Since 1984 Stephanie Bonnell Perrin has served as the 10th Head of the Walnut Hill School, the oldest independent secondary school for the arts in the nation. Walnut Hill School is a private, coeducational, boarding and day school for grades 9–12 (ages 13–18) founded in 1893 as a college preparatory school for young women. Its modern mission, established in 1971, combines an internationally renowned program of pre-professional training in the arts with a rigorous academic curriculum serving a coed population of young artists.
Ms. Perrin has led many initiatives that have moved Walnut Hill into the vanguard of arts education and earned it international recognition as a leader in the education of young artists. During the past two decades, Walnut Hill School has greatly enhanced resources to fulfill its mission, which is to educate talented, accomplished, and intellectually engaged young artists from all over the world within a diverse, humane, and ethical community.
Under Ms. Perrin’s leadership, the School has developed an innovated and dynamic academic program with intensive programs in visual art, music, ballet, writing, and theater. Concentrating on one of these five arts disciplines, Walnut Hill students prepare to enter highly selective art schools, colleges, conservatories and dance companies. Because of the breadth and rigor of the School’s educational program, its graduates excel at careers not only in the arts but also in other professions, including medicine, law, public service, scientific research and education.
In 1988, Walnut Hill became the only independent school in the U.S. that is affiliated with a major conservatory of music by establishing the New England Conservatory at Walnut Hill. This program has become an internationally recognized music education model for high school students.
Drawing gifted students as well as artist-teachers of international acclaim as faculty, guest artists and advisory board members, Walnut Hill School over the past five years has: increased its student body by 20 percent; significantly expanded financial aid; built a new Academic and Technology Center, as well as fitness, computer and campus centers; and enhanced all arts and residential facilities as well as administrative and faculty offices. The School’s professional- level venues for learning and presentation feature the Jane Oxford Keiter 2 Performing Arts Center with its 343-seat, main stage theater, named in honor of Ms. Perrin.
Committed to building a diverse and international student community through a policy of need-blind admission, Ms. Perrin has overseen enormous expansion of scholarship, which grew from $129,000 (7% of gross tuition) in 1984 to $2.4 million (24% of gross tuition) in 2006. Over the same period, the School has conducted international outreach initiatives to develop a student body in which just over 20% of the students are international, coming from 12 countries.
Ms. Perrin has guided the growth of Walnut Hill School into a year-round arts community that now serves almost 700 students each year through its secondary school, intensive summer programs in the arts, and its community education program.
An integral guiding principal that supports Walnut Hill’s broad commitment to arts education is the importance of outreach to public schools, as well as engagement with research and advocacy for the value of arts education to all children. Under Ms. Perrin’s leadership, the School has been active in both areas.
Since 1998 the School has served as a partner with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University’s Department of Psychology and Social Relations, Lesley University, and Boston College, examining the culture and learning styles of the School’s focused and talented students. The School was a founding partner of the National Arts and Learning Collaborative, an independent organization whose mission is to promote high quality arts education in public education.
In the fall of 2000 the School established a partnership with a Boston public school, the John Marshall Elementary School, in which Walnut Hill faculty and students work with their peers to provide opportunities in arts education for the elementary students by acting as teachers and mentors. This cooperative has also generated similar partnerships between area independent and Boston public schools.
Walnut Hill has collaborated in other joint educational ventures with such nonprofit arts programs for young artists including the Sphinx Organization which serves young Black and Latino string musicians, and the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts. Both organizations conduct their summer programs on the Walnut Hill campus.
Ms. Perrin has also led the School through several long-term strategic planning and development initiatives that include three major capital campaigns. Under her leadership, Walnut Hill School has expanded its traditionally strong relationship with its alumni, who have contributed generously to a recent campaign ending in 2005, which exceeded its $17.5 million goal and more than doubled the School’s endowment to nearly $10 million. Planning to raise enrollment to 320 over the next four years, the School has launched an aggressive new five-year plan to further increase its endowment and build a 40-bed residence complex including faculty apartments, and additional practice, performance and studio space.
Prior to joining Walnut Hill School, Ms. Perrin served on the faculty of Abbot Academy and Phillips Andover Academy, where she taught art and art history, and served as a counselor.
A Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia University in 1991, Ms. Perrin graduated from Boston University in 1967 with a BA in Art History and earned two graduate degrees from Harvard University: a MAT in Art Education and an M.Ed. in Counseling and Public Policy.
Ms. Perrin has promoted the value of serious art study in the development of young people through influential articles and speaking engagements including the National Association of Independent Schools Magazine, National Association of Schools of Music, the International NETWORK of Schools for the Advancement of Arts Education as well as speaking engagements at major academic forums throughout the U.S.
As an educator, administrator and advocate, Ms. Perrin believes that all children should have access to quality arts education in the public sector and has demonstrated that the content and process of formal art training affords young people a strong foundation for personal, academic and professional success by nurturing broadly useful skills and characteristics such as creative thinking and problem solving, the ability to collaborate and communicate, the capacity for independent thinking, ownership of work, and the disciplined pursuit of challenging and long term goals.
Ms. Perrin has served as a trustee of the Boston Music Education Collaborative, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and was President of the Board for NETWORK. She is Vice President of the Board of the New England Conservatory Lab Charter School, a Boston public elementary school with a curriculum based on learning through music. She is an overseer of the New England Conservatory, Vice President of the Board of the National Arts and Learning Collaborative, and served as chair of the accreditation committee for the Boston Arts Academy.
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