Our Staff
Bill Cloyd, Founder
A mechanical engineer and former high school physics teacher, is founder and president of Newton’s Attic. From a young age, Bill was a natural engineer with a passion for designing and fabricating huge and complicated constructs that could be used to demonstrate both daredevil human feats and the principles of physics all in one. The 80 foot tower utilizing a circus net and tennis ball cannon to shoot falling human targets and the 40 foot trajectory human ‘lake launcher,’ still used by Lexington physics teachers, were early indications of Cloyd’s imagination and ambition. Frustrated by the confines of the classroom and exposed to the need of science and math teachers for resources to make their classes more appealing, Bill was inspired to create Newton’s Attic where he developed a highly engaging approach to educating students about the excitement, fun, and career opportunities available to them through physics and engineering. Using the concept of play as the ultimate learning tool, Newton’s Attic now has a library of programs that allow students to engage in hands-on design, fabrication and field-testing of their own mechanical devices in highly energized and competitive environments. Bill is a professional engineer with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and is also owner of an engineering consulting company, Mark IV, Incorporated.
Dawn Cloyd, Director of Community Outreach
Dawn is a former high school and adult education teacher with an undergraduate in English and Spanish, Masters in Education from John Carroll University in Ohio, and TESOL Certification from U.C. Santa Cruz. After teaching for four years in the Cleveland area and San Jose, California, she returned to Lexington in 2000 and joined her family’s engineering-driven high end loudspeaker manufacturing company, THIEL Audio, where she remained for thirteen years as Director of International Sales. Upon the sale of THIEL in late 2012, she joined Newton’s Attic as Director of Community Outreach, just after Newton’s Attic acquired its current facility. She loves working with her husband Bill and the wonderful students, parents, instructors and volunteers at Newton’s Attic.
