Groton School Quarterly Wins CASE Award

The Groton School Quarterly has won a CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) Best of District I Award.

 

Submitted for the award were two issues from the 2020–21 school year, each focusing on the pandemic in very different ways. As the entry pointed out, “Normally two consecutive issues would never touch upon a similar theme, but nothing was normal about this pandemic.”

 

The fall 2020 Quarterly, “Rising to the COVID Challenge,” profiled a wide array of alumni carrying out the school's ethos of service—all helping to improve lives affected by COVID. The stories introduced a doctor for the COVID-devastated Navajo nation, an inner-city chaplain, frontline health workers, a whiskey distiller making sanitizer, and others—delivering the message that Grotonians were making a difference during the most challenging of times. The stories spanned generations, so many readers were unexpectedly inspired by someone they knew.

 

The winter 2021 Quarterly, “Protecting the Circle: A Glimpse of Groton Life During the Pandemic,” outlined the school’s enormous investment in student health and safety. Illustrations by Sage Stossel turned what could have been dry material into a surprising package with lively cartoons that compelled the reader to turn page after page, absorbing a multitude of facts that demonstrated the school’s careful and effective approach to the pandemic.

 

“This period has been historic—our archives have information on the school’s reaction to the 1918 flu pandemic,” the competition entry reported, “and we believed that thoroughly documenting Groton during COVID was not only good for the school but important for the sake of school history.”

 

Besides the pandemic-related cover stories, the Quarterly also included campus news, chapel talks, updates on athletics and arts, form notes (class notes), and other regular features.

The Groton School Quarterly won in the category of “Magazines > Alumni/General Interest (Independent and International Schools).” The primary creators of the winning entries were Director of Communications and Quarterly editor Gail Friedman and designer Irene Chu.

 

All recent issues of the Groton School Quarterly are available on the school website’s media page.