Fall 2014 Issue

The Moonshot Evangelist: Claire Johnson ’90 Is Steering Google’s Self-Driving Car

Posted by on Nov 10, 2014 in 2014 Fall Issue, Features | Comments Off on The Moonshot Evangelist: Claire Johnson ’90 Is Steering Google’s Self-Driving Car

The Moonshot Evangelist: Claire Johnson ’90 Is Steering Google’s Self-Driving Car

On May 28, at the Code Conference in Palos Verdes, California, Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed a surprise. The tech world already knew that Google has been developing self-driving cars that use laser scanners, cameras, and radars to map nearby terrain, track cars and pedestrians, and even identify construction zones. The vehicles avoid swerving cyclists, stop at traffic lights, and move around Google’s Mountain View neighborhood as naturally as a human-driven SUV. The computer-controlled cars have already logged more than 700,000...

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Visual Arts Faculty, Past and Present, Exhibit and Explain

Posted by on Nov 10, 2014 in 2014 Fall Issue, Faculty Perspective | Comments Off on Visual Arts Faculty, Past and Present, Exhibit and Explain

This spring, the Nesto Gallery showcased the considerable and varied talents of visual arts faculty members, spanning five decades. This year has been significant in the program’s history: as longtime teachers retire, new and energized educators have joined the scene, advancing Milton’s tradition of excellence in art education. This coming year also marks the first time in recent history that all visual arts classrooms are housed in one building: the renovated Art and Media Center. Thirteen artist-educators shared a spectrum of media used...

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New Americans Will Power Chicago’s Future, Tonantzin Carmona ’08

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New Americans Will Power Chicago’s Future, Tonantzin Carmona ’08

In midmorning, the light reflecting off North LaSalle Street’s towering buildings pours into Tonantzin Carmona’s small office in Chicago’s City Hall. Poised and welcoming, Tonantzin clears the Starbucks cup to one side and ignores the steady ping of incoming emails. She looks every bit her age — 24 years. Last April, Mayor Rahm Emanuel named Tonantzin director of his Office of New Americans. While rancorous debate about immigrants surges across the United States, Mayor Emanuel has declared that Chicago “will be the most...

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Landing the Viewer Inside the Story, Llewellyn Smith ’72

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Landing the Viewer Inside the Story, Llewellyn Smith ’72

“I’m attracted to the consequences of big ideas shaping people’s lives,” says Llew Smith, summing up what drives his filmmaking. His film legacy over nearly 35 years shows a diligent historian, a fearless visual artist, a sensitive and ambitious chronicler of identity and experience in the United States. Llew is alternately, or sometimes simultaneously, a writer, director, producer, series editor and “especially rainmaker, if you know what I mean.” Llew “backed into filmmaking,” by seizing a number of serendipitous...

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At the Console, Nick Makes Productions Sing

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At the Console, Nick Makes Productions Sing

At the Console, Nick Makes Productions Sing: Ambitious performances push Milton’s sound guru. Nick Mehlman ’16 folds his long body into a seat behind an analog sound board and puts on a headset. It’s Wednesday night at the dress rehearsal of For Colored Girls. In the black box studio down the hall, a student band is warming up. For the first time in a Milton production, the musicians are not seated in the orchestra pit; in King Theatre, the play’s staging and set extends to the far corners of the room, bisecting the audience. How can...

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Worth a Thousand Words: Nick Clark ’65 blurs the lines between fine art and your childhood favorites.

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Worth a Thousand Words: Nick Clark ’65 blurs the lines between fine art and your childhood favorites.

Four wide, welcoming murals — eight feet by 16 — warm the airy central hall of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The textured swaths of red, green, blue, yellow, are stunning tone setters — contemporary collages, you think. But then each painting tugs at a deep-seated visual memory — something familiar, nostalgic — stemming from hundreds of turns with The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The murals showcase Eric Carle’s signature tissue-paper technique writ large. Blurring the lines between fine art and...

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In Sight, Fall 2014

Posted by on Nov 10, 2014 in 2014 Fall Issue, InSight | Comments Off on In Sight, Fall 2014

Zion, March 2014 Images by Matt Magann ’17, render views of Zion National Park during Milton’s Outdoor Program trip in March 2014.   Milton’s H. Adams Carter Outdoor Program was founded to honor the Milton graduate (’32), teacher and world-renowned mountaineer, who, in 1947, established the Program’s precursor, the Ski and Mountaineering Club. Through the Program, Milton students learn about the back-country for sport, beauty, contemplation and camaraderie. These outdoor experiences teach students to take responsibility, meet...

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Grade 8 Talks: What Should We Know About You?

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Grade 8 Talks: What Should We Know About You?

It’s Monday morning, and 145 middle schoolers gather in Ware 500. The faithful assembly space buzzes with 8 a.m. energy. Left of stage, an eighth grader flips through a collection of notecards a final time. She takes two deep breaths and steps onto the stage, where four weeks of preparation will culminate in her Grade 8 Talk. On Mondays and Fridays for nine years now, eighth graders have shared themselves with their classmates, and prepared through this experience for the traditional Class IV Talks that lie ahead. Grade 8 Talks, the...

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New And Interdisciplinary: A Wider Lens, A Deeper Look

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New And Interdisciplinary: A Wider Lens, A Deeper Look

Eight new courses at Milton this year integrate disciplines in pursuit of a fuller understanding, and rely upon teachers working in collaboration. Last spring, teachers began preparing for their proposed course work through workshops with Veronica Boix Mansilla. A senior research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Veronica chairs the Future of Learning Institute. Her research examines how to produce quality interdisciplinary work addressing problems of contemporary global significance. Faculty are excited that these courses...

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Commencement Speaker Betsy Beers ’75

Posted by on Nov 6, 2014 in 2014 Fall Issue, Commencement | Comments Off on Commencement Speaker Betsy Beers ’75

Commencement Speaker Betsy Beers ’75

Five Things I Have Learned Since Graduating from Milton 1. You will always learn more doing a crap job than a great one. At some point, wait on tables, fold clothes at the Gap, or be a lowly assistant. Not what you expected to hear, right? Take waiting on tables: You see people at their best and their worst, and you have to learn to negotiate between a hungry public and a volatile guy in the kitchen who wields knives as part of his job. Ten tables, all seated at once, all hungry? I still have a nightmare that I come back to a station and all...

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