, CA S APPROACH TO EDUCATION IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN CREATIVE, EXCITING, AND INNOVATIVE, OPENING UNSEEN DOORS FOR STUDENTS ,, TO WALK THROUGH.
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Fay Lampert Shutzer ’65 President, Concord Academy Board of Trustees and Centennial Campaign Co-Chair
For nearly 100 years, Concord Academy has nurtured every student’s promise as part of a community that needs their intelligence, care, and conviction.
We teach them, challenge them, and get to know who they are and what they dream of becoming. Guided by CA’s unwavering principle of common trust, we help our students define and pursue their truest self.
This is why Concord Academy has become known as a place where love—of learning, of community, of place—is not too strong a word to describe the core of the CA experience.
Large photo / quote here
When we bring out our students’ best, we live up to CA’s highest values. By doing so, we advance their potential to leave a lasting mark on our world.
I ABSOLUTELY BELIEVE THAT CA CHANGES LIVES. THE STUDENTS WHO NEED MORE ARE SO OFTEN EMBRACED BY THOSE THAT HAVE ,, MORE TO GIVE.
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Jamie Wade Comstock ’82 P’17 Centennial Campaign Steering Committee
Our Centennial Campaign is built upon the same core principles. All of us who are part of CA today share the crossing of a momentous threshold. Together, we set in motion a new century that can carry the best of CA forward.
Carol Moriarty P’02 ’05 ’07 Andy Ory P’16 ’21 Fay Lampert Shutzer ’65 Campaign Co-Chairs
We all know the power and beauty of chapel talks. With the tolling of the first morning bell, our campus community quietly enters the Chapel. The first- and second-year students take their assigned seats in the center pews. The wings are occupied by the juniors and seniors, while the faculty and staff settle into the last row or the gallery. Down one aisle, a line of students forms as one friend after another greets that day’s chapel giver. They share hugs and kind words, drawing smiles and good feeling. Behind them, the altar is decorated with signs, photos, and memorabilia from the chapel giver’s life—all assembled the night before by friends. From the belfry, the ropes creak, and the second bell tolls. As it fades, the Chapel is so quiet even a whisper could be heard, but there are none. Classmates, friends, faculty, staff, and, often, parents, grandparents, and other relatives too, have arrived for one reason: to listen.
CA’s faculty and curriculum push students to levels of exploration, discovery, and intellectual agility that prepare them for every academic and career experience to come. That is one reason CA matters. But like everything at CA, our faculty challenge students in ways that are imbued with a particular value. Here, learning is not simply an academic experience, for it is also deeply personal and relational. CA is idealistic enough to believe that we each
Concord Academy’s first head of school, Elsie G. Hobson, Ph.D.
have a role as stewards of this community and of the places where we work and the organizations that we serve; that we can help students learn to live, labor, and grow alongside people from different places, cultures, and experiences—and that everyone can find success and fulfillment. CA offers students the opportunity to know what it feels like to be a
The senior approaches the podium. Steeped in the ways of CA, they have many times before witnessed others entering this moment. But today it is their turn, as CA has always shown them it soon would be. The student becomes the teacher, and for the next 15 minutes what transpires is profound. It sums up a learning experience that has challenged and transformed students one by one, generation after generation, to deepen their understanding of who they are and to grow in the confidence to live it, voice it, and share it.
member of a community and to rise to high
Chapel talks are an assertion of values—of CA’s values and those of the students whose education has been entrusted to us.
certain paths that every student is expected to
expectations. And that feeling becomes part of who they are, because it has grown from within through experience and conviction, rather than being imposed from without. In an academic setting, success is often measured by awards, prizes, and recognition. That approach can create a compelling energy around the learning experience. Some schools have a dress or honor code and prescribe follow. But CA is different. We orient our students’ experience around love of learning itself. We teach students that the deepest and
As we have reflected on this campaign letter to you, we have thought often of the way chapel talks have affected us across the years. Like the students at that microphone, we will never have another opportunity like this to state before you— before the CA community at large—why this campaign matters. It matters for one reason: because CA matters.
most enduring intellectual growth comes from developing one’s capacities, interests, and principles in collaboration with others engaged in that same pursuit. By empowering our students to live according to the value of common trust, we enable them to take responsibility—for themselves and those around them—and to ensure that this community works for everyone.
Classified ad in The New York Times, August 31, 1922.
Rare is the school in which faculty invite students to respond not only to the teacher’s ideas and questions, but also to one another in every class and laboratory, every studio and hall. At CA, whatever understanding or solutions students might develop emerge through encountering and contemplating every point of view in the room. Here, students grow and change through the insights of all those with whom they share the experience. We have committed to this practice because we have seen the depth of learning it creates and how it prepares students to thrive in the complex world they will make their own. Elizabeth Hall speaking at Commencement before an open Academy Garden.
We believe CA matters because these ideals matter. Over the course of nearly a century, they have made a profound difference on and beyond our campus. This campaign is our chance to make sure these ideals carry forward for every student who has been, is, and will be part of CA. The original newspaper ad posted to attract CA’s first students stated: “The school life is planned to develop the qualities of initiative and self-reliance, to stimulate intellectual curiosity, and to give a thorough preparation for college.”
This March 1954 Yankee magazine advertisement beckoned Elizabeth Hall to New Hampshire to see what would become CA’s Chapel.
Such a simple and clear invitation, and yet so much more: preparation not just for college, but for life. In 1954, Elizabeth Hall would provide a model for living bravely, for meeting challenges with creativity and ingenuity. She identified a need at CA—a place for quiet—and she proposed an audacious solution. She would buy an abandoned meeting house in the New Hampshire woods 80 miles away and, with the help of a small crew of people, including one student, would take it apart, board by board, transport it to Concord, and rebuild it at the foot of the Academy Garden.
The CA community came together to reassemble the Chapel board by board.
Soon after its reconstruction, in the winter of 1956, CA’s students, aided by one of their teachers, had another novel idea—person by person, letter by letter, they would carve one of the most beautiful passages from all of scripture into pine and mount it on the wall above the altar. The passage is a call for love of learning and service to the best in one another. And in the Chapel’s new beginning, the creation of the carving, the sounding of the bell, and the quiet of the
chapel talk echoes another message: Every voice matters, every individual is needed, and if we come together around those ideals, we can shape a purpose greater than ourselves. It is easy for those of us familiar with CA to lose sight of how distinctive these values are. We know of no school more committed to intellectual challenge and personal and communal awareness —that strives more to live by these ideals, in word and practice, in every setting, every day. At the conclusion of each chapel talk, there is no applause, no shouts of praise or congratulation. The 400 or so listeners have shared a more subtle, more meaningful moment than that. Instead, the student steps down to greet family and loved ones, and then to join their peers. Together, they walk through the Chapel doors and toward the new day. A campaign is a risky endeavor. It is a public declaration of what an institution believes it can be. It is a statement of values and possibilities, an affirmation of the past and a goal. We can build this long-needed performing arts center. We can unify this campus around the Chapel as our physical and symbolic center. We can invest in financial aid, our faculty, and the resources necessary for today’s and tomorrow’s CA to thrive. With this campaign, the CA community declares anew what it believes, what it has learned, and what it can become. Chapel talks define us, and this campaign is CA’s chapel talk. When we walk through those doors, we will do it together. We invite you to join us.
The Endowment
The Campus
GOAL:
$50 Million
The physical campus is the home of singular experiences that shape the lives of every student.
These paired campaign priorities make today’s CA better and open the door to CA’s next 100 years.
The endowment is the financial expression of the same reality: It affects each student while simultaneously improving every dimension of CA.
They advance our deepest commitments, support opportunities across every program, and create new capacities for all that we deliver and aspire to become.
The Endowment GOAL: $25 MILLION
The endowment is the financial foundation for the academy’s future. A single gift of $50,000 in 1954 initiated our endowment, and generous supporters and careful management have continued to strengthen it. With this campaign, we have prioritized two core elements of CA requiring critical endowment resources: financial aid and the faculty. A robust investment in our financial aid program will enable CA to increase the number of deserving students it can support, while also ensuring our standard of experiential equity for all students. Today, 26 percent of students at CA receive significant financial aid grants. Every year, students who would contribute in meaningful ways to fulfilling our mission cannot enroll because we lack the funds to support them. We believe that must change. We can build a community of students who exemplify our mission—from all socioeconomic backgrounds—only with an endowment to stand behind our values. Endowment growth is also imperative to bringing inventive educators to CA and keeping them here. Our faculty are among the most thoughtful, knowledgeable, and caring teachers anywhere. Our faculty move students to reach beyond their grasp. We see this every day in their work, and we hear this time and time again from parents and graduates. They know that the common trust of CA begins with the faculty’s role as teachers, advisors, mentors, and, in fact, inspirations.
Through contributions to the endowment, donors: n
Ensure CA reflects the talent and ideas in the world, in lives of every background.
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Give promising young people opportunities to mature into engaged and confident citizens, with paths determined by passion rather than financial obligation.
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Set CA on a path to become need-blind.
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Attract and support exceptional faculty members and develop the skill and talent of the faculty as a whole.
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Create a cycle of continual investment in educators who make real the commitment that sets learning at CA apart—the emphasis on every student as an individual.
IT NEVER CEASES TO AMAZE AND INSPIRE ME THE WAY VERY DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS COME TOGETHER WITH A SHARED SENSE OF WHAT IT MEANS,, TO BE PART OF CA.
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Sarah Yeh Assistant Head of School and Dean of Faculty
The Campus GOAL: $25 MILLION
This campaign will enable campus improvements that will create the flow of learning, recreational, and social experiences that CA has always been destined to offer. With the recent re-acquisition of Toad Hall and surrounding land, CA now occupies 27 acres in the heart of one of the most historic towns in the United States. People and events in Concord have inspired and continue to define American history and culture. CA is proud and fortunate to be embedded in our hometown’s thriving life. Now, the CA community has the opportunity to unify our unique campus, and to secure the school’s identity in this celebrated location. A new performing arts facility will be the centerpiece of this progress. The arts, we know, are about many things—creative expression, provocative questions, touching the soul. The arts are that rare human invention through which individual and communal experience meet, stimulate, and awaken. They are, in fact, about the ideals at the heart of CA. The new building will embody the best of these ideas.
Philanthropic investments in the CA campus will: n
Make possible a new facility for interdisciplinary and dynamic learning in the arts, with spaces designed for rehearsal, collaboration, exploration, and performance.
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Allow repurposing of existing spaces to expand programming, unlocking a seamless flow for studying, living, and socializing across campus.
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Deliver on our mission to open students’ eyes to the beauty of the natural landscape and their responsibility as stewards for the future.
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Energize and unify the entire CA campus, with the Chapel at its center—exactly where it belongs.
RY U D B U S
E R V R I
Middle Field
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Upper Field
Concord Academy Campus Current View
Performing Arts Center Student Health & Athletic Center
This layout shows CA’s Main Campus today. What started in 1922 with one house, which served the school’s every purpose, is now a thriving 27 acres of 24/7 living and learning. The recent development of the Moriarty Athletic Campus only a mile down the road has further expanded CA’s possibilities. A defining moment has arrived to realize a vision that has been decades in the making.
Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel
Student-Faculty Center
CA Labs
Math & Arts Center
Lower Field Toad Hall Academy Garden Parking Operations and Maintenance Barn Gooding
220 Main St. Main School Building Parking
Ides
Wheeler Bradford Bailey Commons Parking
242 Main St.
Haines
Admadjaja Aloian
Hobson 228 Main St. Phelps
M A I N
E T S T R E
West Gate Moriarty Athletic Campus (One Mile South) Munroe Belknap
Lee
RY U D B U S
E R V R I
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Concord Academy Campus Proposed View This campaign will transform CA, unfurling new learning, social, and recreational spaces across one half of its landscape. Ides and 220 Main Street will be relocated to form an Academy Village for faculty and staff housing. A new facility will rise to meet our urgent academic needs in the visual and performing arts. The Academy Garden and a new campus lawn will enhance CA’s natural green space. And, as CA has always done, existing spaces will take on new purposes, evolving with CA. Together, these changes will unify the CA campus, placing the Chapel at its physical center.
Academy Garden New Facility
Parking
Academy Village
Ides
Campus Lawn
220 Main St.
Potential Building Site
Parking
M A I N
Potential Building Site New West Gate
E T S T R E
Moriarty Athletic Campus (One Mile South)
Potential Building Site
This is CA’s Centennial Campaign. It is historic, it is a call to action, and it is a chance to build upon what matters most to our community.
We know what matters most here—our bond of common trust, our focus on each individual student’s worth and potential, and living up to the ambitions of those who made possible the CA of today.
In achieving the goals of this campaign, we will pass on a stronger academy to the students and graduates of tomorrow and, in fact, to everyone who will ever call CA home.
THIS CAMPAIGN WILL ENABLE CA TO FULFILL ITS MISSION TO A BROADER COMMUNITY, NOT JUST THIS YEAR, ,, BUT IN PERPETUITY.
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Kevin Parke P’12 ’15 Trustee and Campaign Steering Committee
THE MISSION OF CONCORD ACADEMY WE ARE A COMMUNITY ANIMATED BY LOVE OF LEARNING, DIVERSE AND STRIVING FOR EQUITY, WITH COMMON TRUST AS OUR FOUNDATION. HONORING EACH INDIVIDUAL, WE CHALLENGE AND EXPAND OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OURSELVES AND THE WORLD THROUGH PURPOSEFUL COLLABORATION AND CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT. WE CULTIVATE EMPATHY, INTEGRITY, AND RESPONSIBILITY TO BUILD A MORE JUST AND SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.