Remembering Dan Bartels

Perhaps it was his passion, curiosity, and creativity that attracted colleagues, students, and their parents to him from the time he arrived in 2015 as the School’s first STEAM coordinator and, in short order, established himself as its resident robotics guru.

 

Perhaps it was his varied and supremely interesting background and the circuitous path that led him to North Mooreland Road.

 

Perhaps it was the mentorship he provided his charges and the example he set by working long hours and leaving no stone unturned in his pursuit of both personal and programmatic excellence.

 

Perhaps it was his gentle, encouraging nature, his collaborative spirit, and his desire to draw the best from his students, challenge them to think deeply, make them better than even they thought they could be, and learn wide-eyed along with them.

 

Perhaps it was his smile, which seemed a constant, his fatigue and stress levels notwithstanding.

 

Perhaps, too, it was his courage, which he displayed in full measure over in recent years as he dealt valiantly with the cancer that encroached upon his body but not his heart and soul, battled it with every fiber of his being, and set an example for all whose paths crossed his.

 

Truly, it was all of the above, and when he slipped peacefully away on the morning of Sept. 6, it was clear that the insidious disease had not defeated him but had just reached the finish line first.   

 

“What will be missed about Daniel is his presence on campus,” said Billy Peebles, Interim Head of School, in his announcement to the Collegiate Family on Bartels’s passing. “Daniel would draw colleagues and students in with his affable, larger-than-life grin, and he would keep them coming back just to hear someone speak so passionately about new ideas and creative approaches that were hallmarks of his transformational way of teaching.”

 

A native of Cincinnati, Bartels once described himself as an aimless high school student who had a C average but tested well enough to earn a Presidential Honors Scholarship to Thomas More College in Kentucky.

 

After three semesters, he dropped out and worked for Greenpeace throughout the Midwest advocating for a variety of environmental issues, including clean water.

 

After that, he worked for an electrical contractor, moved to Richmond, worked the night shift at UPS while working by day for Hirsch Oriental Rugs in Carytown, and enrolled at VCU to study art history with an emphasis on Islamic art, with the dream of learning Arabic and Farsi and making the textile business and Middle Eastern art his career.

 

Life once again interfered with school when he and some friends founded a rock band, cut albums, and toured widely.

 

In 1997, he returned to VCU to study math and physics and, to pay the bills, accepted a job with Visual Aids Electronics. Through that connection, he did sound work with, among others, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, President Bill Clinton, Vice-President Al Gore, and Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks.

 

After turning down a position as audio engineer for NATO Radio, he returned to VCU and finished his math/physics degree with a GPA just under 4.0.

 

In 2002, he signed on at Hanover High School, where he taught math and physics and, at the behest of the principal, started a robotics program which quickly became well subscribed.

 

“I thought it was awesome,” he said in an interview shortly after he arrived at Collegiate. “It was exactly what I needed when I was in high school. When I saw the impact it had on kids, I never looked back.”

At Collegiate, he quickly created a transcendent, world class robotics program that over the years competed with the best in international events, won a host of honors, and earned the abiding respect of the cognoscenti in the world of STEAM.

His greatest accomplishment, though, was winning the hearts and minds of his protégés, lighting the spark that enabled them to pursue their passions, and unlocking a world of wonder that they might never have known without his humbly bestowed and heartfelt guidance and inspiration.

“Daniel has been a disruptor in the best sense of the word since he stepped on campus,” said Peebles, referencing Bartels’s ability to push students and colleagues to think deeply and reflectively. “The lives he transformed, the careers he positively influenced, and the minds he touched with his unwavering passion and wisdom as an educator — these are the things that will live on in his memory.”
~Weldon Bradshaw

Editor’s note: Official memorial details will be shared with the community on the Collegiate School website when available.