Meet the New Faculty: Cam Spaulding CdeP 1992

A recent addition to Thacher’s faculty team, Cam Spaulding has already become involved with many aspects of the community in the short time that he has been here. As a teacher, Spaulding is teaching two senior English electives: “Magic in Service of Truth” and “Perspectives on Nature.” He is also the head of the outdoor program and will be coaching boys lacrosse in the spring. Apart from his Thacher duties, Spaulding has continued to run Golden Trout over the summer, which he has done for years. Spaulding’s deep love for the outdoors is obvious, as shown through the roles that he holds both inside and outside of Thacher.

Spaulding has always been passionate about nature and the wilderness. After finishing school at Lewis & Clarke College in Portland, Oregon, he walked 1,700 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail from the Oregon-Washington border home to Golden Trout. He then worked as a wrangler on a 13,000-acre ranch near Missoula, Montana for 6 years, training horses and taking people riding. He also worked at SUWS (The School of Urban and Wilderness Survival) in Gooding, Idaho, which is a behavioral modification program helping high school students who struggle with issues such as drug use. At SUWS, the students and teachers lived in the high desert for three weeks at a time, learning survival skills like creating friction fires and using traps and snares. 

After graduating from Thacher in 1992, Spaulding returned 10 years later during his class reunion. There, Spaulding talked to then Head of School, Michael Mulligan, and acquired a position working at Thacher as a riding instructor in 2002. He then became the head coach of the boys’ lacrosse team, a position he held for ten years, as well as coaching the JV Girls soccer and basketball teams. He followed these positions by running the program at Golden Trout and teaching different sorts of classes.

When asked about his favorite Thacher memory, Spaulding reflected on his time coaching. During our interview, he recalled a specific moment that he shared with the girls’ JV basketball team. A senior who had been on the team for years but had yet to score a point finally made a free throw in the last quarter of her final game. What made this moment so special for Spaulding was seeing the player’s hard work finally pay off. 

In 2018, Spaulding left Thacher to start a wilderness school of his own near Yosemite in Mariposa, California. However, his life changed course after a devastating fire destroyed his home in July 2022. Later that year, when Thacher offered Spaulding the position as head of the outdoor program, he accepted it. 

Since Spaulding has been involved with Thacher for such a long time, he possesses a unique perspective on the ways in which Thacher has changed over the years. One of the biggest changes he has witnessed has been the increasing diversity in the student and faculty population. He notes that the Thacher seems much more centered on principles of inclusion, which is a positive shift that makes the school feel like a new place. Although Thacher has changed a lot since his previous time here, the outdoor program has remained an important part of Thacher life. Spaulding feels that the camping experience as a whole is a key part of the Thacher experience that is important for students to partake in. He carries this same love for the outdoors into his various roles at Thacher, as he exposes students to the outdoors through teaching classes and leading backpacking trips. 

We asked several students to reflect on their experiences with Mr. Spaulding in these settings. 

Louisa Tennant ’24 is a student in Spaulding’s senior elective class on Perspectives on Nature. “It’s my favorite Thacher English class by far. Sometimes we do class outdoors which is really cool because it’s a class about the outdoors,” Tennant says. 

Brady Vondriska ’25 remarks, “During my sophomore fall EDT, Mr. Spaulding could not have been a better trip leader, role model, and overall great person. His knowledge of our outdoors seemed to never end. Whether mentioning the types of plants you can and cannot eat to knowing where every freshwater spring in the Sespe wilderness is, he simply knew everything. I have been in the backcountry with a lot of people at all levels of experience, and I can say without a doubt, Mr. Spaulding was one of the best.”

Looking ahead, Spaulding has high hopes for the future of Thacher and its backcountry program. He wishes to create a trip planning center which would establish an area where resources around camping would be kept in one place. He also aims to create a library of trips and codify the program, making it easier and more organized for everyone to go on trips. Spaulding also recognizes that another important aspect of camping is to consider the history behind the land that you are on, and believes it would be beneficial for students to learn about the natural history of the land that they are going to be exploring during their camping trips.

With Spaulding as a member of the community, Thacher’s future looks promising. His goals to improve the backcountry program and influence seniors’ experiences with nature-oriented English classes have already made an impact on many students.