CSW Announces 2025 Parkhill Grantees
CSW is pleased to announce that history teacher Rachel Hirsch and science teacher Meredith Oppegard have been awarded 2025 grants from the Alorie Parkhill Learning and Travel Fund for Teachers.
Rachel, who has been a member of the CSW community for over 25 years and served as Dean of Faculty and History Department Chair, will travel to Greece to examine the environmental history of Alexander the Great and the Greek myths of Crete. While in Greece, Rachel intends to visit the site of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Imperial Court before heading to Crete to explore the site of the myths of King Minos, the Minotaur, the Labyrinth, and Daedalus and Icarus.
“Investing in the study and exploration of the land, water, and air that are the fundamental actors in the construction of these stories and the events of these histories, I hope I can use the truth of the environment to peel back some of the 2000 years of appropriation of Ancient Macedonian and Greek history that's been used as a justification of colonization, imperialism, and racism,” Rachel shares.
Her work will inform curricula in CSW’s “Alexander the Great” course, a course much beloved by students, and support the creation of a new course, dedicated to uncovering historical truths of Greek Mythology.
Meredith joined the CSW Science Department in 2022 and is currently a dorm parent, cross country coach, and faculty representative on the CSW Board of Trustees. She will utilize her grant to explore the ways indigenous women across the world hold social power through their connection to the sea. She will visit and learn from women of the Coastal Salish Sea in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, USA, the "haenyeo" free diving women of Jeju Island, South Korea, and the seaweed and sponge farming women of Zanzibar, Tanzania.
“I will write a book detailing this journey and the synergy between these women and the oceans,” Meredith shares, “implementing a deeply personal connection of my own, feminism, and environmental justice.”
Congratulations to this year’s recipients!
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About the Fund
The Alorie Parkhill Learning and Travel Fund for Teachers was generously established by Rebecca Parkhill ’85, P’17 and Robert Willett P’17, in honor of longtime teacher and administrator Alorie Parkhill P’85, ’87, GP’17. Grants from the fund may be used for travel, study, and any form of learning and exposure that can then be shared with students and colleagues at CSW.
CSW—a gender-inclusive day and boarding school for grades 9-12—is a national leader in progressive education. We live out our values of inquiry-based learning, student agency, and embracing diverse perspectives in every aspect of our student experience. Young people come to CSW to learn how to learn and then put what they learn into action—essential skills they carry into their futures as doers, makers, innovators, leaders, and exceptional humans who do meaningful work in the world.