Kimberly Ashton

Higher Education and Independent School Writing

MIT Spectrum •

Elizabeth Romero ’26: Catching the Second Wave of Human Spaceflight

By Kimberly Ashton

Elizabeth Romero ’26 was a high school junior in February 2021, when NASA landed the rover Perseverance on Mars.

Earth was largely still in lockdown, and most people weren’t so much as taking a cross-country flight. Humankind, however, had launched a rocket to the Red Planet. A year prior, SpaceX had sent its first crewed mission into orbit.

It was awe-inspiring, Romero thought, that despite all the pandemic-mandated limitations in daily life, we were still venturing into t...
MIT Spectrum •

After MIT, the Marines: A Polymath Reports for Duty

By Kimberly Ashton

Four months after graduating from MIT with a dual major in physics and economics, Braedon Rudolph ’26 will report to Quantico, Virginia, to begin four more intense years, this time as an officer in the Marines.

“They have the hardest training,” he says, noting that he was drawn to the Corps’ reputation for personal challenge and pride.

Rudolph has always been driven to do the hard thing. As a boy, he ran to and from Denver’s Lowry Elementary School every day to see if he co...
The Winsor Bulletin •

Class of ’87 Makes an Investment in Wellness

By any measure, Winsor’s Class of 1987 has been remarkably generous. They have won the school’s yearly Giving Day competition, class members serve on Winsor boards and panels, and in November 2024 they established an endowed fund to support wellness initiatives at Winsor.
Notable as these accomplishments are, they spring from another powerful way class members have given over the last 38 years—to one another. For nearly four decades, the women of ’87 have stayed in close contact, lending their c...
The Winsor Bulletin •

Stories of 'Brilliance and Resilience'

Jaya Goud ’27 was in the sixth grade when the pandemic started, and she quickly grew to miss campus life once her class switched to virtual learning.
“I just felt so isolated....We had all been together for the entirety of my fifth-grade year, and suddenly we were all just tiny little boxes on screens,” she says. “I really wanted to find a way to connect with the community, to have meaningful conversations with my teachers again, and create something that could inspire and support other students...
The Winsor Bulletin •

A Remarkable Gift for Families, and for Winsor

Many families find themselves in a difficult position when considering the cost of an independent school education. For some, full tuition is not financially feasible, yet they may not qualify for the level of financial aid that would make such an educational opportunity possible. As a result, students from these families sometimes decide not to apply, leading to their underrepresentation in the student body and the community as a whole.
Jean Hynes and Mark Condon, who sent their four daughters—...
Berklee Today •

A Rising Star

Puerto Ricans have a saying about themselves, an adage they’ve had too many reasons to repeat over the past couple of years: Puerto Rico se levanta. Puerto Rico rises. 

Hurricane Maria, the ongoing debt management, and this summer’s political protests have all concussed the island, but Puerto Ricans get up, dust off, and press on. 

Take Rubén Amador B.M. ’01, for example. When his contemporary-music school, Conservatorio de Artes del Caribe, folded in 2005, four years after its opening, Amador...
Berklee.edu •

Soldiers and Veterans Pursue Art and Degree Online

In the Iraqi desert in 2004, in between shifts at a small outpost the Marines established at an abandoned train depot to refuel planes, Lance Corporal Andrew Bonica was able to occasionally grab a few minutes on a spotty internet connection and plug into life back home.
During one of this portal’s brief openings, Bonica came across a guitar magazine that featured an ad for BerkleeMusic.com, the predecessor to Berklee Online, the college’s online extension school.
He had taught himself to play gu...
Berklee Today •

Charlie Rosen: Broadway to Berklee and Back

Charlie Rosen ’12 was just three years old when his parents noted his perfect pitch. Not long after learning his colors, he could say whether a piano sound came from a black key or a white one. His parents, both musicians, started giving him lessons and let him experiment with the assortment of instruments they had around the house, an assemblage that included his mother’s woodwinds and his father’s theremin and backyard pipe organ. As Rosen’s interest grew, so did the number of instruments in h...
Berklee Today •

Taking Up the Baton

President Erica Muhl describes herself as a radio person, not a playlist person. She likes to channel surf. She’ll jump from the classical channel to the one that plays ’80s pop and rock. From there, she might dip into some bluegrass, take a ride on the country air waves, or spend time with folk and classic rock favorites. Lately, her digital dial has been landing a lot on the jazz station.

It’s hard not to hear a bit of her own biography in the genres she likes. “Music, I think, was really a v...
Berklee Today •

Courtney's Got Talent

Courtney Harrell ’01 remembers being about 11 or 12 years old when her mother, a gospel singer, started calling her up to the front of church congregations: “She would point to me, and just say, ‘Come up here,’ while she was singing, and toss me the mic.”

Her mom would do this at Faith Tabernacle Assembly, the Dorchester church where she and Harrell’s father were co-pastors, and at the many churches where she was a guest singer. “That was her way: She just threw me in the deep end,” Harrell say...
Berklee.edu •

Berklee Alumna Uses Music Therapy to Help Heal the Wounds of War

Master Sergeant Michael Schneider retired from the Marine Corps in 2015 with the signature mental wounds now endemic among wartime soldiers. He had post-traumatic stress disorder, and a traumatic brain injury that damaged a 4-centimeter strip of his right temporal lobe.
“I needed something to get around that section and relearn pieces and refire brainwaves,” Schneider said in a podcast and article for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). “And music therapy was it.”
With the help of music t...
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