University Liggett School
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| University Liggett School | |
| Location | |
|---|---|
| Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, USA | |
| Information | |
| Religion | None |
| Head of school | Joseph P. Healey, Ph.D. |
| Enrollment |
~525 PreK-12 |
| Average class size | 8-14 students |
| School type | Private, Non-religious, Co-educational |
| Endowment | $56 million |
| Campus | Suburban |
| Campus size | 50 acres on two locations |
| Mascot | Knight |
| Color(s) | Red, white and blue |
| Established | 1878, as Liggett School |
| Homepage | http://www.uls.org |
University Liggett School (ULS) is a private, secular school in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, United States: a suburb of Detroit. It is Michigan's oldest independent, coeducational day school, having celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2004. University Liggett School is generally referred to as "Liggett" or "ULS."
The school has two campuses totaling 50.4 acres, and facilities include nine science rooms, one language lab, four music rooms, four art rooms, three libraries, two dining rooms, four computer centers, and 33 acres of athletic field space, including two outdoor swimming pools, 12 state-of-the-art tennis courts, three gyms, and an indoor ice arena. The main site, or Cook Road Campus, has the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten in the Primary School, grades 1 through 5 in the Lower School, and grades 9 through 12 in the Upper School. The Middle School, or Briarcliff Campus, has grades 6 through 8.
The Annual Fund receives more than $625,000 annually, with an average annual gift of $733. The parent giving average is 66% and the annual alumni giving average is $209. Annually, more than $1 million in merit- and need-based financial aid is awarded to new and returning students in grades 6-12.
The athletic letter is a U superimposed on an L.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] The Liggett School
In the spring of 1878, seven members of the Liggett family, headed by the Reverend James D. Liggett, also a lawyer, editor and abolitionist publisher, settled in Detroit to establish a small, independent school for girls christened originally as The Detroit Home and Day School.
The beginnings were modest. Classes were held in the one-time boarding house along what is now Broadway Avenue near Grand River. There was a parlor for class gatherings, a small boarding apartment upstairs, and a small rear yard for outdoor play. Most children walked to school from fashionable homes along Woodward Avenue or Grand River, while some arrived in horse-driven carriages. For the most part, The Liggett School (as it was renamed in 1914) was an accessible, centrally located school for girls devoted to high standards, proper behavior and preparation for college, as well as life.
In 1883, the school moved to its own three-story brick building, at what was then a central location in Detroit at the corner of Cass Avenue and Stimson Place. In 1914, the Albert Kahn-designed “Eastern Liggett" branch, on Burns Avenue at Charlevoix, was built and soon fully occupied. It would remain so until 1964, when Liggett School classes were held in a new building constructed on Briarcliff Drive in Grosse Pointe Woods.
[edit] Detroit University School
Detroit University School, the second of ULS’ predecessor schools, was founded in 1899 by Charles Bliss and Henry Gray Sherrard. Both men sought independence from the public schools, envisioning a school not only of high academic standards, but an institution providing direction for the moral and physical well-being of young men. In 1916, after fire destroyed Detroit University School's original building at Elmwood between Larned and Congress, it moved to what became known as the Castle," a Gothic-style former residence on Parkview Drive midway between Jefferson Avenue and the Detroit River. There it remained until 1928, when, with the help of Henry and Edsel Ford and many other prominent Detroiters, the school found a new home on Cook Road, then the eastern limits of Grosse Pointe.
[edit] Grosse Pointe Country Day School
Legend has it that an epidemic of typhoid prompted the founding of Grosse Pointe School in 1915 (later named Grosse Pointe Country Day School). At the time, Grosse Pointe had no private, primary, and secondary school of its own and the children of many families attended either The Liggett School or Detroit University School. The epidemic apparently led to a citywide quarantine and students from Grosse Pointe lost time from school.
Opened in 1915 in a white frame house (still standing at 301 Roosevelt Place in Grosse Pointe), the school served boys and girls from kindergarten through ninth-grade. A year later, classes opened in an English-style building located at Fisher Road and Grosse Pointe Boulevard. The school flourished in the 1920s, despite changes in administration and fluctuation in enrollment. In 1941, Detroit University School and Grosse Pointe Country Day School joined forces under one board. For the day-to-day life of the schools, however, the only major change was that Country Day sent its older boys to DUS and became a school for girls.
[edit] Grosse Pointe University School
In 1954, the Country Day building was sold to the Grosse Pointe public schools and the girls joined the boys on the Cook Road campus. The merger of the two schools was complete and Grosse Pointe University School (GPUS) was born. The celebrated modern architect, Minoru Yamasaki, was commissioned to design a lower and middle school and other facilities, including a new gymnasium, auditorium, library and fine arts rooms to complement the older, two-story brick building erected in 1928.
The school attracted students from a wider and wider area and added yet more facilities, until in 1969, the need for an increase in space for the middle school was solved by merging GPUS with The Liggett School to form University Liggett School - ULS.
[edit] Notable Faculty and Alumni
- New Yorker editor and author Kevin Conley, who graduated from ULS in 1978.
- Isabel Cleves Dodge, Dodge Automobile Company heiress and prominent Thoroughbred horseracing owner/breeder
- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides, who graduated from ULS in 1978. Eugenides' novel - The Virgin Suicides functions in many ways as a parody of ULS, mentioning some teachers by slightly altered names (for example, the real-life, recently retired long-time chemistry teacher Gene Overton became Mr. Tonover in the novel.) Additionally, Eugenides features the knight logo of University Liggett School and other clear references to the school in his bestselling novel, Middlesex.
- Edsel B. Ford II ’66 (GPUS), retired Ford Motor Company executive and philanthropist
- William C. Ford, Jr. ’75, Chairman of the Board of Ford Motor Company
- Comedian Max Gail taught at ULS prior to his role on "Barney Miller."
- In 1980, Jean Harris killed Dr. Herman Tarnower, a co-author of the bestselling The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet; she was a lower school teacher at GPUS in the late 1950s.
- Actress Julie Harris, who graduated from GPCDS in 1944
- Tennis player Aaron Krickstein, ranked as high as # 6 in the world, attended ULS in the early 1980s and played for ULS's tennis team.
- Kandia Milton, who graduated in 1990, became Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's chief of staff on January 31, 2008.
- Miles O'Brien, a CNN news anchor. O'Brien graduated from ULS in 1977 and was a co-founder of the school's newspaper, The Knightly News.
- Comedian Gilda Radner, who graduated from Liggett in 1964
- Filmmaker and film instructor Vicki Vidal ’55 (GPUS).
[edit] Accreditations, Academics and Arts
University Liggett School is a competitive preparatory school accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and Association of Independent Michigan Schools (AIMS). Sports teams compete with regional private and public high schools; major school rivals are Detroit Country Day School, Greenhills School, and Cranbrook Kingswood. Liggett competes athletically in the Metro Conference for most regular-season contests with eight other similarly-sized public and private high schools throughout Metro Detroit. It is a member of the Michigan High School Athletic Association and its 9-12 enrollment of 244 currently places it in MHSAA's Class D (248 pupils and fewer), the smallest of MHSAA's four basic enrollment classifications used to determine state tournament play.
In addition to athletics, Liggett has an accomplished arts department. The performing arts department launches two major productions, a drama each fall and a musical each winter, in addition to student-produced films and small acts are performed. The performing arts group the ULS Players are active members of the International Thespian Society and the Educational Theater Association as Troupe 5253. Dr. Phillip W. Moss, chair of the fine and performing arts department, served as president of the EdTA during the 1990s and was recognized in the Hall of Fame for national drama teachers in 2005. The Manoogian Arts Wing was added in 1981, under the planning of then-Arts head Ed Jacomo; it improved arts facilities at the school with a new dance studio, an art display, an audio-video editing studio, five arts classrooms, arts offices and a conference room. This wing is home to the limited visual arts department, which consists of two upper school teachers and one lower school teacher. The music department consists of one band teacher and one choir teacher for the upper school, and a general music teacher for the lower school. Phil Moss and the upper school 2-D art teacher, Jim Pujdowski, do double duty as the Middle and Upper School arts teachers. The same situation arises in the music department, with the entire department of two teachers, Bob Foster and Rich Fanning, teaching the entire Upper and Middle school.
While 67% of ULS students come from the Grosse Pointes and surrounding areas, more than 50 zip codes in Southeastern Michigan are represented, and students of color account for 33% of enrollment.
ULS boasts an 8:1 teacher:student ratio.
[edit] College Preparation
University Liggett School is known for its rigorous high school curriculum. The average graduating class is about 65, and a majority of students continue their education at schools in the Ivy League, "Public Ivy league", or other competitive colleges such as Georgetown University, Duke University, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis, and The University of Chicago. The largest matriculant is The University of Michigan. Of the last five graduating classes, more than 60 students (12 per year) have attended the University of Michigan; 67% of the class of 2007 were accepted to colleges and universities with highly selective admissions standards.
The school offers Advanced Placement classes in history (United States, World, United States Government), science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics), English (literature), foreign languages (French, Latin Virgil, Latin Language, Spanish), math (Calculus AB and BC), and the arts (Art History, Art Studio and Music Theory).
All freshmen are required to pass first aid, nutrition and project adventure. All students must pass American Government, Foundations, World History, United States History, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics to graduate. Otherwise, requirements are based on a credit system, where a semester class is .5 credit and a year class is one credit. Participation in athletics is also a graduation requirement.
Requirements for graduation include: 4 credits of English, 3 credits of Math, 3 or 4 credits of foreign language (three in one language or four in two different languages), 3 credits of history or social sciences (including Am. Government, Foundations, World History and United States History), 3 credits of science (including biology, chemistry, and physics), and 1.5 credits in two different disciplines of art (disciplines include art, art history, music and drama).
Many students choose to supplement their curriculum with honors or AP classes. The school's above average score history with the Advanced Placement tests could be considered an indicator of the difficult curriculum, or the intelligence of the student body, which mostly consists of middle to upper class children.
