As Admissions begins our fall travel, please join us in welcoming new staff members Tonya Strong, Francesca Edwards '18, Wesley Haaf '18, Benjamin Lee '18 and Anna Dechert.
Tonya Strong joins us a the Director of Admissions. Tonya previously worked in the Office of Admissions at Bennington from 2004-2012. She also worked for the African Leadership Academy as their director of admission for global programs and as an associate dean of admission at Wesleyan University, where she led the application processing team as well as recruiting efforts for first-year students in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia and served as the office’s point person for transfer and veteran students. Prior to returning to Bennington she worked as an independent college counselor for international students applying to colleges and universities in the U.S. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University where she studied African American Studies and writing. Her recruitment territory will be New York City.
Fran Edwards worked as a House Chair and Admissions Intern, as well as sitting on the Judicial Committee and working closely with the newly found First-Generation, Low-Income, and working-class (FLoW) student group on campus. She mainly studied politics, international affairs, and philosophy, and wrote her thesis on working-class political engagement among the baby-boomer generation in Rotherham, England, following the deindustrialisation of the coal mining industry. Fran will be working with our visit program, the student intern program, and assisting with the BenningtonWorks events. Her recruitment territory will be the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.
Wesley Haaf was a House Chair and Admissions Intern. Wesley studied literature with a concentration in criticism, short fiction, critical theory, and film and media studies. His FWTs included local television production in his hometown of North Haven, CT; cleaning, digitizing and cataloguing vintage films at the Oddball Film + Video Archive in San Francisco; marketing and social media operations at the Center for Communication in Brooklyn; as well as editorial interning at Motif Magazine in Providence, RI. Wesley will be working on some of the communication initiatives in the Admissions Office and recruiting in the mid-Atlantic states of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC.
Ben Lee studied animation and Chinese language. He has worked at the Student Center as a line/prep cook, then the dining hall, and finally as an Admissions intern during his senior year. Ben's FWT's consisted of working at a graphic design company near D.C.; a ceramics studio based in Virginia; and an artist’s studio in Portland, OR. During his final year, Ben decided to remain on campus over the winter for an independent study, where he developed a large portion of his senior work—a nine minute animated short. Ben will be traveling to China and East Asia.
Anna Dechert is our Associate Director of Admissions for International Recruitment. Anna is originally from central Vermont and studied Near East Languages & Civilizations at Yale University. While in university she was part of a team of Founding Fellows establishing King's Academy in Jordan during a semester away. After graduating, she moved abroad again and joined the founding team at New York University's campus in Abu Dhabi, where she worked in admissions for the last nine years. In this role she focused on building relationships with high school counselors around the world, and guiding students and schools in the Middle East through the admissions process for selective US liberal arts colleges. At Bennington, Anna will oversee international recruitment and will work remotely from her home in central Vermont when not traveling on behalf of the college.