Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to 1810, a podcast produced by the Lawrenceville School. In 18 minutes and 10 seconds, we explore the future of education with insights from bright minded individuals, inspiring new ways of thinking.
My name is Sean Rameton and I'm the editor of the Laurentian, Lawrenceville's magazine for alumni, families and friends, which was first published in 1937. I'll be your host today.
I've been working in this role since 2015, which also happens to be the year that today's guest arrived on campus. Steve Murray is Lawrenceville's 13th head of school and he has presided over a decade of innovation and transformation, as well as the challenges that affected us all.
One program note, this episode was recorded prior to Steve's announcement that he will be stepping down from his position at the conclusion of the 2026-27 academic year.
Thank you for being on 1810 today, Steve.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Glad to be here, Sean.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: The completion of your first 10 years at Lawrenceville provides us a good opportunity to reflect on that time.
We spoke in July 2015 in your office for an interview for that fall's issue of the Laurentian, and we covered a lot of interesting ground. I'm going to refer back to that interview several times today.
So 10 years ago you described your first visit to Exeter, where you had enrolled as a public school student in their summer Scholars program like this.
Stepping on the campus at Exeter and seeing those old buildings with huge oak tables at the center of the classroom, and I thought, wow, what happens here must be important. They take it very seriously.
That first impression came more than 45 years ago. Do you still hold onto that teenager's sense of wonder and possibility about the transformative opportunity a school like Lawrenceville offers students?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: I sure do, Sean. That memory as a teenager so many years ago has really stayed with me, and I see Lawrenceville's campus very much through that lens. As we think about the buildings we design, as we think about how we take care of the campus, it is very much with the thought in mind that what we do here is important and we take it very seriously. I sometimes think about a place like the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, and when people see that building, they don't say, gee, why'd they spend so much money on that? What they say is, wow, the people that designed and built that took it very seriously and their beliefs were very much at the heart of what they did. And I don't think that's an unfair comparison. We care deeply about what we do here at Lawrenceville and the way we set up the campus. The way we design our buildings and take care of our grounds really indicates the pride we feel in what we do here.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: We also talked then about the role of tradition at a place like Lawrenceville and how while it's important, it's also often a matter of perception. Something as radical as the Harkness method became fundamental to the school before very long, despite how disruptive it was at the time.
You said that great schools don't remain great by sitting still.
How difficult is it to know when it's time to move on from a long standing tradition in order to move Lawrenceville forward?
[00:02:50] Speaker B: That's a great question.
I think about a book I read recently and heard him speak. Actually. The former president of MacAlister College is a guy named Brian Rosenberg and he wrote a book called Whatever it Is, I'm against it and it's around school cultures, often higher ed. But I would put Lawrenceville in a very similar category.
He said one of the great strengths of schools is their dogged insistence on remaining true to their enduring purpose and their missions. And he kind of in a wry manner says, equally, one of their great vulnerabilities is their dogged insistence on remaining carefully loyal and committed to their enduring purpose and losing that moment when they actually have to pivot and change.
I then, working with the trustees on a longer term conversation, kind of taking a 30 year view of the future of the school and the three questions I use to frame that is, what are the kinds of things, what are the aspects of life at Lawrenceville that must endure and how we deliver them must endure. So, for example, the relational nature of Harkness teaching and the importance of the student voice around the Harkness table and the relationship between all the participants in that conversation that should endure and the way we deliver that, the way we practice that should endure. There are other things that also should endure, but the way we deliver them may change over time. Something like AI is changing how we deliver rigor and how the learning process happens on campus. It is already affecting it. And so we have to adapt, but we still remain committed to rigor and the friction in learning, so to speak.
And then the third question is, which we still have yet to answer as a board, is what are the kinds of things that need to evolve and change over time? We're very much in that conversation right now.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: We had a conversation similar to this at your 5 year mark in which you mentioned that every time you're an alumni study, you feel the eyes of your 12 predecessors whose paintings hang on the walls there and of feeling a keen obligation to build on their good work, to be worthy of following in their footsteps, and to not let them down or disappoint them. Ten years into your role, do you still feel that obligation to them?
[00:05:09] Speaker B: I sure do. I feel it as sharply as ever. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, our predecessors, and I very much feel that.
I feel the good fortune I have of having great leadership precede me at this school.
Maybe one thing that's changed, I suppose, over time, given that now I'm in my 11th year, having gone through Covid and any number of significant challenges, I feel maybe more of a kinship, more of a shared understanding with them. As I look back at the history of the school, we had heads of school presiding over the Civil War in World War I and the Depression, the Vietnam War, the changes of the 60s, and they all had their challenges. At this point in my career, I'm still in awe of them and still feel that obligation. But as I say, I probably feel a bit more of a. More of a kinship and a shared understanding when I look at their portraits.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: And during that same conversation, you brought up the Lewis Auchincloss novel the Rector of Justin, which presents a portrait of the main character, the head of a fictional New England boarding school, from a series of different perspectives, each written by another character. The book made me appreciate how the head of school has to be so many things to so many different constituencies. How hard is that to do, knowing that many times these folks will want different things from you and that those things aren't always aligned with the others?
[00:06:29] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting you asked that question. I read that book right at the start of my first headship almost 21 years ago, and it made a huge impression on me. And over the years I think back often because it is true that in so many ways people project on me their view of what they think my job is. They often see me through the lens of what they need from me and what they want me to deliver.
I sometimes think of my job as part mayor of a small town and I've got to be out and about. I've got to know everyone's name, I've got to be present in people's lives.
It's also like being the CEO of a mid sized company with $80 million of revenue and you kind of have to be both. And so, as you say, as the book portrays very well, there are myriad needs from the various constituencies in any community and it's hard to be all things to all people. But that's one of the central challenges of the job.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: And yours is certainly a unique job, being the most visible person at one of the nation's most visible independent schools. You seem keenly aware of this 10 years ago, but the time since has been in many ways tumultuous.
We've had a once in a century pandemic, seen a dramatic rise in political polarization.
And the Internet, which was once such a promising environment for the sharing of knowledge, has become an efficient accelerator for misinformation. Now we have the rise of artificial intelligence, which also offers so much promise, but also a myriad of challenges. Do you think any of this changes your role from how you might have seen it in 2015?
[00:07:58] Speaker B: In some ways, as you say, the terrain has changed so quickly and so dramatically in many, many ways, and we've had to adapt to it as an institution in certain ways on the one hand. But the importance of a place like Lawrenceville and my role as a leader in many ways, hasn't changed. The central element of our mission is to work with promising young people and to prepare them for life, to help them grow in their self confidence, to give them the tools not simply to thrive in life, but to make a difference.
How we instill that, how we deliver that, that may evolve. But the basic need to support young people and help them launch is very much as it's always been.
And in many ways, my role, which in part is to help the institution stay true to the values that have guided it for so many years and impart those to students.
That has not changed in spite of the changing terrain.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: No, I think it becomes a very timeless aspect of the job.
Your time at Lawrenceville was essentially cleaved in half by the COVID 19 pandemic. I've always been appreciative of the way the school was able to pivot so quickly and figure out how to continue educating students who were no longer sitting around a Harkness table, but in front of web cameras spanning the globe. What are the long lasting lessons of that time for you?
[00:09:17] Speaker B: In part, I think there were technological innovations.
Things like zoom have been ubiquitous. They're part of our lives now. And it was one of the technologies that helped us in the very beginning make this all work. And now that's just become a normal. We do podcasts, we do evening sessions with families who are across the globe. And it's much more personal. We can convey information and messages so much more easily and more personally. But I think even more important lesson was understanding that on the one hand, institution like Lawrenceville is like turning a battleship.
On the other hand, when the urgency demands, we demonstrated an ability to adapt and pivot on very short notice with very imperfect information and to do it quite successfully. And I think that revealed itself in so many ways through our leadership teams, through our faculty and our students, resilience, and that was very reassuring even in the midst of the crisis.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Were there any innovations Lawrenceville adopted during the pandemic that revealed themselves to you as vital or perfectly transferable to what I'll call normal times? Something worth retaining, that is.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think virtual meetings and the use of zoom as a means to connect is an innovation that's here to stay.
When being in person is costly or inefficient, it's the next best thing. Gatherings such as parent webinars to convey practical information when families live halfway around the world are invaluable. Or alumni updates on the state of the school where you can do actual Q and A. Those are great ways to engage people.
And at the same time, the shortcomings of zoom, where you're still just interacting with an image on a screen, remind us of the power of an actual in person encounter. It reminds us that zoom will never replace the personal connection chemistry that you can establish when you're able to be together.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: It's interesting that even as you find new technology you can adapt, it does make you appreciate the things that have always been your standard and realize that you can take for granted how valuable those things really are.
Let's switch gears here and look back even further.
Back in 2015, you mentioned how when you and Sarah were moving here from the University school in Ohio, you came across boxes of old letters you had written to each other as students, which you had saved because you both considered them to be important.
With so much of what they do existing solely in digital spaces, do you think that today's students miss out on creating these sorts of tangible artifacts that animate personal histories, things they'll be able to look back upon and make sense of it all? Or are things like this simply taking different forms?
[00:11:45] Speaker B: I love that question. It is true. We were unpacking boxes or packing up boxes, and we found all the old letters, even before we were dating, that we had written to each other over the years. We both like to save, as you say, those kind of personal artifacts. And I've always had a thing about handwritten letters.
So, yeah, I do think those are things that kids will miss out on in some ways. Of course, they do have extraordinary photo archives, digital archives. But they have memories that are preserved in that way which I think become all the more important.
And then there still are artifacts that they will have from their time at a place like Lawrenceville. A favorite book they read in an English class, a hat, maybe a letter sweater. There are things that they'll have that will be all the more important precisely because they're tangible and they're something you can put your hand on.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: I wonder, though, if we still lose some archive of the two way interaction between people like you and Sarah. Have it through your letters. I believe you teach a French course dealing with the tangible and intimate nature of written exchanges between two people. If that goes away, is that a bad thing? Or does it just reflect the way traditions of narratives evolve?
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Well, the way I think of it, there absolutely is something precious and intimate and as you say, tangible with a handwritten letter that we are losing again, something that a video chat might replace because it satisfies a more immediate need.
But something is going away.
The patient, careful, reflective communication in a letter. Something a loved one held in their hand and that now you hold in your hand and can go back to again and again to savor.
Of course. It's lovely to see your grandchild or a long lost friend on a screen and actually see their smile and hear the sound of their voice and their laughter. So I get why it is so compelling and tempting. You know, I'm writing about this notion of progress in my baccalaureate remarks for graduation this year, where innovation allows us to move two steps forward, but there's often one step back, something we lose. And often we don't even miss it until it's gone, like a handwritten letter.
At a much earlier time in history, most of human culture and learning was based on oral tradition. We passed things down through memorization. We cultivated the ability to learn vast amounts of information.
It's why the Odyssey is written with certain rhyme schemes and repeated refrains to make it easier to memorize. With the advent of easily available paper and the written word, there was a seismic change in human culture because things could be written down.
There was a fear that we would go soft, we'd lose the sharpness of our intellect because writing, or eventually books, were a shortcut.
Perhaps so, but writing allowed the development of Greek philosophy because a lengthy essay on logic did not need to be memorized. And libraries came to be in places like Egypt and Persia, where they accumulated vast troves of writing, scrolls of poetry, meditations and scientific understandings.
I might regret that I'm not able to store as much in my active memory as someone who lived 3,000 years ago. But does anyone nowadays think of a book as a shortcut that has made us soft?
[00:15:00] Speaker A: One thing I meant to ask you in our very first interview, but actually forgot to, was about your mustache, which might be your most salient physical trait. So I'm 10 years late in asking this, but what's the origin story?
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Well, I always wanted to, as a teenager, wanted to have a mustache. My college roommates for a while were calling me the Chocolate Milk Kid because of my first few unsuccessful attempts. But when I was living in Paris as a junior in college, it suddenly came in largely in its present form.
So I kept it, and I've gotten quite attached to it, I guess.
I did shave it once.
When I was head of school in Cleveland, students were doing a fundraiser, St. Baldrick's, where they shave their heads for pediatric cancer research, to raise money, and they challenged me to shave my mustache, which I was willing to do, but then a group of students intervened and said, no, we need to save the mustache. So I said, well, look, there's a group that is urging me to shave the mustache and a group that is urging me to save it. So whichever raises more money, shave the stash or save the stash will prevail.
And sure enough, shave the stash won. And so I did shave it briefly, and I grew it right back. My wife of 37 years did remark during that brief period when I didn't have the mustache that it was a little bit like having an affair. And I said, well, good thing it's with me.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: I can imagine what the curiosity was among the students and the faculty there at the cu. Without it, it probably still exists today.
So, finally, there was a long standing tradition of outgoing US Presidents leaving a note of advice for their successors on the desk of the Oval Office. Now, to be very clear, you have not made any public indication that you're winding down your time at Lawrenceville, so let's not start any rumors. But if you were to leave such a note for your successor, what might you say?
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I've received such notes myself as I've succeeded a previous head of school. I think my message would be a keep the faith, because there's a lot about this job that resides on your faith that things will turn out okay.
And I'm a bit of an optimist in that regard in many ways.
And I'd also say you're sure you'll love this job, to do this job and to stay with it. You really have to love the work, care deeply about the kids and the faculty and the institution, and come to work wanting to make a difference. If you can keep those things on the forefront of your mind, you'll do fine.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Well, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today, Steve. We'll have to do it again in another 10 years.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Love to Sean. Thank you very much.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Thank you.
That's 1810 for today. Inspiring ideas from Lawrenceville to you. We look forward to our next exploration. If you have comments or questions about today's episode, please reach out to communicationawrenceville.org A transcript of today's episode is available at elville1810podcast.kastos.com.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Sam.
