“The dorm is the place I see the most authentic version of the kids and where the so-called soft skills and lessons of boarding schools are learned — empathy and kindness and living in community with people who are different than you. ... It has been a privilege.”

Michaela Chipman’s father is one of 11 children. She has 32 cousins. They all grew up near each other in Massachusetts.

“That large family is a big part of who I am in terms of loving boarding school life and being part of a tight-knit community,” Michaela says.

Michaela is the coordinator of sexual wellness, the dorm head of Howe Hall, on the English faculty, a faculty advisor to the Chaffee Leadership Institute (a program for sophomore girls), and an assistant coach of the JV field hockey team.

“I went to an all-girls school seventh through 12th grades, and those experiences and that community helped shape my passions here, the elective portions of my job with young women. ... I am really passionate about making opportunities for all students but especially young women,” Michaela says.

Being a dorm head, she says, has always been her favorite role. She says she seeks to make the dorm a place where students can be themselves.

“One of the things that distinguishes a boarding school is the opportunity to live in community with other students and adults who share a mission with you,” Michaela says. “And the dorm is the place I see the most authentic version of the kids and where the so-called soft skills and lessons of boarding schools are learned — empathy and kindness and living in community with people who are different than you. ... It has been a privilege.”

When Michaela is in the classroom, she says, “I want to teach students how to think, not what to think.”

In her role encouraging healthy relationships, she says her “greatest accomplishment is you could stop any student on campus and ask them what consent is, and they could tell you. And if I have even one student in a better, healthier, safer place because of that work, all of it has been worth it.”

Michaela’s 4-year-old bernedoddle is part of the Howe Hall family. “She’s all about the girls in the dorm,” Michaela says. And all about taking walks in the Meadows with Michaela.

Michaela likes a good Italian dish, is known to make a tasty short rib, likes to read books, head to the beach in the summer, read obituaries and the real estate section, and do crosswords.

Why the obits? “It is beautiful to see how someone is remembered,” Michaela says. “So often we don’t know what we mean to people, and there it is for the whole world to see.”

And the real estate section?

“I love houses, feel they are the living embodiment of a person,” Michaela says. “Home is where your beloved are. In another life, I might have been an architect and interior designer.” In this life, she likes to go thrifting and antiquing and has given her apartment in Howe that homey feel. “There is a lot of character in there,” she says.

Michaela also is well aware that other current faculty members have lived in that Howe apartment before her and “feels a connection.”

She first came to Loomis Chaffee in June 2018 as a faculty intern in the Loomis Chaffee Summer Program. Michaela was heading into her senior year at Boston College, from which she graduated in 2019 with cum laude honors.

“I have done a lot of learning and growing here,” she says, “and I have had the privilege of mentorship and encouragement and love and care. ... I have been so fortunate to call this place home ... and work.”