The light in Patty Kovacs’ office is stained green as it filters through the backless bookshelf leaning against her window and holding carefully arranged plants. This light fills a small room, artfully decorated with Chinese prints. A bowl of Hershey’s Kisses sits on a table by the door.
Few people leave Ms. Kovacs’ office without a nugget to take with them, whether a piece of wisdom or chocolate.
Now, upon her retirement, Ms. Kovacs and her husband, David, a U-High alumnus, have started an endowment at U-High for nontuition needs of juniors and seniors going through the college process — a final act in support of the community she has nurtured for 27 years.
Senior Joshua Carter has been meeting with Ms. Kovacs since the second semester of his junior year, when the college counseling process begins. He has one word to describe her: warmth.
“She’s so joyful,” he said, “and she’s genuinely interested in understanding people, and learning about people in a very vulnerable way. And to do that, she has to cultivate that environment of warmth.”
Ms. Kovacs’ goal is to understand her students and help them gain a greater understanding of themselves.
“I want to strive for the nuance and the personal story,” she said. “Yes, that’s the thing that is most rewarding about this job, is to see the plot develop.”
Camille Baughn-Cunningham, a high school counselor, has worked with Ms. Kovacs for 19 years. She describes Ms. Kovacs as a caretaker.
“She helps people grow and thrive in her role as a college counselor and simply as a person,” Dr. Baughn-Cunningham said. “So I think the Lab community will recognize that aspect of her as well as just her expertise as a college counselor.”
Beyond working at U-High for 30 years, Ms. Kovacs has far-reaching roots at Lab. Her children, her husband and her in-laws went to U-High. Her mother in-law even worked at U-High as a librarian.
Ms. Kovacs’ parents grew up in poverty during the Great Depression. Their belief in the importance of education, as well as her family’s history with U-High, inspired her to start this endowment.
“My dad made sure that we could pursue our educational goals, and he always made us promise that we would help other people do that,” she said. “It’s in honor of him and my mom and it’s in honor of the fact that my husband and my kids graduated from here.”
This endowment allows Ms. Kovacs to continue to provide for students at U-High during the college process, just as she has throughout her career.
As a college counselor, she considered her greatest responsibility to be understanding to her students and excavating their stories.
“I love working on the essays because it is giving students the courage to tell their own story, their own voice,” she said. “Sometimes there needs to be an affirming presence that gives them permission to be their authentic self.”
Storytelling is central to Ms. Kovacs’ counseling style. She often shares personal stories during meetings with the goal of providing a space where students feel comfortable sharing their own stories, and exploring how to define themselves.
She said, “I want my students at the end of this process to be fulfilled that they’ve been their truest self.”
On a shelf above her bowl of Hershey’s Kisses, sits a line of chipped white mugs, gifts from former students. Each is stamped with a colorful college logo: a bright purple Northwestern “N,” Princeton’s orange tiger. In a room filled with elegant Chinese art and dark wood furniture, the selection of merchandise stands out, an aesthetic testament to the lives and futures she has helped shape.
