Gara Field ’87 Announced as ’16 Commencement Speaker

At the all faculty-staff meeting on Monday, November 30th, Head of School Andrew Menke announced Gara Field, PhD as the 2016 Commencement speaker. A 1987 graduate of New Hampton School and a 2007 inductee in the School’s Athletic Hall of Fame, she currently serves as a nationally recognized principal who has helped turn around the struggling Providence, RI public school system.

Field earned a BA in Mass Communications and an MA in Inter-cultural Communications from the University of Hartford. After a stint in video production at ESPN, she returned to New Hampton where she taught history, and coached soccer and basketball for six years. She left to pursue an MEd in School Leadership from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Connecticut. Prior to accepting the principal position in Providence, Field served as an assistant professor at the University of Georgia.