ACS Alumni & Friends Association launches

Southwest Chapter in Houston, Texas

A combined group of nearly 50 ACS graduates, former students, and parents gathered for an evening reception near Houston's famed Galleria. Within days of this Houston event, the ACS Alumni and Friends Association launched its official Southwest Chapter. Carolyn Holy Schmidt, ACS Cobham, a former student leader and now Houston-based educator, assumed the role of president of the Chapter.

Hosted by Andrew Kittell and Gordon M Speed of the ACS Baltimore-based US Office, the evening event in Houston showcased recent developments on the Surrey and Middlesex campuses. ACSers from the '60's to members of the Class of 2001 enjoyed each other's company and hearing about the expansion and continual improvement of what's now a three-campus school system, the largest of its kind in Europe.

ACS Cobham grad Rick Bartok shared a video he'd shot two weeks earlier while on holiday in London. Bartok's homemade production captured the sights and sounds of London as well as heartfelt greetings from longtime ACS Cobham faculty and administrators.

Former ACS Hillingdon parents Rich and Kathye Deakins also addressed the group. They explained how two ACS Programs of Distinction changed their daughter's, Jennifer's, life and gave her a career direction. Jennifer, received ACS Foundation-provided scholarships to attend ACS British Studies '99 and to join the ORBIS Foundation's summer 2000 team of international eye doctors as one of two ACS student-interns on a international eye doctors as one of two ACS student-interns on a sight-saving mission to Uzbekistan. Jennifer's now a sophomore premed student at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida and is enjoying an internship this summer at a Houston-based ophthalmology clinic.