meet the cel faculty

SCH Academy's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) faculty members are a multidisciplinary team, bringing expertise from a wide variety of industries. In disciplines such as design and media, engineering and robotics, app development, business and nonprofit management, and more, these experienced educators care deeply about helping each young entrepreneur bring their bold ideas to life.

Read about each of our CEL mentors below and find out why entrepreneurship is so important to our faculty, the PreK-Grade 12 curriculum, and empowering our students to affect a positive change fueled by their passions.

Ed Glassman | Executive Director of CEL and New Media

Ed Glassman began his career as an innovation and design consultant in Chicago, developing new products and services for Fortune 500 companies. During his time in consulting, Ed also served as Executive Director of The Chicago Innovation Awards, where he developed entrepreneurial programs and educational experiences for Chicago high school students. Ed took his interest in education and entrepreneurship further in 2008, when he partnered with a small team to build Tribeca Flashpoint College; a media arts and design college in the heart of Chicago.

In 2014 Edward moved home to Philadelphia and began his work at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy as the Executive Director of The Sands Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. He has mentored hundreds of students of all ages as they bring their ideas for products, services, and non-profit organizations to life. Ed holds a masters degree from The University of Pennsylvania in Education Entrepreneurship, and believes that the entrepreneurial mindset—one of reliance, resourcefulness, and innovative problem solving—is a powerful framework for education. Ed is also an alumnus of Chestnut Hill Academy, Class of 2003.

CEL is amazing to me, because we treat our students like true colleagues and partners. We take their ideas seriously, and set them up to pursue that work in real and meaningful ways. We prioritize process over product. The videos you will see on this site are the end result of months, or in some cases, years of work. Along the way they are learning incredibly valuable lessons about resilience, resourcefulness, creativity, and problem solving.

Peter Randall | Engineering & Robotics Department Chair

CHA lifer Peter Randall graduated magna cum laude in Systems Engineering from Princeton University ’73 and Operations Management from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania ’74. After a 10-year stint in Corporate America with Xerox Corp and CIGNA, Peter started his first entrepreneurial enterprise, consulting and developing software for the new personal computer market. After 15 years on his own, Peter joined with two colleagues to found NetReach Inc., an Internet development company. While serving on the board of CHA, Peter nominated himself for the role of CHA’s Director of Technology. Peter then created the Engineering & Robotics Department at SCH, becoming its first Chairman. Under his guidance, students have built hundreds of sophisticated projects including robots, drones and even a full sized, 4 passenger airplane. In 2019, the SCH Upper School Robotics Team won the World Championship in the FIRST Robotics Competition from amongst the 7,000 schools participating.

CEL allows students to explore a topic of personal interest with guidance from their faculty advisors. This helps them develop the skills of self-motivation and persistence. They are forced to own their own education as they are both the leader of their project as well as the workforce. The shift from a grade based motivation to do great work to self motivation is a new experience for most of the class.

Scott Kirker | Coding & Computer Science Faculty

Scott Kirker's professional trajectory spans the dynamic worlds of finance and tech. With a BS in Finance from Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from Babson College, he transitioned from a prominent role in finance and M&A to the creation of Ultimately LLC. This tech venture, dedicated to deploying cross-platform mobile applications aimed at fostering mindful and intentional connections, created user experiences inspired by research in the field of positive psychology. Skilled in numerous development frameworks and programming languages, Scott brings a synthesis of academic knowledge and hands-on industry experience to the classroom. At SCH, he is eager to impart his real-world entrepreneurial insights, ensuring students get a rich, grounded understanding of computer science.

Hello SCH community! I'm thrilled to be teaching Coding and Computer Science across the Middle and Upper Schools in CEL.

Juliet Fajardo | New Media Faculty & Resident Architect

Juliet Fajardo teaches Architecture, 3D Modeling and Animation, Graphic Design, and New Media focused CEL courses in the Upper School at SCH Academy. In addition, she is a licensed and practicing architect in Philadelphia with a focus on adaptive reuse, renovation work, and biophilic design in her practice. She has a Master of Architecture and a certificate in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania, and worked at KieranTimberlake and BLTa Architects for 12 years before coming to SCH and starting her own practice. Her design exploration work focuses on the intersection of formal geometries and the botanical world. She uses a 3D modeling program called Rhinoceros in conjunction with an algorithmic-based modeling tool called Grasshopper to create parametric objects generated into digital renderings. Juliet lives on East Oak Lane with her husband and two boys, and enjoys yoga, playing the piano, and gardening in her spare moments.

CEL is a special and unique opportunity for students because it combines the skills and talents that the student already has, with something that they care about outside the classroom walls, and spend an entire semester beginning to design and craft a solution for that topic or problem. It is creative problem solving at its best, and in the end, CEL opens the doors to many more opportunities for the student beyond a normal curriculum.

Ian Kreher | Upper School Math Faculty & CEL Mentor

Ian Kreher has been a teacher at SCH since 2014. Before coming to SCH, he worked as a financial analyst at an insurance company. He has worked with students from both the Middle and Upper school divisions across his teaching career. Ian was initially a math teacher but transitioned into CEL to leverage his experience in business. He is also the faculty mentor of our school’s Investment Club. Outside of teaching, Ian enjoys traveling and hiking with his wife, skiing, and the occasional PC game.

CEL is a way for students to really be in charge of their own education. A school curriculum is generally set by faculty and administrators and says 'students need to know X, Y, and Z by the time they graduate.' CEL flips that idea around and asks students what they think they should know, then connects them with experts and mentors to help them learn and develop the concepts and skills they wish to acquire.

Eliza Culp | Lower & Middle School CEL & New Media Faculty

Eliza Culp

Eliza hails from the sunny lands of Florida and has made Philadelphia home for the past 10 years. She is an interdisciplinary artist and educator and her background is in mechanical engineering, fine arts, and sociology. In the classroom, Eliza builds projects that uplift students to understand their identity as both a student and as a citizen of the world.

At SCH, Eliza teaches both Middle and Lower School classes. Her 8th grade students study interiority through light fixture design. The 5th grade students take ownership of their creativity by making fidget gadgets. The 4th grade students explore new media and CEL skills through various mediums including game design. The 3rd grade students analyze design and marketing by prototyping their own toys. She is also coaching the FLL Explore League, #OMGrobots!

Adam Butz-Weidner | Middle & Upper School New Media Faculty

adam butz-weidner

Adam came to SCH after working as a musician, multimedia artist, and technologist in Philadelphia and New York where he collaborated with organizations like The Philadelphia Opera Company, UPenn School of Arts & Sciences, Jacob’s Pillow, and The Recording Academy. Additionally, Adam has partnered and worked alongside multi-Grammy Award winning musicians and engineers throughout the music industry, exposing him to music creation and distribution at its most competitive level. Adam loves empowering creative thought with new artistic technologies and practices. As an educator, he brings a wide net of experiential knowledge and wholehearted curiosity to the problems and challenges students face in actualizing their own creative and entrepreneurial ideas. Adam loves chocolate chip cookies, specifically crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside.

Julie Knutson | CEL Social Entrepreneurship Faculty

Julie Knutson

Julie Knutson (she/her/hers) is thrilled to join CEL @ SCH. Julie brings experience as an author of children’s nonfiction (her book The Science and Technology of Marie Curie was a finalist for the 2021 AAAS/Subaru Prize), classroom teacher, curriculum writer, social justice advocate, and information literacy champion to her role as an instructor of social impact. She hopes to infuse the CEL program with an emphasis on global citizenship and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), topics on which she’s written extensively.

Julie is an avid reader who loves cooking, playing tennis, and traveling with her husband and son. In her spare time, she can also be found at any of her area’s dog parks, throwing a ball in an endless round of fetch with her inexhaustible border collie, Balto.

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