News - Faculty
Welcoming Our New Faculty: 2012-13
We are excited to welcome this group of new faculty, who come to us with diverse and fascinating backgrounds. Here’s your chance to learn a bit about them.
Renee Bend will be teaching Middle and Upper School science, including AP biology, Genetics, and Integrated Physical Science. She has a B.A. in Biology from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR, and recently completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Utah. Her professional background includes teaching, medical research, and leading backcountry trips. She says she has a passion for sharing the “science of life” with others, so her extensive training was driven by the end-goal of teaching. She is an organic gardener and backyard chicken owner and loves wilderness adventures — especially canyoneering, backcountry skiing and backpacking. She also enjoys discovering new music and collaborative cooking with friends. She has traveled extensively, including trips to India, Japan, Micronesia, and Belgium.
Barr Dolan joins the faculty in a part-time position, teaching AP physics to our most advanced students. He holds both a B.A. and an M.S. from Cornell, an M.A from Harvard, and an M.B.A. from Stanford. For the past 30 years he has been doing early-stage venture capital (in both health care and technology) in the San Francisco Bay area, and is now working part-time in that field. He has two children in the Waterford Lower Schools. He enjoys spending time with his kids, outdoor activities like skiing and hiking, music, and coaching youth soccer.
Kate Linsley is our new Dance Department Chair and Director of the Waterford Dance Academy. She began studying ballet in Seattle at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. She danced with Kansas City Ballet for 5 seasons, and after moving to Salt Lake City in 2000, she danced with Ballet West for 10 years. She has performed in venues all over the world, notably at the Edinburgh International Dance Festival and the Kennedy Center. She has taught dance classes throughout her career, including most recently at the University of Utah and the Ballet West Academy. She is also a certified yoga instructor, and directs a nonprofit organization called Inbody Outreach that provides yoga therapy to at-risk populations. She says she finds great joy in tending her small balcony garden, and plans to expand that in the future, when she has a back yard.
New French teacher Sara Phenix has a B.A. in French and English, and an M.A. in French from Brigham Young University, as well as an M.A./Ph.D. in French from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught all levels of French at both BYU and Penn. Last year, at Penn, she was awarded the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. She heard about Waterford from a friend — someone who was, it turns out, a mutual friend with Nancy Heuston. She loves French cinema, traveling to and living in Paris, and college basketball.
Michele Starcher is our new Lower Schools Music Specialist for Classes III-V. She has a B.M. in Music Education from Ohio State University and an M.M. in the same field from Capital University. She has taught vocal music for many years. She and her family have just moved here from Ohio — she found Waterford when she decided to look broadly for a school that valued music education as much as she does. She enjoys walking in parks or out in nature, scrapbooking, and reading, and admits to being an ice cream fanatic.
Also new in our French department is Veronique Willardson, a French-speaking native of Belgium. She came to the States to pursue a college education in foreign languages and music. She attended BYU, where she received a B.A. in French and Spanish with minors in Italian and music/violin. She taught French and Spanish intermittently over the years while raising her family and supporting her husband’s career. She is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian. Along with her love of languages, she teaches private violin lessons and plays in the Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra as a member of the 1st violin section. She is also an avid knitter.