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PRINCETON: New leader opens year at Stuart Country Day School

By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff writer
   PRINCETON — Back to school means hitting the books for students, planning lessons for teachers and overseeing all of this and more for Dr. Patty Fagin, the new head of school at Stuart Country Day School.
   Ms. Fagin is Stuart’s seventh head of school, and the first in the school’s 47-year history who does not belong to a religious order. Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart is an independent Roman Catholic school for girls in kindergarten through grade 12, as well as a coed preschool and junior kindergarten. It is well-known for its active community service outreach and requirements, both in the Princeton area and beyond.
   "I’d always wanted to be the head of an all-girls school, I’m drawn to single-sex education, it’s very powerful," Ms. Fagin, a product of an all-girl education herself, said. "I walked out of high school and college thinking girls can do anything."
   Working with girls through their entire education is an inspiring experience for Ms. Fagin. "It’s awesome, you see these little bitties come in and you get to know them and their families and in the blink of an eye, you turn around and they’re your seniors and you’ve watched them grown up and you’ve had a big hand in that and helped shape that. It’s so powerful."
   As head of Stuart, Ms. Fagin will oversee 500 students from pre-K through 12th grade and 120 staff.
   "The families here are amazing; the girls are bright, they’re leaders, so pulled together and they have a presence that makes you so proud to be associated with them," said Ms. Fagin. "You talk to their families and realize what a great support system you have in the families as well because they truly believe in Sacred Heart education and that partnership is so powerful.
   "I worked in public schools for 15 years and it’s hard to get that buy-in from the entire group of families in a public school."
   Ms. Fagin comes to Princeton after six years as head of school at Villa Duchesne in St. Louis, Mo., an all-girl, Sacred Heart school for grades seven through 12. Prior to that, she was executive director of Guilford Day School in Greensboro, N.C., a school for students with learning disabilities in grades one through 12.
   Ms. Fagin plans to focus on preparing students for the 21st century. "What do we need to do to make we are really preparing students for a future we can hardly predict," she said. "Technology is changing so fast and the economy — who knows what it will do from day-to-day what it will do; how do we look at our students and say, ‘What’s going to best prepare them?’"
   She is looking for project-based learning experiences for the girls at Stuart. "What are we going to do that is going to make sure our students have the opportunity to collaborate, learn the critical thinking skills that are going to be required, to know how to utilize all the information that is coming at them from the Internet and the various Internet resources — how do we discern what’s the most important?" said Ms. Fagin. "We’re moving away from a content-based educational background to process-focused. It’s much less about content; schools used to be about ‘what can I give you that you can memorize and regurgitate back’ to much more about the process of how we’re going to use that content in ways that are innovative and forward thinking that are going to make a difference."
   One new program at Stuart this year is an exchange program for sophomore girls where they can spend two weeks at a sister school throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Peru. There are 21 Sacred Heart schools in the United States and 44 elsewhere around the world.
   Ms. Fagin will be recognized as the new head of school on Sept. 16 at an installation ceremony at 10 a.m., in the Cor Unum auditorium in the school’s Stuart Road campus, officiated by Monsignor Greg Malovetz, Stuart’s chaplain.
Staff photo by Victoria-Hurley-SchubertDr. Patty Fagin, left, the new head of school at Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart in Princeton, works with Jennifer Bautista, a new Spanish teacher for the middle and high school girls during staff training this week.