On Friday, September 12, Head of School Mr. Craig Bradley and President of the Board of Trustees Mr. Tim Sullivan ’81, P’13,’16 announced that Dr. Anne Bruder will be the school’s 16th head of school and first woman to serve in the position. Her tenure will begin on July 1, 2026.
An email from Mrs. Lisa Brown, chief of staff to the head of school, arrived early on Friday morning, instructing students to gather in Elfers Hall in plus-one attire for an all-school meeting with “two special speakers.” Excitement quickly spread through the crowd as Mr. Bradley took the stage and hinted that the last time an announcement of this nature was made was ten years ago. Mr. Bradley went on to give an overview of the responsibilities of the board of trustees before introducing Mr. Sullivan who formally announced the new head of school.
Dr. Bruder joins the community from Deerfield Academy, where she has served as dean of academic affairs since 2022. Prior to Deerfield, she worked at Berea College, a tuition- free liberal arts college for low- income students, where she served as an associate professor, chair of the English department, and the creator of a bridge program for incoming students.
Earlier in her career, Dr. Bruder worked as an English teacher at Hotchkiss for two years. Her time on campus was formative for her later career. She said, “I was here to teach English, but in so many ways, Hotchkiss schooled me: when to listen and when to lead, how to build an educational culture elevated by curiosity while grounded in diligence, and why living in a community that collectively teaches the whole student is so deeply rewarding. Those lessons have stayed with me.”
She holds a B.A. in Religion and English from Middlebury College and a PhD in English language and literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Bruder has written a number of articles about education and pedagogy, most recently on how ChatGPT and AI are affecting learning and teaching. In an article in Education Week on January 4, 2023, she wrote, “I won’t tell [my students that ChatGPT] is as dangerous as quicksand or as insurmountable as Everest. Instead, I’ll ask them to train their critical gaze on [its] ready answers and decide which ones merit more investigation, as I have been doing. As always, I will ask them to forge ahead to new and different places so that the path they eventually lay down in writing will be theirs alone.”
In her address in Elfers, Dr. Bruder introduced herself, saying, “Here’s a bit of fair warning: I tend to ask a lot of questions. So don’t be surprised if, as we get to know each other, I ask about your homeplace, the contours of your Hotchkiss story, your thoughts about the book you’re holding in your hand, your ideas about what you aspire to be in the years after you leave Lakeville, whether you prefer today’s dessert or yesterday’s, what—if anything— you were thinking the last time you touched the bearcat statue in the MAC for good luck, whether you’ll be painting the left or the right side of your face blue during Spirit Week, and finally and most importantly, about what precise emotion you will feel— pride, confidence, or sheer glorious exhilaration—when the Bearcats stomp the Rhinos on a perfect fall day two months from now.”
Dr. Bruder was selected by a search committee made up of five trustees; Mrs. Brown; Mr. Erby Mitchell, dean of the office of admission and financial aid; Ms. Michelle Repass, instructor in English; Mr. Roger Wistar, instructor in computer science; and Ms. Hope Cobera, director of communications. They began their search last February. “Throughout the whole process, we often spoke about the importance of finding a leader who understood the particular challenges facing schools at this moment in time, and I think we have certainly found that leader in Dr. Bruder. She has a keen eye in recognizing strengths and opportunities for Hotchkiss in this moment and inspired the committee with her ideas about how to prepare students holistically for the world, not only as students or athletes or artists but as people,” said Ms. Repass.
Dr. Bruder’s appointment as the first woman to lead the school ushers in a new era. She said, “A school’s identity cannot be found exclusively in its past, no matter how noble it is. A school that looks mechanically to its history only to find tidy answers to current problems unwittingly tells its people they are to be mere caretakers of an earlier generation’s timeless wisdom…And there’s just no time for that. Not when learning itself should be an adventure. As I see it, if education is a process of continuing self-discovery, then schools ought to approach their pasts with openness, with an impulse to discover what was unfinished there, and with the optimism and humility to learn what from their pasts might be usefully dismissed and what might be creatively borrowed and transformed.”
