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NMH Magazine : Spring 2004

A Man for All Challenges

By Mary Seymour

This spring Tom Sturtevant became NMH’s head of school after serving as associate head since July 2003. Richard W. Mueller ’62 was named president of the school, and as such will play a key role in development and alumni relations, guide planning efforts for the Northfield campus, and provide overall leadership.

Who is Tom Sturtevant, and what does he bring to NMH? Here’s a look at the man who’s responsible for the educational program and the day-to-day running of the school.

Tom, Betsy, Margaret, Lizzie, and Richard Sturtevant

Tom Sturtevant is a can-do kind of guy. His feats of daring are family legend, from single-handedly rescuing a sinking sailboat to saving the life of a teenager who’d fallen off a rock ledge. Over and over, he’s demonstrated strength, stamina, and steadiness in the face of challenge.

“His physical strength is unbelievable,” says his father.

“He’d carry a car up a mountain if need be,” says his wife, Betsy.

As NMH’s new head of school, Tom Sturtevant might be just the right man for the job. 

Sturtevant learned to face challenges early on. As the youngest of three brothers, each 16 months apart and fiercely competitive, he had to be tough. He was, by all accounts, mischievous, irreverent, and irrepressible. In fact, Sturtevant spent much of first and second grade in the hall. “I was a little active,” he concedes.

In fourth grade, one of his challenges was revealed when his parents took him to an educational testing center, where he was diagnosed as mildly dyslexic. The revelation was something of a relief to him. “He said, ‘Thank god, I thought I was stupid,’” recalls his father, Peter.

The diagnosis was somewhat ironic for a boy whose family was steeped in education. His father, a former English teacher, became head of Maret School—a progressive independent school—in Washington, DC, in 1973.

Tom grew up with Maret as his backyard, though he and his brothers attended private school elsewhere. During the summers, the family decamped to Maine, where sailing was the family pastime. Sturtevant became a skilled sailor and often served as racing crew for family friend Tim Parson.

“He took pride in being tough,” says Parson. “He’d hold the mainsheet until his palms were bleeding.”

One of Sturtevant’s diversions involved strapping a life preserver to a bike, bumping down a set of steps, careening along a dock, and pedaling into the ocean. Parson’s uncle was so amused by the sight that he paid Tom a dime for each go-round.

Tom (top) with brothers

As he got older, Sturtevant’s interests broadened beyond sailing and crazy bike stunts. By eighth grade, he realized he enjoyed language and literature. In ninth grade, he literally fell in love with a poetry textbook, making him the only boy at his all-boys school to fall hard for meter and quatrains. “It was odd. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work,” says Sturtevant. 

In fact, it worked out just fine. At Westminster School in Connecticut, which he attended from tenth through twelfth grade, he delved deeper into literature and poetry. He fell in love again, this time with geometry, and became a star soccer and lacrosse player. As a junior he developed a case of adolescent ennui that caused his grades to slip. He went to his advisor with a box of favorite records and asked him to hold them ransom until his grades improved. They did, and he graduated cum laude.

Sturtevant attended Tufts University, where after considering studies in math and engineering, he majored in English. Upon graduating in 1984, he decided he’d do anything but teach. His reasoning: “I knew I could teach—and if I started, I wouldn’t stop. I wanted to try other things first.”

He joined a framing crew and built houses for about six months. Then he took at job processing educational loans at Key Bank in Boston, which made him utterly miserable. Realizing his passion lay not in paper-pushing but in education, he made some phone calls in spring 1985 and landed a teaching job at Tabor Academy.

It’s easy to connect the dots in the Sturtevant family: Peter Sturtevant was headmaster of Maret for 20 years. Peter Jr., the middle son, taught English and became headmaster of a small girls’ school in Maryland in the 1980s. Tom is now the third man in the family to head an independent school.

Understandably, he doesn’t want to be categorized so easily. “My father never tried to build a school leadership career in a traditional sense. It just fell into place. My brother, who’s now an educational consultant, ultimately found he didn’t want to be a head of school. My journey has been different. I’ve worked toward this kind of leadership position for a longer time, with more steps along the way.”

His first step was teaching English at Tabor, where he also served as a dorm 
parent to tenth-grade boys and coached lacrosse, sailing, and third-team hockey. The hockey assignment came as something of a shock.

“I don’t know how to ice skate, and I don’t even own a pair of skates,” he informed the athletic director.

“There’s a famous Polish coach who goes on the ice with his boots on,” was the response.

Sturtevant struck a bargain: a pair of skates in return for his coaching. With one week to learn how to skate, he joined the girls team practices, followed their drills, and asked the coach to tell him everything he needed to know. Sturtevant learned enough to lead the team through a respectable season. He still has the skates.

By his second year of teaching, Sturtevant realized he was interested in school leadership. He loved working with students but was also intrigued by the bigger picture. He found himself asking questions like: What are the school’s deeper goals? How well do its programs serve these?

He took a leave of absence and earned a master’s in English at Stanford in one year—quite a feat for a fellow who’d been diagnosed as dyslexic.

In fact, Sturtevant had never accepted dyslexia as a complete diagnosis. “I have mixed dominants, some dysgraphia, extra energy, and I recognize words differently than others might,” he says. To compensate, he developed a steel-trap memory, a good sense of humor about himself, and deep appreciation for feedback from colleagues. Last but not least, he became a connoisseur of puns and malapropisms.

Over the years, Sturtevant developed a profound respect for different ways of learning. He was fascinated by brain development and learning styles, and 
his experience had taught him there were multiple ways to process information. 
He also understood how a child’s deepest leanings might not develop along predictable paths or timelines. In a sense, his own learning differences had motivated him to teach and be part of schools.

In 1990 he began working at St. Andrew’s School in Delaware. Sturtevant spent nine years there and wore a stack of hats. His responsibilities—not simultaneous, but nearly—included teaching English and math, serving as academic advisor and dorm parent, coaching girls varsity soccer and boys varsity lacrosse, and working as director of college counseling. 

A pivotal experience happened when he was teaching two junior English classes, one honors and one regular. Over the course of the year, he discovered that the non-honors class, properly motivated, was capable of the same level of work as the honors class. Both classes took the AP Literature and Composition exams, and both did equally well. 

“When I was first assigned the honors course, I thought it was a feather in my cap,” he says. “What I discovered was that I liked teaching students who haven’t hit their stride.” 

At the end of the year, Sturtevant recommended to the English department that they abolish the English honors course in 11th grade. St. Andrews hasn’t had one since—and now all juniors take AP English exams.

The first time Betsy Sturtevant met her future husband, he was talking about his recipe for mole sauce. She thought he was intelligent and articulate, and soon discovered they shared a passion for teaching.

They met at a party in 1990; Tom was teaching at St. Andrew’s and Betsy was a fourth-grade teacher at Maret School, where Tom’s father was still headmaster. The lower school director described Betsy’s skills thus: “Her calm, patient manner, animated by a delightful sense of humor, has won her students’ hearts as well as helped engage their minds…her colleagues appreciate her warmth, sensitivity, and forthrightness.”

She was such a dedicated teacher that, a year after meeting Tom, she passed up an opportunity to meet him a second time because she had to write reports for her fourth-graders. Luckily Tom convinced her to get together with him after her reports were done. They went to an all-night diner and talked for hours. When Tom went back to St. Andrew’s, he told everyone he knew, “I met the woman I’m going to marry.”

Months later he took Betsy sailing with his family in Maine. Tom sat at one end of the boat, absorbed in whittling a piece of driftwood. “I thought he was being antisocial,” she says. “That night he proposed to me. He didn’t have an engagement ring yet, so he’d whittled me one out of driftwood.”

They wed in 1992 and had their first child, Margaret, two years later. Next came Lizzie in 1996. As a faculty spouse at St. Andrew’s, Betsy juggled 
parenting with tutoring students with learning differences, serving as a dorm parent and advisor, and coaching tennis and field hockey. Before having children, she also taught kindergarten at nearby Kent School.

In 1999 the couple moved to Long Island, where Tom became upper school principal at Friends Academy, a Quaker-affiliated independent school. As such, he oversaw the day-to-day operations of the upper school, from hiring new faculty to managing the budget to meeting with trustees. He also taught English.

The Sturtevants had a son, Richard, in 2000, and Betsy began parenting full-time. When Tom entered the search for associate head of NMH last year, she supported him fully. Both felt NMH suited their values, and they loved the wide-ranging campus and tight-knit community. Tom got the job, and the family moved to Norton House on the Mount Hermon campus last summer, quickly filling it with toys, books, and dogs.

As a couple, the Sturtevants form a well-balanced team. Tom, naturally gregarious, loves working a room. Betsy, intuitive and soft-spoken, is a gifted and empathetic listener. Friends of the couple liken her to Tom’s mother, who died of lung cancer when he was 21. A strong and exceptionally sweet woman, she’d stayed at home to raise Tom and his brothers, then started her own needlepoint design company.

The Sturtevants share a love of education, writing, and literature. Both were English majors—Betsy earned her bachelor’s at Colgate, then a master’s in education from Lesley College/Shady Hill School. They are devoted churchgoers and outdoor enthusiasts who love spending summers at their house in Brooklin, Maine, where Tom spent every childhood summer. 

Most of all, they share a deep love for their children, now 10, 8, and 3. By their description, Margaret, the oldest, is artistic, socially graceful, and serves as the family scheduler. Lizzie, the middle child, is musical, free-spirited, and loves to turn cartwheels. Both girls are students at the Bement School in Deerfield. Richard—the spitting image of Tom when he was a boy—is energetic, sweet, and “runs the household.”

“My fondest memory of Tom is seeing how sweet he is with his kids,” says Parson. “He really understands his girls as girls. At the same time, they’ve certainly been raised as tough girls. They’re always up in Maine covered with scratches and insect bites. He and Betsy believe in letting their kids learn life through experience; they’re not overly sheltered in any way.”

When Tom’s father became headmaster of Maret School, it was in crisis. The school was in debt, had no endowment, and was on the brink of closing. During his two decades of leadership, Sturtevant turned the school into one of the preeminent day schools in Washington.

Although NMH is by no means in crisis, it is in transition—and the echoes of family history are uncanny. Apparently the Sturtevant men enjoy a good challenge.

Tom became associate head of NMH in July 2003; six months later, the board of trustees voted to make the school smaller and centralized on one campus. They also changed the leadership structure: former head of school Richard W. Mueller ’62 became president, and Sturtevant became head of school.

At 42, Sturtevant radiates a steady confidence that defies chronology. Some might suspect him of being overconfident, but anyone who takes the time to look harder will find vulnerability and compassion. Sturtevant describes himself as having a deep optimism and trust in good will and God’s grace.

“Tom is a very creative, gentle soul,” says Betsy.

Others describe him with a mix of respect and familiarity.

“He’s a visionary,” says MaryAlice Kolodner, a teacher at Friends Academy. “He has the big picture in mind but can also manage to keep the details straight. He seems to thrive on finding solutions to problems.”

A former student, Taylor Horner, recalls, “He lent me countless books and lectured me about dating the wrong boys. Since then, he’s helped me get job interviews, given me advice on teaching, and only occasionally lectured me about dating the wrong boys.”

“Tom loves kids and understands them better than they understand themselves,” says Brad DuPont, who coached and taught with him at St. Andrew’s. “The ability to lead students and faculty is encoded in his genes.”
One thing Sturtevant loves about NMH is its emphasis on finding each student’s potential. That kind of sky-high thinking is exactly in tune with his own. He also believes deeply in the school’s mission and fundamental strengths. Changing those is not on the docket.

What he’s interested in is evolution and improvement. “NMH is poised 
to be an even better school,” he says. “The challenge is to adapt the program 
to best suit our mission. That takes an adjustment in priorities and programs. That’s the sign of a really good school—that it continues to evolve.”

As a teenager, Sturtevant had a summer job working on the custodial crew at Maret School. His work included scrubbing desks; sometimes he washed away unkind words about his father. At that point, working at a school was the farthest thing from his mind.

Three decades later, he sits behind an oak desk in his office on the first floor of Kenarden. His rumpled hair is boyish in contrast to the sober, grown-up suit he’s wearing. The office is curiously bare of decoration, as if its occupant hasn’t had time to pause and consider what should hang on the walls. His support staff clearly dote on him, and the atmosphere is relaxed and good-humored.

Sturtevant’s calendar is jam-packed with the business of running NMH’s day-to-day program. On any given day, the CFO, president, various faculty members, students, and deans come through his office. He’s been handed a workload and institutional challenges that would flatten most. 

But not him.

This, after all, is what he’s wanted and strived for. His trajectory shows how far keen intellect combined with determination can take a person.

How far, one wonders, might it take a school?