Lawrence Wall, Head of Upper School, eagerly extols the contributions of Abigail Cudabac, the Academic Dean and his colleague in Upper School administration for the past two decades: “The thing that is almost immediately perceptible to people is how intelligent Dean Cudabac is,” he says, quietly but forcefully. “In real time, she can synthesize things in a way that is complete but efficient. In a conversation that covers many considerations, she misses nothing; that points to significant brain power at work, but it also demonstrates that she is listening intently. One of her greatest qualities is that, whip-smart as she is, she is never unkind or impatient with the rest of us. She cares very much. And of course, her work is fundamental to the operation of our school: overseeing academics involves the hopes and dreams of students and parents and teachers who are all in this together.” We spoke with Dean Cudabac in her Upper School office.

Tell us something that people might not know about your job.

People probably assume that when I arrive in the morning, I more or less know what the day is going to hold — that’s rarely true. This is a time of year when we’re working simultaneously on admissions for next year, and making plans for teachers and staffing and the course catalog. But sometimes it’s just about being on hand to meet a need. I enjoy the days where I get to do several kinds of things. That would include having teachers come to talk, or when a student stops by to ask a question. It’s not a happy circumstance all the time, but it’s often a fulfilling one. In each of those encounters, there’s a chance to get a different perspective on what the school is to different people. Their wants and needs might look very different, but ultimately they are all headed to the same goal: to serve the students’ education, which doesn’t always mean serving their desires.

You were the Upper School Registrar between 2004 and 2020. How did that position prepare you to be the Academic Dean?

The course catalog was on paper, for at least my first decade. I became involved in it, thinking through the core sequencing and the curricular elements, having conversations with department chairs about what made sense for their department, and with Lawrence to be sure that it fit into the scope of what works for Upper School. And because I have a data-centered mind, people would ask me for information: “Can we look at the last 10 years of AP scores and grading information for these classes and see if we can find any trends?” Doing those projects gave me a deep insight into Upper School and its needs. I also served on committees such as the one that planned the Inlustrate Orbem Building, which meant discussing what we needed in an academic building.

Did anything surprise you about that process?

It was the largest amount of glass I’d ever seen in an academic building. The architect’s vision, which he took from our teachers and administrators, was the idea of a community that sees each other. We wanted rooms that would be varied in size. An intimate location can create just the right atmosphere for a smaller class, but that also builds in some new complications — it’s more challenging to schedule classes. It’s very easy to slot things into units of the same size.

How does the Upper School scheduling process work?

After students register for classes, I ask our software to create a master schedule for our teachers. I print it out: sometimes I tape it to my walls so I can think it through. If we can schedule only 320 students into third block, then I know there aren’t enough classes there. If the computer has suggested that we have four ninth-grade English classes in the same block, that’s probably not going to be workable in our schedule. And then I start to adjust: well, this person’s also teaching 10th grade, so we can switch those two classes. 

You make some adjustments that seem logical — although I’m always worried that the computer version was perfect and I’ve just messed it up — and then you ask the software to schedule the students. If we ended there, we would have a great number of unhappy people. It’s usually most successful with tenth and 11th graders, and less so with ninth and 12th graders. The ninth graders don’t have a dedicated free period, so they have less flexibility. And the 12th graders have a wider variety of courses to choose from, so it’s harder to fulfill all their requests. That’s when the really slow part happens, going through each student’s schedule and seeing what adjustments can be made.

Do you remember a proposed course that seemed implausible but that turned out great?

The history department had a request to reframe their themed semester classes, which were typically called electives, as seminars. They wanted to attract students who were interested in the kind of historical inquiry that they would have when they headed off to college. Many of the seminars were interesting and turned out well, but the one that comes to mind was Whitney Duquette’s course, Food in World History. My first reaction was “What is this, a recipe hour?” Which clearly it wasn’t, because she wouldn’t have proposed that. When we started looking at it more deeply, we realized that it would include trade patterns and international relations and culture.

What were you like as a teenager?

Oh, boring. I grew up in Charlotte, so I was at West Charlotte High School here in town. I was in a choir outside of school and I was the one always reading a book. I was not the one on sports teams.

What are some books you’ve loved over the years?

My junior year of high school, I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby. I read Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude for the first time in ninth grade, which was too early, and I needed to go back and do it again later. I read it then because my older sister was a senior and she was supposed to read it for English class, and she got to page 43. She said, “I quit. I don’t understand this book — I’m just going to write my paper on the first 43 pages.” I said, “Well, I’m going to read it.” More often now, I’ll read mysteries and British procedurals. I’m a big fan of Dorothy Sayers: my mother actually wrote her master’s thesis on Dorothy Sayers.

What are you good at outside your life here at Latin?

I have surprised myself over the last seven years by being a good nonprofit board member at the Charlotte Choir School, including three years as the president of the board. There are some skills I’ve mastered here that have served me in that environment. I’m an introverted person, and board president is not a naturally introverted role. But I’ve learned to talk to people — and more importantly, listen to people — in ways that have made that a more natural fit for me.

Have you seen students change dramatically in four years of Upper School?

A student may have been at this school for years and years, and walk into Upper School thinking they’ve got the school pretty well figured out — and hit the wall in the ninth grade. That can be a little bit of immaturity and a little bit of “I’ve never had to do this on my own before.” And sometimes the student runs into a long-term health situation that carries across more than a single academic year. If you’ve been out of school for a long period of time, you lose your moorings. You don’t know where you are in your classes or how to proceed. I think the cases I’ve seen where a student has come out the other side of that, recovered, and had a successful high-school experience — honestly, they’re some of the best experiences. For the students, and for those of us who have been privileged to help them work through that. They come to the other side with newfound maturity and the kind of planning skills that are going to be gold for them for the rest of their lives.