“The Work Still Matters”: Convocation Ceremony Heralds New School Year

The Northfield Mount Hermon community gathered in Memorial Chapel on Wednesday to mark the official start of the 148th school year with the Convocation ceremony. One of the school's signature events each fall, the ceremony featured singing, the acknowledgement of new faculty chairs and fellowships, and reflections from teachers and students.

Head of School Brian Hargrove offered some brief words of welcome before inviting religious studies and philosophy teacher Jennifer Keator P’19, ’20, ’26 up to the lectern to give this year's invocation. Eu Park '27 followed with a moment of silence, in which he reflected on how easy it can be to take the exceptional atmosphere of NMH for granted in the midst of a busy school year.

"I remember when I first came into this very chapel, amazed by the high ceilings and the beautiful lights hanging from the top," Park recalled. "However, as time went by, I started to lose that bright, awe-inspiring, uplifting feeling. … I let familiarity deceive me and make me lose sight of how I felt when I first arrived."

Park called on his classmates to cherish the people, places, and opportunities that make NMH a singular place to learn and grow. "Just because you see them often doesn't mean that you'll get to see them forever,” he said. “Indeed, it would be foolish if we were to ask for everything to last forever. However, it would be more foolish not to enjoy it while it still lasts."

Hargrove reiterated NMH's commitment to its "grounding principles" — embracing diversity, taking pride in the school, and building a community where everyone can belong and thrive — in his opening address of the year.

As people around the world grapple with the effects of rapid technological advances in every facet of life, those principles have become more important than ever, Hargrove said, hearkening back to the "four essential questions" students ponder in NMH’s Humanities 1 class: Who am I? What is my place? What does it mean to be human? How, then, shall I live?

He encouraged students to heed the words of author William Blake in the school song, "Jerusalem." "Our work at NMH has been and will always be to engage fully with the world in which we live," said Hargrove. "Let us lean into the opportunities and responsibilities this moment calls us to."

The following faculty members were awarded faculty fellowships, joining their colleagues currently serving as chairs and fellows:

• Jane Austen Teaching Fellowship in Literature: M.K. Brake
• David F. Bolger '50 Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching: Jennifer Keator P'19, '20, '26
• Theodore R. Carpenter '38 Faculty Fellowship: Scott Bloom
• David D. Hartman '52 Faculty Fellowship: Katherine Hunt

The Spade Oration, a keynote address given by a member of the senior class each year at Convocation, was delivered by Amelia Sabetti '27. Sabetti extolled the importance of embracing uncertainty and being open to unexpected opportunities.

"Sometimes, the hardest work is being willing to begin when we do not know where it will lead," Sabetti said. "We are here at NMH for only a few years, but those years become part of a much longer story: a community shaped by the students who came before us and by the students who will come after us. …We do not always know, while we are living them, which moments will become part of the story we carry from this place."

She likened the growth students undergo in their time at NMH to that of the trees planted by the senior class on campus each year and asserted that the real rewards of our actions are found in the work we partake in together, even if the outcomes are unclear.

"Our founder D.L. Moody understood that building a community requires more than an idea; it requires people willing to contribute to it,” Sabetti said. “When he founded our school, students contributed their own labor to its life, learning that education was not only something they received but something they helped create. Today, our work has that same potential."

Convocation closed with a benediction from world languages teacher Gorgui Diaw P’23, ’27, ’30 and the singing of the "Northfield Benediction." As students and faculty filed out of the chapel to take class pictures and share a picnic lunch in Memorial Grove, it was Sabetti's final sentiment that seemed to resonate in the laughter, cheers, and excitement that echoed across campus: "Let us plant something that someone else will one day be grateful to inherit. Together, we may not be able to see the whole tree, but we can decide what we are willing to plant."

— Max Hunt

Photos by Matthew Cavanaugh. See more scenes from the 2026 Convocation ceremony on Flickr.