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Board of Trustees

• Claudia Barber
• Casey Blanchard
• Frances Carr
• Rebecca Lindy Coll
• Ken Edwards
• Lisa Fargo
• Mary Hamilton Homer, Chair
• Craig Heindel
• Mike Rosen
• Mike Russell

Claudia Barber  

I am a current VCS parent who values the sense of community, responsibility and educational engagement that VCS provides each of its students. The alignment of the school's mission with our family's personal values creates an environment for our children that supports and promotes those values in a very inclusive way.  I joined the board of trustees for these reasons: to help make certain the core values of the schools mission are implemented to their fullest potential, to advance awareness and understanding of those core values to the greater community and because I absolutely love this school. I am delighted and dedicated to doing whatever I can to support its faculty, administration & students.

Casey Blanchard  

The reason I serve on the VCS Board is simple - I want to participate in the generation of positive societal changes through education. I have watched our daughter become engaged in and inspired by the innovative social and academic atmosphere of the Vermont Commons School. Upon enrolling in Vermont Commons, tremendous changes took place in our daughter. She wanted to climb the Adirondack Mountains, study physics and play soccer. Her attraction to art and music grew into a passion that motivates her development to this day. My daughter is not alone in experiencing this sense of empowerment and success; the entire student body, the faculty and the administration bring incredible energy and commitment to their daily activities.

Frances Carr

As a current, VCS parent, Fran values the strong VCS community, the talented and dedicated faculty and the positive educational environment that fosters confidence and engagement.  She strongly believes that a vibrant education must recognize that developing solutions to complex and important problems requires expertise and perspectives from many disciplines.  It must also nurture responsible global citizens. VCS  provides this environment through a vigorous experiential education and an integrated curriculum.

In her professional life, Fran is a molecular endocrinologist and professor in medicine at UVM.  She has spent the past 20 years in leadership roles in government and academia in VT, NY, DC, and MA.  Her passion for international engagement and interdisciplinary experiential education was fostered while senior science advisor at USAID. 

Fran earned a BS in Biology and Psychology from Boston College and a PhD in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Illinois College of Medicine.  She and her husband, Ned McMahon, and their son and daughter enjoy international travel, skiing, biking, and hiking.

Rebecca Lindy Coll

Rebecca Lindy Coll is a past parent of Vermont Commons School. Although no longer a resident of Vermont, her passion for the school and belief in its mission has inspired her to maintain her ties and to share her considerable experience in fund-raising and independent schools with the Board.  She joined VCS after ten years in England where she served on many committees and boards at the American School in London.  Rebecca's work at ASL helped the school to raise significant funds that went towards creating endowments, buying state-of-the-art equipment, and funding innovative teacher programming.  Professionally, Rebecca has experience developing executive education programs in managment consulting and at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. At Vermont Commons School, Rebecca is on the Development Committee, Strategic Planning Committee, and chaired the Advisory Board in our recent search for a new Head of School.  Rebecca graduated from Skidmore College in 1987 and also has two further degrees in Book Arts from the University of the Arts, London.  Rebecca and her family now live in Needham, Massachusetts.  

Ken Edwards

Ken Edwards has spent the past 25 years working in a variety of leadership roles for high technology firms in both Massachusetts and Vermont.  He founded the Six Sigma practice at IDX Corporation in 2002 and served on the their Leadership Operations team until IDX's acquisition by General Electric Corporation in 2006.  Ken is currently the General Manager of New Product Introduction and Account Management for GE's Electronic Medical Records business.   He is a strong believer in an interdisciplinary and applied educational environment.  Business and organizational problems in the real-world aren't broken apart between elements of science, mathematics, social sciencel, or language arts.  Instead, real-world problem-solving requires an integrated and interdisciplinary approach.  Ken serves on the VCS Board because of his enthusiasm for, and belief in, the school's vigorously applied and interdisciplinary approach to education -- an approach that gives VCS's students an applied knowledge advantage when they approach natural and organizational problems in their future. 

Ken earned a BA in Economics from Middlebury College and an MBA from Boston University.  He resides in Shelburne, VT with his wife and two sons.

Lisa Fargo

Our family became part of the Vermont Commons community in 2000.  At that time the school  had a faculty of  10 and a student population of 35.   Both of our children, Taylor and Griffen, thrived in the "hands on," experiential educational enviorment offered at Vermont Commons.  With the guidance and support of the VCS faculty, our kids successfully endeavored to discover their respective paths to a life well led.  With thanks to the VCS community, they have become thoughtful, confident, learners and contributors to their collegiate communities. 

I believe in the value of independent and community based learning, and my efforts while serving on the board will be geared toward helping to develop a sustainable school that provides an excellent educational experience while maintaining strong ties and commitments to the local community.

Peter Goff

I have invested my entire professional career in Vermont Commons School. My wife (Dr. Donna Rizzo, UVM) and I designed the framework for the VCS Science curriculum and the predecessor to the Research and Service Program. My colleagues and I have refined and advanced the programs over the past decade, and we have built something I am very proud of. The trust of my fellow faculty members, the past-and-present families, alums of class & volleyball court, and the Board of Trustees is very important to me, and I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to help promote and maintain VCS's mission statement.

 

Mary Hamilton Homer

Put simply, I am passionate about this school, the faculty, the administration and the incredible kids who attend here.  The energy created when these forces come together is palpable, addictive and exactly what education should feel like.  We are the family who takes the ferry from Plattsburgh everyday in order to take advantage of this atmosphere founded on respect, openness, love of learning and personal responsibility.  I couldn't be happier to do whatever I can to ensure that Vermont Commons is available to all who would seek it.

 

Craig Heindel

Craig is a past VCS parent who feels that the school has been a very special place for him and his family. His two daughters graduated from VCS (Naomi in 2003, and Ruth in 2006) after receiving remarkable high school educations, taught by wonderfully talented and dedicated faculty. Craig is pleased to be able to help VCS advance into its second decade with its strong and unique programs of experiential education focused on environmental knowledge and ethics applied to local, regional and global issues.

In his professional life, Craig is a consulting groundwater geologist and part owner of Heindel & Noyes, Inc., an environmental consulting firm based in Burlington, Vermont. He evaluates water resources for property owners, commercial interests, and local and state governments, and he specializes in water supplies, assessments and remediation of contaminated sites, and on-site wastewater disposal. He especially enjoys the teaching aspects of being a natural resources consultant, whether providing testimony at a hearing or leading a group of UVM students on a glacial geology field trip. When Craig is not geologizing, he and his wife, Judy Chaves, enjoy being out in the mountains and lakes of Vermont and the northeast, in all seasons of the year.

Michael Rosen

Mike Rosen is an engineer who has spent most of his professional life in academia. He has been teaching the engineering design sequence in the School of Engineering at UVM for the past five years. The senior course gets him very involved with industry -- established firms and start-ups -- in Vermont and beyond because all the students' projects  originate in the world outside the ivy. Mike got involved with VCS through the aviation encounter groups he ran with Jess Redmond. Beyond understanding flight from an engineering perspective, he has had a life-long passion for aircraft and recently completed a homebuilt two-seater in a carriage barn in North Bennington. He's drawn to VCS by his belief in the importance of experiential learning -- the underlying principle for his UVM courses as well.   

Michael Russell

Michael Russell is the parent of two VCS alumnae - Frances Russell '08 and Ruby Russell '09 - in partnership with Margaret Russell.   He is an attorney at Hoff Curtis in Burlington where he focuses his practice in the area of land use and zoning, and also maintains active practices in business law, real estate transactions and estate planning.   Michael joined Hoff Curtis in 2002 and became its Managing Director in 2008.  He has served as a Trustee on the Lake Champlain Waldorf School Board, a member of the Town of Charlotte Zoning Board of Adjustment, Trails Committee and Natural Resources Advisory Committee, and numerous other volunteer, non-profit committees.  Prior to taking up the practice of law, Michael was an entrepreneur and small business information technology consultant.  He is a product of an independent secondary school, The Colorado College, the University of Denver College of Law and Vermont Law School.  His other pursuits include carpentry and woodworking, automotive mechanics, farming, sailing, golf, ultimate Frisbee and Settlers of Catan.