Faculty Flashback: Eva Campodonico (Dr. C)

By Orhan HM. '25

About a year ago, I interviewed Jeff Sensabaugh as the first featured person in an article series exploring experiences of the many faculty and staff who were once students at College Prep themselves. Now, I’m back with the second article of the series, tracing the Science Department lineage to Dr. C (class of ’95). Buckle up for an insider look into her student experience and path back to College Prep, complete with Italian soccer chants, unexpected details (did you know she coached cross country?), and science analogies. Enjoy!

Note: the following interview has been edited for clarity and concision. 

Orhan: First, I wanted to just ask a little bit about your time as a student. One big part of the CPS experience is actually applying. What do you remember about applying to CPS?

Dr. C: I was excited because my older brother Gabriel (’90) and older sister Sophia (’93) both went to College Prep. I idolized my older siblings, so I was like, “Oh my God, I finally get to apply to their high school.” They didn't really want to have anything to do with me because I was their younger sister, so I was excited because I got to go do something that cool, like my older siblings. I had also had a year in a school which just didn't feel very good because the people weren't super friendly and the classes weren't that interesting. Everything I had heard about my siblings' time here said that there would be a really good shift at College Prep. 

I don't think I thought as carefully as students currently do about going to high school. My siblings had gone here and thought it was a really good match, so I trusted that and came here. I remember having to take a special CPS-exclusive entrance exam and being really nervous because I was not, and am not, a good standardized test taker. I took the test in the auditorium and remember being really, really happy when I got in, because I thought that I had tanked the test.

Orhan: Did your vision of what you thought CPS would be like play out?

Dr. C: I learned very quickly that I had a lot of learning to do. I came from doing most of my education at a Waldorf school, which focuses much more on the arts, so I didn’t have a rich background in learning how to write, read books, or practice strong math skills. I started in all the “ones” (Math 1, French 1…) but quickly learned that there was a lot of help for me here. Even if I was not as quick at some topics as other students, everybody wanted to help me. Really soon, I figured out that this was a fun place to learn. 

Orhan: What were some of your favorite classes?

Dr. C: Coming from Waldorf, I loved painting and drawing, so I signed up for every visual arts class I could, and probably took one every semester I was here. I also signed up for photography: hands down, my favorite art form while I was here was black and white photography. I got fancy in my senior year and officially assisted for a photo class, which mainly meant that I was in charge of cleaning up the dark room by myself.

The other class that was really amazing was AP Biology in my senior year, taught by Sharona Barzilay. She made it seem like such an interesting story that convinced me I needed to be a Bio major in college. Now, I kind of am Dr. Barzilay, because she taught AP Bio and Issues in Science, and now I teach junior bio and “Issues.” I'm having a little bit of an “I became my idol” moment. 

Still, I was primarily known as a visual artist at CPS, not as a science person. 

Orhan: I happen to know that Jeff Sensabaugh was already teaching here when you were a student. Did you take any classes with him? 

Dr. C: Yes! When I was a student here, we had two different flavors of physics for seniors to take, one called Senior Physics, and another called Physics with Calculus. Not having the required calculus knowledge, I took Senior Physics with Jeff during his first full year as a teacher. I remember Jeff teaching me about resonance and the centripetal force. 

Also, the kindest thing that Jeff did for me was that when he saw that I was really sick, he pulled me out of class and told me to go home. He was already a teacher who cared about his students enough to say, “No physics lesson takes importance over your health; you should go home.” When I came back to teach and saw him again, I thanked him for that.

Orhan: Outside of classes, what did your engagement look like on campus? 

Dr. C: Like I mentioned, I idolized my older siblings. My older brother was a rower for Oakland Strokes, so I knew I wanted to be a rower. Rowing isn’t a College Prep sport, but it used to be really popular: when I joined Strokes, I was one of a dozen or more College Prep students on the team. I was a rower for three of my four years but got injured in my senior year and couldn't row. 

Also, one of my best friends was a varsity volleyball player. From her freshman year, she was super tall and an amazing player. The Baldwin Gymnasium was being built when I got here, so when her team and that gym came into shape at the same time, that gym was packed and LOUD. There was a group of Italian students who would lead these soccer chants for the volleyball team. The one year that team got to state, it was especially crazy! I wasn't on the team–I'm way too short and do not have the ups for volleyball–but I got really invested and still love watching volleyball here. 

Clubs-wise, the culture was really different. There were fewer clubs, and the structure of experiential learning was different. Back then, it was called community service, and the idea was that we were students who should serve our community who were less well off. It was about dealing with food insecurity and collecting gifts for people who didn't have enough money to get gifts for their family. Since then, I like the shift away from the focus on what people have and don’t have.

I didn't have a very packed schedule, though. Rowing took up a lot of my time, and I also really liked hanging out with my friends.

Orhan: What did your path look like after CPS? 

Dr. C: After College Prep, I knew that I would be best suited in a small college, so I went off to Middlebury College. Middlebury gave me the same strong teacher relationships I was hoping for. For example, I had an amazing mentor/teacher, Dr. Spatafora, who helped me narrow my focus from science broadly to microbiology specifically.

After college, I didn't have a plan. I'm kind of known in my family for not having a plan. I had a girlfriend who was moving to New York City for a research technician position to bolster her med school application. So I figured I would move to NYC as well and ended up getting a job as a research technician at Weill Medical School (of Cornell), where I stayed for two years. One day, the person I worked for pulled me aside and said, “You're really good at this. You should apply to graduate school.” I didn’t say “whatever,” but I think I shrugged it off. I ended up applying anyway because she kept pushing me to. 

I knew I wanted to pursue infectious disease and microbiology, and Yale had a brand new program that was specifically interested in studying the interactions between pathogens and their hosts. The program aligned perfectly with my interest in studying these two sides of the infection coin, so I was really, really excited the day I learned I got into Yale. I did my PhD over the next six years, where I figured out some genes that a type of bacteria uses to infect cells (more on that in a Common Classroom maybe).

Orhan: How did you make your way back to College Prep?

Dr. C: I did develop one plan along the way, which was to become a teacher. I had the chance to teach a ton in college and graduate school, so my big plan was to be a liberal arts college type teacher, where I could work closely with college students. When I went to do my postdoc at UC Berkeley, I specifically picked a lab where the project I would be doing would develop my skills as a really good mentor for younger students. Unfortunately, I didn't end up having the kind of mentorship I was used to. The mentor I had didn't really help me cultivate my career and didn't really have my back. There was a point where I recognized that I needed to have an escape plan, because it was not gonna be possible for me to complete enough research to get the college teaching job I wanted. 

So, crazily, I remembered a College Prep teacher named Jack Coakley who also did some research before he became a high school teacher. I emailed Jack out of the blue after 15 years and said, “Hey, can we have coffee and can you tell me why you left research and started teaching?” I met him at Peets over by the Claremont Hotel, and we talked about what he loved about high school teaching. He told me to tell the school that I would be interested in giving a guest lecture, which would give me exposure to working with high school students. 

I ended up getting the chance to work here briefly as a sub and then apply for a position. So, lots of research, a little bit of planning, and now I'm a high school teacher and the rest is kind of history. 

Orhan: Can you expand a little on why teaching became your big plan along the way?

Dr. C: What I love about teaching that made moving away from research feel okay was, pardon the science metaphor, feeling like an enzyme: If I stayed in research, I was bound to work on a few projects over decades, whereas in teaching there is a new batch of people that I could show how cool science was, possibly inspiring them to join the world of science themselves. I really like contributing to that transformative moment when people find something they deeply enjoy, which I remember being done for me by Dr. Barzilay and Dr. Spatafora. I knew that giving people the chances that I had been given to find my passion was something I wanted to do.

Orhan: What has your role as a teacher at CPS looked like?

Dr. C: My first year here, I was recruited to teach biology, and I've taught between two and three sections of junior bio ever since. During my first year, I also taught one year of AP Environmental Science, which was not my background at all, but it was what the school needed me to do. I basically taught myself the content as we went along, which was fun but also terrifying. I was really relieved when they hired someone the year after who was much better equipped to teach that class. 

During my first year, Ms. DeVane also asked me to develop the STEM program. As a school, we were seeing that a lot of kids wanted hands-on experiences, and STEM was the first program that was piloted to provide that type of experience, followed shortly by STOAK. I spent the fall of my second year developing STEM before it launched in the spring. In total, I ran STEM for six years and loved the cycle of getting to work with an entirely new cohort each year. 

Eventually, though, I decided to make a shift in how I devoted my time. Running STEM meant that at the start of June, instead of looking ahead to three months off, I was just ramping up for a whole new phase of work. As just one of numerous commitments (see next question), I felt like I was taking on too much, which influenced my decision to pass the program on. 

Since then, I started teaching Issues in Science, and just recently in the past couple of yearsI developed Molecular Genetics (Molgen) as a class, which is really fun. 

Orhan: In my interview with Jeff, it came up that CPS teachers wore a lot of hats outside of purely teaching. Has that been your experience as well?

Dr. C: Definitely! During my first five-ish years here, I wore so many different hats: I was a teacher, developed STEM, got recruited by another science teacher to coach cross-country, and was added to a bunch of committees, partially to comment on the student experience as a former student myself. I think I even ran Intraterm for a year.

Over time, though, it became clear that I couldn't devote time to all of those commitments while also being a human that could sleep and have a world outside of school. So I made the tough decision to cut back on some of my responsibilities. Partially, I’m really glad that the pool of faculty has continued to grow, which has allowed me to do this and helps limit each teacher’s duties outside of the classroom. 

If there's one thing I would like to return to, I would love to be a cross-country coach again: I loved seeing students as athletes outside of the school context that I usually associate them with. For the moment, though, I am “just a teacher.”

Orhan: How has the school changed since you were a student?

Dr. C: Continuing off what we were just talking about, I think one of the biggest differences is the specialization of faculty in roles like Wellness, counseling, CAP, college planning, support for learning, and sports coaching. There has been a major shift since when I was a student and even since I started teaching again. It is wonderful to have faculty and staff dedicated to the success of these programs, often exclusively. First, they shoulder a lot of the burden that teachers otherwise had to pick up as secondary responsibilities. More importantly, I think it goes a long way to increase the quality of all of these vital programs that support in-class learning, ultimately enhancing the student experience. 

Past that, the school has made some really good choices around building a schedule that better accommodates the larger scope of work that high school encompasses, including supporting the development of great people, not just great students. I really appreciate that we as a school are making time for the student experience outside of the classroom, which was not something I lived as a student or saw as much of when I came back to Prep. As a teacher, it will always be hard every time classroom minutes go away, since there are topics to cut because I think they will be too rushed. At the same time, I am glad that we (College Prep) made the shifts we did to make time for CAP, Wellness, and the likes. 

Orhan: To wrap it up, what are some aspects of the school that you feel have stayed the same?

Dr. C: Despite the changes I mentioned, my experience returning to the school was dominated by a keen sense of familiarity. From when I was a student, continuing to today, College Prep has been a well-designed hive for students who are insanely enthusiastic to learn. I still remember my first year in college, where I was surrounded by people who were engaged but didn’t have the same level of unbridled joy for learning that CPS students have. In this respect, I wouldn’t say I experienced an environment quite like Prep until I returned. 

I think one of the reasons for this sustained culture is the wide base of long-time faculty, who preserve institutional memory and manifest the same culture that drew them to working here decades ago. I’ve noticed these teachers projecting their joy for learning to the newer teachers, who then share it with their students. 

I am just really grateful that students get to experience a space where enthusiasm for learning is embraced at College Prep, and that I get to return as an educator to this environment that I so loved as a student.