Harley’s Approach to College Counseling
“Club Rush” is an afternoon every fall in the Upper School when students have the chance to sign up for clubs for the year, and each year it is very different because new clubs are created based on student initiative and enthusiasm.
Each and every year, students at The Harley School participate in HAC Athletics, and their success continues to be impressive, both as students and athletes. Our athletic program is an integral part of Harley, teaching student-athletes invaluable lessons about teamwork, time management, persistence, and competition. Our program allows them to develop physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally as they represent their school on and off the field. They grow, mature, and work hard to be the best teammate they can, while creating lifelong memories with teammates who often remain friends for life. 
Our Upper School is filled with formal and informal opportunities for students to take on leadership roles. Whether following passions or learning new skills, student-driven opportunities take many shapes.
Unlike this class, death is not an elective. Although it is one of two universal human experiences, our culture often ignores, denies, or misconstrues the true nature of death and dying. What happens when we bear witness to this natural process in the cycle of life and develop our ability to be fully present with others when they need us more than ever? It has the potential to change us deeply and fundamentally while shining a brilliant light on the path of our own lives.
This program utilizes environmentally-focused approaches to education and hands-on learning in order to foster the next generation of leaders through a lens of sustainability and problem-solving.
At Harley, our students learn how to evaluate social systems in order to identify complex problems in society through a lens of social justice. They take a hands-on approach to working for a fair, equitable society by researching, exploring and evaluating different perspectives, and offering solutions—both theoretical and practical.
Students may create independent studies with supervising teachers throughout their Upper School experience or, during Grade 12, they can design Capstone projects—intensive collaborations with Harley faculty and off-campus mentors—involving rigorous academic study and culminating in public presentations. 
2000s
Phillip Williams ’00 with little Sophia in her Harley onesie!
“Harley was an immensely formative experience” –Daniel Effron ’01
Daniel with his daughters, Maya (5), Nova (3), and Lilah (1).
Daniel joined Harley in middle school in Grade 8, graduated from Yale University, went on to receive a Master’s and Ph.D. from Stanford University, and is now a professor at the London Business School. He says Harley was a great influence on his academic decisions: “Harley taught me a love of learning and an intellectualism that I hadn’t yet experienced in other schools.
“At Harley, it was okay to be late to class, as long as your lateness was the result of intellectual curiosity. He was once late to Edna Deutsch’s math class (Mathematics, 1978 to ‘04) because he was caught up in a conversation with James Aldrich-Moodie (JAM) about a poem he’d read, and, in another instance, he and a friend got caught up analyzing the latest REM song with Alex De Santis. He says behavior like this was almost encouraged at Harley; being curious and wanting to learn more was part of the school’s ethos.
When he was looking at colleges, he had initially planned, directly influenced by teachers, Richard Thorley (Science, 1995 to ‘12), JAM, (English, 1998 to ‘03, Math, 2003 to present), and David Schickler (Drama and Middle and Upper School English, 1998 to ‘00), to double-major in physics and theater. Richard Thorley’s physics class constantly “foster[ed] curiosity about how the world works” in both his classmates and him. He remembers JAM, who taught him both English and calculus at Harley, as a renaissance man who “modeled a curiosity for everything, was fascinated by everything.” Daniel’s interest in theater was inspired by David Schickler encouraging them to “think like other people think” to make their theatrical part convincing. When he eventually chose a major at Yale, he took some of his interest from both theater and physics, and settled on psychology. For this, he credits the incredible John Dolan (Psychology, 1994 to present) and his teachings in AP Psychology.
Daniel also loved the small size of Harley and the extracurricular opportunities made available to the students. He says, “You can get involved in things that you might not initially be good at, but are curious about.” Daniel was a member of the tennis team and believes that in a big school, he wouldn’t have made the team, but Harley’s attitude toward taking chances and giving new things a try allowed him to do just that and enjoy a more well-rounded high school experience.
At the London Business School, Daniel is a psychological scientist and he takes the curiosity in life that he admires so much in JAM and other Harley faculty, and explores. In his research, he studies phenomena that puzzle him and tries to figure them out, write about what he learns, and tell people about it. He reports that the dean of the London Business School says their job is to engage in “curious wandering at the frontier of knowledge.” Not all of his work feels quite like that, he admits, but he enjoys the attitude of “Just give it go!” when he comes upon something interesting. He once conducted a study about cheating in a coin toss by asking, “How do people behave when they face a finite series of opportunities to cheat with little or no risk of detection?” and he learned, after doing a variety of experiments, analyzing over 25,000 cheating opportunities faced by over 2,500 people, that people are three times more likely to cheat at the last available opportunity; he calls it the “Cheat-at-the-End” effect. Click here if you’d like to read more about it—it’s fascinating!
How did he end up in London? Daniel was living in Chicago doing post-doctoral work at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and looking for faculty jobs. London Business School caught his eye because of its international diversity, “friendliness to the kind of psychological work that I do,” and location in a city that’s a hotspot for his wife’s career in international development. He now lives in South London with his wife, Julia Tobias, and three daughters, Maya (5), Nova (3), and Lilah (1).
Rose Mulbury, daughter to Sarah Townsend Mulbury ’01, showing her Harley spirit already!
Aliza Leit ’17, Rachel Present Schreter ’02, and Aidan Leit ’20 held a mini-reunion in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Lauren Rosenberg Stuhmer ’02 and classmate Jeremy Heartberg ’02 had dinner in West Palm Beach, FL. She said, “It was a great reunion!”
Hillary Levitt Langdon ’04 and her husband Brett Landon were married in August.
Back in December, Dr. Matt Present ’04, a pediatric resident at the University of Rochester Medical Center, shared on Facebook some exciting news on a project he’s been working on:
“Friends, I’m excited to share a project I’ve been working on for the last 18 months: starting a Rochester chapter of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
“For the uninitiated, the Imagination Library mails a brand new, high-quality, culturally relevant children’s book to families every month. It’s free and, like Dolly herself, it’s extremely effective. All sorts of studies show that kids enrolled in the DPIL show up to kindergarten way more likely to know their letters and numbers. Based on what we’ve heard from the 120+ kids we’ve enrolled during our pilot program in the 14605 zip code, Rochester’s families love their monthly deliveries of Corduroy and The Little Engine That Could.
“If you’re careening through Christmas with some loose change in your pocket or already have a New Year’s resolution to address inequality in its most pernicious forms, I encourage you to head to our website and see whether we might fit with a world you’d like to live in.
“And if you’re in a spot to share more time than treasure, I just put the finishing touches on our website, and I’d be honored if you’d check it out and let me know what you think.
Happy holidays to you and yours.
www.Rochesterimaginationlibrary.org
Instagram: @imaginationlibraryroc
Facebook: facebook.com/ImaginationLibraryROC/”
One of Andrew Rea ’05’s summer Binging with Babish episodes of his cooking show featured classmate and Babish employee, Sawyer Jacobs ’05, and his new little baby, James, wearing a Harley onesie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSl2sRZvpSQ.
Andrew Rea also recently hosted a virtual cooking class for 12 members of the Harley community, including Allie D’Amanda Sacks ’03, P ’32, ’35 (pictured in the upper left corner of the photo above) at New York Kitchen in Canandaigua. He donated this class as a way to support Harley’s June Blast! The group prepared panzanella salad, shrimp scampi, and creme caramel. Harley parent, sommelier, and event attendee, Joe Ellis P ’21, ’23, donated wine pairings for each course. It was a fantastic event that we hope to hold again in the future—perhaps even in-person!
On top of all this, Andrew also supported Blast! by donating a match challenge for the evening’s Harley Fund and Horizons Fund!
Tenley Sternowski (right), daughter to Meg Malone Sternowski ’06 was born on October 2, and her older brother Camden (left) turns three at the end of this month.
Harley Upper School Music teacher, Mike Kaupa (1997 to present) golfing with Noah Shumway ’08 and Zach Shumway ’05.
The family of Brendan Larrabee ’06 and his wife, Meaghan.
In her most recent newsletter, Maggie Lloydhauser ’11 shared a tribute to her brother, Coyne Lloyd ’06, for his 34th birthday:
“Ode to Coyne
“My oldest brother, Coyne, is one of the people I love most on this earth. He is brilliant, and thoughtful, and believes in his loved ones with deep conviction. He is logical, loving, and largely unconcerned with the social norms that fence so many of us in.
“He is persistent, too. It’s easy to laugh at the child who pushes back on every question with, “why,” but it’s also famously maddening. I sometimes feel the same way with Coyne.
“And yet, that refusal to accept the first answer he gets is also part of what makes Coyne so remarkable.
“In 2018, I had endless reasons to not go with Coyne on a somewhat spontaneous trip to Morocco and the South of France: I was in my last few months at a job I cared about and I couldn’t spare the days off; I was about to be unemployed and it was bound to be quite expensive; it wasn’t long enough for such an ambitious trip; it was simply a crazy thing to do. Coyne pushed and pushed, and at one point, I remember being frustrated: did he not respect the importance of the work I did?! Ultimately, though, talking around in circles with Coyne helped me realize that it was guilt more than necessity that had me squeamish about taking time off. Ever logical and generous, he asked me how much I felt I could afford for the trip, then covered the rest of the costs himself. We decided to focus not on all the wonderful things we wouldn’t be able to do on such a short trip, but to revel in all that we could fit in…”
Click here to access the full story: https://www.harleyschool.org/alumni-news-coyne-lloyd-06/.
Lily Beaumont ’07 has made quite a name for herself as an undergraduate at the University of Rochester. She graduated 10 years ago, but we recently heard from Harley parent Belinda Redden P ’24, a member of the Fellowship Office at the University, that several U. of R. professors mentioned her for the “quality of her intellect and writing.” Lily was surprised and flattered, and said the first writing assignment she could remember was in Harley’s lower school when the students were asked to write, illustrate, and publish a book. “I had an early introduction to writing at a young age—and it started at Harley.”
Fast forward to Upper School and her love for English and writing continued. Lily said, “Every single English teacher I had was amazing,” but Alex De Santis (Upper School English, 1971 to 2009) was a stand-out. His teaching was “rigorous and analytical,” and he was a huge reason she majored in English. Lily said the depth of thinking in Harley English classes prepared her for college. In fact, one class at the U. of R. (Senior Seminar) that was small, relaxed, very unorthodox, and iconoclastic in challenging the prevailing trends of literary theory, was “very reminiscent of her experience at Harley.”
Click here to learn more about Lily and see samples of her writing: https://www.harleyschool.org/alumni-news-lily-beaumont-07/.
“Harley changed the trajectory of my life.”―Katherine Rich ’08
Katherine says there are two key reasons Harley made such an impact on her.
First, Latin class with Jessica Densmore (Upper School Language, 1997 to present). Spanish and French are the main languages at Harley, but students are required to take one semester of Latin in Grade 8. The language is then an elective in Upper School. Katherine stuck with it (and Spanish) all through her time at Harley. She also studied Greek with Len Wilcox, P ’01, ’03, GP ’34 (Mathematics, College Counseling 1969 to ’82, 1986 to 2020) during the lunch period; Len inspired her and encouraged her studies in this ancient language. In fact, she was such a voracious student that he let her borrow all of his Greek and Latin books to peruse on her own time. She did and she enjoyed them immensely (see photo below)! She also shared:
“I was the only student in the AP Latin class in my senior year. That was fun, very cool that Harley let me do that even though I was the only one. We read Vergil’s Aeneid.”
Click here to learn more about Katherine: https://www.harleyschool.org/alumni-news-katherine-rich-08/.
Rachel Kurchin ’09 with her Harley science teacher Cindy Richards (2000–2009).
Celeste Schepp Wyman ’09 and Emmett Wyman ’09 were married in May 2022. In attendance were fellow alumni: John D’Amanda ’75, Kathy Durfee D’Amanda ’76, James D’Amanda ’06, Allie D’Amanda Sacks ’03 (bridesmaid), Chris Hoeger ’09, Dahee Hong ’09, Rebekah Sherman-Myntti ’09 (bridesmaid), and Richard Lange ’09 (groomsman). Jake Sacks ’32 was ring bearer and Emma Lou Sacks ’35 the flower girl.
