SUMMIT COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL

From SummitCDS.org

Summit Country Day School senior Theresa Rager’s research paper on the history of tuberculosis research and its effects on the development of the medical field has been chosen for publication in The Concord Review. It will be published in the quarterly’s Winter Issue.

Theresa is only the sixth student from the Cincinnati area to be published in The Review in the 26 years that the publication has been in existence. Including Theresa, four of those six published Cincinnatians were Summit students.

Summit Country Day School Senior
Theresa Rager, seated, with Dean
of Students Kelly Cronin.

Theresa’s 50-page research paper, “The History of Biomedical Research on Tuberculosis,” was a year-long project in Honors Research Seminar in Social Studies taught by Summit Dean of Students Kelly Cronin. Theresa, who is one of three Summit students in the Greater Cincinnati Health Council’s 2012 TAP MD program, has an interest in becoming a physician. “She combined her interest in science with history.” says Ms. Cronin. “She was taking AP Biology at the same time. Her research project was equivalent to work done by an undergraduate history major. Students in Honors Research Seminar start out studying research methods, then select a topic for research and spend the rest of the year researching and writing a paper. Theresa shortened the paper she wrote in Ms. Cronin’s class before sending it to The Review.

“The Concord Review selects only about 3% [6%] of the papers that are submitted,” says Ms. Cronin. “It is harder to get published in The Concord Review than it is to get accepted into Harvard [6%].” Even Harvard acknowledges how prestigious the publication is. In a recent New York Times story, William R. Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admissions at Harvard University, said he keeps copies of The Concord Review in his office to inspire applicants. Being published in The Concord Review is impressive, like winning a national math competition, he says.

The Concord Review champions exemplary history essays by English-speaking high school students. As of the Fall 2012 issue, the Review had published 1,033 research papers—averaging 6,000 words each, complete with endnotes and bibliography—from authors in 46 states and 38 other countries. The Concord Review is the only quarterly journal in the world to publish the academic work of secondary students of history.

Dr. Terrence Malone, Summit’s Upper School Director, credits The Summit’s signature Writing Program with Summit’s success in The Concord Review. The Writing Program culminates in the Upper School with the writing of major research papers in several different areas of the curriculum. “The volume of writing that students undertake here at The Summit makes a difference in how well prepared our graduates are,” he says. “We hold our students to a high standard. We have a high expectation for their performance and the quality of the written word. In our most advanced classes, students are doing college-level writing and we’ve heard from some alumni that their first writing assignments in college were easier than the work they did here.”

The three previous Summit students to be published in The Concord Review also were students in Ms. Cronin’s courses. They were:



•Jane Abbottsmith’ 08. Her paper, “Religion and Nationalism in Ireland in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” was first published in the Spring of 2009 during her senior year. It subsequently received The Concord Review’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize and was republished in 2012 The Concord Review Readers Series, Emerson Prize Issue 1. Jane received a bachelor’s degree in religion magna cum laude, with a certificate in Values and Public Life, from Princeton University. A Gates-Cambridge scholar, she is now pursuing a master’s degree in theology and religious studies at Cambridge University in the U.K.

•Nick Corser ’08. His paper, “The Burning Times: The Role of the Catholic Church in the European Witch Trials,” was published in the Winter of 2006 during his sophomore year. Nick received a B.A. in political science and history from Vanderbilt University and is now attending Emory University School of Law.

•Dr. Margaret (Niehaus-Sauter) Fuchs ’03. Her paper, called “The Role of Music in the Life of the North American Slave,” was published in the Fall of 2002 during her sophomore year. Dr. Fuchs received a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from Kenyon College and a medical degree from The Ohio State University (OSU). Dr. Fuchs is a second-year internal medicine/pediatrics resident at OSU’s Wexner Medical Center.


The Summit Country Day School serves students from age two through grade twelve in a coeducational setting. The Summit combines the academic excellence and one-on-one guidance of a top-tier independent school with the servant leadership and character building environment that are hallmarks of a Catholic education.