Treat people nice-Lee

Mercersburg Academy is pleased to welcome Steven Lee as the Assistant Head of School for Community and Culture in Student Life. 

Associate Head of School Jennifer Craig explained the reasoning behind the addition of the position. “I went to a conference three summers ago where there were a whole bunch of associate heads of school and there were two thirds of people at the conference who were people of color,” Craig said, “and most of them have come up as Directors of DEI but they all said that being named an assistant head or associate head of school gives you the role authority to actually implement programs. A Director of DEI often has to ask and collaborate and pull people in, but actually isn’t in the hierarchy of the association of the school.”

Craig and Lee have been working together since June, before the school year started, in a series of student life-focused retreats.

“The retreats were designed for the teams to address how they should work together on specific issues for the coming year.” Craig added, “Ms. Wrzesinsky and Mr. Brown led their parts of the retreat with the programs that they run. I am handing off a bit of that work to Mr. Lee.”

  Andy Brown, Dean of Students for Community Life, and Jo Wrzesinsky, Dean of Students for Accountability and Support, are both part of the Student Life Office.

“My role is twofold,” said Lee. “On the one hand, I oversee the Office of Student Life and its staff, and the other part of my role is working with Ms. Craig and Mr. McDowell to create a vision of belonging, inclusion, and diversity for the school. This is a more strategic position of trying to imagine the future of Mercersburg.”

In the area of DEI, Lee has ideas about how the Mosaic Mentors and DEI Director Galbreath can progress with the student unions to create a more inclusive environment for those in the unions and for the entire Mercersburg community. 

“In my last school, we used to do something called an Alliance Block Party; our alliances were versions of Mercersburg unions. In the fall and spring, I hosted a block party where all the alliances led a celebration. We actually had thirteen active alliances. And each of them got a set of tables and a budget, and they brought food from their culture. We had a DJ and a multicultural playlist, and the whole school was invited. It was a way for every single alliance to showcase their culture, but it was for the whole community,” said Lee.

Galbreath noted Lee’s thoughtfulness. “I’m really looking forward to how we work to support and develop a really awesome holistic framework to help build community and belonging,” Galbreath said.

Craig has a vision for Lee’s position as one of authority that can actually implement policies. 

“I think the biggest change that I hope for is that somebody with his lens and perspective and his training will have the role authority to ask the questions that need to be asked of a historically white and maybe even male institution,” she said. “His lens will ask questions of our policies. Is that really how we want to present? Is that really what we want to believe? How inclusive is it? Does it bring dignity to each student?” 

Apart from experience in the DEI field, Lee has worked at four independent schools before Mercersburg Academy, teaching humanities courses such as English and History. He also expressed an interest in the field of civic engagement. 

“I’m really excited to work with the civic engagement initiative. That is one of the reasons why I chose to come to Mercersburg. I've done a lot of work in the DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging) space, but I think the future is to merge the IB with civic discourse and civic engagement. In a lot of ways, they overlap a lot; the same skills and mindsets for DEIB work translate very well to civic discourse. I'm actually going to meet with Ms. Schoenberger and Mrs. Brown next Monday to talk about the extent to which we can collaborate by bringing those two programs together,” Lee said.

Lee wants to promote a new model of engagement where the students confront questions like “what is equity and injustice,” “why does it exist in our world,” and “how can we as a society address them?”

“In certain circles, there’s already a prescribed definition of engagement, and it's not that I think that definition should be dismissed, but I do think that it's better to give students agency: much less descriptive, much more connective inquiry,” Lee said.