Read More from the Rector
This year I have watched her play volleyball, basketball, and, now, soccer, but seeing her swing a thirty-pound sledge hammer is something else. I stood to the side, taking photographs and blowing on my fingers. Then, halfway through a morning that refused to warm, wearing only a tank top, she dug into the dirt pile with a shovel! Everyone worked to keep up with her. I have a photograph of her with that shovel, a huge smile on her face, like a proud coal miner. In fact, the photos show all of us smiling.
April 2007
Travel is, well, education, and vice versa. A trip that calls the world into question, that makes us reflect upon ourselves, that dedicates us to new actions, and that can leave us in that invigorating limbo of feeling empowered and powerless. How much baggage do we bring? What will it be like when we call home? What different person will return?
And so, what else has been happening recently on the journey of Chatham Hall? What new baggage? New people.
January 2007
One day, as I pedaled by two herons on the coast, they rose, angled, and flew beside me, all the way to the end of the peninsula. Their awkward elegance and, well, mine, traveled side-by-side, down the coast. I felt a kind of harmony with something else, a harmony with the place. I felt that I belonged.
And that, of course, is what Chatham Hall is all about this year, and every year, for that matter. We educators and students on our academic bikes, stretching the muscles of our minds, heart, and souls, until we all find ourselves scooting along, at a stronger pace, at home with some new acquaintances by their sides. So we build an academic community, one year after another...
August 2006
Graduation was less than a week ago. I am sitting in my office, looking out the window at the empty stage that sits on the front lawn like an empty raft on a lake. On the morning of graduation, before the crowd began to gather, from this window, I saw the President of Council and soon-to-be-announced recipient of the Rector’s Medal on a swing in her graduation dress. A brilliant young woman of powerful conscience and action, yet still a bit of a girl. Two days before graduation one senior sped by this window, her formal gown trailing behind her, on a scooter. Now all the seniors have taken off on their individual scooters of life. I’ve asked them to send postcards from along the way...
June 2006
I suppose that Chatham Hall was one station on the way toward this ultimate place for Georgia O’Keeffe. It gave her a home as an adolescent, and faculty who believed in her talent. Six years after she had graduated, Chatham Hall provided O’Keeffe a classroom in which to teach—thanks to a brilliant May Willis, who knew O’Keeffe’s worth—when she was doubting whether or not she could be an artist. Then, it propelled her toward the right, full place. Or, perhaps, gave her enough of a sense of herself to search for the ultimate place...
January 2006
Several months ago I sat at my desk reading three proposals, each from an individual junior and her faculty sponsor. One girl wanted to travel to northern Africa to study the role of women in society there. Another, a dancer and pianist herself, proposed traveling to Paris to study Impressionist paintings that represent dance and music. A third, who had read several novels by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, wanted to travel to Russia to explore the settings of these works and to study in museums and archives devoted to these writers...
August 2005
The binder confirms what I have learned from recent surveys. What is the #1 reason our current students cite for attending Chatham Hall? Academic quality. What do young alumnae say was most meaningful about their Chatham Hall experience? Caring teachers...
January 2005
Great people transform us. During an Assembly this fall I quoted a Wallace Stevens poem: “I placed a jar in Tennessee,/ And round it was, upon a hill….The wilderness rose up to it,/ And sprawled around no longer wild.” I talked about how new Rectors are jars: simply by being new and by being placed on the top of the hill, we change the landscape. However, Rectors are small jars when compared to the Nikki Giovannis of the world, the big jars—when we meet and talk with them, they rearrange the way we think. They civilize us, and we become a bit less wild...
January 2004
Exam week: intellectual concentration and cynicism were in the air. During dinner that evening, the two (former) sophomores and I argued about books. One of them slumped, eyed me, shot back “No!”, and rapped the table with her fist when I referred to Lord of the Rings as Bored of the Rings. “It’s just one action scene, one war, one clever fantasy after another…” said the other sophomore. “But there is nothing to involve your heart.” An attack on Jane Austen followed from the slumping sophomore. Her classmate rolled her eyes. We moved on to Dickens. He took his beating, but also had his advocate...
June 2004
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October 13, 2008
Day Student Open House
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November 9-10, 2008
Open House
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December 1. 2008
Early Decision Applications Due
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December 7-8
Open House
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December 15
Notification for Early Decision Applicants
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January 10
Reply Date - Contracts and deposits due for students admitted Early Decision
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January 18-19
Open House
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February 10
Applications and Financial Aid materials Due
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February 15-16
Open House
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March 10
Notification for Applicants
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April 4-5
Revisit Weekend for admitted students and their families
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April 10
Reply Date - Contracts due for admitted students