With a degree in philosophy, it makes sense that Marshall Chapin, Class of 1994, would spend some time contemplating a career that he could "wake up in the morning and feel good about." He recently found it as the chief operating officer at Envision Schools, a nonprofit company that is opening small charter public high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. "The schools empower students and spark a sense of community and an intellectual curiosity that is absent at many urban public schools," Chapin says. "It's the same intellectual curiosity that makes Kenyon such a special place."

Chapin's varied life after college prepped him for his eclectic duties at Envision. He traded bonds at PaineWebber in New York, played professional soccer in England, worked at a software company in Cleveland, then went on to earn an M.B.A at Cornell. After the technology company he signed on with crashed and burned in January 2003, Chapin started searching for something that could tie his experiences together. "I wanted a profession I was truly passionate about that still leveraged my business training," he explains.

Envision designs its schools around project-based, experiential learning, and places arts and technology at the core of every learning activity. Science students, for example, might go to a local beach and study the effects of erosion before presenting their findings in a public forum. "Kids feel what they produce matters and has some impact on the community," Chapin says. "They don't feel alienated like they do at most city schools."

Chapin helped open the Marin School of Arts and Technology in the fall of 2003 in Novato, California. Another Envision high school will open in San Francisco in the fall of 2004, and the goal is for six schools to be operating by 2006. The schools are based on a model developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is Envision's largest funder. "I've already seen the schools begin to work," Chapin says. "It's really quite amazing."