By Matis Molina Ricard’24
Many important figures are a part of the Gunn community that go unnoticed or just aren’t seen as much on campus compared to classroom teachers, yet these adults still play vital roles for the school. One of those is Caralyn Dea who has now been working at Gunn for almost three years. Ms. Dea can be seen during school meetings where she takes videos of each country she visits worldwide and gives us interesting facts about them, but what exactly does she do on these trips?
Ms. Dea is in charge of recruiting international students to our campus, where she aims to attract a maximum of 65 international students and a minimum of 60. She also visits consultants to give them updates and get them excited about our school by discussing things such as our new building, The Lizzie. When asked what kind of student she is looking for, she says, “I’m not looking for a student; I’m looking for a family that has the same values Gunn has,” and tries to see who would have the best fit in our community. She also makes sure to meet with parents whose students are already here and talks about all of their successes to promote goodwill and encourage other international students to join the Gunn community. The Frederick Gunn School wants to promote diversity through its international population, and Ms. Dea does her best to do just that.
During her travels for the school, she has been to eleven countries including, Colombia, Brazil, South Korea, Singapore, and Spain. Her favorite country so far is Vietnam, which she says has great food and an amazing culture. She also heavily recommended Mexico, in particular Mexico City, where she says that the street art is incredible and vibrant and that the little food stands that are found on the sidewalks are always incredible. And finally, one of her favorite countries was Germany, where she said, “I was in a different city every day.” She visited Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, Berlin, and Hamburg. She said that one of her favorite aspects of her trip to Germany was the delicious bread and raspberry preserves that she had during breakfast. While in South Korea, when visiting alumni from the class of ‘95, they went out to eat Korean BBQ, and although it was hard to pick from the many options, she said it was her favorite meal that she had had on her travels. When traveling to so many different countries in such a short amount of time, one would think that jet lag would start to take a toll on her fatigue, but Ms. Dea says staying active is the best way to stay awake.
Ms. Dea is excited for the future as she wants to diversify the school even further by trying to break into different countries, including Saudi Arabia, which she will be visiting this coming year in November. She has a lot of very exciting plans for the future of this school regarding its international diversity and can’t wait to explore many more new countries and continue to share her journey with us.
