The Advancement Office has been hard at work trying to revise, revamp, rethink, and reimagine the alumni portion of The Hill website. We hope you will spend some time exploring and interacting with the new features. Some highlights include submenus, embedded Facebook pages/groups in our Affiliate Group News sections, a dynamic events section, and much more. This isn’t the end game for our alumni community – it’s just a start. We are aiming for a “best in class” environment that we all can use to take Hill and our alumni community to places we haven’t been before. This will only happen with your support, feedback, and dedication. Please help us improve our alumni community by passing along your feedback directly to Bill Robertson ’92, director of alumni relations. All suggestions and edits will be considered. If you’d like to be involved in a greater capacity going forward, please let him know.

The Inaugural Athletics Hall of Fame Ceremony was postponed due to Hurricane Sandy and will now be part of Winter Games Weekend, January 11-12, 2013. In addition to the first-ever Hall of Fame event, don’t miss the David H. Mercer and Frank S. Bissell ’33 P’72 Memorial Service, Class Secretary Summit, Bissell Wrestling Tournament, Alumni Squash/Aquatics/Hockey/Basketball Events, the Robert P. Parker II P’00 Squash Award Ceremony, Varsity Girls’ Basketball Locker Room Dedication, and more than 10 student athletics competitions. Don’t miss this weekend and sign up today to participate!

The Hill School Alumni Association continues to strengthen our regional chapters through our 3/3, 6/6, 9/9, 12/12 quarterly event theme. Events were held in D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Pottstown, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seoul during the month of December. Our next global event will be March 3, 2013! Contact Emily Melle ’04, assistant director of alumni relations, to get involved with this program.

View the recap here.

Don’t forget to support The Hill Fund before December 31, 2012. Click here for ways to give or to make a gift online.

Our Affiliate Groups continue to strengthen their leadership and enhance their communication methods. The Hill Wrestling Association, Hill Hockey Association, and Hill Basketball Association are the three pioneer groups that are making great strides to engage alumni, parents, and friends of The Hill with passion for their individual sports. Each has added a “News” section on their area of the alumni portal that feeds directly from their Facebook presence. Take a look at what these groups have to offer and contact any of the Alumni Association Sub-committee members or Bill Robertson ’92, director of alumni relations, if you want to become more involved.

Erik Schmidt ’14 (Chester Springs, Pa.) and Nkemka Obineche ’14 (Clarksville, Md.) were two of seven students from across the country selected by the NY Times to have essays published online! You may read their thoughtful blog posts at: http://nyti.ms/Py52kc.

As part of their fall term course work, students in The Hill’s English 3 Honors classes (taught by Mrs. Lindsay Mulhern, Mr. Ned Ide, and Miss Jamie Caniglia) were required to enter a blog contest sponsored by the NY Times. Students were asked to consider the following questions and write an essay: If people 13-17 years old could vote, how do you think President Obama and Mitt Romney would change their campaigns? What issues do you think teenagers would want them to highlight? How do you think the two political parties would, or should, attempt to appeal to young people in general?

The contest received close to 900 entries from students across the country. Fifty students were chosen as finalists, and only seven of those 50 essays were selected for publication in the “Room for Debate” section of the online edition of the New York Times during election week.

Faculty emeriti Willis Pierre and Tom Ruth both run listservs for alumni, parents, and friends of The Hill to stay connected with them and each other in unique and fun ways. The “TRuth news service” provides worldly perspective on global news. To subscribe, simply email Tom. Willis runs the “SNS (Saturday Night Survey),” which poses a question to subscribers each Saturday evening and then provides all of the responses, followed by insights from Willis on Wednesdays. To subscribe, simply email Willis.