Lincoln Academy Director of Resident Life Ken Stevenson brings experience and a lifelong love for the Midcoast to the Newcastle high school’s new boarding program.
“The way I often describe it is, I’m responsible for everything other than athletics and academics,” Stevenson said in a July 29 interview in his office in the Hall House, now a 24-student dormitory after an extensive renovation.
A big part of his job is to organize activities for students who live on campus. Especially on weekday afternoons and weekends, “you want to offer them things to do so they’re not sitting in their room playing video games all day,” he said.
Stevenson will focus the activity schedule on experiences available in the local area. He plans to start a program he calls Passport to Lincoln, wherein resident students will earn credit for participating in certain activities and events unique to the Midcoast.
For example, students might haul a lobster trap, kayak around an island and participate in Damariscotta Pumpkinfest. Students who complete a certain number of passport activities will receive recognition from the school.
The school also expects all resident students to be active in the community on weekday afternoons. Many students will fulfill this requirement by signing up for extracurricular offerings such as athletics, drama and music.
Students who decline to take part in school activities will have other options. For example, if a student has a strong interest in boat-building, “I’m going to go find that student somebody in the community they can connect with,” Stevenson said.
This daily interaction with the community will also help integrate the resident students, the majority of whom come to Lincoln Academy from China, into the student population and the community beyond the school.
“For every residential program, that’s always a challenge,” Stevenson said. “What’s the mixing bowl? What’s the integration between resident students and day students?”
Lincoln Academy, as part of its mission statement, strives to prepare students to be citizens, and every citizen has rights as well as responsibilities, Stevenson said. Those responsibilities include a duty to be active in the community, whether the resident student community, the Lincoln Academy community or the Lincoln County community.
This belief will be a core aspect of the philosophy of the resident program, Stevenson said. “I think that will set in motion programs and initiatives and expectations that will help reduce those barriers,” he said.
A student ambassador program also helps address the issue of integration. The student ambassadors volunteer to greet resident students at the airport and act as their guides and goodwill ambassadors.
“Their level of interest and enthusiasm and excitement is really impressive,” Stevenson said.
With these programs and goals in mind, it is normal for students who share similar backgrounds to stick together.
“When students are 10,000 miles from home and in a country and in a school where they’re having to use a second language all day long, it’s pretty reasonable for, at the end of the day, students to hang out with students of similar culture,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson arrives at Lincoln Academy with a decade of experience as a director of resident life at his alma mater, The Hun School of Princeton in Princeton, N.J.
The Hun School has about 300 day students and 150 resident students in grades 6 to 12.
The resident program at Lincoln Academy presents different challenges and rewards as a new venture the school plans to expand in coming years.
“We’re really excited, as an institution, about having students from all over the world come and really get involved in the life of the community, and that will prove to be a great experience for the students and hopefully will add some interesting dimensions to life in Midcoast Maine,” he said.
Stevenson will also coach boys varsity soccer at Lincoln Academy.
A college athlete, he coached off and on in the years between college and his return to The Hun School, where he coached boys junior varsity for a couple of years and girls varsity for seven years.
“I love the game of soccer,” Stevenson said. “I love coaching. I love helping kids, athletes, figure out what kind of athlete they’re willing to become.”
He also enjoys other extracurricular activities. He led student trips to Costa Rica at The Hun School and enjoyed participating in school theater as an actor and technician.
He enjoys theater for its own sake, “but also because I think when students see faculty and administrators in other kinds of contexts, it helps the students recognize ‘Oh, right, they’re people, they have lives and interests,'” he said.
“I think the more exposure to various facets of who their teachers are is really, really good for students,” he said. “I think they value and appreciate that.”
Stevenson is a graduate of The Hun School and Brown University, where he and his future wife, Alison, earned degrees in religious studies.
The Stevensons live on a farm on Peter’s Pond in Waldoboro with their daughter, Riley, who will attend Great Salt Bay Community School. A son, Tucker, is a junior at The Hun School and plans to finish high school there.
The couple also has three adult children. Andrea lives on Cape Cod, Campbell is a graduate of Colby College and teaches junior high math at a public school in Springfield, Mass.; and Connor is a student at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.
The couple plans to live on campus after the school builds a second dorm, which it plans to open in 2014.
They enjoy hiking, kayaking and sailing and consider the Midcoast a “paradise,” both for the ample outdoor activities and for the “rich and vibrant” culture of the area.
Stevenson has been coming to the area since he was a boy, as the farm has been in his family since the 1930s, and he and his wife lived and worked in Maine after college.
“Sometimes my wife and I, when we’d be out sailing, we would say, ‘Gosh, if we could do anything, we’d start a boarding school in Midcoast Maine,'” Stevenson said. “It’s pretty close to a dream come true.”
