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Christian MacQuarrie Klein '91 & Kristin Leigh Newton '91

Senior Photo Foretells a Full Life Together

(First published in Technology Review, July 2005)

Kristin Newton and Christian Klein live in Arlington MA with their sons, Alex, 6, and Connor, 3.

In their senior year, Christian Klein and Kristin Newton were photographed by a classmate Kristine Chan-Lizardo (formerly AuYeung) to illustrate her project on gender roles. Several striking photos were blown up and mounted in the Stratton Student Center's fifth floor Athena cluster.

"Kristine AuYeung had us pose as a generic MIT fraternity-sorority couple," Kristin Newton recalls. "We'd just started dating, I was Alpha Phi and he was Phi Delta Theta, so it wasn't exactly a stretch."

While the photo remains, Klein and Newton have built a life together in the Boston area, establishing careers, marrying in 1994, and starting a family.

Christian MacQuarrie Klein is a partner and senior architect of Approach Architects in Boston. With double degrees in architecture and civil engineering, he returned to MIT and completed his master of architecture degree in 1997. He and his partner Bryan Poisson design and manage commercial, financial, and residential construction projects in New England and New York.

"One of our specialties is the banking industry," Klein says. For Wainwright Bank's new branch, his firm transformed a used-clothing store into a dazzling full-service bank and cyber-café in the heart of trendy Davis Square. "We provide large and small banks with architectural design services along with merchandising programs than create a seamless and integrated look."

Newton put her mechanical engineering degree to use as a physics teacher at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS). An IAP intensive on classroom teaching prompted her career shift into teaching. "Back then, education classes were only available through Wellesley," she explains. Dr. Harry West was her thesis advisor. "My project brought Harry's engineering contest concept to the high school level at Boston Latin and Cambridge Rindge and Latin. MIT supported that contest for several years." Before she'd graduated, CRLS recruited Newton to teach physics.

"Rindge and Latin is fascinating and the most diverse place - culturally, socially and economically.