LEADERSHIP TRANSITION: Princeton Day School on the Great Road will welcome Rebecca Bushnell, a University of Pennsylvania English professor and administrator, as its new Board Chair on July 1.

Rebecca Bushnell, elected last week as chair of the Board of Trustees at Princeton Day School, has a long history with the school, and looks forward to the challenges ahead.

“It was a young school when I was there,” the 1970 PDS graduate recalled. “I got a wonderful education that prepared me for education and life. PDS has certainly transformed over the years, but it has kept its core strengths in academics and athletics, with strong programs in the arts and architecture.”

A professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught since 1982, Ms. Bushnell is widely experienced as both a teacher and administrator. “The most valuable experience I’m bringing to the table is my 15 years as administrator at Penn,” she said.

As dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn for many years, she managed every aspect of the School’s $500 million budget, strategic planning, fundraising, administration, and faculty affairs. “I’m interested in administration in non-profit education,” she added. “I’ve been doing it for a long time, and it’s not as different from secondary education as you might think.”

After graduating from PDS Ms. Bushnell earned a BA at Swarthmore College, an MA from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University. She taught English for a year at the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr before embarking on her career at Penn.

Ms. Bushnell is the author of eight books and many articles on subjects ranging from Greek tragedy to English gardening. She has taught many different courses at Penn, where she received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, an ACLS Research Fellowship, and an NEH grant for Teaching with Technology.

She is also a member of the board of the Morris Aboretum, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Ms. Bushnell and her husband John Toner, the executive director of Renew Theaters, which manages the Princeton Garden Theater, live in Philadelphia. They have two daughters, Emily and Ruth Toner.

Looking ahead to the challenges in her new position, Ms. Bushnell stated, “The job of the Board chair is to oversee operations, to be a good steward of the school, to support and guide the head, Paul Stellato.”

She continued, “I have tremendous admiration for Paul. He is a visionary leader with a strong sense of integrity and ethics. He cares so much about the school and its faculty and staff. I look forward to working with him.”

Ms. Bushnell pointed out the current strengths of the school and its leadership. “What PDS offers is an intense education in small classes with people who really care about their subjects,” she said. “PDS is in wonderful shape. A lot of students want to come to PDS. It provides an amazing education.”

Describing the “exciting vision for the future of the school in the 21st century” shared by Mr. Stellato and the faculty, Ms. Bushnell noted, “they’ve spent a lot of time thinking through where the school should go in the next decade, working to bring everything together and getting the resources to do that.”

She concluded, “I’m looking forward to this. It’s so interesting to be involved in the PDS community. I’m delighted to be taking on this position, and I’m looking for help from a lot of people in the school and the
community. It’s a team effort.”

Mr. Stellato expressed the confidence of the Board in Ms. Bushnell’s “ability to guide our school during this most exciting, promising time, and, as she has done at the University of Pennsylvania, to ensure it remains faithful to and fulfills its mission for its students,
families, alumni, and faculty.”

A member of the PDS Board since 2013, Ms. Bushnell is on the executive committee, chair of the Mission Fulfillment Task Force, and has aided PDS fundraising activities. She succeeds Barbie Griffin Cole, a PDS 1978 graduate, who has served on the Board for 17 years, the last five as chair.