Upper School Intersession 2025

Thanks to significant advances in machine learning and data science, decision makers are embracing and employing advanced algorithms and statistical models to help with or fully automate difficult tasks across our society. With examples ranging from advertising and finance to healthcare and criminal justice, machine learning tools have become ubiquitous. While often providing significant improvements in speed and performance, these tools come with increased complexity that can make the decision making process opaque and difficult to evaluate. How did your model make that prediction? Why? Are the decisions that it makes fair? How can we quantify fairness? In this activity, we will discuss real-world examples of automated algorithmic decision making along with the practical and ethical problems they can face. We will explore the ideas of bias, fairness, safety, and interpretability.

Jeremiah and Jacquie Robison will lead students through their experiences as 9th grader, Sofia Robison's parents. Sofia received a diagnosis of cerebral palsy when she was just over one year old.

Jacquie saw the inequity/gaps that exist with disability inclusion, and launched the multi-national nonprofit, WAWOS (We're All Working On Something). Their mission is to disrupt the narrative around physical disability in kids + teens, promote access to adventure for all abilities, and advocate inclusion. Her engagement will empower students to consider the social change they want to see, and lead them through steps to either partner with existing orgs or build mission statements, draft bylaws, apply for nonprofit status etc to build community for strong impact

Jeremiah, as a serial entrepreneur and technologist, was frustrated by the lack of tools to address mobility impairments (why have we not moved beyond walkers and wheelchairs?), and launched VC-backed CIONIC, to build bionic clothing. They have built an FDA-cleared Neural Sleeve (lower limb) that combines motor learning with functional electrical stimulation to activate the necessary muscles precisely coordinated in the gait cycle. Jeremiah will guide students through approaches to apply technology/innovation to solve a problem.

Prepare to practice the art of politics in the Civic Mirror® political role-playing game. You will inhabit a country modeled after the U.S. and will have an opportunity to manage a business, run for office, and serve on a jury. If someone sues you or charges you with a crime, you will be put on trial. You will need to find a way to keep the members of your family alive (provide them with food, shelter, medical care, etc.) while pursuing your "hidden agenda" (secret goals). You will work through the real-life challenges and trade-offs necessary to enact legislation in a country where people's goals are often in conflict.

The climate crisis does not affect all people equally. In this session, we will cover how climate emergencies and extremes magnify pre-existing vulnerabilities, increasing migration and expanding health disparities. We will define three types of climate migrants who are arriving in the United States and evaluate the health risks that they face before, during, and after their migrations.

Structural inequities and racism create significan health impacts on migrants in the United States, including asylum seekers, short-term authorized workers like farmworkers, and unauthorized residents. In this session, we will evaluate some of the social structures that have produced and maintain modern social inequities as well as health disparities. Students will learn to assess the structural processes that are at play for migrant populations, how these processes affect their health, and efforts in the US to reduce these health barriers.

Museums curate and display human remains in order to research the past and to educate the public. But it has come to light that many of the individuals on display might not have considered the museum to be their ideal final resting place. Adding in individual and indigenous voices problematises the concept of curation of human remains, but many archaeologists see us on a path we can’t retreat from without radically changing the field. Museum visitors also expect to see skeletons, and most find it part of their education - and often inspires them to go into research of medicine. Additionally, ancient cultures and modern society have radically different views of the afterlife, consent, and burial practices that are often at odds with each other. In this session we’ll learn about and debate these differing views.

Key questions: How can we as curators and archaeologists balance these different value systems? Do the dead have a voice, and what would they argue for? What are some of the arguments for and against keeping human remains on a case-by-case basis? How can we develop more complex arguments than "I wouldn't want that to happen to my body" when all of our ideas of our bodies are different?

Part of a series: “Ethical issues in archaeology." Students are invited to attend one or more sessions in this series by Stacy.

In this session, we will be viewing images of ancient human remains and will be discussing death.

The Global Justice Center is a feminist human rights organization started by the late reproductive rights advocate Janet Benshoof. GJC’s mandate is to leverage international law to advance gender equality. Toward that end, GJC focuses on two main areas: advancing reproductive autonomy as an international human right and ensuring justice for mass atrocities involving sexual and gender-based crimes. Learn how Global Justice Center conducts this crucial work, including through innovative legal analysis, advocacy with governments, and press work. Signature campaigns--including to achieve a global convention on crimes against humanity, pierce pervasive impunity for widespread sexual and gender based crimes in Myanmar, and for access to safe abortion is a fundamental right--will be discussed.

In this session, students will be able to explore the basics of thoughtful charitable giving and the impact of philanthropy on social issues. Through interactive discussion and a case study, participants will learn how to identify key social challenges, evaluate nonprofit organizations through due diligence, and consider how individual giving can make a meaningful difference. By the end of this session, students will gain an understanding of strategic philanthropy and practical insights into making a positive impact in their communities.