By Elise Gobron’21
The caring, devoted, and thoughtful faculty here at St. Mark’s are what help make our community so special. After a successful academic year, we will sadly be saying goodbye to a few beloved faculty members. Loris Adams, Kim Berndt, Liz Cavanaugh, Marion Donovan, Matt Eddy, Patricia Gilbert, Jean Lindsey-Dwyer, Michele Nieves, Chris Roche, Carol Smith-Nichols, Rick Umiker and Showjean Wu have all been influential members of this community. They have helped us learn, grow, and succeed as both students and people. They have challenged us to become the best versions of ourselves that we can be.
St. Mark’s is so thankful to have had all of these faculty members as part of our community. Although they will be missed, we wish them each all the best next year and for their future endeavors. These faculty members will always have a special place here at St. Mark’s and we hope that they come back to visit often! Here is a video of a tribute the monitors presented at the end of year Academic Showcase.
We interviewed some of these faculty about their favorite memories at St. Mark’s.
( Articles for Mr. and Mrs. Umiker, Ms. Donovan and Ms. Berndt can be found in the Humans of St. Marks section).
Loris Adams: Director of Community & Equity Affairs, Religion Department Faculty.
Ms. Adams leaves St. Mark’s after four years to become Director of equity and community life at the Hewitt School in New York City . We thank her for all the work she has done, creating affinity groups and giving student Pathways leadership an established voice in our community.
Liz Cavanaugh: Senior Associate Director of Admission
Ms. Cavanaugh enjoyed her roles as admissions officer, dorm parent, and coach for the girls’ crew team and will miss all the St. Markers: “Thank you for the friendship and mentorship of many Faculty/Staff colleagues, and most importantly, thank you to the many students over the last 12 years who have allowed me to teach them, learn from them, grow with them, and have fun! George and I will miss St. Mark’s and look forward to visiting Southborough and Lake Quinsigamond often!”
Matt Eddy: Science Department Faculty
Mr. Eddy taught Biology at St. Mark’s and helped run the Fab Lab. We wish him well next year.
Patricia Gilbert: Modern Languages Department Chair, Modern Languages Department Faculty
Ms. Gilbert loved her interactions with students in class: “I loved playing Loup Garou with my French students. I don’t know if they realized that it was just my sneaky way to get them to speak French freely without getting all hung up on grammar and pronunciation, but we certainly had lots of fun!”
Jean Lindsey-Dwyer: Science Department Faculty
Ms. Lindsey-Dwyer will miss all of her wonderful students, especially Julia's one minute dances! She says that she will miss St.Mark's and all things that make it great, and leaves us with an original quote: "Remember Chemistry is all about energy and stability."
Michele Nieves: Mathematics Department Faculty
For Ms. Nieves, her funny memory is in her first couple of weeks at St. Mark's she could only find things in relation to the dining hall. So if she wanted to go from STEM to the library she would go from STEM to the dining hall, and then from the dining hall to the library. “It was incredibly inefficient!”
She says that St. Mark's students, faculty, and staff challenged her to be a better teacher, a better athlete, and a better human being. She will always remember the abundance of kindness and "Age Quod Agis" will stick with her forever.
Chris Roche: Science Department Faculty
Mr Roche says that he has many fond memories and will miss many people! He will particularly miss the robotics team of SM--“Memories--WOW! --especially in the last few years--watching our robotics team (Gone Fishin’) have some great successes after a lot of hard work -- seeing the Great Wall of China on the Faculty Asia trip, going bowling with my advisees. I will always be grateful to John Warren for letting me buy computer parts so my initial CS I class could build their own computers --- That really set the tone for how we build and explore in STEM!”
Carol Smith-Nichols: Science Department Faculty
Dr. Smith-Nichols says that for her, St. Mark's has been a rich environment filled with an array of viewpoints, ideas, and voices. She also says that it has been her greatest pleasure to be part of the Pine Oak duty team this past year. “I will greatly miss the check-ins and conversations from worries over too much homework, to triumphs, to questions, to just sharing a little bit of everyone's day. Love you all, Dr SN”
Showjean Wu: Modern Language Department Faculty
Ms. Wu also says that working with students in Chinese is certainly one of the best memories at St Mark's.