What does it take to be a champion? To shake off a bad day and show up ready to tackle the next challenge, to bring your best each and every day with the knowledge that, as the saying goes, “champions are made in practice.”

Our one-year-old Alumni Board has committed to developing an engagement program designed to meet alumni where their interests lie. That might be with their class, a program they were associated with at Tabor, or regionally. On that last point, we have created four area alumni chapters with at least three more on the near horizon. The Advancement Office helps get these groups started, but each chapter is independently run. Their events are their own from concept to execution. A chapter’s sole purpose is to offer alumni increased opportunities to stay connected with each other and the school. While these chapters are in the early stages, feedback is clear, alumni appreciate additional ways to stay connected that are close to home. We caught up with a few chapter volunteers.

Over three generations, the Mycock/Cederholm family has witnessed significant changes to the Tabor campus including the building of the impressive Fish Center for Health and Athletics and, thankfully, an indoor ice rink. What has not changed is this family’s embrace of the school’s mission and the central role it has played in all of their lives.

Macy Pryor ’10, a leather-maker in Colorado, has found her purpose: spreading the love of craft and teaching.

You might have heard them recently on NPR, seen them on “CBS This Morning,” or read about them in Paste Magazine, but you might remember The Barr Brothers best as two-thirds of Tabor-grown jam-trio, The Slip.

Looking back on many years of teaching ceramics in the Braitmayer art building, two pillars stand clear in my understanding. One is the strength and depth of the ceramic program Bob Mogilnicki ’76 and I have worked together to develop. The other is my understanding of the deep value of teaching with and through art and clay. Here, I will reflect mostly on the first pillar and save my thoughts about the second for another place.

Tabor is engaging in our year of self-study in preparation for our 10-year Accreditation through the New England Association of Schools & Colleges (NEASC) in the fall of 2019.

Rowing and Special Olympics are two of my greatest passions and the idea of starting a program at Tabor that would combine the two of them really excited me.

For the second year in a row, Kellie Navarro ’19 (above), a member of our student Community Service Board, created an opportunity to share her passion for marine science with fifteen students at Our Sisters’ School, a middle school in New Bedford. Entirely through her own volition, and with a little help from her friends, Navarro created a schedule and secured three student presenters, as well as seven other student volunteers to help host the fifth graders and their teacher throughout an afternoon of activities.

In the coming year, as part of our NEASC accreditation process, we’ll be deeply engaged in a period of deliberate self-study: looking inward to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses, and whether the things we do align with the things we say. At the same time, we have been engaged in a multi-year effort to look more routinely outward: to connect, to compare, to assess, to engage, and to learn.