The Taft School
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| The Taft School | |
 |
|
| Non ut sibi ministretur sed ut ministret
Not to be served but to serve |
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| Established | 1890 |
| School type | Co-ed, Private, Boarding |
| Religious affiliation | None |
| Headmaster | William R. MacMullen '78 |
| Location | Watertown, Connecticut, USA |
| Campus | 220 acres (.89 square km) |
| Enrollment | 570
Boarding: 464 Day: 106 |
| Faculty | 112 |
| Average class size | 12 |
| Student:teacher ratio |
5:1 |
| Average SAT scores (2005) |
Verbal: 651 Math: 655 |
| Athletics | 27 Interscholastic taftsports.com |
| Color(s) | Maroon, Navy Blue |
| Mascot | Rhino |
| Homepage | taftschool.org |
The Taft School is a private coeducational prep school located in Watertown, Connecticut. The School was founded by Horace Dutton Taft in 1890. It has 570 students, about 460 of whom live on the 220-acre campus. The Taft School is a member of The Ten Schools Admissions Organization.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Mr. Taft's School: 1890–1936
The Taft School got its start in 1890 when Horace Dutton Taft was invited by a family friend, Mrs. Robert Black, to head a brand new college preparatory school for boys in Pelham Manor, New York. Until then, Taft's experience as an educator had been limited to tutoring Latin at Yale, his alma mater. Here, presented with seventeen students of "extraordinary variety for how few they were," Horace Taft plunged headlong into the complete education of the boys, and indeed his own as a headmaster. Mrs. Black named the institution "Mr. Taft's School."
[edit] The Taft Family
Horace Taft's brother was William Howard Taft, who was elected President of the United States in 1908 and later appointed as the Tenth Chief Justice of the United States in 1921. Horace and Will enjoyed a close relationship and the president's two sons graduated from Taft. The year 1909 opened with great excitement for the Taft family. Will's second son, Charles Phelps, was among the younger boys in the school when his father was elected president. Horace felt it only right that Charles should be allowed to attend his father's inauguration but found it hard to justify Charles' absence to the rest of the school. Horace's solution was to rule that no boy could leave campus—except to attend his father's inauguration as president of the United States; President Taft, is said to have guffawed upon hearing this news.
The same year in which his brother became president, Horace Taft suffered a tremendous personal blow: his wife died from cancer. Winifred Taft had taken critical part in the operation and sustenance of the new school, supporting her husband in his ideals and work, managing the school's finances, and in the myriad activities she planned with and for the students. She had also developed close friendships and associations in Watertown, and become a literary and intellectual leader in her circle. Horace Taft described her death as "the kind of blow that divides a man's life in two."
For years Horace and Winifred Taft together had envisioned a proper boarding school campus for their prospering enterprise, and planned to build it on their land on Nova Scotia Hill, some two miles distant. During the last years of her life, Winifred had been collaborating on architectural plans for a new school building with the New York firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson. However, Mrs. Taft's illness made the relocation impracticable, and the campus developed in situ, just off the Watertown Green. The present-day heart of the school, HDT and CPT Halls, which house the administrative offices, reception areas, classrooms and auditorium, date from the first major construction phases of 1912–13 and 1929–30.
In 1908–10 "The Annex", the school's first building project, was constructed opposite the Warren House, where the Taft parking lot is now. This large, gambrel-roofed building served as a dormitory for students and faculty for the next fifty years. In 1911 a wooden gymnasium was built where HDT Hall stands now. The school's incorporation in 1912 was followed by the first major construction phase, with the building of Horace Dutton Taft Hall (1913–14), following Bertram Goodhue's design.
[edit] A new campus
In order to raise the necessary funds to develop the campus, the privately owned school was turned over to a board of trustees in 1926. With major new funds in place, the school built Martin Infirmary (now MacIntosh House) and staff residence (Congdon). The main campus soon took on its present-day form as the Warren House was torn down and replaced with Charles Phelps Taft Hall and Bingham Auditorium in 1929–30. The student body had grown to 323 boys, the faculty numbered 27. Taft's mission was to educate "the whole boy." Most graduates in Mr. Taft's time went on to Yale, and there many became class leaders and Phi Beta Kappa students. According to a student at the time, while the classroom atmosphere was "rigorous and unyielding, there existed quite a close and warm relationship out of class between us boys and our masters. Perhaps that was due to the amazingly high ratio of one master for every ten boys. More probably it was fostered by the colorful personalities of the members of the teaching staff which drew young man to them. We knew them well, and they us, and the net result was very good indeed." Athletics, music, drama, literary, and other club activities provided outlets for various extracurricular talents, and an alternative context for student-faculty interaction.
Headmaster Taft himself got to know his charges. Early on he began the long tradition of hosting small groups of boys for Sunday suppers in his living quarters. These evenings provided an informal setting for discussions of "any subject from European politics to the last unpopular rule adopted by the faculty."
In 1936, after 46 years as headmaster, Horace Dutton Taft retired. Since his inauspicious start at Pelham Manor he had come to be regarded as one of the most revered headmasters in New England. After a year away, he returned to teach his favorite course—Civics—to Taft seniors.
[edit] The Cruikshank Era, 1936-1963
In February of the following year a search committee appointed the man who would succeed Horace Taft as headmaster. Paul Fessenden Cruikshank seemed a perfect fit: a Blair Academy and Yale graduate who had majored in law and history, a past teacher and coach at Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven and at the Gunnery, and founder of the Romford School in nearby Washington, Connecticut. Surely Mr. Taft appreciated the close parallels to his own career and was pleased with the appointment. In the summer of 1936 Paul and Edith Fitch Cruikshank and their four children moved in to the Headmaster’s quarters in Horace Dutton Taft Hall. For his first year of retirement Horace Taft gracefully “exiled himself” to California. On his return to Watertown, Cruikshank invited Taft to take an active role in the life of the school. In addition to teaching his class in civil government, the former headmaster spoke weekly at Vespers and hosted Sunday suppers for seniors at his home. Cruikshank later wrote of Horace Taft: “Close as he was to the school and active as he was in its life, he never once offered me gratuitous advice.” While he was a strict and serious Headmaster known for his unrelenting emphasis on moral standards, respect for authority, and his famous insistence on gray flannels and wing-tips over khakis and loafers, Cruikshank believed deeply in the ability of the upperclassman to “regulate” himself so as to find his own balance between work and play. New privileges were extended to seniors and upper middlers (juniors) even as life was highly regimented, with compulsory meals (including breakfast,) daily Vespers, and church on Sundays.
[edit] The War Years
The War years had a profound effect upon campus life. The departure of much of the school’s staff for wartime work required that the boys take over responsibility for much of the daily care of the school. Student monitors supervised student KP duty, waited on dining tables (previously the task of staff waitresses) and cleaned classrooms, halls, stairs and other public spaces. While they continued to be the ones to clear the hockey rink (which was then the Pond) the boys took over the tasks of mowing the campus grounds and harvesting fruit at local farms for the kitchen. In fact, so much work was done by the students in World War II that the school’s tuition dropped from $1,450 to $1,250. Another wartime change was the accelerated graduation program, instituted in 1943, in which rising seniors took a summer semester so that they could graduate from Taft in February. Cruikshank felt strongly that the boys finish their secondary education before entering the military. Many faculty members also left Taft temporarily to join the war effort. At Vespers the headmaster would read the names of alumni killed in the line of service; in all there were 59. Cruikshank’s great legacy was the expansion of the curriculum and the increase in academic standards at Taft. While student enrollment stayed fairly steady at 345 boys between 1930 and 1960, the faculty grew by 50%, the course selection by 200%, and many AP course were introduced. During the 1940s and early '50s the number of student clubs exploded as well, owing in part to wartime advances in technology and skills, such as chemistry, navigation, radio, ski and outing. Debates with other New England prep school teams, especially arch rivals Choate and Hotchkiss in the Triangular Cup, continued to be popular. One of the most exciting and enterprising events of the time took place in the year 1949-1950, when hockey coach and math teacher Len Sargent decided to build an artificial ice rink for Taft. After traveling the country on a fund-raising trip that summer, he returned to Watertown and mobilized over 3,000 hours of help from students and faculty to construct the first such facility in the independent-school world. After the structure was given a roof, the resulting quantum leap in practice time helped to ensure Taft’s dominance in the prep school ice hockey league for more than a decade. There were many other additions and improvements to the campus during the Cruikshank years, including the purchase of faculty houses, construction of an up-to-the-minute science center in 1960, a language lab, the “New Gym,” and the interior rehabilitation of several of the main buildings. Edith Cruikshank was universally regarded as a gracious, maternal figure by the boys and known for her tea and cinnamon toast gatherings in the Headmaster’s quarters. She was appreciated particularly for her special efforts to study the photo and file of each new boy before he arrived on campus in the fall, so she would know every student’s name and something about their background. Her kindliness may have been most appreciated by the youngest members of the community, the eighth graders, who formed the junior class until the level was phased out in 1958. As with all headmasters' wives, Mrs. Cruikshank’s job included hosting visiting parents, dignitaries, and athletic teams, and accompanying her husband on frequent school-related travels, in addition to raising four children.
[edit] The Esty Years, 1963-1972
In 1963 Paul Cruikshank retired, and the Board of trustees hired John Cushing Esty, associate dean and instructor in math at Amherst College, to be the next headmaster.
He and his wife Katharine, an author and mother of their three children, took over Taft at the dawn of the tumultuous '60s. With his energetic intellect and ambitious ideals, Esty set out to renew the educational experience at Taft. His mission was to question some of the traditional tenets of education and to introduce opportunities and experiences that would foster the development of students’ identities and self-esteem as they moved from adolescence into young adulthood.
Esty recast the mold of the headmaster and asked new things of the faculty: to foster their students’ reflection on the experiences and material they were exposed to, rather than be asked simply to know it. Like other younger educators of his generation, Esty encouraged critical thinking and active discussion inside and outside the classroom.
In 1961, he hired a 20-year old teacher named Lance Odden, fresh out of Princeton, who began offering a course in Far Eastern History. Until then, history offerings had been confined to the traditional categories of Ancient, Medieval, European and American. Russian History and Asian Studies were soon added.
Ideally, for Esty, good work habits and achievement should be discovered by the student himself, and learning be its own reward. Accordingly, one of Esty’s first initiatives was the Independent Studies Program, which he introduced in 1964 under Lance Odden’s supervision. This was intended to allow the more mature senior boy to follow a chosen field of interest with a teacher’s guidance, and to exert some control over his own life at school. He was not required to attend classes, or the job program or athletics, and exempted from some of the dormitory rules, but was expected to complete all regular course work and behave responsibly. The early IS projects ranged from literary criticism and playwriting to an analysis of American foreign policy in Latin America and the construction of a harpsichord. The program brought a host of distinguished visiting speakers, professors and artists to campus, such as Robert Penn Warren and Archibald MacLeish.
Esty’s experiment in education included changes in daily school life for all students. The Sunday schedule was loosened considerably, allowing boys to sleep in, and to attend the church of their choice in the afternoon. Where Vespers under Horace Taft and Paul Cruikshank had been a formal, serious function with only the headmaster and the most senior faculty presiding, or perhaps a guest speaker, Sunday Vespers was eliminated, and the weekday Vespers format was opened to a wide array of students and faculty as well as outside presenters. Before he finished his decade as headmaster, Esty and the school's trustees began the giant move toward co-education. In the spring of 1971, 82 girls entered Taft.
[edit] Lance Odden’s Headmastership, 1972-2001
In 1972, the school’s second year of co-education, Lance Odden was named the new headmaster. In 1966 he had spent a year and two summers studying for his M.A. in history at the University of Wisconsin, writing his graduate thesis “U.S. Relations with China, 1929-31.” Odden’s intellectual passion for history and Asian Studies was balanced by his career in coaching the boys’ varsity lacrosse and hockey teams. His wife, Patsy Odden, would become assistant director of athletics and coach of the hugely successful girls’ varsity hockey teams.
Odden’s mission at Taft was to put the school on a comparable footing with the other principal New England prep schools at a time when admissions were becoming increasingly competitive. For the next 29 years, the first couple directed and oversaw the transition to coeducation, the diversification of the student body, an explosion in the arts offerings, and a huge increase in the institution’s endowment. Major campus improvements during Odden’s time included the expansion of the athletic facilities, the construction of the Arts and Humanities Center, the Wu Math and Science Center, the renovation of the Library, Centennial Dormitory, and a second hockey rink.
The headmaster continued to teach until his retirement in 2001. During his 30-year tenure at Taft, Lance Odden became a leading figure in the roster of New England secondary school headmasters. In his years as headmaster he repeatedly echoed Horace Taft’s stated goals to “educate the whole (child)” and to urge upon his largely privileged students the importance of using their educations to contribute as responsible citizens and humane leaders in the world.
[edit] William R. MacMullen '78, 2001-
In February 2001, the Board of Trustees appointed its first Taft-educated headmaster -William R. MacMullen, ’78. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale and his master’s degree from Middlebury. MacMullen was hired as an English teacher in 1983, and had served as a dean and boys’ varsity soccer coach. As headmaster with a passion for teaching, he continues to offer a senior-level class in English. His wife Pam is also an English teacher, dean, and coach at Taft. “Mr. and Mrs. Mac,” as they are affectionately known by students, have two boys, John and Tom. MacMullen is the school’s fifth Headmaster in its 116-year history.
[edit] Campus and facilities
The campus is located in Watertown, Connecticut, and is approximately 220 acres in size. It includes an 18-hole golf course, 12 tennis courts, 8 squash courts, 2 fieldhouses, 2 ice hockey rinks, and more than 10 fields all situated around Potters Pond.
[edit] Dorms
There are eight dorms on the Taft Campus. There are 3 boys' dorms including Charles Phelps Taft (CPT), Horace Dutton Taft (HDT), and ISP. There are 5 girls' dorms including Mac, Centennial, Congdon, Vogelstein (Vogue), and Upper School Girls' Dormitory (USGD/The Rock).
[edit] Students
In 2005, Taft had 570 students from 33 states and 19 foreign countries. The school hosts students in 9th through 12th grades as well as Post Graduate (PG) students. Students are referred to by their grade's common name such as Lower Mids, Mids, Upper Mids, and Seniors. A dress code (pithily summarized by the "collared shirt, no denim" dictum) is required for all students. There are currently 470 boarders and 100 day students. .
[edit] Faculty
The faculty at the Taft School includes 61 men and 51 women, a total of 112 teachers. Consequently, there is a 5:1 student to teacher ratio. The majority of the Taft faculty live on campus, in both private houses scattered across the grounds, or in apartments in the dorms. Each floor of each dorm has at least one faculty apartment.
[edit] Academics
There are over 207 academic courses offered at the Taft School. The average class consists of 12 students. Advanced Placement courses are offered in 24 disciplines, including Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Spanish Literature, Spanish Language, French Literature, French Language, Latin, European History, American History, American Government, AB and BC Calculus, Statistics, Chemistry, Biology, Physics B and C, and Environmental Science, Studio Art, Music Theory, Music History, English Literature, Economics, and Computer Science AB.
[edit] Class of 2006
- Average SAT I Verbal: 651
- Average SAT I Math: 655
- From the middle 50% of the class, combined SAT scores ranged from 1190–1400
[edit] College acceptance
For the past three years, approximately 28% of the Senior Class was admitted to an Ivy League or Little Three college.
Another 23% was admitted to Boston College, Duke University, Georgetown University, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, Trinity College, Tufts University, University of North Carolina, University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt University.
[edit] Notable alumni
- Trey Anastasio '83, Phish lead guitarist
- Jeff "Skunk" Baxter '67, musician (Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers)
- Benjamin Moore Belcher '32, chief executive of the Benjamin Moore Paint Company
- Peter Berg '80, Actor/Director
- Laurence Bergreen '68, author Voyage to Mars
- Darren Bragg '87, Professional Baseball Player
- Tim Breen '60, Guggenheim fellow, author, professor
- Alexander Burnham '45, editor Virginia Quarterly Review
- Mary Chapin Carpenter '76, Grammy-award winner
- Eliza Clark '03, Actor, playwright
- Spencer Treat Clark '05, Actor Mystic River
- Barnaby Conrad '40, founder Santa Barbara Writers Conference, author of Matador
- Barnaby Conrad '70, author
- Will Dana '81, managing editor Rolling Stone
- Stevan Dedijer, founder of the Research Policy Institute, Croatian Intelligence
- James Driscoll '96, Professional Golfer
- The Dude of Life '83
- David Edwards '70, professor, author, filmmaker
- Dr. Paul Ehrlich '62, Pediatric allergist
- Steven Erlanger '70, New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief
- James Franciscus '57, actor
- Varian Fry '26 journalist and 'the American Schindler'
- Don George '70, travel author, editor Lonely Planet
- Alfred G. Gilman '58, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine
- Richard Ginman '66, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy
- Sarah "Pease" Herndon Glaser '79, Olympic silver medal, 2000, women's sailing, 470
- Mason Gross '29, president of Rutgers University
- Otis Guernsay '36, editor, Best Plays
- Geoffrey Hellman '24, New Yorker columnist
- Henry Hillman '37, Industrialist, philanthropist
- Philip K. Howard '66, lawyer and author, Death of Common Sense
- Harold "Doc" Howe '36, U.S. commissioner of education 1965-68
- Robert Johnson '14, president of Temple University
- Peter Karsten '56, professor and author
- Deane Keller '19, artist, Yale professor
- Patrick Kerney '95 Pro Bowl Defensive End for the Atlanta Falcons
- Thomas Kuhn '40, author of Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Ralph Lee '53, Guggenheim fellow and Obie Award winner
- Thomas Losee '59, publisher Architectural Digest
- Maynard Mack '27, Shakespearean scholar, Yale University
- Elmore McKee '14, first Yale University chaplain 1926-30, author [The People Act]
- John Merrow ’59, Peabody award-winning journalist and producer
- Joseph Irwin Miller '27, American industrialist, Cummins Engine Company
- Peter Miller '72, magazine publisher
- AJ Mleczko '93, Olympic gold and silver medalist
- Rollin Osterweis '25, Yale Professor, debate society (taught George W. Bush and John Kerry)
- Jacinto Peynado '59, vice president, Domincan Republic
- Baaron Pittenger, Jr. '44, Executive Director U.S. Olympic Committee 1987-90
- Joyce Poole '74, biologist, expert on Elephants
- Robert Keyes Poole '50, conservationist
- Barbara Potter '79, hall of fame professional tennis player
- Mark Winslow Potter '48, artist
- Sumner Chilton Powell, pulitzer-prize winning historian
- Josh Quittner '75, author, editor Business 2.0
- Manuel Rocha '69, U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia 2000-02
- James Stillman Rockefeller '20, Olympic gold medalist, 8-man rowing (Paris, France)
- Steve Sandvoss (Actor) ('98)
- Tammy Shewchuk '96, Canadian Olympic gold medalist, 2002, women's ice hockey
- Fred Small '70, singer-songwriter
- Earl T. Smith: United States Ambassador to Cuba (1958-59)
- Cheves Smythe '47, physician, professor
- Michael Patrick William Stone '42, secretary of the Army 1989-95
- Robert Sweet '40, U.S. District Court Judge, Southern District of New York
- Robert Taft '05, U.S. Senator from Ohio 1939-53, majority leader
- Robert Taft, Jr., Republican Congressman 1963-65, 1967-71, Senator 1971-76
- Robert Alphonso "Bob" Taft II '59, Governor of Ohio
- William Howard Taft III '33, ambassador to Ireland
- John Vogelstein '53, Investor, Philanthropist Prep for Prep
- Robert F. Wagner, Jr. '29, Mayor of New York
- Arthur Waldron '66, historian, author
- David Kenyon Webster '40 (1922–1961), American soldier, journalist and author
- John Welchli '46, Olympic silver medalist, Melbourne, 1956
- Palmer West '92, film producer
- George Weyerhaueser '44, chairman, Weyerhaueser Company
- Richard Wright '78, producer
- Cap'n Crunch '12, Namesake
