Thomas E. Cone III
Instructor in Biology on the Class of 1929 Teaching Foundation
Coordinator, Community Service Program
Director, PALS

Tom Cone has always had a love and fascination for animals, plants and the outdoors. He is a local celebrity for his prize-winning Great Pumpkin, which he grows each fall to weights from 500-800 pounds and enters for judging at the Topsfield Fair. From the time Cone was a teenager teaching swimming at day camps, he knew he wanted to be a teacher. After receiving a B.S. degree from Trinity College and teaching in the Peace Corps for two years, he joined the Andover faculty in 1966 and later earned an M.A.T. degree from Brown. He teaches the full spectrum of biology courses, ranging from Biology 100 to AP Biology. These include Microbiology (Biology 450), because he's always been fascinated with diseases and how to treat them, especially tropical diseases, and Animal Behavior (Biology 420), which he enjoys because new information about the ways animals make a living emerges every year.

Cone has coached boys' varsity squash since 1981. A large number of his players have gone on to play in college, and a few have played professionally. He is director of PALS (Phillips Academy/Andover High School/Leonard and Parthum Schools) , a community service program in which Andover students work in partnership with grade 7-8 students at the Leonard and Parthum schools in Lawrence, Mass., providing school-year teaching and enrichment activities, as well as an intensive summer experience.

In 1999, Cone took a sabbatical in Belize, where he worked in the town library, set up science demonstrations and tutored high school students for the Caribbean equivalent of AP exams in biology and chemistry. Back on campus, he serves on the Campus Beautification Committee and also pursues his personal interests in honey bees, playing squash and gardening.

Jerry Hagler grew up in a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, where he enjoyed a childhood outdoors exploring the wildlife of the California chaparral. He received a B.A. degree in 1987 from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he majored in biochemistry and molecular biology. From the coastal redwood forests of Santa Cruz, he flew to the east coastal high-rise forest of Manhattan and attended graduate school at Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. There he studied the regulation of gene expression of the smallpox relative Vaccinia virus, receiving a Ph.D. degree in 1993. After marrying a fellow Cornell graduate, he moved to Boston for postdoctoral work at Harvard University, analyzing the molecular regulation of the immune system.

Seeing an advertisement in Science Magazine for a position teaching laboratory research science to high school students, Hagler shifted career paths, coming to Phillips Academy as the visiting scholar in molecular biology in 2000 with his wife, toddler triplet daughters and three cats. He has been bitten by the teaching bug, overseeing independent laboratory research projects of PA students (Bio 600/610/IP), teaching AP Biology (Bio 560/570/580) and Human Genetics (Bio 440). During much of the day, he is in the Gelb Research Laboratory, helping with and troubleshooting a wide variety of student-conceived projects, ranging from molecular analysis of local microbiological communities to site-directed DNA mutagenesis of disease-related genes. He was appointed an instructor in biology in 2003.

Kristen C. Johnson
Instructor in Biology

Phone: 978-749-2453
E-mail: kjohnson@andover.edu

Kristen Johnson enjoys teaching biology to the youngest students, as well as the most advanced. “In Bio 100, it is so exciting to see 9th graders become engaged in the classroom as they finally figure out how and why the body works the way it does,” she says. “I also really enjoy teaching Bio 550 (AP biology) to uppers and seniors because they constantly ask questions that bring us to new heights in the classroom.” Johnson first became interested in the human body and how it works when she accompanied her mother, a nurse, to the pediatric clinic where she worked. In high school, Johnson attended summer programs in marine science, chemistry and biotechnology. She went on to receive a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, where she majored in biochemistry, molecular biology and religion. For her thesis at M.I.T., where she received a Ph.D. degree in cancer biology, she studied the cellular and molecular mechanisms behind Neurofibromatosis Type 2, a devastating childhood brain cancer. Currently, she is interested in cutting-edge molecular and cellular biology as it applies to the study of human diseases.

Johnson coaches girls’ JV volleyball in the fall and girls’ JV2 basketball in the winter. She is adviser for the Science Club and a complementary house counselor in Pemberton Cottage. Her household includes husband Christopher, his 15-year-old sister and two large dogs. She enjoys traveling and nature photography, and her house is full of travel guides, photo albums and framed pictures of vacations in Hawaii, Alaska, Scotland, Switzerland and Italy.

Marc D. Koolen
Chair, Biology Department
Instructor in Biology

Phone: 978-749-4387
E-mail: mkoolen@andover.edu

No matter what the weather, you often can find Marc Koolen at the bird-blind he constructed, a cedar structure that allows bird watchers to remain hidden while they observe a myriad of feathered creatures. Birds are Koolen's special interest. The birdhouses around campus are part of a bluebird project he has worked on for years. He's also helping to preserve the Green-Smith Bird Collection, which will be housed in the Gelb Science Center and the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library. Aside from birding, his main hobby is his 1979 VW Beetle convertible.

Koolen says he became a biology teacher by accident. While waiting to be drafted after receiving a B.S. degree from St. Lawrence University, he started substitute teaching. He enjoyed the experience, and after his discharge from the Army, he joined the Phillips Academy faculty in 1974. “The teaching here is something special,” says Koolen, who teaches Introduction to Biology, Animal Behavior and Ornithology. He used a sabbatical to complete an M.S. degree at Purdue University. He coaches cross country and squash, advises the Eco-Action club and serves on the campus beautification committee. During the summer, he hikes, kayaks, does lots of birding and unwinds in the Adirondack Mountains.

Rajesh R. Mundra
Instructor in Biology
International Student Coordinator

Phone: 978-749-4805
E-mail: rmundra@andover.edu

In addition to serving as an instructor in the biology department, Mundra is also the Interim Associate Dean of Community and Multicultural Development (CAMD) and serves as the International Student Coordinator.

As the international student coordinator, he is an advocate for international students in the Phillips Academy community and works to promote understanding and appreciation of foreign cultures. Other responsibilities include assisting all international students and their families with all aspects of their life here at Phillips Academy, serving as advisor to new international seniors, issuing 1-20 forms, and organizing a special three day pre-school orientation to help new international students start their year with confidence.

Mundra graduated from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA in 1991 with a B.A. in biochemistry, and received his M.A.T from Brown University in 1995.  He was a teaching fellow at Phillips Academy in 1991-1992 and has also taught in Switizerland, India, Kenya and New York City. He came back to Phillips Academy in 1996 as an instructor in biology.  He worked with the International Academic Partnership (IAP) for 7 years in a variety of roles including being the Associate Dean.

Currently, he is a house counselor in Rockwell Hall (South), which is a ninth grade boys dorm, and a coach for the varsity football team. Last year and again this December through the IAP, he will take a group of PA students for 2 weeks to Mumbai, India to live and work with German and Indian students to learn about children's rights in India.  Over the years, he has also been an advisor to the IndoPak club and coached JV swimming and JV2 boys lacrosse.

Patricia Russell
Head, Division of Natural Sciences
Instructor in Physics
Instructor in Biology

Trish Russell joined the PA faculty as a teaching fellow in 1985 after graduating from Brown University with a degree in biomedical engineering. She returned to Brown for graduate school and joined the Andover faculty as an instructor in biology and physics in 1989. In addition to teaching, she served as cluster dean of Rabbit Pond and then Abbot from 1995-2002, has been a house counselor for 15 years and coaches the JV girls' swim team.

Russell's research interests have led her to summer work in molecular biology at Princeton University and molecular evolution at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole and, most recently, a full-year sabbatical (2002-03) studying embryonic neuron migration at Children's Hospital in Boston. She currently teaches courses in introductory physics, advanced cell biology, physiology, and ecology.

Kevin F. Cardozo
Chair, Chemistry Department
Instructor in Chemistry

While working with fellow students as a teaching assistant in a chemistry course at Haverford College, Kevin Cardozo discovered he enjoyed explaining the concepts to others. After graduating, he spent the summer teaching chemistry at the Phillips Academy Summer Session and then a year teaching chemistry at Tabor Academy. These experiences solidified teaching as the career path he wanted to follow. He moved to Andover in 1992 and was immediately convinced that this vibrant boarding school community was the place where he wanted to teach chemistry for many years.

Cardozo feels the opening of the Gelb Science Center has infused tremendous excitement and enthusiasm for science in both students and faculty. He is looking forward to further developing new classroom teaching methodologies, experiments and research projects that the new technology, equipment and laboratory spaces in Gelb will facilitate. He also enjoys his other roles as a house counselor, as well as coach of soccer and tennis. He loves music, and he is a perpetually optimistic Red Sox fan.

Paul D. Cernota
Instructor in Chemistry
Adviser for Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Issues

Paul Cernota always has been a person who asks a lot of “why” questions. “The vast scale of science and its applications are exciting,” he says. “I enjoy studying how the natural world works at both the macroscopic and atomic levels.” After graduating magna cum laude with an A.B. degree in chemistry from Princeton University, where he was a National Merit Scholar, he earned a Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, working with National Medal of Science winner Gabor Somorjai. Cernota’s dissertation was titled “A Scanning Tunneling Microscope Study of Organic Monolayers Adsorbed on the Rh (111) Single Crystal Metal Surface.” He has published scientific papers in Surface Science and has presented a talk and posters at national meetings of the American Vacuum Society and American Chemical Society.

On the Andover faculty since 1999, Cernota teaches honors AP chemistry (580) and introductory chemistry (250) and advises at least one student on an independent project each year. “Students at each level get excited when they understand a hard concept, and that’s a powerful motivation when teaching,” he says. He is a house counselor in Bartlet Hall and adviser for gay, lesbian and bisexual issues in the Community and Multicultural Development (CAMD) office. Cernota sings with the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus and will join the group’s European tour of Berlin, Prague and Wroclaw, Poland. He also is a big fan of the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots.

Keith A. Robinson '96
Instructor in Chemistry

Keith Robinson enjoys explaining science to students and passing on his interest in the subject. He teaches both introductory chemistry (Chem 250 and Chem 300) and AP biology (Bio 550). “The idea that we can take something as complex as an organism or an ecosystem full of organisms and even begin to explain how and why things work and interact the way they do constantly amazes me,” he says. After receiving an A.B. degree in biochemistry from Bowdoin College, he worked as a business consultant, often with pharmaceutical companies. Deciding he wanted to be more directly involved in science, he joined the Andover faculty in 2002.

A 1996 graduate of Phillips Academy, where he raced on the Nordic ski team and was a day student, Robinson is currently head coach of Nordic skiing. He also is in charge of the aquariums in the Gelb Science Center and has 30 fish in his own aquariums in Carriage House, where he is a house counselor and lives with his wife, Sarah. “I got my first tank when I was 10, and I would breed various fish and trade them to pet stores for supplies,” he says. Lately, he’s been trying to master live plant aquariums, as well as breeding fancy guppies. His other interest is computers—finding ways to take advantage of the technology in the Gelb Science Center and to increase the computer literacy of students. Click here for a tutorial he created for students on how to graph in Excel. He also coaches Search and Rescue, is a faculty adviser to the Andover Drug and Alcohol Awareness Committee (ADAAC) and likes to hike, bike, ski and kayak.

David A. Stern
Instructor in Chemistry

Before coming to Andover in 2001, David Stern had a long and varied career in academia and industry. Most recently, he was a senior sales representative, managing direct sales of a Connecticut company's Fourier transform infra-red spectrometer and microscope. He previously worked as senior sales engineer (atomic spectroscopy), product manager (high energy ion implantation) and senior staff scientist (EPA program manager) for firms in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He also has taught chemistry at Tufts University, Smith College and Southampton College of Long Island University and has lectured at Merrimack College. Stern received a B.S. degree in chemistry from Lafayette College and a Ph.D. degree in analytical chemistry from the University of New Hampshire. His thesis was titled, “A Laboratory Investigation of Trace Metal Adsorption on a Marine Sediment in Sea Water and the Speciation of Copper in Sea Water.” He has published in scholarly journals and has co-authored numerous EPA reports.

At Andover, Stern teaches Introduction to Chemistry (Chemistry 250) and College Chemistry (Chemistry 300). He and chemistry instructor Temba Maqubela are designing a new course, Introduction to Spectroscopy and Chromatography. He coaches boys' JV3 soccer in the fall and girls' JV tennis in the spring.

Clyfe G. Beckwith
Chair, Physics Department
Instructor in Physics

Clyfe Beckwith's cosmology students love the idea of learning about the universe; interest in astronomy has grown exponentially since the Hubble telescope and Internet access. At Andover since 1992 and chair of the physics department for the past seven years, Beckwith also teaches AP Physics (Physics 550) and College Physics (Physics 300) and is developing a research program for cosmology/astronomy. Growing up bilingual in Switzerland, he credits teachers at the American International School of Zurich with igniting his interest in science. He received a B.A. degree with a double major in math and physics from Dartmouth College. Teaching in Andover's Summer Session before beginning a Ph.D. program “definitely put me on track to become a teacher,” he says, an occupation shared by many members of his family. He received master's and Ph.D. degrees in physics, with a dissertation in photoacoustic spectroscopy, from Boston College.

On the Andover athletic fields, Beckwith is the head varsity coach for the fall girls' volleyball team, who were 2003 New England champions, and spring boys' volleyball team. A house counselor in Stearns House, he and his wife, Mary, have two sons, ages 7 and 5, and two cats.

Click here to see Beckwith's photos of Venus crossing the sun June 8, 2004.

Kathleen R. Pryde
Instructor in Physics on the Richard J. Stern Instructorship

At age 32, Kathy Pryde went back to school to get a bachelor's degree and become a physical therapist. A required course in physics caught her interest, and she changed her major. After earning a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Washington, Seattle, where she was awarded Phi Beta Kappa, she and her husband joined the Peace Corps. While teaching math in the southern African nation of Malawi for two years, she realized she loved teaching. At Andover since 1994, Pryde teaches physics and meteorology. She likes the full range of teaching—from helping students at the introductory level see that physics can be enjoyable to challenging Advanced Placement students. During summer 2003, she taught and consulted at an Aga Khan Education Service school in Kampala, Uganda, with the International Academic Partnership.

Pryde enjoys learning about the physics of music and has spent the past few years trying to build “ever more perfect” musical chimes. She is a house counselor in Nathan Hale House, a 9th-grade girls' dorm, where she says she loves the energy of the girls.

Peter Watt
Instructor in Physics on the Frederick W. Beinecke Teaching Foundation

A Canadian who has been a member of the Andover faculty since 1988, Peter Watt teaches college physics, C-level Advanced Placement physics, special relativity and quantum mechanics, and physical geology. A house counselor in Carter House, he also coaches recreational tennis and cluster basketball and serves as an adviser and admission reader. He chaired Phillips Academy’s physics department from 1991-97.

Watt received a Ph.D. degree in applied physics from Harvard University, where his thesis was titled, “Geophysical Applications of Aggregate Theory.” He also holds an M.Sc. degree in physics and B.Sc. degree with first class honors in physics from Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S. Prior to coming to Andover, he was an assistant professor of geology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1981-88) and a research fellow in the Seismological Laboratory of California Institute of Technology (1979-81). He is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Geophysical Union, Canadian Geophysical Union, American Association of Physics Teachers, American Association for the Advancement of Science and Sigma Xi Research Society. He has published many papers in refereed journals, presented papers at conferences, written book reviews and has been invited to lecture at educational institutions throughout the United States and Canada. He has conducted peer reviews of 48 papers for geophysical and other scientific journals and reviewed 15 research grant proposals for the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Petroleum Research Fund.

Fei Yao
Instructor in Physics

Fei Yao’s parents were college professors in physics and chemistry, so science has been her life. From a young age, she knew she wanted to be a teacher. She received a B.S. degree in applied physics from Beijing Polytechnic University in China and an M.A. degree from Brooklyn College of SUNY.

On the Andover faculty since 1991, Yao teaches Physics 300, 550 and 650. “Physics is very closely related to everyone’s everyday life,” she says. “I love to show the beauty of physics to my students and to help them understand the real world.” She enjoys communicating with students in higher level courses, as well as helping students in the introductory level course to learn physics. She was a house counselor for eight years and is currently a complementary house counselor. She also is an assistant to the coach of the fitness program.