Head's Reflections
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February 15, 2010
Intellectual Spark Drives St. Mark's Academics
One Wednesday morning in mid-January, in Carol Miller’s Structures and Material Science elective, VI Former Turner Bohlen placed the edges of the balsa wood model bridge he had spent the previous eight weeks constructing onto wooden supports, suspending the bulk of the bridge in the air. Carol attached a plastic bucket to the middle of the bridge and placed a succession of weights into the bucket to discover the maximum stress the model could sustain.
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January 18, 2010
Teaching Visual Literacy in Art History and Beyond
Arts Department Head Barbara Putnam is best known to most at St. Mark’s for her teaching of studio art. Her students’ drawings and paintings grace walls throughout the campus, and even at our local Starbucks. However, Barb is also a very gifted teacher of Art History. For over three decades Barb has been photographing art to use in her slide lectures in her Advanced Placement Art History class, and she has used her slide collection skillfully to increase her students’ visual literacy.
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December 8, 2009
Our Times: Relevant History for the 21st Century World
“Can a democratic, developed country that believes in a minimum wage logically support and promote a policy of free trade in the modern world?” So asked History and Social Sciences Department Chair David Lyons at a faculty meeting this past fall as he and colleague Rob Calagione described Our Times, a new course.
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November 10, 2009
Modeling our Mission in Mathematics
One of the great pleasures of my work is seeing the creativity of the St. Mark’s faculty. As we articulate in our mission statement, we challenge our students “to develop their analytic and creative capabilities,” and we strive to kindle “their passion for discovery.”
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October 15, 2009
Think Then Compute
By John Warren
During opening of school faculty meetings, our new Director of Academic Computing, Dr. Jaiwant Mulik, provided very perceptive advice about how best to employ technology: “think then compute,” he urged. Computers, software and the internet, he asserted, can make a meaningful difference to teaching and learning but only if they are employed thoughtfully to supplement the teacher’s main goals and only for tasks that can be better done by computer.
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