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College Counseling

Harley’s Approach to College Counseling is highly individualized and student-centered. Students have direct access to college counselors throughout their Upper School experience, but really, each student is part of a team including faculty, administration, and staff. It’s our job to support each student and we want nothing more than to send students on to the next step of their journey at a right fit school for them. The student centered and driven process is wrapped in care, expertise, and professionalism.

We host college reps during times students are available (no need to miss a class) so they can make connections and learn more about potential schools. We also arrange campus visits for classes as field trips, host an alumni college day (where recent Upper School graduates return to share advice and answer questions), and help connect students with our international alumni network. In fact, representatives from schools all over the world actively seek opportunities to come to Harley and meet with our students!

Our college counselors are accredited and are part of national/global conversations on admission trends. They also attend and present at conferences across the country.

Beginning with our Grade 11 parent night, we offer informational sessions for parents, including one devoted just to financial aid. Our partnership with families is critical, as the college admissions world changes very quickly and having an expert to guide students and families through the process is essential.

View the downloadable College Counseling Guide

Clubs

“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.

A few of this year’s choices: Sports Media, Social Action Club, Journalism Club, Feminism Club, Student of Color & Allies (SOCA), Gay-Straight Alliance, Tri M (music honor society), E-Sports Club, Euchre, Key Club (service), Animation Club, Dungeons & Dragons, Sustainability Club, Jewish Cultural Club, Astronomy Club, Biomimicry, and Beyond Soup (social justice/service).

Athletics

​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. 

Helping our athletes to reach their potential are some of HAC’s best assets: our coaches. More often than not, they are drawn from the ranks of our faculty and  have a deep understanding of the personalities and abilities of the student-athletes on their teams.  

We strive to find the right balance of academics, exercise, and personal growth for everyone.  By offering a variety of sports at many different levels, all student-athletes find a sport they can be successful in. It is with great pride and pleasure that my team and I work to enrich the athletic lives of all our HAC student-athletes. Go Wolves! 

To learn more check out our athletics page.

Student Leadership

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.

– Independent study: one trimester, full year, and multi-year projects have included automating our solar chimneys, coding handmade musical instruments, or developing a class on financial literacy for underserved high school students.

– Serving on student council

– STEM: Climate curriculum program, biomimicry program, NASA Hunch program

Clubs

“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.

A few of this year’s choices: Sports Media, Social Action Club, Journalism Club, Feminism Club, Student of Color & Allies (SOCA), Gay-Straight Alliance, Tri M (music honor society), E-Sports Club, Euchre, Key Club (service), Animation Club, Dungeons & Dragons, Sustainability Club, Jewish Cultural Club, Astronomy Club, Biomimicry, and Beyond Soup (social justice/service).

Hospice

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.

With the support of their classmates, teacher, and comfort care home communities, senior students are offered the chance to care for others who truly need their purposeful, non-judgmental attention. In the home-like setting of a comfort care home, opportunities for learning extend beyond a traditional classroom rubric and conventional methods of evaluation. In this course, students will certainly find tangible “learning outcomes” by studying the medical/physical processes associated with dying and the basic nursing assistant skills of comfort care. The ultimate goal, however, will always be rooted in true relationships and connection, which occurs only through empathy and compassion.

Learn more about the Hospice Program at Harley HERE.

Capstone/Independent Studies

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.

Food & Farm: These year-long and trimester-long classes are held outside as much as possible, allowing students to become leaders in our various growing spaces. They cover environmental justice issues as well as hands-on work such as planning and overseeing planting, harvesting, and preparation of the gardens.

Past year-long focus projects have included: Creating a native plant shade garden in the Wild Wood area, redesigning our hydroponic system, overhauling Harley’s high tunnel, and improving the irrigation system for the MicroFarm.

Culinary Arts: These classes have a two-fold purpose: to give students practical skills in cooking and the science behind different techniques in the kitchen, learning about food justice, food sourcing, labor topics, and sustainability.

Past topics have included: Examining a plant-based diet, looking at the carbon footprint of different meals and food preparation methods, proposing a low carbon footprint menu to the dining hall, links between food labeling and environmental issues of food production.

Beekeeping: This one trimester class provides hands-on training in beekeeping, how to be a beekeeper, and safety and other techniques for working with bees. Once trained students help with all aspects of Harley beekeeping such as hive inspections, honey collection and extraction, and teaching students in Lower School about our hives.

Students pick a research topic addressing honeybee health and the larger environmental picture.

Social Justice

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.

Our faculty integrate social justice into our broader curriculum to assist students in gaining a foundational knowledge about what makes a democracy function. By gaining skills in ideating supportive pathways they become more exposed and experienced to how communities can undergo healing and restorative actions.

 

Capstone/Independent Studies

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. They are empowered to create their own curriculum, set goals, and work on time management skills in order to accomplish their objectives.

Independent Studies run the gamut from The Psychology of Sports to Furniture Design to The Neuroimaging of Alzheimer’s Disease. Capstones, meanwhile, are as diverse as the students who pursue them: Fictional Rochester, Autobiographical Art, Biomimicry Education, Organic Fuel, and Rochester Refugees. 

Indicative of Upper School curiosity and creativity, pursuits such as these distinguish our graduates in college. Through deep dives of this sort, Harley students master more than speaking, writing, and computing: they learn to communicate, advocate, collaborate, organize, listen, and empathize. 

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Sustainability by Design: Architecture’s Unique Role
Much has been written about sustainability and sustainable architecture. My wife, Adrian Parr, and I co-edited a book called New Directions in Sustainable Design in 2011 (ISBN 9780415780377), which addressed multidisciplinary perspectives on the future of sustainability. We sought to address the larger issue of what it means to think sustainably. People tend to look to specific ways to “be sustainable”— but sustainability, to me, refers to an approach to living and designing. Buildings are not actually “sustainable” without an intensive use of resources and ongoing maintenance. But buildings and places are essential for our society.
By Michael Zaretsky '86
October 7, 2021
October 7, 2021
By Michael Zaretsky '86

It is important to understand that buildings are responsible for approximately 40 percent of the carbon emissions produced in the United States. CO2 is, of  course, one of the primary contributors to global climate change, and it is having detrimental impacts on our world in myriad ways.

Initially, I approached sustainability from a technical lens that addressed green building strategies such as reducing energy and water usage in buildings, reducing waste, and seeking to improve air quality. All of these are critical goals for our future buildings, but it is important to remember that Homo sapiens have been living in buildings on our planet for over 100,000 years*. We successfully created places that adapted to our local climates using local materials long before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. So, I always approach sustainable design by looking first at the local climatic and environmental conditions and exploring how people created habitation in that region before the Industrial Revolution. This is known as bioclimatic design or climate-responsive design, and it is where sustainable building design starts for me.

The reality is that we receive enough solar energy or wind energy to easily provide enough power for all of our buildings and infrastructure. However, our current economic models stand in the way of larger scale adoption of renewable energy sources that would eliminate carbon emissions and provide much healthier and more sustainable energy sources for our society.

 

“I am currently the director of architectural engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, and I was previously associate dean of faculty affairs and curriculum and associate professor at the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati. On March 29, 2021, I will begin my new role as head of the architecture department at the University of Oregon.

I am a licensed architect and am deeply engaged in the relationship between social justice and the built environment. I am an active researcher and scholar and am involved in projects and initiatives that bring meaningful, innovative design to the communities that can benefit most from design thinking.” – Michael Zaretsky ’86

There are many contemporary technical solutions that are allowing us to create buildings that use reduced amounts of energy, water, and resources. Thousands of buildings have achieved LEED certification, awarded by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) status is a green certification indicating that a project has achieved certain criteria in terms of energy use, water use, air quality, site response and related factors. While this has some benefits, it does not go nearly far enough to make a significant difference in our emissions or our built environments. Real change will occur through policy and through cultural and societal imperatives.

While I am deeply engaged in this discussion about sustainable design, I realized years ago that my interest was more focused on the cultural and social impacts of design. Regardless of how energy-efficient a building is, it is useless if it is not built with the input and engagement of the users and stakeholders who will be impacted by the project. In reality, approximately 95 percent of the buildings in the world are built with no input from architects, so there is an emerging discipline that addresses the role that architects and designers play in the development of projects for those who typically don’t have access to these services.

Over the last decade, my research has focused much more on public interest design (or social impact design). Public interest design evolved as a response to the equivalent public access that the medical and legal professions provide. Everyone has the right to receive medical care and legal services. Public interest design is a growing field that includes designers who believe that all members of society deserve access to design services.

Since 2008, I have been working with a nonprofit based in Cincinnati called Village Life Outreach Project (villagelifeoutreachproject.org). We partner with a nonprofit and three rural communities in Tanzania to produce sustainable solutions to the challenges that they face — lack of power, lack of clean water, lack of sanitation, lack of ongoing medical services, and lack of safe building construction technologies. I have been leading the design and construction of a zero-energy health center in Roche, Tanzania, which has been built with the Roche community. I have worked with faculty and students at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Texas at Arlington in partnership with organizations across the United States and in Tanzania to create sustainable solutions that can be utilized and distributed by the local communities.

There are many innovative technical solutions on the rise aimed at producing much more energy-efficient buildings — and that is a good thing. However, I still believe that for us to address what it means for a building or place to be “sustainable,” we must address all of the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of our built environment. There are many great thinkers working to address these issues. My hope is that this becomes embedded as a core component of our educational systems moving forward. We need our next generation to be focused on what it will take to create a truly sustainable society

 

*Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Meaning,

3rd Edition by Leland M. Roth