Stewart and McDonough awarded Teaching Chairs

Fr. Richardson Schell, Headmaster

Father Schell was pleased to announce that Mr. Stewart has been appointed to hold The Class of 2000 Teaching Chair (which was established by the Board of Trustees and made possible by the parents of the Class of 2000 in honor of the graduating class) and that Mr. Joe McDonough has been appointed to hold The William G. Carey ’52 Teaching Chair in Classics.

Geoffrey Stewart brought a wealth of experience to Kent in 2003. In his formative years he attended Belmont Hill School. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Rochester, where he won the University Drama Prize while majoring in English. Early in his teaching career at The Winsor School he supervised and directed countless productions. During those years, he also earned an M.A. in Theater at Northwestern University in 2000. He was honored at Windsor with the Virginia Wing Outstanding Teacher Award in 2001. Moving to the Peddie School, he again supervised and directed student productions and taught English as well.  In the thirteen years since he joined Kent, he has staged many challenging and lauded productions, from Brecht to Shakespeare to the Laramie Project and classic American musicals. He has taught a wide range of courses, from English 1 to AP Literature, and he has developed senior electives in dramatic literature and practice. Mr. Stewart has been instrumental as an advisor in the refurbishment of Mattison Auditorium. This winter he will begin teaching electives in theater that will be open to all forms. Mr. Stewart’s wife, Kathleen, is an administrator and teacher at nearby Kildonan School. Their daughter Kayleigh is currently studying drama at the Tisch School at New York University. They have two sons, Dylan, a member of the Kent Class of 2018, and Brendan, now an eighth grader at Kent Center School.

Having been appointed to the Faculty in 2006, Mr. McDonough earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in music and classics from Williams College and a Master of Arts degree in liberal arts from St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD.  Now in his eleventh year in the Classics Department, Mr. McDonough teaches courses in Latin, Greek and Classical Civilization and also serves as the Faculty member advisor to The Cauldron. Under the aegis of The Paideia Institute, he has studied and participated in “Living Latin in Paris” and “Living Greek in Greece,” in addition to attending two programs this summer at Wethersfield in Amenia, NY:  “Gregorian Chant” and “Latin Pedagogy.” In addition to positions as j.v. boys’ cross-country coach, j.v. boys’ basketball timer and spring musical rehearsal piano accompanist, Mr. McDonough serves as organist at Sacred Heart Parish in the Town of Kent and is the accompanist for the occasional “Hymn-Singing Thursdays” series. Mr. McDonough’s classes are a lively mixture of instruction, lecture and discussion. His students benefit from his deep and wide reading, scholarship and humor.