| St. Mark's School of Texas | |
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Courage and Honor
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| Location | |
| Dallas, Texas, United States | |
| Information | |
| Type | Private, Non-sectarian |
| Established | 1906 |
| Headmaster | Arnold E. Holtberg |
| Faculty | 125 |
| Number of students | 845 |
| Campus | 40 acres (160,000 m2) |
| Mascot | Lions |
| Athletics | 17 sports |
| Website | www.smtexas.org |
The St. Mark's School of Texas is a nonsectarian preparatory day school for boys located in Dallas, Texas, USA. The School offers grades 1–12.
Contents |
St. Mark's developed from three preceding private schools: The Terrill School (1906–1944), Texas Country Day School (1933–1950), and The Cathedral School (1944–1950). The school traces its earliest history to Mr. Terrill's school, which is considered the city's first effort to create a private school that could rival its East Coast counterparts. The Terrill School served as a base for the foundation of The Cathedral School.
St. Mark's was founded as a merger of the nonsectarian Texas Country Day School and the Episcopally-associated The Cathedral School. To solve the religious question, St. Mark's was founded as a nonsectarian school with the agreement that Chapel services would be nondenominational, led by an ordained Episcopalian Chaplain. The school officially opened as St. Mark's School of Texas in 1953. The Hockaday School for Girls, founded in 1913, became the sister school to St. Mark's.
Historically, the School was fairly homogeneous and geared towards the sons of doctors, lawyers, and affluent businessmen. St. Mark's has since made significant changes in terms of financial aid and minority recruitment, and approximately 50% of students are now involved with the financial aid program.
On its 40 acre-campus is an array of buildings, most of which are named after well-known Dallas families. Texas Instruments' co-founders Cecil H. Green and Eugene McDermott donated a math and science quadrangle, the main library, the greenhouse, the planetarium and the observatory.[1] Shortly after those buildings' completion in the 1960s, Time magazine called St. Mark's the "best-equipped day school in the country."
In more recent years, the Roosevelt family contributed a carillon, installed in early 2005. The natatorium was named in honor of Ralph Rogers;[2] the Lamar Hunt family donated a football stadium, completed in the fall of 2005, and Tom Hicks funded a new gymnasium. Its arts facilities are also impressive. In 2007-08, the School executed the large-scale Centennial Project. Initiating funding was a $10 million donation from the family of Harlan Crow.[3] The products of the Project were two new state-of-the-art academic buildings: Centennial Hall, housing the Math, English, History, and Administrative Departments; and the Robert K. Hoffman '65 Center, housing the Language, Debate, Journalism, and College Counseling programs, in addition to the Student Store and Senior Lounge. The new buildings opened in June 2008.[4]
Large donations have spearheaded much of this construction and enhancement of financial aid, but support is actively solicited from throughout the school's community. For example, in 2010-2011, donations were received from 87% of parents and 56% of all alumni; the percentage of alumni contributing was the highest percentage for any secondary school in the country.
St. Mark's has long resisted efforts towards coeducation, though there are several courses that students can take with Hockaday students at that campus. The school has a long tradition of outdoor activities throughout the Middle and Upper Schools, known as the Wilderness Program. Each Middle School class has a camping trip every year. The Wilderness Program culminates in a 10-day backpacking trip in the Pecos Wilderness of New Mexico. The trip occurs in early-mid August before boys enter the 9th grade and is considered a "rite of passage" into the Upper School. Faculty, alumni, and current Upper School students, known as sherpas, lead the trip in small groups. The school's uniform has remained unchanged for decades: gray shorts or pants with white oxford shirts for grades 1–11 (blue oxford shirts for seniors).
Its 849 students are spread across first through twelfth grade, and the overall student/faculty ratio is 8:1. 80 percent of the 125 faculty members have master's or doctoral degrees, and 25% have been at St. Mark's for more than twenty years. There are twelve endowed teaching positions, including nine endowed chairs.
Among the 92 graduates in 2011, 22 were National Merit Semi-Finalists, and 35 others were Commended Students. The median SAT score was 2130 on a 2400 point scale.
From the class of 2011, the 82 seniors enrolled at 49 colleges and universities. Twelve will attend the University of Texas at Austin, while an additional 43 will attend a "national university" ranked in the top 25 by US News, and five others will attend a top 5 "national liberal arts college" or one of the military service academies. Between 2007 and 2011, ten or more students matriculated at the following schools: Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, SMU, Southern California, Stanford, University of Texas at Austin, Vanderbilt, and Washington University in St. Louis.
St. Mark's organizes 17 varsity sports teams that compete against similarly-sized private schools in the Southwest Preparatory Conference.[5]
Most St. Mark's teams have won recent conference championships, but several have been historically dominant within the 18-team SPC. For example, in the 2010-2011 academic year: Wrestling won its 14th consecutive conference title and 35th in the 37-year conference history; Swimming won its 15th conference title in 16 years; and Track and Field won its 8th consecutive SPC championship. St. Mark's has also done well in two sports that are not widely followed in Texas: Lacrosse finished among the top 4 in the state in 2011 for the third consecutive year after again winning SPC, and Crew won three state titles in 2010 as well as a state championship in 2011.
Overall, St. Mark's has won 10 consecutive SPC Director's Cups, a quantitative measure of overall yearly athletic success within the conference.
After starting for the Texas Longhorns football team, Sam Acho was drafted in the fourth round by the Arizona Cardinals in 2011. In October, 2010, the Sporting News named Sam one of the 20 smartest athletes in America, a list that included 2 other college players and 17 professionals from the four major American sports.[6] Sam's brother, Emanuel '08, was also a multi-year starter for Texas, where he was first-team all conference in 2011 and was first team academic all conference in 2009, 2010, and 2011. [7]Kalen Thornton '04 also started at Texas before playing for the Dallas Cowboys From the 2011 class, 7 seniors signed to play intercollegiate sports, including football and track (Penn), lacrosse (Bates), track (Columbia), rowing (MIT), swimming (Bates), football (Stanford), and water polo (the U.S. Naval Academy).
See also
St. Mark's offers 42 Upper School clubs and academic teams for the approximately 90 boys per graduating class.[8] This extracurricular activity has led to significant external recognition.
For example, both the school newspaper, The ReMarker, and the yearbook, the Marksmen, won 2011 Gold Crowns, the highest award given by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.[9] From around the country, approximately 20 school newspapers and ten yearbooks earn this recognition from among 1700 entries. For The ReMarker, it was the eighth consecutive Gold Crown, lengthening its record for consecutive Gold Crowns won by a high school newspaper. The Marksmen won its fourth Gold Crown in five years.
The debate team won a national championship in 1990, finished runner-up in 1987, 1992, 2002, and 2010, and has generally been ranked among the top ten in the country over the past 30 years. The school itself annually hosts one of the most prestigious high school debate tournaments in the country: The Heart of Texas Invitational.
The White House sponsors a Presidential Scholars Program that attracts about 7000 high school students with a special interest in the arts. 150 are invited annually to Miami for intensive instruction and evaluation, and 60 are then selected as finalists. In 2010, 4 St. Mark's seniors were named finalists (2 in photography, 1 in ceramics, and 1 in band), and 2 of the 4 were selected to be among the 20 Presidential Scholars in the Arts.[10].In 2011, one student became a finalist and another a semi-finalist.
The school's photography program has been named best in state by the Association of Texas Photography Instructors for five consecutive years (2007–2011).[11]
At the 2009 state tournament for autonomous robots, the St. Mark's team went undefeated against 22 teams, taking first in seeding, first in double elimination, third in documentation, and first overall.
The Middle School math team finished first in State in 2008, 2009, and 2010, and the 4th grade "Wordmaster" team won a national title in 2011, competing against 694 teams from around the country. The Upper School "Whiz Kid" team has won the North Texas championships for the past 3 years.
15 boys were named to the 2011 All State Orchestra (and 4 others to All State Band) by the Texas Private School Music Educators Association; this number comprised over a quarter of the entire orchestra.
Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs are probably the most famous alumni musicians; while in high school, they created a band called The Marksmen. The founder of Texas Monthly and a co-founder of the National Lampoon both attended St. Mark's. Prominent alumni actors include Tommy Lee Jones, who played football at both St. Mark's and Harvard, and Luke Wilson, who set the school record for the 800 meter run (1:54.99).
The avidity with which students pursue extracurricular activities is mocked in the film Rushmore, which was co-written by another St. Mark's alumnus, Owen Wilson, set at a fictional cross between St. Mark's and a rival high school in Houston, St. John's School, and filmed on the campus of another Houston rival, the Kinkaid School; the film features a protagonist who participates in dozens of clubs and activities.
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