2013-2014 Lecture Series

Ron Cino

Head of School, Worcester Academy

Tuesday, 3 December 2013. 7-8 PM in Warner Theater

Worcester Academy has been engaged in an ambitious capital campaign, OnWArd: The Campaign For Worcester Academy, with a goal of raising $50 million to strengthen facilities and programs directly benefiting students. With the support of our parents, alumni, and other friends of the school, we have raised an impressive $34 million, which has been used to fund the highly successful renovation of Kingsley Labs, the acquisition of the South Campus and subsequent construction of Morse Field, and the growth of our endowment.  We are entering the Capstone Phase of OnWArd with a roughly $20 million multi-building facilities improvement plan.  With construction focused over two summers, the renovation of Walker Hall, one of our historic and most prominent buildings, is the centerpiece of this plan; Walker will emerge as a first-rate center for the humanities that will serve Worcester Academy well for generations to come. Head of School Ronald M. Cino will discuss the challenge of balancing the preservation of our historical buildings with the Academy’s efforts to support sustainability and the ongoing effort to create a greener world. Mr. Cino will also discuss the process the Academy went through to obtain LEED certification Silver for this new project.

How to Save the Oceans and Feed the World

Andrew Sharpless, CEO, Oceana and author, The Perfect Protein

Thursday, November 7

New England Aquarium Lecture Series, Boston

With Earth’s human population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050—adding the equivalent of two Chinas to current numbers—we need wild fish more than ever to feed us (especially the nearly 1 billion of the world’s poorest people who rely on seafood as their main source of animal protein). The bad news is that wild fish populations are in decline because of overfishing, destruction of habitat and bycatch. We are grinding up small fish such as anchovies, mackerel and sardines into feed for salmon and other farmed animals, even though these overlooked fish are delicious and healthy and could feed millions inexpensively. The good news, as Andrew Sharpless explains, is that if just 25 coastal nations of the world—including the United States—take three steps to better manage their wild seafood supply, our oceans will not only become more biodiverse, they will be far more abundant and capable of feeding hundreds of millions more people every day at a sustainable rate. Sharpless’s message is clear. We can save the oceans and feed the world.

Click here for more on the Aquarium series.

We will charter a bus leaving Worcester Academy at 4 PM

Dinner at Legal Sea Foods in Boston/Lecture is at 7 PM.

Email john.murnane@worcesteracademy.org to reserve your spot.

Click here for an article about the threats to our oceans.

Dr. Jeff Pappas

Director of The New Mexico Historical Preservation Division

Monday, 21 October 2013. 7-8 PM in Warner Theater

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Dr. Pappas is a Worcester native and a former member of the Worcester Academy faculty. He received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University, taught at Colorado State University and served in the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office after leaving Worcester Academy. Dr. Pappas has worked for over 20 years in the National Park Service, primarily at Yosemite National Park. As the Director of The New Mexico Historic Preservation Division, Pappas helps identify and protect New Mexico’s cultural resources, including its archaeological sites, architectural and engineering achievements, cultural landscapes and diverse heritage. Pappas oversees efforts to help communities identify, evaluate, preserve, and revitalize their historic, archaeological, and cultural resources.

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2012-13 Lecture Series, Open Gates

Life in the City:

Exploring Urban Issues

2012-13

Half the world’s population now lives in cities—and this is only increasing in the wake of a worldwide urban migration. Despite the problems usually associated with the city—higher crime rates, poverty, pollution–Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, author of the Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier, claims that “cities are our best and brightest hope.” The 2012-2013 Open Gates lecture series will explore a variety of urban issues, with a special focus on the City of Worcester.

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Kerry Spitzer and Anne Bowman

October 18, 2012 (7-8 pm, Warner Theatre)

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Kerry Spitzer is a Ph.D. student at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her research focuses on affordable housing policy and incarceration in the United States. Prior to coming to MIT, Kerry worked for over four years in New York City government. As a budget and policy analyst at the NYC Independent Budget Office she authored reports on the city’s juvenile justice system, jails, and supportive housing programs. Prior to her work at IBO, she was a project manager at the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development in the Inclusionary Housing Program. In addition, she has conducted research for the NYC Department of Homeless Services and Department of Corrections on the population of individuals who cycle between the jail and shelter system. She has also worked for the Supportive Housing Network of New York and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where she co-authored an article on Latino small business (click here). She holds a Masters in Public Administration from NYU Wagner and a Bachelors in Government from Cornell University.

A recent graduate of the Master’s Program at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, Anne Bowman joined the housing development group of Heartland Alliance, an anti-poverty organization in Chicago, in 2011. During her time at MIT, Anne focused her studies on the relationship between design and community development, an interest that culminated in her Master’s thesis, which examined the ways universities are looking at the design and development of their edges—and beyond—in new and innovative ways. She found Clark University in Worcester and Trinity College in Hartford – her two main case studies – to provide many lessons for institutions and cities everywhere. Anne’s current work as Associate Director of Real Estate Development at Heartland continues to bring design and development together through the planning and building of affordable housing. She is currently working on the redevelopment of a 35-acre public housing development in Chicago, a community center, and an apartment building for 37 families in Milwaukee. Prior to attending MIT and joining Heartland, Anne was an architect at Torti Gallas and Partners: Architects of Community, a firm in Washington, DC focused on creating buildings and plans that contribute to the cities and towns of which they are a part, physically, socially, and economically. Anne also received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Notre Dame and is a licensed architect.

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The City Dark

Thursday, January 17th 2013. From 6:30 to 8 PM in Warner Theater

Big cities run 24/7,  supported by artificial lighting. Does this pose health risks? Does it matter that people in cities seldom see the night sky? Filmmaker Ian Cheney thinks that it does.

THE CITY DARK is a new feature documentary from filmmaker Ian Cheney (KING CORN, THE GREENING OF SOUTHIE) chronicling the disappearance of darkness and the extinction of the starry night sky. The film won awards in the Documentary Competition at SXSW Film Festival in March 2011.

We will screen and then discuss this film. Michael Carroll, Worcester Academy’s Director of Sustainabilty, and Dr. John Murnane, Director of the Open Gates program, will co-host this event.

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Worcester in 2020 by David Forsberg

TBA

David Forsberg will sketch out major changes and initiatives to revitalize and modernize the city of Worcester–past, present and future. As former President of the Worcester Business Development Corporation (WBDC) and a leader in the development and revitalization of Worcester, he brings a unique hands-on perspective. He will put the future of the city into a historical context and outline some of the major projects designed to improve life in the city of Worcester over the next 10 years.

Video of Last Speaker in Series, Rebecca Cypess, April 3

Our Next Guest Speaker

Alumni Author

Rebecca Cypess

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

7-8 PM

Warner Theater

A former adjunct faculty member of the Yale Department of Music and Yale School of Music and lecturer at Southern Connecticut State University, Rebecca Cypess joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory in the fall of 2008 upon completing her doctorate in musicology at Yale. Cypess publishes regularly in scholarly journals, with articles and reviews in Early Music, the Journal of Musicology, the Galpin Society Journal, the International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Early Music America, and Encyclopedia Britannica. She has presented papers at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Renaissance Society of America, the American Musical Instrument Society, and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music. Although her primary area of research is 17th-century music, she has also written and lectured on ethnomusicological issues in the American Jewish community, and she has an essay due to be published soon on John Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic. She is currently writing her first book, which deals with the negotiation of time and the preservation of memory in Italian instrumental music between 1615 and 1630. She has a B.A. in Music History and Performance, Cornell University. M. Mus. in Harpsichord Performance, Royal College of Music. M.A. in Bible, Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Yeshiva University. M.A. M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Music History, Yale University.

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Interview with Class of 86. . .

Adam Najberg, The Wall Street Journal, Senior Editor, Asia

Education:

• UC Berkeley
  Journalism/Asian Studies
• Bowdoin College
  Asian Studies
• Worcester Academy, class of 1986
• Chandler Jr High School

1. How long have you been with the Wall Street Journal?

2. How has your role evolved at WSJ?

3. How has journalism and publishing changed over the course of your career?

4. Where do you think it is heading (journalism)?

5. What are the larger implications of the changes re: journalism you’ve seen during your career? How is society effected by these changes?

6. What would you like to say to students at Worcester Academy?

Here are Mr. Najberg’s responses:

Naomi Schaefer Riley

Naomi Schaefer Riley, WA Class of 94, appeared on C-Span.For her interview with host Brian Lamb click here.

First Lecture, 2011-12

Rebecca Vaudreuil, Open Gates lecture, 8 September 2011

Steal This Podium:

Worcester Academy Alumni Authors

2011-12

At Worcester Academy’s Ross Auditorium, Warner Theater

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At boarding school I was always taught,

Not to reveal what I really thought,

Nor ever once let my eyes betray

the dreadful things that I longed to say

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These are lines from a 1929 song, “I’m in Love,” by Cole Porter, one of Worcester Academy’s most well known alums. Biographer William McBrien claims that Porter chafed under the watchful eye of Headmaster Dr. Daniel Abercrombie–called into his office for risqué performances of “The Bearded Lady” and other spoofs as a member of the WA class of 1909. Porter’s generation may have been taught to keep a tight lip, but this was clearly not the case for subsequent generations of Worcester Academy students. They’ve had plenty to say, from Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book (the best known work by an alum and thus the title of this series) to Richard Wolfson’s acclaimed Simply Einstein: Relativity Demystified to a host of others–Rewriting Shakespeare, Rewriting Ourselves by Peter Erickson, Samuel Adams: A Life by Ira Stoll, God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation are Changing America by Naomi Schaefer Riley, to name a few.

Celebrating the many scholarly contributions of Academy graduates and their engagement in the world at large, Open Gates, Alumni House, and the Worcester Academy library welcomed David Muller ’66 to campus on Thursday, October 14th 2010. Mr. Muller, author of China as a Maritime Power, “cut the ribbon” at the official opening of the “Academy Collection of Arts and Letters.”  The collection, which is permanently on display in the library at Worcester Academy, is comprised of books and articles published by Worcester Academy alumni and faculty (click here for a taste of these publications). As a further step, the Open Gates lecture series for 2011-12 will feature alumni authors. Each will discuss the content of their particular publications as well as the craft of writing and publishing. The series will be co-hosted by Dr. John Murnane and Jack Haringa. Dr. Murnane is the Director of Academic Programs at Worcester Academy and has published several articles. Jack M. Haringa is a member of the Board of Advisors to the Shirley Jackson Awards. He is an author and Chair of the English Department at Worcester Academy, as well as co-editor, with S.T. Joshi, of the critical journal Dead Reckonings.

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Rebecca Vaudreuil

Thursday, September 8th–7-8 p.m.

Author of Group Music Therapy Intervention: Working In Neurologic Rehabilitation and Music Therapy and the Military: Working with Individual and Group Active Service Members and Veterans (forthcoming), Rebecca is a Worcester Academy alum who earned her Bachelors in music therapy at Berklee College of Music in Boston. A board certified music therapist, she also has her fellowship in Neurologic Music Therapy and is a Neo-Natal music therapy specialist. Rebecca currently resides in San Diego, CA and works throughout San Diego County. She is the Junior Joy Giver Program Director for Resounding Joy and also works at Learning Services, Inc. a center for traumatic brain injury in Escondido, CA; St. Madeline’s Sophie Center, an educational training center for developmentally delayed adults in El Cajon; Rady Children’s Hospital with cardiology patients, and in the San Diego Unified School District with children in special needs classroom settings. Rebecca also has a passion for international music therapy and has traveled to Japan, Africa and Jamaica to engage in and provide music therapy services in schools, orphanages, and infirmaries. She is planning a trip to India in 2012 to work in palliative and hospice care.

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Naomi Schaefer Riley

Thursday, October 27th

7- 8 p.m.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values. Her book The Faculty Lounges… And Other Reasons You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For was just published by Ivan Dee. Ms. Riley was, until recently, the deputy Taste editor of the Wall Street Journal, where she covered religion, higher education and philanthropy for the editorial page. Her book, God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America, was published by St. Martin’s in 2005. Prior to joining the Journal, she founded In Character, a magazine published by the John M. Templeton Foundation. Her writing has also been published in the Boston Globe the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education among other publications. She has been the recipient of the Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Journalism Fellowship. She is the winner of the 2006 American Academy of Religion’s Newswriting Contest for Opinion Writing. Ms. Riley graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. She lives in the suburbs of New York with her husband, Jason, and two children.

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Rebecca Cypess, TBA

A Former adjunct faculty member of the Yale Department of Music and Yale School of Music and lecturer at Southern Connecticut State University, Rebecca Cypess joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory in the fall of 2008 upon completing her doctorate in musicology at Yale. Cypess publishes regularly in scholarly journals, with articles and reviews in Early Music, the Journal of Musicology, the Galpin Society Journal, the International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Early Music America, and Encyclopedia Britannica. She has presented papers at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Renaissance Society of America, the American Musical Instrument Society, and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music. Although her primary area of research is 17th-century music, she has also written and lectured on ethnomusicological issues in the American Jewish community, and she has an essay due to be published soon on John Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic. She is currently writing her first book, which deals with the negotiation of time and the preservation of memory in Italian instrumental music between 1615 and 1630. She has a B.A. in Music History and Performance, Cornell University. M. Mus. in Harpsichord Performance, Royal College of Music. M.A. in Bible, Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Yeshiva University. M.A. M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Music History, Yale University.

 

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Richard Ford’s Lecture

Jonathan Starr OpEd, Wall Street Journal

Those who attended Jonathan Starr’s Open Gates lecture (the “Failure of Aid Work and NGOs in Africa,” January 8th, 2011, 7-8 PM) will recognize the gist of  Mr. Starr’s recent Wall Street Journal OpEd piece. It is a theme that Clark University’s Professor Richard Ford touched on as part of the Open Gates series on Global Problems last week, “Listening to the People: Development as If People Mattered,” April 12, 2011, 7-8 PM. (Video of Professor Ford’s lecture forthcoming.)

For Mr. Starr’s article, click here.

For Mr. Starr’s lecture at WA, click here.