Beyond the Familiar: Katherine Bucknell ’75 Supports Study Abroad
Katherine Bucknell ’75 recalls the “thrilling freedom and challenge” she found as a student at 91Թ. Encouraged to experiment “seriously and safely,” she says, “we were invited to do anything that fascinated us. Everything was available if we approached it with rigor and discipline.”
Throughout her school days, she found much that fascinated her. Long stretches at the pottery wheel offered “beautiful oblivion,” she remembers. Outside the studio, she played hockey, basketball, and lacrosse. Music—piano, guitar, and singing—accompanied it all. She was equally immersed in academic exploration. In her junior and senior years, she joined an economics tutorial built around conversation and sustained interrogation of ideas.
“You could imagine you were Joan Baez with the guitar, and then an economist,” she says. “Without pressure to measure yourself against others, you got to try on a lot of hats.”
The freedom was real, but so was the expectation that each experiment be taken seriously. “You couldn’t fake it,” she says.
Bucknell went on to Princeton, studied English literature at Oxford, then earned her doctorate in English and comparative literature from Columbia University. She built her life in England as a literary scholar and novelist. Her experience in Europe reshaped her perspective. “America is so insular,” she says. “Living in a foreign country is both humbling and expanding. That bit of abrasion as you gain a broader understanding is healthy.”
For many years, CA receded into the background of Bucknell’s life, but that changed at her 50th reunion last year. She found herself connecting with classmates she had not known well. Listening to their stories, she says, she was struck by how they had “lived their lives unafraid and authentic, not flinching from getting older and wiser.”
Having seen how her peers had held to their values, Bucknell grew interested in reengaging with the school. In conversations with Head of School Henry D. Fairfax, she found that CA’s mission still resonates with her. “I recognized it,” she says.
As a way to bolster that mission, she established the Katherine Bucknell Maguire ’75 Study Abroad Fund, which helps students take part in weeklong travel programs or attend school for a semester or year outside of the United States. She especially intends this endowment to support students who might otherwise be unable to afford to study abroad.
Bucknell hopes they’ll benefit from a balance of freedom and challenge, just as she did—and that they’ll be open to seeing where experiencing a different culture might lead them.
