation for his role as a military advisor. He is in Afghanistan as part of the first wave of Security Force Assistance Teams. SFATs focus on counterinsurgency operations and are embedded with Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police units. Sergio proposed to Amanda Maloof in April 2012. He met Amanda next to a castle in Angers, France, during his first day of studying abroad. They are engaged to be married in the summer of 2014.
Jacquelynn (Vanderlip) Holly ’06 Jacquelynn graduated from UC Riverside in March 2010 with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Journalism. She currently works at Space and Naval Warfare Headquarters (SPAWAR HQ) in Old Town, for a small company called Programs Management Analytics and Technologies (PMAT) based out of Norfolk, Virginia. Jacquelynn is also coaching her third season of LJCDS track and field as a hurdle and sprint coach. Go Torreys! Jacquelynn and her husband, Geoff, were married November 19, 2011, in Coronado and are excited to announce they are expecting a baby boy in July!
Alumni Class Notes Alumni Class Notes
Mateo Levy ’02, Jessica Grossman
Alex Zyman ’02, wife Stella Hernandez
Clara Saks ’04, husband Timothy Kenny
Sarah Swigart ’04
Jacquelynn (Vanderlip) Holly ’06
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Alumni Events2012-13
Distinguished Alumni Award Nominations Due: November 1, 2012via email to: [email protected]
ALUMNI WEEKEND
Career Day Friday, March 15
Spring Fling Reception honoring all Career Day Speakers.
Parents of alumni are welcome to attend!
Friday, March 155:00 – 7:00 pm
Reunions(classes of ’73, ’78, ’83, ’88, ’93, ’03) Saturday, March 16Jacobs Family Library Courtyard5:00 – 7:00 pm
Homecoming Pre-Game(alumni 21+ years of age) Friday, October 265:30 – 7:00 pm
Homecoming GameFriday, October 267:00 pm
Class of 2007 Five Year ReunionFriday, November 23Pacific Beach Ale House6:30 – 8:30 pm
Alumni Soccer GameFriday, November 23 (Thanksgiving Break)TBD
Alumni Leadership Council (ALC) Winter SocialThursday, December 13La Jolla Marriott 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Alumni Ice Cream SocialA Family EventFebruary 2013Date, Time, and Location TBD
STAY IN TOUCH VIA LA JOLLA COUNTRY DAY ALUMNI on FACEBOOK and LINKEDIN
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