The Belltower: Alumni News

List of 17 news stories.

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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Eamonn Campbell '07

  11/25/2024
  Cultivating a life of curiosity can sometimes seem like a hazy concept. What actually comes from being curious? For Eamonn Campbell ’07, his thirst for knowledge helped him pursue various threads of interest, from athletics to science to law. Eamonn’s genuine interest in the world around him has served him well.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Betsy Shaw '83

  8/26/2024
  It can be rare for someone to match her talents with a life filled with purpose and achievement. It is rarer still when that life leads to the very top of her field on the world stage. As a Burr and Burton student, Betsy Shaw ’83 couldn’t envision that her athleticism and competitive spirit would lead her to represent the United States at the first-ever Winter Olympic Games for the sport of snowboarding - a sport that didn’t even exist when she grew up.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Grace Pinkus '20

  5/30/2024
  
  It’s finals week at UMass Amherst, and Grace Pinkus ’20 is eagerly awaiting what will essentially be her first traditional graduation on May 18, where she will earn a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. As with all 2020 high school graduates, Covid restrictions derailed her high-school graduation experience. Ironically, our meeting was on Zoom - a platform, Grace said, with which she was very familiar.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Kathi Bierwirth '81

  3/1/2024
  At the end of this year, Kathi (Frost) Bierwirth ’81 will retire from Burr and Burton Academy after nearly 40 years of teaching, coaching, leading and supporting students. Kathi has the rare gift of being a person who always knew that she wanted to make Burr and Burton her life’s work. 

  
  

   
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Rhoni Basden ’04

  9/1/2023
  Rhoni Midden Basden ’04 is adept at crafting her surroundings into powerful teaching tools, a skill she learned, in part, at Burr and Burton. Rhoni is the Executive Director of Vermont Works for Women, a nonprofit based in Winooski that “promotes economic justice by advancing gender equity and supporting women and youth at every stage of their career journeys.”
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Mark Slade '02

  6/1/2023
  Mark Slade ’02 always knew that the Northshire would be his home. Despite being drawn to travel and adventure, Mark never questioned whether or not he would make Manchester the place he chose to live, work, and raise his family. Mark’s mother, Bonnie Baird Oulette Slade is a 1967 graduate of Burr and Burton, and Mark married his high school sweetheart, Kate (Coniglio) Slade ’02. You might say that Burr and Burton runs through Mark’s veins, as he and Kate have four children, and their oldest is currently a ninth-grader at Burr and Burton. 
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Meg Chandler '13

  3/1/2023
  Work in international development felt as natural to Meg Chandler ’13 as going to work for the family business. Born in Bangkok, and spending her early years in Burma, Meg and her brother James ’10 moved with their family to Dorset in 1999. After watching her parents dedicate their careers to international service, Meg said she always knew that she would spend her career in a similar way. 
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Bryan Dalton '81

  12/1/2022
  Bryan Dalton ’81 knew early on that he wanted a career abroad. His family moved to Manchester, Vermont from California in 1972 when he was in fourth grade. At Burr and Burton, Bryan found that his talent and interest lay in “the power of language,” encouraged by Harvey Dorfman in English, and the strong world language department. He graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1985 and served as an intern with the non-governmental organization Africare in Niamey, Niger.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Marcia MacDonald Neugebauer '50

  8/31/2022
  It’s hard to find a more celebrated moment in U.S. history than NASA during the early days of the space race. And Hollywood most certainly agrees, having churned out scores of biopics elevating and celebrating the brilliant minds who first placed Armstrong on the moon. Before that “one small step for man” in 1969, there were countless hours of scientific theory, space instrument creation, and many other spacecraft sent up to observe and report on the great beyond. 
  
  Those chosen few who took part in the race for space discovery in the 1950s and 1960s might not have known at the time the part they’d play in making history. One such pioneer (though she disputes the label) is Marcia MacDonald Neugebauer ’50. Marcia was a research scientist with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1956 until her retirement in 1996. She and her team were the first to successfully measure the existence and properties of the solar wind with their tool, a curved plate analyzer (CPA), which was launched on the Mariner 2 spacecraft in 1962. 
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Ben Beers '61

  8/22/2022
  
  There are alumni, and then there are alumni. You know the ones - they spend their lives celebrating and elevating their school, by coaching, teaching, volunteering, and even sending their children and grandchildren to their alma mater. There are few in Burr and Burton’s 193-year history whose DNA is so indelibly intertwined with the school as Ben Beers ’61. 

  
  

  This year, Ben celebrated his 62nd year as a member of the facilities staff, starting as a part-time, after-school employee when his mother was ill in 1959 and moving to full-time after graduation. Ben famously boasts that he got married on a Saturday, graduated on a Sunday, and started his full-time career at Burr and Burton on Monday. 
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things that Matter with Ashley Ihasz Austin '01

  3/2/2022
  Ashley Ihasz Austin '01 was inspired by music at a young age, and turned her love of music into a thriving career in the music industry. In this Five Things that Matter, Austin sits down with Advancement's Meredith Morin to discuss her business, her path to Los Angeles and back again, and what she loved most about BBA.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Terrell Williams '97

  12/1/2021
  Terrell Williams ’97 grew up in Newark, NJ, and attended BBA for four years. He graduated from the University of Vermont with honors in 2001, and earned his Master's degree in clinical social work in 2008 from Bryn Mawr. He works as a school social worker at Imhotep Institute Charter High School in Philadelphia, and teaches a History of Hip Hop class virtually for BBA, alongside BBA social studies teachers Pete Nicholson and Andrew Cassarino. Terrell lives in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia with his fiancé and their nine-child blended family.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Clem Wright '05

  9/2/2021
  Clem Wright ‘05 grew up in South Londonderry, a self-described “‘Over the Mountain’ kid.” After graduating in 2005, Clem went on to Harvard to earn a degree in English, and after college, he worked at a malaria non-profit in Sierra Leone before moving to San Francisco to work for Google. We sat down with Clem to talk about his work, his trajectory, and some of his favorite BBA moments that led him to where he is today.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things that Matter with Megan Beattie-Cassan '99

  6/1/2021
  Megan Beattie-Cassan ‘99 knows Burr and Burton from multiple angles: She’s an alum, she’s the current school nurse, and she’s also a BBA parent. As the school nurse in during the Covid-19 global pandemic, Beattie-Cassan’s expertise  was critical to both BBA’s reopening in the fall of 2020 and the successful prevention of the spread of Covid on campus.  We caught up with Beattie-Cassan in 2021 to learn more about her many connections to BBA.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things that Matter with Vance Griffith '92

  3/1/2021
  In February, we caught up with Vance Griffith '92 who lives with his family in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and has spent more than 20 years working on western ranch lands.
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  Alumni Profile: Virology Today with Colin O'Leary

  1/23/2021
  From the forthcoming winter VIEW: Burr and Burton alum Colin O’Leary ‘09 was in the middle of a Ph.D. studying respiratory viruses when the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020.  Read about how the pandemic affected his research, why he came to study virology, and his hopes for the future of public health.
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  Alumni Interview: Five Things that Matter with Charity Clark '93

  12/1/2020
  In November, we caught up with Charity Clark ‘93 who lives with her family in Williston and works as Chief of Staff to Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan.
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