Chattanoogan: New GPS Head Dr. Autumn Graves

Since she arrived as head of Girls Preparatory School in July, Dr. Autumn Graves has been quite busy, but not too busy to greet everyone.
 
Actually, getting to know others is partly why she has been so tied up, as she decided to set up individual get-acquainted meetings with the nearly 120 other employees.
 
“Those have been 20-30-minute conversations I’ve had with everyone to get a sense of how they see their work tied to the mission of the school,” she recalled during a recent interview from her office.
 
“I’ve also asked everyone to give me a change they would make if they were to wake up one morning and be head of GPS, and I also give them an opportunity to ask questions.”
 
She was also involved in some teacher hires, and has tried to become acquainted with the students since school started. During the interview, for example, Dr. Graves was anticipating getting to shadow an eighth-grade student to get a sense for what it is like to be a student that age at GPS.
 
During all these observations and conversations, one theme has emerged, she said – a lot of people have a deep love for GPS. And that stands out even though she has also served at such other respected prep schools as Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. (where Chelsea Clinton and Al Gore III attended and where Malia and Sasha Obama currently attend), Friends Seminary in New York, and Girard College in Philadelphia.
 
“What’s unique about GPS is the intensity of the devotion that people have for this institution,” she said in an enthusiastic manner. “It’s very deep. There’s a passion and loyalty to this institution that I find both wonderful and also daunting as a leader to know people invest so much of themselves here.”
 
Dr. Graves’ arrival at the 108-year-old independent school in North Chattanooga comes following 20 years of passion and loyalty to her own educational ideals. Born in Western Pennsylvania – where she became a Pittsburgh Steelers football fan for life – her family moved to Richmond, Va., when she was in the fourth grade.
 
The youngest child of Paul and Maxine Adkins, she learned early on about leadership – and working hard and in an efficient manner -- simply from observation. Her father was a manager for United Parcel Service, with a second job serving as a pastor and presiding elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Her mother, meanwhile, was a dressmaker who oversaw 40 other workers at a plant.
 
Dr. Graves ended up attending Collegiate School in Richmond, a then-all-female independent school. Like GPS, it was known for good academics, and it even had a May Day pageant and an activity similar to the Cat-Rat tradition pairing seniors and sixth-graders.
 
She initially had a dream of being a sports agent with the idealistic goal of helping athletes make wise decisions and become better people. However, a sports agent told her the profession was all about earning money, and that changed her perspective.
 
So she decided to focus on making model young citizens instead of money, even though she is a big proponent of the capitalist system in America when handled ethically. “If I was going to invest that kind of time and energy into developing someone, I’d rather do that for children,” she said.
 
Her first job after graduating from the University of Virginia in 1994 was at Mercersburg Academy in South Central Pennsylvania coordinating special programs and activities, serving as a boys’ dorm mom, assisting with the soccer team and teaching some U.S. history.
 
She said she loves a variety of U.S. history, from the eras of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, to the roles of women during wartime America, to the photographic history of the civil rights movement.
 
She has also become enamored of Chattanooga history since moving here, and loves all the stories of successful entrepreneurs who also practiced philanthropy. Her favorite deals with the Olan Mills photo studio company, due to the fact the Mills family has long been connected with GPS and that some of her family’s photographs growing up had the Olan Mills insignia in the corner.
 
Due to the fact that she feels she would not have adequate time to prepare for and lead a class properly, she is not teaching any classes at GPS, as the late former headmaster Randy Tucker did.
 
But while she is not teaching history, she is making some at GPS. Not only is she the first woman to head the school since Mary Hannah Tucker retired in 1966 (other than two interim heads), but she is also the first black person – male or female – to lead GPS, Baylor or McCallie.
 
However, Dr. Graves has not thought of herself as being a groundbreaker at this school that was the first of the three local independent secondary schools to begin accepting black students in 1969.
 
“I often think about what brings us together and what we have in common more so than what is different, and so this idea of being a female is the largest point of commonality,” she said.
 
“I think that my race plays more into my own history and own experience interacting with the world. For some people, my race matters a lot to them – good, bad, or indifferent.”
 
She did add, though, that she thinks her hiring speaks volumes about the collective character of the school’s board of trustees.
 
“They made a decision that we are going to hire who we think is the best person for the job, not who we think looks the way we need our head of school to look. They said we are hiring the best person.”
 
Although jokingly admitting that she is not a morning person, especially after coming from New York – a late-to-bed, late-to-rise town – she is still trying to spend about 11 or 12 hours at GPS each school day.
 
That involves about 50 meetings a week, but does not include catching up on emails and other communication after hours, or taking care of other matters on the weekend.
 
“I’m hoping to get it down to 10 hours a day,” she said with a laugh. “I feel like this is a better balance.”
 
In fact, she feels that such a schedule is more like when she was a student, including when she was receiving a master’s degree from Columbia University and her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
 
Since arriving in Chattanooga, Dr. Graves has become aware of the academic and athletic rivalry with Baylor. She said she is actually used to being in serious competition with other schools everywhere she has been. Some places, like Minneapolis, had a single main rival as GPS does, while in bigger cities like New York, several private and public schools competed in various realms.
 
In Chattanooga, she said home-schooling, church-based schools and the public schools can also be competition for GPS in addition to Baylor.
 
Dr. Graves said she has been very impressed so far with what she has seen at GPS, from such extra academic class offerings as forensics science, to the modern/contemporary dance program, Terpsichord, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this fall.
 
“It’s on par with what you see at a lot of colleges and universities,” she said of the latter.
 
For Dr. Graves, getting the position at GPS required a well-orchestrated proverbial dance of her own that was not easy to put together from her end. She and her husband, Vann Graves, a New York advertising creative director with such clients as American Airlines and the U.S. Army, were both from Richmond and wanted to return to the South.
 
She also wanted to work at an all-girls school. “I’ve just hit a point where I want to invest in this next generation of girls,” she said.
 
However, her years in independent education also told her that she needed to be at a school with a board with whom she felt compatible.
 
GPS met her desires in all three realms.
 
“What I loved about this board was not only their commitment to and passion for GPS, but also the thoughtfulness they took in their search process,” she said. “They really got to know me.”
 
Dr. Graves has enjoyed getting to know GPS in return, despite the hectic schedule during the first few weeks.
 
It has also been a little crazy away from school. Her husband has been getting a lot of frequent flier miles still commuting from New York, and her parents at the time of the interview were making plans to move to Chattanooga.
 
The reason for the move is that Dr. Graves and her husband are expecting their first child in late November.
 
“We decided to have lots of life change all at once,” she quipped.
 
She added that GPS has not been afraid to change over the years as well while holding on to the rich and beloved aspects of its past.
 
“This is a school that has a strong history, but it does not seem to be stuck in the past,” she said. “That need to rejuvenate and to be innovative is a part of the ethos of the school.”
            
A Mini-History of GPS’ Heads
 
Dr. Autumn Graves is the first fulltime female head of school at Girls Preparatory School since Mary Hannah Tucker retired in 1966.
 
In fact, women’s social history has changed so much since then that the title of the position was headmistress when Ms. Tucker served.
 
Ms. Tucker headed the school from 1950-66. During that time, she oversaw the growth and development of the new campus in North Chattanooga. A native of Gibson County in Northwest Tennessee, she began teaching math at GPS way back in 1928, when the school was located in the former Baylor School facility on Palmetto Street.
 
She was 96 when she died on Pearl Harbor Day 1999 after having moved back to Trenton in Gibson County.
 
A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University and Vanderbilt, she also served as interim head along with Katherine Spears Clark in 1945-46 after founders Tommie Payne Duffy and Eula Lea Jarnagin retired. The third school founder, Grace McCallie, had died in 1918, 12 years after the school’s beginning.
 
From 1946-50, the school was headed by Edith Mattson Lewis, who held the title of principal.
 
The first male headmaster was Dr. Paul Bode, who served from 1966-73. He left in February of 1973, and Roberta Moore filled in on an interim basis for about five months until Dr. Nat Hughes arrived from Memphis.
 
Dr. Hughes served until his retirement in 1987, when Randy Tucker was hired. Mr. Tucker served until 2013. While serving as an interim headmaster at Battle Ground Academy in Nashville, Mr. Tucker died on April 21 following an automobile accident on Interstate 75 in Bradley County.
 
Dr. Sue Groesbeck served as interim headmaster at GPS during the 2013-14 school year.  
            
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