Vantaggi
Highly motivated students, instructors who care about teaching. Excellent pay and benefits for a boarding school. The school's wealth allows for generous financial aid, fostering significant diversity in student body, by economic status, race/ethnicity, nationality, and personal interests. Pleasant small-town environment, about 1.5 hours' drive to Boston.
Svantaggi
Long work weeks throughout the academic year: 50-to-60-hour weeks are common. Although this is not an unusual demand in boarding schools, the campus schedule makes it more difficult, with classroom teaching across a 10-hour day and a class schedule that varies bi-weekly. Planning off-campus and family time can be a significant challenge. There are efforts and successes in making school administration up to date. Still, there are in play vestiges of an older era that tolerated a domineering faculty seniority system and assumed workload of a male faculty member would be handled in some part by a wife in residence. Emphasis on an ideal of a faculty-run school means faculty votes and opinion shape many decisions about the structure of academics and student and faculty life. This has its benefits, but it can result in decisions with limited impact or unwieldy implementation, made to win approval from faculty who tend to veto if divided. Most administrative positions are rotated for 5 years among senior faculty, which limits exposure to good practice outside the institution and means administrators have limited time to lead after learning the job.