My MPA Experience Archives

April 28, 2020

Meet 2019-20 Alumni Association Board member Isaac Marshall ’11!

After MPA, Isaac attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he closely studied health care delivery systems. He discovered a passion and interest that were key in making his career decisions later on. “I am inspired by professionals who have found mentors to engage their passions and expand their impact,” he said.

Isaac chose to pursue a position on the Alumni Association Board because he wants to help shape the future of MPA. Since graduating from MPA, he’s experienced the impact that his MPA education has had on his life. “From the first day of college and being prepared to write lengthy papers, to having professional confidence in my strengths, I can trace back several important traits to MPA and the learning that I engaged with there,” Isaac said.

Isaac sees himself supporting MPA both financially and in his role on the board. The “theme” of his support is directly related to MPA’s mission. Issac deeply believes that education is fundamental to growth and life-long success and life-long learning, and that MPA teaches these life-long skills in a way that produces learned and passionate students as each graduate goes out into the world and forges his or her own path. “I want to return to that organization that has impacted my path.”

MPA Goes Virtual: Dhruv Muppidi

April 22, 2020

This story series illustrates how our community is embracing, growing, and connecting through virtual learning together. Read on to hear MPA junior Dhruv Muppidi’s experience as #MPAgoesvirtual!

Upon beginning virtual learning, Dhruv said he was feeling a little bit of anxiousness, but a lot of excitement. To establish a sense of normalcy, he’s been sticking to a familiar routine and curating a classroom space at home.

“It’s important to get into a regular schedule and stick to it. As much as this feels like a break, I believe it’s critical to treat this process as similarly as possible to a normal week at school,” Dhruv said. For him, that means setting an alarm to continue waking up at 6:30 AM and being ready promptly at 8 AM to tune into his Global Voices class. Read More

MPA Goes Virtual: Elli Carlson

April 8, 2020

This story series illustrates how our community is embracing, growing, and connecting through virtual learning together. Read on to hear MPA senior Elli Carlson’s thoughts as #MPAgoesvirtual!

Away from campus, Elli has adapted to virtual learning in her at-home classroom, making sure it’s super cozy and an enjoyable place to attend her online classes in. In addition to her synchronous classes on Zoom, she is excited to further explore more online tools, such as peardeck.com.

Elli defines “virtual learning” as moving the MPA classroom to an online setting while maintaining the unique dynamics of the learning environment at MPA–and she agrees her teachers are successfully doing that and more.

“MPA teachers have already done a great job of taking initiative around virtual learning. By reaching out and showing students they are thinking ahead, they have always communicated that their doors are always open, in real life and online,” she said. “Thank you, MPA, for making this transition so seamless! We are all very lucky to have so many avenues to communicate in this situation.”

MPA Goes Virtual: Isak Dai

March 25, 2020

This story series illustrates how our community is embracing, growing, and connecting through virtual learning together. Read on to see what MPA junior Isak Dai looks forward to as #MPAgoesvirtual!

While virtual learning may look and feel different than a regular school day, Isak breaks it down in a way that makes it feel very familiar, even away from campus–to him, virtual learning is “bundling up the work we do at school and doing it at home through the internet.”

“Before our current situation, we certainly were practicing some aspects of virtual learning by accessing online resources like Schoology, but now have been forced to take all of MPA online,” he said. “My hope is that through this challenge we can learn to take advantage of the many virtual learning resources at our disposal and take these lessons with us when we eventually return to school as usual.” Read More

MPA Goes Virtual: Kaija Kunze-Hoeg

March 20, 2020

This story series illustrates how our community is embracing, growing, and connecting through virtual learning together. Read on to see what MPA sophomore Kaija Kunze-Hoeg looks forward to as #MPAgoesvirtual!

Kaija tells us that she is excited to try this new style of learning. “To me, virtual learning is a new, innovative take on what a classroom looks like,” she says. “I expect to have to learn to focus harder as I will have more things that can distract me when I am learning from home.”

Knowing this may be a challenge for her, Kaija is preparing to set up her workspace to help her stay on task and continue achieving academically. MPA recommends starting with a quiet, well-lit area with strong Internet connection and a clean, clear working space to continue joyful learning away from campus. “I am going to try to make my at-home ‘classroom’ pretty close to what it would be at school so I can feel more engaged in my classwork,” she says. “I will use a desk, but it will just be more cozy.” Read More

Meet Jeremy Drucker ’97

March 9, 2020

Meet 2019-20 Alumni Association Board member Jeremy Drucker ’97!

Jeremy Drucker is a public affairs consultant working with non-profits, businesses, and governments to help them achieve their public policy objectives. Before finding his path in social justice and leadership, he was originally training to be an English Literature professor, but transitioned during graduate school to government and strategic communications work. “The skills I learned at MPA served me well in both settings,” he said. “They taught me how to write, they taught me how to speak, and they taught me how to think.”

Jeremy’s MPA experience of rigorous curriculum combined with caring, detail-oriented instruction formed the groundwork not just for him to utilize his passions personally and professionally, but also to organize them toward a globally positive goal.

Now, chooses to serve on the MPA Alumni Association Board for a variety of reasons. “MPA was very important to my educational, professional, and life development. I want to see it remain that way for others,” he said. “I’d like to see the board continue deepening the commitment of alumni to the school both personally and financially. Providing avenues such as the alumni-student mentorship program is a great way to do that.”

Meet Nate Bander ’09

February 11, 2020

Meet 2019-20 Alumni Association Board member Nate Bander ’09!

MPA Class of 2009 alum Nate Bander is MPA’s admission outreach coordinator and Upper School admission coordinator at Mounds Park Academy. He also coaches boys basketball and the varsity track and field and cross country teams at MPA. After attending MPA K-12 and the University of Minnesota, where he majored in Communications Studies with a Spanish Studies minor, Nate moved to Baza, Spain and worked in an adult language academy as an English teacher.

“The single biggest impact that my MPA experience had on me was inspiring me to learn about the world. MPA is a wonderful, diverse community of parents, students and educators who place a high value on education. I feel prepared to speak about the greater world, travel to faraway places, digest complex theories and thrive as a global citizen. MPA connected me to the broader world.”

But Nate’s MPA moments did not stop as a student and alumni. In fact, he didn’t make one of his fondest memories until coaching in 2019.

Nate recalls, “I first met Yahya Madar (Class of 2019) when he came out for my ninth grade basketball team. That season, I benched him in a game and he almost quit the team.” But, Yahya persevered and in 10th grade, he came back out for the basketball team. He also tried high jumping in track and field for the first time, and something clicked. Read More

Feeling Supported And Strong At School

February 4, 2020

The following essay is adapted from MPA Class of 2020 member Lilly Ramalingam’s Senior Speech.

I started preschool at the age of two at my family-owned Montessori school, Ramalynn Montessori Academy. My parents, my grandparents and my uncle have all taught at the school and it is a four-minute walk away from my house, so it was almost quite literally a home away from home. Before graduating from Ramalynn after eighth grade, I was a confident and happy girl, with none of the worries I would quickly take on during my first two years of high school.

After eighth grade, I didn’t have much of a choice on where I would attend high school, since my parents and grandparents had already decided to send me where my uncle had gone before he went to college at Brown back in the 90s. This high school I attended for two years before coming to MPA will rename nameless.

I went into this new school as a freshman, while the majority of students in my grade had been together for many years before high school, so I knew I was already at a slight disadvantage, but because I’m generally a very social person, I wasn’t too worried about finding new friends. Read More

The Ability To Choose A New Path

January 27, 2020

The following essay is adapted from MPA Class of 2020 member Ceci Driano’s Senior Speech.

I have always been a planner. The color-coded schedules and to-do lists kind of planner. Yet somehow my life has not gone according to plan. Eighteen years in the making, I now understand that change is constant and life is not always fair, but through it all, the most important thing is how I view change when my best laid plans go awry.

I went to elementary school in rural Minnesota and loved the small-town life. I was able to walk to school and recognize a familiar face everywhere I went. I have many fond memories partaking in events that would only happen in a small town. One of my favorites was walking in the Homecoming and Glows Parades, where the high schoolers were able to ride floats for their sports team and then run back to the beginning of the parade and do it all over again with another extracurricular. Whether it was running my make-believe Screwball Café where I took real money for fake food, or playing chip-it-over the river, where I just kicked a soccer ball over the wheelbarrow in my backyard–I found a way to have fun. My imagination seemed to run wild, and as my dad liked to say, I was basically a free-range chicken. I thought I had my whole life planned out: I would graduate, go to the college down the street so I could live at home with my parents, and then I would become President. What could go wrong? Read More

Meet Juliana Wu ’19

January 22, 2020

What do you love about MPA?
I love the inclusive environment MPA offers to each and every student that goes there.

How were you encouraged to dream big and do right at MPA?
I started to play cello right after submitting my college application during my senior year. Now, it has become one of my favorite ways to get away from the heavy workload at Carnegie Mellon and a great hobby of my life in general. Thinking back, it is still a bold and somewhat “reckless” decision that I made to begin a new instrument at the end of high school, but without the encouragement of MPA, I wouldn’t have made that decision and I would have missed out on a lot of the fun I have playing cello. Read More