Meet St. Luke's New Faculty and Staff

Photo From Left to Right, Staggered: Sally Rose Zuckert '15, Erin Hupal, Maggie Calcio, Kate Cerruti, Samantha Mongardi, Elisabeth Howard, Alex Robertson '13, Olivea Kieffer, Phil Cox, Laurel Scarozza (joined St. Luke’s during the 2020-2021 school year), Matt Goodman, Ashley Gangi-Petit, Lauren Malesky, Ryan Kohl, Hannah Gousse, Jeanette Thompson, Jessica Dowling. (Not pictured: Dimitra Skroubelos)

New faculty and staff were introduced by Head of School Mark Davis this week at the first faculty/staff meeting of the 2021-2022 school year. Davis shared these remarks about each of the newcomers to the Hilltop:

Maggie Calcio 
Maggie joins St. Luke’s as the Upper School Chemistry Fellow. She previously worked as a teaching and curriculum development assistant in the chemistry department at Barnard College, where she graduated with a degree in environmental science. Maggie has also worked as a farmer, and she enjoys hiking, baking, and reading. 

Kate Cerruti
Kate comes to St. Luke’s from Raleigh, North Carolina, where she lived and worked at a boarding school, teaching math and science. She has been teaching on the East Coast for the past 10 years, though she began her teaching career on the West Coast and raised her two sons in Southern California. She has coached track & field, cross country, and basketball during her career and is excited to teach physics at St. Luke's.

Phil Cox
Phil has returned to St. Luke’s as our Middle School History Department Chair after spending the last two years at The Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood, New Jersey. Before Elisabeth Morrow, Phil was on the Hilltop as a family leave substitute for Abby Abbott in the Upper School History Department. Phil brings a Swiss Army knife set of tools from his experiences in independent schools. In addition to being a classroom teacher, he has worked in development, admissions, and division leadership positions, but he’s felt most fulfilled teaching and coaching. He lives in Pound Ridge with his wife, Jessie, and their two children – Theo, who is 5, and Ellie, who is 2. Phil enjoys tennis, golf, rowing, family walks through Pound Ridge Reservation, and raising his kids as supporters of Bayern Munich soccer club.

Jessica Dowling
Jessica comes to St. Luke’s from Amistad Academy in New Haven, where she taught middle school art, just as she will do here. In addition to teaching art, she maintains an active studio practice and regularly exhibits her mixed-media pieces. Jessica lives in Norwalk with her husband, Alex, and their three beagles. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening, hiking, and baking.

Ashley Gangi-Petit 
Ashley will teach Upper School English, and comes to us from the University of Connecticut, where she taught first year writing as a graduate instructor for six years. Prior to that, she served as an AmeriCorps faculty member at Grace Academy in Hartford. Ashley lives in Norwalk with her husband, Zac, and their adorable cat, Eleanor. She looks forward to defending her Ph.D. dissertation in English literature in October. In her spare time, she enjoys running, knitting, and, of course, reading!

Matt Goodman
Matt Joins the designLab faculty, and comes to us from John Burroughs School in St. Louis, where he was a teaching fellow in the industrial technology department. He studied industrial and interaction design at Syracuse University, after growing up in Needham, Massachusetts. In his free time, Matt likes to play guitar and drums and to ride his bike.

Hannah Gousse
Hannah will teach biology in the Upper School. She comes to us from Kent School, here in Connecticut, where she was an ecology and biology teacher, head of a 120-boy dorm, girls varsity softball coach, and fierce DEI advocate for four years. Prior to Kent, Hannah taught for a year at the Ursuline school in New Rochelle, New York. Hannah recently moved to Danbury with her fiancé, Eric, golden-doodle, Teddy, and cat, Pippin. In her free time, Hannah enjoys weightlifting, biking, hiking, gardening, and learning about and identifying plants and insects.

Elisabeth Howard
Elisabeth is our Upper School Math Fellow. She graduated from Hamilton College in 2020 and then spent the pandemic year in Oregon. She now lives in Norwalk and is enjoying exploring the local hiking trails and social dance scene. At home, Elisabeth enjoys painting, cooking, playing games, and reading.
 
Erin Hupal
Erin joins the Middle School History Department from Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy in Stamford, where she worked as a middle school history teacher for seven years. Prior to that, she worked in the Greenwich public schools for five years and has a collective 14 years of teaching middle and high school history. Erin lives in Stamford with her wife, Kaity, four-month-old daughter, Charlie, and two dogs, Denver and Matty. In her spare time, Erin can be found on the softball field, traveling or snowboarding.

Olivea Kieffer
Last year, Olivea was a seventh grade teacher at St. Martin Academy in New Haven. This year, she is our Middle School English Fellow, again teaching seventh grade. She graduated from Bucknell University in 2020, finishing up her student teaching during the start of the pandemic. Olivea got engaged last October and has a pug named Bouggieboo. When not stressing about wedding planning, Olivea likes to snuggle up with a good book, hike Sleeping Giant, and practice special-effects makeup. 

Ryan Kohl
Ryan, who is the newest member of the Upper School Math Department, comes from the University of Michigan, where he studied applied mathematics. Prior to his studies at Michigan, he completed his undergraduate work at Tufts University. Outside of the classroom, Ryan enjoys reading, studying languages, and frequent visits to the cinema.

Lauren Malesky
Lauren joins St. Luke’s Upper School history team after spending the last seven years in Brussels and Paris teaching middle school and upper history-geography/humanities in the bilingual programs at the Lycée Français Jean Monnet in Brussels and the École Internationale Bilingue in Paris. She hopes to continue her work in bilingual education by helping to develop a high school bilingual program at the Paris Lab School in Paris, France. She has a Master’s in International Relations and Public Policy from UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and an M.Ed. from the Klingenstein Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Lauren has taught diverse groups of students in various locations: public schools in Kyoto, Japan, a boarding school in Colorado, and independent day schools and educational nonprofits in New York. Lauren is excited to join the SLS community and to learn and grow alongside her students and colleagues.
 
Samantha Mongardi 
Our new Middle School Art Department Chair, Samantha, comes to us from The American International School of Muscat, Oman, where she worked as an art teacher and classroom teacher for 11 years. She previously taught in Tanzania andNew York City, as well as in Malawi as a Peace Corps volunteer. In her spare time, Samantha can be found hiking, running, cooking vegetarian food, practicing yoga, playing with clay, or painting. She moved here with her daughter, Sofia, 14, and son, Luca, 12. Samantha is excited to make a new home in Ridgefield and to join the creative and caring community of St. Luke’s.

Alex Robertson '13
Alex graduated from St. Luke's in 2013, after eight years of attendance. After graduating from Columbia University in 2018 with a bachelor's in English Literature, Alex taught in the public school system in his hometown of Wilton before spotting an opportunity to return to St. Luke’s as an Upper School English Teaching Fellow. Alex still lives in Wilton, where he is eager to re-engage with cultural activities he picked up as hobbies while living in New York City, including attending screenings of old movies and indie band concerts, as well as studying paintings by Old Masters for minutes and minutes at a time at museums. Alex says he’s excited to be back in the environment that shaped him into who he is today.

Dimitra Skroubelos 
Dimitra joins us from the Easton, Redding, and Region 9 Boards of Education, where she held the role of HR, Benefits/Payroll Clerk since 2018. Prior to that, she also spent time working for the Greenwich United Way and in private industry. Dimitra lives in Stamford with her 4-year-old twin daughters, Hariklia and Amalia, and her husband, Georgio. In her spare time, she enjoys being outdoors, playing games with her daughters, or just enjoying a meal with friends on the patio. She is a member of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Stamford and working on perfecting her Greek culinary skills.

Jeanette Thompson
Jeanette joins the Middle School Science Department as the sixth grade science teacher. For the past nine years, she has been teaching science for grades five through eight at St. Mary School in Ridgefield. Jeanette lives in Redding with her husband, Chris, their children, Ben and Isabelle, their rescue dog, Layla, and a gargoyle gecko named Karma. In her free time, she can be found working in her gardens, taking walks, or spending time with family.

Sally Rose Zuckert '15
Sally Rose is happily back at St. Luke’s – as the Upper School History Fellow – having completed her master’s degree at the University of Chicago, where she studied the intersections of women’s performance histories and gender theory. Since returning to Connecticut this summer, Sally Rose toured with the LawnChair Theater Company in their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In her free time, Sally Rose reads about the Amazons and enjoys cooking her way through Edwardian recipe collections.