Sara C. Johnsongraduated with honors from Indiana State University where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Art degree in painting and photography, with a minor in art history. Sara continued her studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she earned a Master of Fine Art degree in media art (photo, video, film). While living in Knoxville, Sara taught video and photo courses for the University of Tennessee. Sara moved to Charlottesville eight years ago when she began working as a professional video editor. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US in galleries and public spaces includingthe Knoxville Museum of Art, the Swope Museum of American Art, and Period Gallery. Sara is the recipient of numerous awards and grants for her media work including the Knoxville Legacy Grant Award for Interdisciplinary Art. Sara has been teaching art at Charlottesville's Renaissance School for seven years. During her seven years with Renaissance School, the art program has grown to include portfolio development work on an individual basis. Students have gone on to pursue continued studies at some of the most competitive and prestigious art schools in the nation. Sara looks forward to working with Renaissance families and students as the Head of School.
Miki Liszt has been on the Renaissance School faculty since the school began. She has also been the Artistic Director of Miki Liszt Dance Company which is a nonprofit, tax exempt organization she founded and based at McGuffey Art Center in 1984. In 2007, Miki Liszt received the Piedmont Council of the Arts Individual Artist Award. Also that year, Dance Magazine showcased the Miki Liszt Dance Company First Friday Series as a trendsetter for the crossover between dance and the visual arts in its March issue. Ms. Liszt graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she studied choreography with Bessie Schonberg, for whom the Bessie Schonberg Theater in New York and the New York "Bessie" awards in Dance and Performance are named. Miss Schonberg was, until her death, Artistic Advisor to Miki Liszt Dance Company. Miki Liszt Dance Company performs collaborative work nationally and locally. The New York Times’ Jennifer Dunning has said of Ms. Liszt’s choreography that it finds “Deep Reality in Ordinary Movement” noting that her choreography creates the effect of layered and refracted realities as she takes “walks, pauses, slow and gentle collisions and standing still and makes them suggest purpose and meditative thought.” Miki is delighted to assume the new collaborative mantle of Interim Director of Renaissance School.
John Hermsmeieris the new Dean of Academics at Renaissance School. Working directly with the interdependent structure of the Renaissance Curriculum is a natural progression from John’s tenure as Director of the Environmental Education Center, a non-profit organization he founded in Charlottesville in 1996. Through over a decade of Center programming, John explored the connections between the community’s environmental choices, the role citizens play in these choices and the collective environmental education curricula of area home, public and independent schooling, particularly Renaissance School, where he has taught environmental science since 2001. Before establishing the Center, John pursued these connections as the earth science teacher at Tandem School. He has also served as a teaching assistant at Mary Baldwin College and as a master teacher with the UVA Summer Enrichment Program. John’s interest in the environment began with childhood visits to his grandparents’ farm near Marion in Southwest Virginia, and this interest was shaped as he grew up in Fairfax County, where his natural surroundings were continually altered due to myriad forces. These life experiences inspired him to obtain a degree in environmental science at the University of Virginia. John enjoys sharing his home environment with his wife Kimberly and three children.
Diane Auger Smithwas born in Newport, Vermont, a small town 5 miles from the Quebec border. Diane’s parents are French Canadians who immigrated to the United States. Diane’s first language was French, which she spoke solely until she was four or five. As a child, Diane lived in Vermont, Florida, and Virginia, spending most of her life in Virginia. Diane is a University of Virginia graduate with a degree in mathematics. She worked as a management consultant in New York City, Washington D.C. and Baltimore for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) serving various manufacturing, investment banking, government and utilities clients in designing and implementing large automated systems. Andersen Consulting frequently assigned Diane the role of facilitator between the programmers and the clients because of her ability to communicate effectively with both. Her husband, a native Charlottesvillian, and she returned to Charlottesville in 1991 where they've been ever since. Her husband, Garrett Smith, is a partner at Michie, Hamlett, Lowry, Rasmussen and Tweel. Diane worked a number of years at the University of Virginia. She first worked on a project to design, develop and implement a tax compliance system for foreign national professors, employees, and students at the University of Virginia. UVa awarded Diane an Administrative Internship with UVa’s Office of Management and Budget. Diane had the opportunity to work with a number of University leaders on an initiative called Process Simplification. This was a business reengineering initiative targeting a number of central administrative processes with the objectives of seeking efficiencies, ease of use, eliminating redundancy, automation, etc. Diane is the mother of three children. She spent a number of years as an at-home mom and school volunteer. Diane also had a small professional organizing business for a couple of years, which while very interesting was not particularly lucrative. Last year she returned to school to earn her teaching license in 6-12 grade mathematics. Diane graduated from the Mary Baldwin College Post Baccalaureate Teacher Licensure Program with a 4.0 average. She was one of a handful of students selected by Mary Baldwin College as a "Teacher of Promise", and was invited to attend a special conference designed to recognize and develop outstanding teaching in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Diane developed her math skills through sheer hard work, and the support of her father, who has a Ph.D. in math. He worked at NASA during the Apollo missions training the astronauts how to operate the computers on the Lunar Module. He always made sure Diane understood her math, and she looks forward to doing the same for her students.
Bridget Mitchell is a native of Pittsburgh, though she and her family have called Charlottesville home for eleven years. Some of her instructors include, Larry Cervi, Ron Tassone, Ed Vaughn and Mario Melodia. Stella Adler, teacher to Marlon Brando, of Stella Adler Studio in New York had the greatest influence on her acting technique. In high school she was a Pennsylvania Governor’s School Drama student and was flown to Florida as an Arts Recognition and Talent Search honorable mention, where she was handed her award by Jose Ferrer and Michael Baryshnikov. She attended Otterbein college as a Drama Major and Adelphi University as a full-tuition talent scholarship recipient. A semester at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in Design and another semester of Drawing at PVCC helped sharpen her visual experience of the performing arts. She comes to the Renaissance School with experience as a Drama and Dance instructor for Linda Schmidt’s School of Performing Arts in Somerset, PA. Bridget has performed at nearly every venue the Charlottesville area has to offer, including - Live Arts, Four County Players, MLK Performing Arts Center, Farmington Country Club and two one-woman acts at McGuffy Arts Center for Miki Liszt Dance Company's First Fridays series. She was a part of the opening act for Tony Bennett for the grand opening of the Paramount on the downtown mall. She greatly enjoyed performing with the group she started with friends, the Fourtunettes, which sang Andrew Sisters, McGuire Sisters and many loved, old commercials and jingles at most of our community's nursing homes. Presently she’s teaching jazz dance classes at McGuffy Arts Center for teens and adults, where she also teaches dance to training ice skaters in the summer. McGuffy Arts is where she continues her long-term study of Dynamic Alignment with master instructor Eija Celli. In her free time Bridget works on a middle reader novel that she’s been refining for too many years to say. Her favorite use of time is spent with her husband, Kevin, and her kids, Sophie (who graduated from RS last year) and her son, Keenan, who is presently an RS senior.
Joan Barnettcomes to Renaissance School with over thirty years experience teaching French in both public and private schools and at UC Berkeley where she earned her Masters in French. She organized and directed a French Exchange program for 17 years between students at Tandem Friends School and the Lycée St. Pierre in Bourg-en-Bresse, France. She served as Head of the Foreign Language Department at Tandem for over ten years, was co-chair of Tandem’s Emphasis Program for four, and coordinated their Speaker Series program for the past five years. Joan was Tandem’s coordinator of the summer Governor’s School Academic and Arts programs (and served as Regional Director for the past three years); she also guided Tandem students through the application process for the Governor’s Foreign Language Academies. Her love of travel has resulted in over fifteen trips to France; she has studied in both Paris and Pau and maintains close ties with her French friends. During one summer she hiked in the Alps for a week, camped out in Provence for another, and visited la France profonde with one of these friends. She lived in India and Pakistan for a total of three years, attended two American Association of Teachers of French conferences (one in Québec, one in Martinique), and led students to Québec on two different occasions. She was a Girl Scout throughout her entire public school life and was one of four Americans chosen to attend an international Theatre Workshop for Young Adults in England, sponsored by the Girl Guides; she later became a leader for both of her daughters’ Girl Scout troops. She plays tennis, loves to cook (especially Indian and Chinese food), enjoys films, theatre and classical music, and is a member of both the Charlottesville Women’s Choir and the Threshold Choir. One of her greatest delights is spending time with her five grandchildren, ages seven, five, four, three and one, and their parents. Alas, one family lives in California; the other will be in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, for three to five years -- but grand places to visit, n’est-ce pas?
Greg BrownPerformer, composer, and recording artist, Greg Brown, joins us as Instructor in Music. He is an accomplished guitarist who has studied with many performers and composers. Mr. Brown has developed a unique style and cites diverse influences, including Beethoven, Eddie Van Halen, Paganini, Spanish Flamenco, and Chinese music. According to Les Productions d’Oz, his third CD, Distant Places, best reveals the diversity of his talent. “The disc includes Arabic, Asian, and American influenced works for solo guitar, a rumba, two orchestral pieces and the return of his electric guitar.” A graduate of The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Greg has been a member of the Charlottesville Classical Guitar Society, the College of Music Society and the Society of Composers, Inc. He has taught music at Mary Baldwin College, The Covenant School, and Field School. He lives in Charlottesville with his wife and family.
Ann Marshall, a native of Charlottesville, first taught while working on her Ph.D. in English at the University of Virginia. She has returned to be close to her family and live in her favorite university town. For 25 years she taught at The Hill School in Pottstown, PA. Once a traditional all-boys boarding school, The Hill admitted girls in 1998. Her husband Richard Cappuccio retired last year from teaching English at Townsend Harris High School in New York. Ann has three step-children and six grandchildren. Richard’s youngest, Shane, teaches English at The Portledge School on Long Island. Ann enjoys swimming, gardening, and traveling to historic and literary sites. Her article on Dorian Gray and Winckelmann appeared in a collection of essays published by Hofstra University. She hopes to complete a book about the literary pulpit. Her interest in remarkable preachers began with her dissertation on John Donne.
Nell Halladay is originally from New Jersey where she lived for 39 years. She is a graduate from Glassboro State College with a B.S. in chemistry and also holds M.S. and Ph. D. degrees in chemistry from Seton Hall University. Following a postdoctoral position at City University of New York, Nell began a 12 year career as a pharmaceutical chemist. She switched gears in June of 2000, moved to Charlottesville, and attended the Virginia School of Massage. Nell received her national certification as a massage therapist in December 2001. She opened her massage therapy business in February 2002 and loves doing massage. She also does message therapy as a volunteer for Hospice of the Piedmont and works on both patients as well as their caregivers. She taught introductory level chemistry classes at Seton Hall University and Piedmont Virginia Community College and tutored chemistry and math at both the high school and college level. Nell enjoys reading, hiking, and gardening.
Lou Tannerhas been teaching History and Government at Renaissance School since its beginning, a full ten years now. After first receiving a B. A. from U.Va. way back in 1975, he later studied Russian, European, and American History in Graduate School but along the way took or audited courses in numerous other fields as well, including Ancient, Middle Eastern, and South and East Asian History. Within a somewhat narrow range he reads widely, with interests tending to History, Travel Writing, Biography, Current Affairs, and Non-Fiction in general. With wife Stephanie, whom he met while backpacking in Australia light years ago, he enjoys traveling, gardening (mostly as an armchair hobby--it is her passion), reading, hiking, and birdwatching. In addition, he speaks Russian and French --though only passingly--and has a smattering of Spanish and Latin. Extensive travel in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia--where he also lived for almost five years, have only deepened an abiding conviction that the study of History is not only essential. It is also--dare it be said--fun.
Becky Wilbur grew up in the Midwest (Minnesota), went to college on the west coast (Stanford University, BS Biology), spent some time north of the border (Canadian Outward Bound Wilderness School Assistant Instructor), and went to graduate school on the east coast (Duke University, PhD Botany). In 1991, she and her husband and two daughters moved to Charlottesville where Henry assumed the directorship of the University of Virginia’s Mountain Lake Biological Station. During the past 16 summers she has been a mentor, teacher, and researcher at the station. Her main interests are Forest Ecology and Ecosystem Function, and she has also taught Biodiversity of the Southern Appalachians. During the last 16 winters, she has worked with the Environmental Education Center and Ivy Creek Foundation, helped teach science at the elementary school level, taught a non-majors Biology class at UVA, tutored math and science at the Learning Center of Charlottesville and coached many Odyssey of the Mind and Destination Imagination teams. In her spare time, she enjoys whitewater canoeing, volleyball, playing the cello, baking bread, reading, and taking long walks in the woods with the family dog.
