SEED School, Co-founded by Eric Adler '86,
Profiled in New York Times Magazine

by Michael Lott
9/28/2009

Eric Adler '86, a member of the Swarthmore College Board of Managers, is a co-founder of the Schools for Educational Evolution and Development (SEED) School of Washington, D.C., an innovative public boarding school. An article in the September 25, 2009 edition of the New York Times Magazine profiles the school and its students.

Adler, along with co-founder Rajiv Vinnakota, believed that children from inner-city neighborhoods needed a more secure and supportive social and academic environment for their education. As such, SEED provides more than just classes. A residential program (students stay there during the school week), SEED gives students extensive life skills counseling, college preparation, and even the scholarship-funded opportunity to study abroad during the summers. These efforts pay off: SEED students' college acceptance rate tops 97%, and it has been lauded by President Barack Obama as "a true success story."

Adler, an economics and engineering double major at Swarthmore, left a job as a management consultant to start SEED and hopes to open more SEED schools in other cities (a Baltimore school opened last year). In addition to the New York Times Magazine article, he and the SEED school were featured in the December 2003 Swarthmore College Bulletin (PDF, pp. 18-21).