The Next Chapter for Dr. Jon Vogels
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n 2020, Upper School Principal Dr. Jon Vogels announced that he was stepping down to return to full-time teaching and to lead the launch of CA’s Speech and Debate program. His successor, Max Delgado, will start at CA in summer 2021. In almost every way imaginable, the Colorado Academy Upper School that Vogels bequeaths to Delgado bears no resemblance to the school Vogels inherited 18 years ago. When he took over the Upper School position, Vogels found himself working in a worn, outdated, and overcrowded Upper School building that had been built in the ‘60s. Today, Vogels’ successor will find a stateof-the-art LEED-certified Upper School building which opened in 2013. It has multiple science laboratories, the 110-seat Knowles Lecture Hall, and the Anderson Innovation Lab, where students can design, engineer, and build whatever their imagination creates. When he was hired, Vogels led an Upper School with 320 students—it’s now grown to 420. He had 32 full-time faculty members—and now, he works with more than 50 faculty. The school Vogels inherited had one parttime counselor sitting in a dark office in the basement. Today, CA prioritizes student social and emotional health, boasting two full-time counselors. And they no longer sit in the basement. Finally, alumni with good memories will recall one of the traditions in place when Vogels arrived. Twice a year during exam periods, all Upper School students would carry their desks over to the old gym to take exams. After watching small students struggle (and fail) to transport large desks,
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Colorado Academy Journal
Vogels pointed out that the practice simply defied common sense. That was the end of what he calls “the great desk migration.” But for all the changes that have occurred during Vogels’ tenure as principal, what is most important at CA’s Upper School has not changed at all—the feeling of connections within the community. “Even as we have grown, we have not sacrificed the personal,” Vogels says. “I teach, I go to plays, I watch sports events, and it reaffirms what we do. We give students so many great opportunities to learn, perform, and achieve. We are fortunate to have the resources to support students and introduce them to situations where they can be successful. Then we stand back and let them flourish.”
Arriving at CA Former Head of School Chris Babbs did not have to twist Vogels’ arm during the hiring process nearly two decades ago. Vogels had grown up in Denver, knew about CA, and was ready to return to Colorado. He had watched two nephews and a niece attend CA, and now he had the opportunity to bring his own young family to the school. His son, Henry Chesley-Vogels, was in Employee Child Care when Vogels started the job. This year, Henry graduates with the Class of 2021, a homegrown example of what appealed to Vogels about CA. “In a Pre-K through Grade 12 school, you can walk across campus and see a First Grader, a Sixth Grader, and an Upper Schooler,” he says. “I loved the environment where you could watch the span of a child’s education, and you could work with families over a long period of time. It’s also wonderful to see your own children grow up in that kind of community.”
Building a new Upper School Perhaps one of the most important days during Vogels’ tenure in the Upper School came in January of 2013, when the ribbon was cut and Upper Schoolers flooded into the new building, after just seven months of fundraising and seven months of construction. Architects had encouraged Vogels and other school administrators to be “aspirational” in this new building, with an eye on letting the space help teachers take their practice to a new level. “It was one of the most exciting things I got to do as principal,” Vogels says. “The decision-making was great fun, and we knew this building could transform Upper School programs at CA.” There were no models for Vogels to follow. He was designing a building for programs that did not exist yet. He remembers how the idea of pulling lockers away from the walls and placing them in the center of the hall felt “revolutionary.” He envisioned Knowles Lecture Hall as a “great space,” although he admits that, at the time, seeing how the space for the now-successful Innovation Lab would be used was “challenging.” He persuaded teachers to give up their exclusive classrooms and share an office alongside teachers from different disciplines, where they could more easily exchange ideas. The result? CA has gone from few interdisciplinary courses to more than a dozen. He planned for rotating art displays, floor-to-ceiling white boards in math labs, classrooms with modular furniture to accommodate dynamic teaching styles and small groups, student lounges for each grade, and 22 skylights to bring natural light into both floors of the building.
