For almost five years, Erin Hutchinson has been both a College Advisor and the Assistant Director of the Center for Service and Global Citizenship. Ms. Hutchinson, who currently lives on Doubleday I, also serves as the faculty advisor to the Deerfield Black Student Alliance, an elected member of the Committee for Faculty Life, and an appointed member of the Inclusion Task Force.
She emphasized that her favorite thing about Deerfield has been “being able to assume new roles, from working in the Office Of Inclusion and Community Life to coaching Girls Third Basketball.” Yet the most meaningful experience for her was leading the faculty trip—Leadership and Activism through the Lens of the American Civil Rights Movement—this year over spring break. “I loved seeing the trip grow over the years from an idea to reality,” she said. “I appreciate the faith and resources that Deerfield Academy invested in my project to the great benefit of the students who went on that trip.”
She added, “I’m really going to miss the students when I am gone, especially Donald, but that happens every year whether I stay or leave as the students graduate… What I’m really going to miss is having my adult friends so accessible in my life, just across the Quad or stopping by my office to invite me to lunch. HG, Dr. Brown, Dr. Pfeffer, Mrs. Gray, Ms. Dolan, and Dr. Hunt have been incredible friends to me, and the thought of leaving them behind makes me feel really vulnerable and sad.”
Alioune Dia ’22, one of Ms. Hutchinson’s current advisees who also participated in her CSGC spring trip, said, “What makes her unique is her ability to combine kindness and a sense of empathy for the students as a faculty advi- sor and as a college advisor, with her pragmatism as a woman but also her unique standpoints as an African American woman. And I think that that’s something that will sorely be missed on campus. And also her […] inescapable smile. It was a pleasure having her as my advisor; [she helped me] understand a part of myself as an African American in ways that I couldn’t with most of the other wonderful faculty on campus.”
Ms. Hutchinson will soon be joining her husband at Earlham College, a liberal arts col- lege in Richmond, Indiana. She has accepted the position of Assistant Vice President of En- rollment Management, and is “looking forward to returning to the field of college admissions at an institution whose values closely align with [her own].”