The Williston Northampton 2010-11 Annual Fund surpassed the goal of $1.45 million dollars, raising a total of $1.47 million from alumni, families, and friends. 

This year, we saw a significant increase in participation from alumni. We’re pleased to report that 21% of all alumni made Annual Fund gifts, a mark we last reached in 2006. Just as impressive, 71% of Williston parents gave to the Parents’ Fund.  Thank you for your part in our terrific results.

The Class of 2011 challenged the faculty to see which group could achieve the highest percentage of Annual Fund participation in what became the race for the Frog of Annual Fund Awesomeness.  It was a close contest, but the faculty (91% participation) edged out the seniors (83% participation).  The faculty was awarded the Frog at the last assembly of the year, but we’ll see if the Class of 2012 can take the trophy back next year.

Every Annual Fund dollar will be used to support faculty salaries, student financial aid, and the upkeep of our beautiful campus.  There is no part of the Williston Northampton experience that the Annual Fund and Parents’ Fund don’t touch.  Thank you for making a gift—and a difference—to the school, its faculty and students.

Natania Hume, who teaches art at The Williston Northampton School, is one of seven artists who were invited to create a piece of work for the exhibit In-Dialogue: Poetry of Place at Gallery A3, 28 Amity Street in Amherst. The show runs July 7-30, with an opening reception on July 7, 5:00-8:00 p.m., and a poetry reading on July 21, 7:30-9:00 p.m. The exhibit includes paintings, photographs, drawings, and sculptures that were either created simultaneously or selected to create thought-provoking combinations.

Painting by Natania Hume

The show is a collaboration between members of the art gallery and guest artists who were encouraged to engage in a visual dialogue inspired by poetry. Natania, who is a potter and a painter, was invited by her father, painter Larry Smith. “We both work with still lifes as a subject for our oil paintings, but our styles are different,” says Natania. “We arranged new still lifes with the other person’s style in mind, but did not try to imitate each other’s style.”           

Tim Trelease, currently an artist-in-residence at Deerfield Academy, curated the show. He told the Daily Hampshire Gazette that the theme Poetry of Place was interpreted differently by each pair of artists, resulting in various forms of dialog. A secondary theme, that of lifelong relationship, arose through the invitation process, since many of the artists chose family members as their collaborators. Showing together are a mother and son, a father and daughter, an adult son and his deceased father, a grandmother and grandchild, and a husband and wife.

The poetry reading on July 21 will feature Gita Trelease reading about India, Sue Katz reading about motherhood, and Michael Mauri reading about current economic events and his work as a forester. Tim says the show promises “many poetic interpretations, visual and verbal, of places near and far.”

Brendan Hellweg ’14 describes the alumnus behind the new “Williston Is” video.

Odds are you’ve seen some of his work: his Slap Chop remix has over thirteen million views on YouTube and has been aired on national television. His Press Hop videos have garnered similar numbers, and he currently works with ESPN to create “this month in sports” style overviews for television. His creations have become pretty much ubiquitous on the online community. Numerous mash-ups and remixes of his videos exist and his creations routinely surpass the one-million-views marker.

Steve Porter talks to film students in the Williston film & photo lab

I hadn’t heard of him or even the Slap-Chop, mainly due to the fact that I live in a cave and only recently have started supplementing my homework time with vast amounts of time on StumbleUpon and YouTube. However, after seeing him present his work during an assembly and film class at Williston, I decided it would be a good idea to delay my assignments for an hour to see what kind of stuff he made these videos from. Some of them are pretty hilarious, and all of them are deviously clever.

Steve Porter is a Williston alumnus (Class of 1997) who started off his career as a touring DJ following his graduation. Quickly recognized for his talent, he was rated the #2 DJ in America by DJ Magazine and was signed by Fade Records. After touring for some time, he created a dance remix of a commercial for a slicing tool called the Slap Chop. It quickly went viral and his remixing career began.

Steve came to Williston to create a video titled “Williston Is,” which is produced in the same style as his other creations. Some of you might have seen students with video cameras walking about campus asking students what, exactly, Williston is all about. These quotes are coupled with a short speech by the head of school and some original beats by Steve. These quotes are then cut up into fragments and mixed together to create a music video that highlights some of the greatest parts of Williston. Watch and enjoy!

This spring, The Williston Northampton School community created a video that shows what an exceptional place Williston is to learn and live. The project was inspired by and overseen by Steve Porter ’97, a world-renowned DJ and video artist whose videos have received millions of hits on YouTube and who now produces videos for the NBA, the NFL, ESPN, and others. Titled “Williston Is,” the video features students, faculty, and alumni finishing the sentence that begins, “Williston is . . .” Students in Edward Hing ’77’s film class took most of the footage and worked in collaboration with Steve on the final editing. The video was debuted to the student body at an assembly in May; alumni saw it for the first time at Reunion in June.

Last March, six Williston students participated in the American Mathematics Competition (AMC), a worldwide competition that involves more than 250,000 high school students. Two Williston students, Dongyang “Don” Cheng ’11 and Jiayuan “George” Xu ’13, scored high enough on the AMC 12 and AMC 10 tests, respectively, to be invited to the next level of competition, the American Invitational Mathematics Exam (AIME).  

For their participation in the three-hour long AIME, Don and George were honored at the final assembly of the year by Mathematics Department Head Elizabeth Anderson and Mathematics Teacher Alan Lipp with pins and certificates of distinction on the AMC, and certificates of participation in the AIME.

Don Cheng did so well on the AIME that he was one of only 302 students invited to participate at the next round of competition, the nine-hour United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, which was held over the course of two days in April.  This is the second year that Don has competed in the USAMO. 

Don also received two additional awards for his outstanding performance in math competitions this year. The first award recognized his scoring in first place in Massachusetts on the AMC. The second recognized his perfect score in all six rounds of competition in the New England Mathematics League, in which math clubs from over 400 schools competed, and for which only a few students in New England achieved a perfect score.