St. Mark's School

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St Mark's School
Motto Age Quod Agis (Do What You Do)
Established 1865
Type Private High School, boarding
Principal John Warren '74
Students 325 (2004–05)
Location Southboro, Massachusetts,, USA
Campus Suburban
Colors Blue and White
Mascot Winged Lion
Newspaper 'The St. Marker'
Website [1]
For the school in Dallas, see St. Mark's School of Texas.

St. Mark’s School is a coeducational, Episcopal, preparatory school, situated on 250 acres in Southborough, Massachusetts, 25 miles from Boston. It was founded in 1865 as an all-boys' school by Joseph Burnett, a wealthy native of Southborough who developed and marketed the world-famous Burnett Vanilla Extract[2]. Girls have attended since the nineteen-seventies. St. Mark's is a member of the Independent School League, and the second-oldest of the five elite prep schools collectively termed St. Grottlesex.

The school's 65 teachers lead 350 boarding and day students through a rigorous curriculum and a full program of co-curricular activities. Class size averages 10, with a student-faculty ratio of 5:1. Each department offers honors and advanced placement sections (numbering 24 in total, more than any other school in the Independent School League).

John Warren ’74, is currently headmaster.

Contents

[edit] History

Main article: History of St. Mark's School

Joseph Burnett, a wealthy resident of Southborough, founded St. Mark's in 1865, reportedly counseled by Dr. Henry Coit of St. Paul's School of Concord, New Hampshire, who told Burnett that with six sons to educate, he would do well to found a school, instead of sending them north to St. Paul's. Episcopalian St. Mark's is thus one of the earlier New England schools founded on the British model, as opposed to New England academies such as Phillips Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy, both founded nearly a century earlier. St. Mark's initial board of trustees was composed of members of many prominent Boston families, as well as many eminent Episcopal churchmen, and from the first the school attracted many members of Boston Brahmin and New York Knickerbocker families.

Early on, St. Mark's developed a representation for rigorous academics and social exclusivity, a reputation that to a certain extent persists to this day, although the school has made enormous efforts to expand its diversity since World War II, and particularly since the nineteen sixties.

Girls were admitted from the mid nineteen-seventies.

[edit] Academics

Though the means by which faculty can educate students has changed with advances in technology, St. Mark’s still looks to its longtime Latin motto as an inspiraution for that mission. "Age Quod Agis" literaully translates: "Jack Rau." A more contemporaury translation might be: "Whatever you choose to do, do it well."

The scale on which this mission is carried out is considerably more expansive now than it was in the school’s first academic year. Initially, the school employed one faculty member and educated a dozen boys. The school now employs more than 60 faculty members and welcomes more than 330 students each fall. Students, boys and girls, come from not only New England but from around the world. In the 1970s, St. Mark’s reached an agreement for coordinated education with the nearby Southborough School, a newly founded institution for girls; four years later, Southborough School merged with St. Mark’s.

St. Mark’s raumains focused on academics, provides a rigorous liberal arts program that stems from a classical tradition, and prepares its students for competitive colleges and universities. It is characterized by small classes, close student-teacher relationships, and a strong emphasis on the sporting life as a complement to the life of the mind.

[edit] Curriculum

The St. Mark's curriculum follows a liberal arts tradition. An English course required every year of students. All students take the same English class their first three years, and choose from a selection of electives their final year. Mathematics is required up and until the level of algebra two. Two years of laboratory science is required and one year of art and religion. In addition, one year of American history is required. Students take between 5 and 6 classes each year depending on the difficulty of the classes and their personal ambition.

[edit] Programs

St. Mark's offers several unique programs to its students and others affiliated with the school. The programs are as follow:

  • The Math Insititute
  • The Summer Music Institute
  • Electric Vehicle Engineering
  • Visiting Poet Program

[edit] Facilities

St. Mark’s has changed much in appearance since its founding. Headmaster Thayer initiated a major building program that dramatically enhanced the school. In Burnett's time the school in its entirety was made up of one structure—a square, two-story house painted yellow with green blinds. That building and others from those early days, including a large schoolroom and dormitory wing built in 1866–1867, were gradually demolished during the Thayer period in the 1890s, to make way for the brick and Tudor-styled structures that now comprise the school’s 250-acre campus. Notable in the Thayer vision was the cloister-style construction of the school, with interconnected buildings forming an architectural ensemble in which the entire school, alone among elite American boarding schools, was essentially under one roof, in many cases with dorms on the upper floors of the buildings and classrooms and other academic halls in the lower floors.

This coherent architectural vision has survived to this day, and St. Mark's main campus structure has remained remarkably well-preserved. The school itself touts the "school under one roof" concept as a unique strength. It is certainly unusual. With the exception of St. Paul's School, St. Mark's other peer St. Grottlesex boarding schools in the Independent School League groups built their campuses in architectural styles that mimicked the architectural vernacular and New English colonial references of the Harvard University campus and the early New England academies.

St. Mark's late twentieth and early twenty-first century construction of an athletic center, a dormitory and a large performing arts center have led to some of the campus structures no longer being under a single roof. How this close, cohesive architectural environment impacts student relations has not been formally studied. Sadly, during the construction of the performing arts center, another beloved facility- the fives courts mentioned by Nabokov- were razed. This effectively ceded to Groton School, which is the only other school in the independent school league with fives courts, the permanent title of North American Fives Champions.

[edit] School profile

  • School Endowment: $133 million

[edit] Notable and famous alumni

Main article: List of St. Mark's School alumni

St. Mark's School has had numerous illustrious alumni. The school's graduates have been well represented in the arts and letters. American poet Robert Lowell wrote for the school literary magazine while a student, as did poet Harry Crosby. Artist William Congdon began painting there. Henry Demarest Lloyd, the father of American investigative journalism, studied at St. Mark's, and indeed, journalism has historically been particularly well represented at the school, both in the form of Pulitzer family members and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists. Former CBS news chief and the Nation editor Blair Clark, Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee, and most recently Motley Fool financial publisher David Gardner are all alumni. The Forbes family of the Forbes Magazine publishing empire includes a number of St. Markers. The Pulitzer publishing family also counted generations of St. Mark's graduates, including Joseph Pulitzer III. St. Markers have become Episcopal clergy, including bishops. In politics and government, St. Mark's has produced senators, representatives, governors, and senior diplomats. St. Markers are also heavily represented in finance, the law, and business. Story Musgrave is a St. Marker who has traveled to space as an astronaut.

[edit] Notable faculty

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[edit] Trivia

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The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • Baseball's catcher's mask was first used in 1875 by a St. Marks School catcher. It was originally a fencing helmet he modified so as to protect his broken nose. A Harvard baseball player by the name of Fred Thayer was playing on the opposing team that day and by 1878 Thayer had gotten a patent on it.
  • St. Mark's was originally a feeder school to Harvard.
  • Poet Robert Lowell, generally considered to be one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century, wrote his earliest published prose for student journals while at St. Mark's.
  • Fay School was initially founded to be a feeder school to St. Mark's.
  • William E. Peck founded the Pomfret School in Pomfret, Connecticut in 1894 after serving as head of St. Mark's.
  • Discussed in The Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach.
  • School Ties (1992), starring Brendan Fraser, Chris O'Donnell, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck, was filmed at Middlesex and St. Mark's. Originally, the director wanted to use St. Mark's picturesque Tudor buildings as the primary film site; however, he was unable to get a permit from the local police station that would allow him to close off the street for filming. Thus he decided to use Middlesex School.
  • St. Mark's was referred to in the Gilmore Girls episode titled "You've Been Gilmored". In it, one of the characters is mentioned to have been kicked out of Groton, St. Mark's, and Rivers.
  • The school is mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic first novel, This Side of Paradise.
  • St. Mark's high school football rivalry since 1886 with the younger Groton School is one of the oldest athletic rivalries in the United States, following the Andover-Exeter rivalry. List of high school football rivalries


Members of the Independent School League, New England
Belmont Hill School | Buckingham Browne & Nichols | Brooks School | The Governor's Academy | Groton School | Lawrence Academy at Groton | Middlesex School | Milton Academy | Noble and Greenough School | Rivers School | Roxbury Latin School | St. George's School | St. Mark's School | St. Paul's School | St. Sebastian's School | Thayer Academy

[edit] References


[edit] External links