Michael C. Reichert, PhD, is executive director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives, a national research collaborative composed of independent schools in partnership with the Graduate School of Education of the University of Pennsylvania. The Center helps schools investigate the actual experience of their students using a participatory action research model and develop interventions based upon their findings. A psychologist who has worked in clinical, research, and community health contexts for over thirty years, Reichert maintains an independent practice where he specializes in work with boys, men, and their families. As supervising psychologist at Pennsylvania’s Haverford School since 1989, he has provided direct service to students and their families, acted as a consultant to teachers and administrators, and offered special programs. He has also served as director of an urban youth development program and conducted research on behalf of for-profit and nonprofit organizations, especially to inform programs with perspectives more grounded in the actual experience of participants. Reichert has written numerous publications based upon this work, including (with Richard Hawley) Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Lessons About What Works—and Why (Wiley/Jossey Bass, 2010).
Richard Hawley, PhD, is headmaster emeritus of Cleveland’s University School, where for four decades he taught, counseled, and coached middle school and high school boys. In 1994 he was named founding president of the International Boys’ Schools Coalition. His published work includes several novels, including The Headmaster’s Papers (Garrett County Press), which won a number of literary prizes. He has also published several collections of poetry, an opera libretto, and a series of nonfiction books about children and schools. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, American Film, America, Commonweal, the Christian Science Monitor, Orion, and the New England Journal of Medicine, as well as in scholarly and literary journals. He lives in Vermont with his wife, painter Mary Hawley.