Fran McInnis
Fran McInnis Student Activities Office, 1980–2016 For 36 years, Fran McInnis has played a critical role at Milton. She has managed more information, essential to the functioning of the Upper School, than one can measure. From budgets and the all-School calendar, to student mailboxes and the quarter-filled graduation sock, nothing was too broad—or too narrow—a focus for Fran. She has been situated in two buildings and four different offices, always at the epicenter of student activity. She has seen three heads of school—and an interim; nine Upper School principals—and an interim; six...
Read MoreThe Lived Truth: When Mine Is Different From Yours
When my younger brother, Richard, graduated from college, he worked for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. Senator Moynihan—a liberal Democrat—regularly had breakfast with the staunchly conservative Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Today’s political culture would label these two senators enemies. Legend has it that the first half hour of their shared meals involved their ridiculing one another’s positions with passion and, often, spectacular humor. Once that exchange was out of their systems, they got down to business. They knew that regardless of their...
Read MoreZZ Packer
Reading her short story “Brownies” from the collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, author ZZ Packer explored racial segregation and prejudice among groups of adolescent girls in suburban Atlanta. Ms. Packer was the Bingham Visiting Writer. She grew up in Atlanta and Louisville, Kentucky, and graduated from Yale University. She earned her master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa; she has held fellowships at Harvard, Stanford and Princeton. The critically lauded Drinking Coffee Elsewhere was a finalist for the...
Read MoreEmily Reichert, Ph.D.
Emily Reichert is the CEO of Greentown Labs, one of the largest and fastest-growing clean technology startup incubators on the East Coast. Dr. Reichert, who earned her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, was the Lorax Speaker for this year’s Earth Day assembly. Businesses that have evolved from Greentown Labs’ Somerville prototyping and office space have created innovative and practical environmental solutions, such as the first fully functional airborne wind turbine and an unmanned “robot boat” that records ocean data and analytics. Dr. Reichert spoke about...
Read MoreDost Öngür, M.D.
Dr. Dost Öngür, chief of the Psychotic Disorders Division at McLean Hospital, was the 2016 Science Assembly Speaker. Noting the stigmas associated with mental illness, Dr. Öngür described mental illness as a public health issue affecting hundreds of millions worldwide. Dr. Öngür is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of more than 80 articles on the neurobiology of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Dr. Öngür’s research, using brain-imaging techniques to study chemical abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, is...
Read MoreLisa Miller, Ph.D.
A professor of psychology and education, Dr. Lisa Miller ’84, this year’s Class of 1952 Speaker for Religious Understanding, described the connection between happiness and spirituality among children and adolescents. Such spirituality may come from organized religion, nature, or an activity like yoga or music. Dr. Miller directs the Clinical Psychology Program at Columbia University Teachers College and founded the Spiritual Mind Body Institute—the first Ivy League graduate program in spirituality and psychology. Her innovative research into the quantifiable effects of spirituality on...
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