Putney Post is our alumni magazine, published twice a year.
In this issue, we explore how Putney unique mission and fundamental beliefs serve as our north star. They are as resonant today as they were at Putney’s founding.
We structured this issue to tell the stories of alumni in their careers 5, 10, 25, and 50 years out from their graduation from Putney.
“The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.” This is possibly what Putney does best. However, the concept of trust is neither simple nor straightforward. It’s a practice, a neurological/emotional state, a religious experience, an evolutionary fact. We asked alumni to grapple with the concept and it’s consequences from various vantage points.
Before you read this issue, close your eyes and think of the barn—the smell of hay and manure, the sounds of animals and of work, the cows’ liquid eyes. Put yourself there if you can, and ask, “What’s my barn story?” We hope you’ll think about it. We hope you’ll share your story with a friend. In this issue, we endeavor to capture the reach of The Putney School’s barn in both scope and depth: China, California, the New York Times, the school’s fiber arts studio, science labs, and history classrooms, even a bright pink sweater from The Gap.
Putney people frequently ask how the school responds to the important topics our society wrestles with. Equity and inclusion, climate change, rising tuition costs, and more. In the last year, the questions have centered, overwhelmingly, on artificial intelligence and the recent explosion of ChatGPT and its ilk. What on earth will we do about this? How do we teach our students to use technology responsibly? Is it an asset or a threat? In this issue, we dive into that question.
We have a lot of alumni who graduate into the world and live lives guided by their love for and connection to the natural world. In this issue, we meet a small handful of them, including siblings Rayna ’93 and Soren deNiord ’96, landscape architects whose work centers around ecological resiliency; Clara Rowe ’07, CEO of Restor, a mapping and open data platform that supports, promotes, and connects a multitude of environmental causes; and soon, Henry Stephenson-Ryan ’23, whose work understanding the population dynamics and ecosystems of the forests that surround the campus will reverberate for decades to come.
In this issue we explore the concept of growth through a few lenses. We meet Putney’s new head of school, Danny O’Brien. We check in on the literal growth of this little school in the form of two new dormitories. We witness the growth of our students through their work growing our food. We reflect on the life and work of longtime Putney faculty Brian Cohen, who helped students grow into artists as he honed his own skills and pursued his artistic passions.
