Language Department Head Diana L. Beste has taken the job of Head of the Upper School at Greenwich Academy, the prestigious Fairfield County girls day school. She will leave Choate after this academic year, her 23rd here, on July 1st.
“I chose GA because I liked it geographically and I had seen the school before, so it was a draw,” said Ms. Beste, who lives and advises Homestead with her husband Bill Lustenader, a painter, and their three children, Julia, George, and Phil.
At Greenwich Academy, Ms. Beste will oversee the Upper School, which is comprised of grades 9 through 12 in the pre-K through 12 institution, which is slightly smaller than Choate at 784 students. The Upper School consists of 316 students and around 50 faculty members.
The new job will be quite a change for Ms. Beste. “I will be working with students far more,” she said, “and overseeing coordination of education with Brunswick,” a boys day school just minutes from G.A.
Ms. Beste holds degrees from the State University of New York at Brockport and the University of Massachusetts in classical studies, Latin, and classical humanities. In 1995, she studied in Rome with Reginald Foster, one of the world’s top Latin scholars and the Vatican’s chief translator. She received the Forest D. Dorn Chair, which carries a 10-year tenure, in 1996.
She came to Choate in 1983. “I was working in Rochester [NY] and wanted a job closer to New York City, where I’m from,” she said. “I saw the position and went for it. I had never stepped foot on or seen a boarding school in my life.”
She did not anticipate the job to be a long-term one at the time, certainly not one that would span for over two decades. “No, I didn’t envision it,” she said. “In one of my first years here I was out to dinner with [Librarian] Mr. [Craig] Warren and told him that I did not expect to stay for more than five years tops.”
While some teachers express feelings of jubilation and some of melancholy, Ms. Beste finds herself strangely in between. “To be honest, I’m very nostalgic about leaving Choate,” she said, “But I am also excited by the prospect of change.”
Choate’s Language Department has been fertile ground for up-and-coming secondary school administrators. Ms. Beste’s predecessor as Department Head, fellow Latin scholar Donald Firke, became Dean of Academic Affairs and, subsequently, Dean of Faculty at Choate and is now in his first year as Head of School of the Latin School of Chicago.
