Alick-McLean

Alick McLean

Humanities

How does the APH teaching philosophy look in your classroom?

Understanding is secondary to the collaborative means of seeking it. To work together means to listen—and also to find ways to express ourselves in ways that engage our collaborators while respecting the voices of others from the past and today. The classroom is a space to be passionate about ideas, so passionate that we are willing even to question our own assumptions to do them justice.

What excites you about The Academy at Penguin Hall?

The students who choose to attend Penguin Hall, and those that teach and work here, are all by nature committed to making this a place where every voice counts, every person deserves to speak and to be heard. What better way to prepare the next generation of leaders—you!

Share something interesting about yourself.

One day when I was traveling with my then 9 year old daughter, Sophia, she asked me to tell the family about a castle we were about to visit. Great, I thought, at last I can start unleashing my decades of research into medieval architecture onto my kids! I began to recount the dates, the materials, the styles, when she, actually quite politely, interrupted me. “No, Papa, not that. Tell us a story!” All the years of research, all the articles and books, were dwarfed by the simple demand of a child—what we crave are the voices and stories of history, not just the objects.

Alick McLean has a B.A. in Classics from Yale University. He earned a Masters in Architecture from Princeton University, and received a Fulbright Fellowship for research into Italian cities leading to his Ph.D in Architectural History, Theory, and Criticism, also from Princeton University.