Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School’s The Culmen yearbook has turned its pages to be under the new direction of Kyle Townsend and Yolanda Chendak for the 2024-2025 school year. After formerly being advised by Amy Rutkowski and Christina Held, The Culmen’s shift to having two new advisors marks an opportunity for fresh perspectives as the team works on capturing this year’s memories.
“Having new advisors has been an exciting journey and [quite] a learning experience,” senior Emily McCall said. “I have high hopes for this [year’s] yearbook and I think this will mark a memorable first year as advisors for Mr. Townsend and Ms. Chendak.”
After major improvements were made to The Culmen last year, such as transitioning into a chronological format and including “spring supplements” to make its spring section appear more complete, The Culmen staff has dedicated 2024-2025 to be a “transitional school year” for the new advisors. McCall and her Co-Editor-in-Chief Mary Katherine Hoffman initially led yearbook meetings themselves to ease the learning process for their new advisors.
“It’s worth noting that my goals for the yearbook are mostly to empower the [students’] goals, because the yearbook is 100% student created,” The Culmen Co-advisor Kyle Townsend told The Fanscotian. “So part of the reason I wanted to [advise] with the yearbook is to facilitate that, because it’s very impressive what they do.”
Both yearbook advisors were excited to apply to be yearbook advisors considering their qualified experience for the job. Townsend had previously worked in corporate publishing and has a degree in magazine journalism, understanding much about the functions of a publication and editorials. Meanwhile, Chendak spent 12 years in advertising and marketing, then transitioned to teaching various art classes before taking on the yearbook advising role.
“Our [different] expertises [complements] the balance of the work in the yearbook,” The Culmen Co-advisor Yolanda Chandak said. “I take more ownership of the creative part [since] I’m [found] even drawing some of the graphics for the yearbook, while he has [his] editorial wheels going by looking at what [students] are writing.”
New positions come with new challenges, but Townsend and Chendak are up for them. The Culmen staff values communication and working together to grow amid the challenges. The Culmen staff is implementing weekly conference check-ins to enhance the communication between staff members.
Chendak and Townsend hadn’t met prior to finding out that they would be advising The Culmen for the 2024-2025 school year. Chendak reports an exciting experience so far working with Mr. Townsend and looks forward to the future.
“It’s been a good partnership [with Mr. Townsend] so far [as] we both have the same vision and goals,” Chendak said. “[It’s] something new [and] something different [because] I [never] worked with colleagues aside from working professionally.”
