This profile is the eighth installment in an ongoing series about the retiring faculty members in the Voluntary Retirement Incentives Program (VRIP).
After three decades, Susan McCaslin, Instructor in Philosophy and Religious Studies and Associate Dean of Faculty, will depart from Andover to enjoy a relaxing retirement.
During her tenure, McCaslin has served many roles on campus, including Dean of Studies, Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, a faculty trustee member on two different Strategic Planning Committees, a house counselor, Girls Junior Varsity Squash Coach and Associate Dean of Faculty.
McCaslin has also served as the second Director of the International Academic Partnership, a program in which Andover collaborated with schools in the Aga Khan Development Network to help communities in sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South Asia and the Middle East.
McCaslin said religious studies have always been her “enduring interest” but that she initially did not intend to pursue a career in education.
“I really sort of fell into [teaching],” she said.
McCaslin said she experimented with various jobs when she was twenty years old, primarily working as a freelance writer.
Andover’s Office of Academy Resources (OAR) first hired McCaslin as a writer for the school’s Bicentennial Campaign.
McCaslin said she had been “experiencing some negative cash flow, so the fact that this job had a salary was deeply appealing.”
She arrived on campus in 1977. “The students and faculty were on spring break, and I remember thinking, ‘This cannot be a high school,’” McCaslin recalled.
After four years at Andover, McCaslin left to work at Harvard University as the Assistant Director of the University’s Center for the Study of World Religions.
McCaslin said she had no intention of returning to Andover until she met Victor Henningsen, Instructor in History and Social Science while eating in Lower Left of Commons. The two married in 1982 while living in Cambridge.
Following their marriage, Andover contacted the couple and offered Henningsen the position of cluster dean and asked if McCaslin would teach in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department.
McCaslin said, “I found that it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“I love the subject, and it’s a great thing to be teaching at the secondary school level. It deals fundamentally with questions of identity and purpose, and I think that those are questions that students at this level are asking themselves seriously, perhaps for the first time,” said McCaslin.
“It’s unusual to get to teach about religion at this level, and it’s even more unusual to have colleagues who are teaching similar things. I’ve had terrific colleagues and terrific students, and that’s been a real pleasure,” she added.
Outside of the classroom, McCaslin has coached the Girls JV squash team for approximately ten years.
McCaslin said she enjoys coaching squash because “the focus is on how to help individuals improve and also to function as a team. It’s an interesting balance and combination of both competition and cooperation.”
She has played squash for 40 years and looks forward to continuing her passion. “They say it’s a lifelong sport. It’s true,” she said.
In addition teaching and coaching, McCaslin found satisfaction working in administrative positions with faculty members from a variety of departments.
During her time as a house counselor in Nathan Hale House, McCaslin valued her “contact with students and student culture.”
“The Andover of the 70’s was a pretty freewheeling place, and I think we’ve put in, since that time, a lot more support for students,” she said.
“What I like about [the school] is that Andover is always willing to question itself and to keep trying to get better,” McCaslin said. “I’ve always liked Barbara Chase’s definition that a great school never thinks it’s great enough.”
Though she believes that PA has always been devoted to academic excellence, McCaslin thinks that Andover distinguishes itself by “making sure [it] draws broadly from American society and the world [at large].”
“It’s never been just about excellence. It’s also been about equity,” she said.
After a summer of deliberation, McCaslin has finally planned to retire, though she does not “think of it so much as retiring as rewiring.”
“It’s an opportunity to connect with some parts of my life that have been submerged,” said McCaslin.
McCaslin plans to spend time at her house in Vermont, tending her gardens, and to see more of her children, who live in California and New York.
She also hopes to visit family in Glendale, a small town outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, where she spent a “happy and innocent” childhood.
McCaslin said, “I’m just going to give myself initially a mini sabbatical and be slow to get involved in new work. I do look forward to working in some capacity, [but] whether it’s volunteer or paid is immaterial. It will really be the nature of the work that counts.”