Dr. Monica Benton Palmer has been named Milton’s next Upper School principal, effective July 1. The following is a message from Head of School Todd Bland announcing Dr. Palmer’s appointment to the Milton community:

I am happy to announce Dr. Monica Benton Palmer as Milton Academy’s next Upper School principal, effective July 1, 2022. After rigorous evaluation of candidates in a national search under highly competitive circumstances, Milton acted swiftly to bring Dr. Palmer to Milton, and we are delighted she chose to join our community.

Monica has 19 years of independent school experience, and her passion for working with upper school students results from a desire to connect with and guide students in their formative years.

The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered injustices that are more complex and connected than some may understand, Jubi Oladipo ’24 reflected after working with a Boston nonprofit that makes and delivers medically tailored meals to people with chronic and critical illnesses.

“Often, people with chronic illnesses and disabled people are left out of the narrative,” Oladipo said, noting that the pandemic added additional barriers for people in need to safely obtain healthy food. “Food insecurity is a really intersectional issue; so many different factors can impact a person’s ability to go grocery shopping and prepare meals that help them satisfy their medical needs.”

Oladipo and the other students in Andrea Geyling-Moore’s Activism for Justice in a Digital World course recently visited and worked in the kitchen of Community Servings, located in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Max Seelig ’22 said the visit opened his eyes to how food insecurity can have its origins in more than just poverty.

“Generally, the first image that comes to mind when we think of someone who’s food insecure is someone who is experiencing homelessness or poverty,” he said. “But access is not just financial. Physical health and location also determine access to food and meals.”

As a young man, Dr. Philip McAdoo had a moment where he thought his ambitions weren’t enough. While waiting to be interviewed to receive a scholarship from the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, he met young people planning to be doctors, lawyers, and civic leaders competing for the same scholarship. McAdoo wanted to be a theater actor.

During a break in the interviews, McAdoo visited Atlanta’s King Center, where he encountered a quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

“I carried that with me for the rest of my life,” said McAdoo, Milton’s 2022 MLK Day speaker. “I thought I needed to be something more than I was. Dr. King created space for everyday people to do the extraordinary.”

McAdoo delivered a webinar titled “Reflections on Service and Love” to Upper and Middle School students on Tuesday afternoon, and to the broader Milton community in the evening. Zain Sheikh ’24 moderated Q&A sessions with him following his talks. Desman Ward ’23, Nate Dixon ’22, and Zahra Tshai ’22 introduced McAdoo for the sessions.

“For me to immigrate to the United States was to take stock of what I had to give up to get what I want out of what Mary Oliver calls ‘this one wild and precious life,’” English teacher Kristine Palmero told students this week. “It’s about choosing where my physical body will be even if there are rooms in my heart that live in a house in a country so distant that their night is my day.

“But over time, the U.S., which I thought would be no more than an interlude, turned into my home,” Palmero added. “For me, trying to immigrate here is about loving the U.S. and my life here with my whole being, even when I wasn’t sure how long I would get to stay.”

Palmero was born in the Philippines and raised in Saudi Arabia, where her father worked for an energy company—she saw how Americans working for the company received privileges other foreigners did not. Inspired by the film Dead Poets Society, she asked her parents to send her to boarding school in the United States; her father responded by gathering as much information on American prep schools as he could to help her achieve her dream.

When Katie Chow ’12 was growing up, her parents would come home from Boston’s Chinatown with white boxes wrapped in red string and containing favorite treats for her and her siblings: pastries such as dan tat (egg tarts) or bolo bao (pineapple buns).

“For us, love is a surprise box of buns, even though your fridge is packed; dad giving you the last helping of fish when you know it’s his favorite, too; and spending Sundays helping mom fold wontons that will live in the freezer for months,” Chow writes on the Instagram page for the Asian Inclusion Project, a joint venture with Ashley Bae ’12.

For Bae, a Los Angeles native and daughter of Korean immigrants, food connects across generations. As a child, Bae peppered her paternal grandmother with questions as the older woman experimented with fermentation for kimchi and cooked a spicy seafood stew from her youth in Guryongpohang, a port city at the southeastern tip of South Korea.

“When I cook comfort foods that remind me of my childhood, I’m really cooking food from my grandma’s childhood, because I grew up watching her,” Bae says. “There’s something beautiful about how a routine activity like cooking can mean so much for a culture.”

Bae and Chow formed the Asian Inclusion Project (on Instagram at @asianinclusionproject) out of their mutual desire to amplify Asian American voices and invite others into the Asian American experience. Food is a natural medium: In many cultures, sharing food is an expression of love, celebration, and community. The project shares submissions from chefs and amateurs alike—people with diverse stories and Asian American identities in common.

Formed this year, the Astronomy Club offers students an opportunity to delve into the far reaches of the universe by observing and chronicling the night sky as well as exploring astrophysics.

The two senior co-heads, John Matters ’22 and Teddy Sunshine ’22, started the club because of their shared interest in astrophysics, which studies the chemistry and physics of celestial phenomena such as black holes, dark matter, and the life cycles of stars. They recognized the value in having Milton’s Ayer Observatory available on campus and wanted to encourage more students to use it.

“We decided to start the club because we were both interested in the subject matter and we both have backgrounds in astrophysics,” said Sunshine, who has taken up astrophotography in the last two years. “I go out at night and take photos of both wide-angle and deep space objects and I’m able to display them to everyone. We’re trying to teach people the skills to do that. I got really into it through the pandemic and it’s become a real passion of mine and I want to teach other people how to do it as well.”

In her junior year, Chen-Chih (Shiloh) Liu ’22 stayed remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic, learning from her home in Taiwan. Still, she was a full participant in her Honors Biology course, completing lab assignments in her kitchen.

And now, one of her experiments has made her a published scientist. Liu’s article, “How ethanol concentration affects catalase catalysis of hydrogen peroxide,” was recently published in the Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI), an online scientific publication for students in college, high school, and middle school. 

“I knew at the beginning of the process that it would be very time consuming and rigorous,” Liu said. “I committed to it. I didn’t want to stop or do anything in between. So, I was glad it got accepted and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this and go through the peer-review process that you don’t usually get at a high-school level.”

On Norfolk Street, just a block from Blue Hill Avenue in the heart of Mattapan, sits the headquarters of the Urban Farming Institute (UFI), an almost decade-old enterprise operating five farms in neighborhoods just south of Boston. Its mission: to develop and promote urban agriculture, engage residents of Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury in growing food, and build a healthier community.

The person overseeing this ambitious undertaking is Patricia Spence ’76, UFI’s founding president and CEO. Spence recalls how UFI’s founders first approached her in 2014 about heading up the fledgling nonprofit. She had held numerous senior-level positions throughout her career, both in the corporate sector—in marketing and sales for Xerox and Digital Equipment Corporation—and in the nonprofit sector, at WGBH and the Boston Public Schools.

Spence smiles as she describes the founders’ pitch to her about the position. Having recently orchestrated the passage of legislation that allowed for commercial zoning for urban agriculture, “they were looking for someone who could kind of juggle it all,” she says. “I’m the person you bring in when you’re trying to do something different. That’s kind of where I sit in the world, so here I am.”

I recently shared with the Milton community my plan to step down as head of school at the end of the 2022–23 academic year. Although this is far from a farewell message—there are almost two years and much work to be done—I have already begun to reflect on the many gifts Milton Academy has given to my family and me.

By far, the greatest of these gifts are the connections with thousands of students, colleagues, alumni, families, and friends who have enriched our lives. I hold their stories close—be they funny, moving, tragic, epic, or small—as touchpoints that color personalities and biographies, as conversations that have expanded my understanding of the world.

In the fall issue of Milton Magazine, we focus on food and the many ways it fosters and strengthens these connections. The stories shared over meals are more personal, more familiar, because of the intimate nature of dining together. Even if you start as relative strangers, good conversation and sharing a wonderful meal create lasting impressions and memories. Food is something to celebrate on its own, of course, but sharing a meal together is about so much more; it’s about stories, connection, and the love that goes into preparing—or receiving—the meal.