St. Mary's Messenger 2024

MOVING THE CLASSROOM OUTDOORS

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Mirek Bobek, MD · Chair

Tracy McGovern · Chair Elect

Natasha Chmelir, DVM · Secretary

Jens Heycke · Treasurer

Mark Eberle · Honorary

Mike Naumes · Honorary

Chuck Watson

Adam Peterson

Scott King

Peter Grant, MD

Jeresa Hren

David Chamberland, MD

Tanny Flowers Sr.

Amy Kranenburg

Chris Borovansky

Christian Istel

Steven Boswell

Judy Gambee

Tina Miller

Fr. Ken Sampson

Ryan Bernard · President

Frank Phillips · President Emeritus

Jim Meyer · Principal

Anita Cooper · Vice Principal, High School

Chris Johnson · Vice Principal, Middle School, COO

Lesley Klecan · Dean of Academics

Andrea Saxon Gibson · CFO

Bethany Brown Director of Advancement

Rebecca Naumes Vega ’99 Director of Enrollment Management

Sarah Primerano ’97 Director of Alumni Relations

Erin Maxson Kiene Director of Marketing & Communications

Jamie Young · Athletic Director

Celebrating Grandparents and Special Mentors

St. Mary’s annual Grandparents’ and Special Mentors’ Day saw record attendance! Students and guests enjoyed performances by our Middle School Band and High School Choir. Several students spoke about the vital role that grandparents play in their lives.

Bob Hansen, pictured top-left with wife Anne and granddaughter Natalie, was honored at the event for his long-standing devotion to St. Mary’s School. Over the past 30 years, he has coached several sports, run the clock at basketball games, kept the book at volleyball games, and helped manage campus safety—and he’s driven a St. Mary’s bus literally all over Oregon. Bob and Anne are alumni parents to Katie and Kim, and now they are St. Mary’s grandparents to Natalie, with grandson Nathan soon to be a Crusader.

Project WILD

BY RYAN BERNARD

We are all very fortunate to live in the Rogue Valley.

Let us count our blessings: access to outstanding medical professionals and services; a well-established regional state university; a strong arts scene, with the Britt Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Craterian Theater/Teen Musical Theater of Oregon, Rogue Valley Youth Symphony, and many other performance and display venues; dozens of fruit orchards and wineries winding through our varied terrain; and, of course, St. Mary’s School—a little gem of a college-prep, providing a top-notch, comprehensive educational program for 160 years!

On top of all that, we are surrounded by robust forests, rugged mountains, clean lakes and rivers, roaring coastal waters, and abundant good weather. In fact, one could easily argue that our breathtaking natural surroundings are our single greatest resource. It’s partly because of this happy fact that St. Mary’s is expanding our outdoor program and rebranding it Project WILD.

“We live in a natural playground with the power to inspire, so we are taking the classroom outside.”

—Ryan

Bernard biking on the backroads of the countryside, and skiing on Mt. Ashland.

When Alan retired, we were uncertain about the direction of our program. Then, through a stroke of pure serendipity, he introduced us to his colleague from Mt. Ashland Ski Patrol, Tommy Hurrell (read his interview on page 10). We immediately hired Tommy to develop, institute, and manage improvements and innovations to the program—and Project WILD was born.

St. Mary’s School has long provided student programming in outdoor adventure. For decades beloved former teacher and community stalwart Alan McCreedy operated the Outdoor Club, offering St. Mary’s kids adventure opportunities among the state’s rich natural resources: hiking in the rugged Cascades, camping in the region’s towering national forests, canoeing on local lakes, kayaking and rafting on the Rogue River, spelunking at Lava Beds National Monument, Continued on page 9

Program additions include courses as a compulsory component of our comprehensive middle school curriculum, increased outdoor trip opportunities for all students of every age level, and, we hope, one day, the development of nearly 2 acres creekside on our campus into an outdoor learning lab.

Chris Johnson

Chris is a native Oregonian, who joined the St. Mary’s faculty in 1996. An Outdoor Club trip leader since 2004, he has led groups on multiday backpacking trips across Oregon and Northern California. His love of the outdoors started in scouting, where he earned Eagle Scout rank. Then a weeklong trip to Canyonlands National Park in Utah during college sparked his interest in backpacking.

Jerry Burke

Jerry’s outdoor education began as a teenager, hiking and building trails along the Missouri River. After initial mentoring by botanists, birders, and historians, he worked as a naturalist and forest ranger before beginning his teaching career. Jerry leads the Three Sisters Wilderness trip to Lane County. When he’s not backpacking, you’ll find him cutting down dead Douglas fir trees and managing the health of his forested property.

Continued from page 6

Based on researched methods, best practices, and prior successes, we are broadening the Project WILD program based on three pillars: environmental education and stewardship, leadership development and community service, and physical and mental health.

Through coursework and hands-on learning experiences, students will learn about native flora and fauna, geologic history, river flows and lake levels, fire behavior, and, ultimately, how to preserve elements of the environment for future generations. Additional programming will be geared toward developing leaders to tackle the challenges of environmental preservation and land management. We will teach collaborative teamwork and problem-solving, using learning challenges, low-ropes courses, and community service commitments. Last, but certainly not least, St. Mary’s Project WILD will be the perfect antidote to the digital distractions

and threats of the twenty-first century. We’ll get kids outdoors because we know it is good for both their physical development and their mental health.

A key facet of all the educational endeavors will be student records and reflections of their learning experiences, with many focused on their sense of place.

We live in a natural playground with the power to inspire, so we are taking the classroom outside. We are very excited about the prospects of Project WILD, and we are sure that once it is up and running, you will be, too!

Getting to Know Tommy Hurrell

We recently sat down with Tommy Hurrell, St. Mary’s new director of Project WILD, to get to know him and better understand his love and commitment to the great outdoors.

How did you fall in love with the outdoors? | My dad, my uncles, and my grandpa would take me fishing all the time. My first memories are in a canoe in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. When I was a little bit older, I would take my two younger sisters on adventures in our backyard; we were exploring and just being creative. As for teaching, both of my grandmothers were teachers. My Grandma Lou was an art teacher, and we did art lessons every week until I was 18. She fostered both the artistic side and the teaching side.

When did you start thinking that being outdoors could lead to a career? | When I was a freshman at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my dad passed away. A big part of the connection between my father and me was spending time outside. My first time in a kayak, my first time backpacking, my first time hunting and fishing all were with my dad, so I was yearning to reconnect with him, and I decided I wanted more time outside.

In my second year of university, I started working at a summer camp in Colorado. One of the things I really liked about this camp was that there was a core of personal work. We were striving to be better than we were the day before. Then I worked as a naturalist at Balarat Outdoor Education.

All of these experiences reaffirmed that I enjoy working with youth and working with them outside. Kids realize that this is a real place we can go and be in, and it’s not scary.

Your wife, Julie Fultineer '08, is an alumna of St. Mary’s. Is that how you ended up in Southern Oregon? | We actually met on the river in Colorado after college. I knew of the redwood forests and Crater Lake, but I didn’t know how much was in and around the Rogue Valley. So she brought me out here to start guiding on the river.

Then a few years later, Alan McCreedy and I met while on Mt. Ashland Ski Patrol. We were on Ariel, and we started talking about my background and experience, and he said, “I want to get your résumé to my boss at St. Mary’s.”

Project WILD is supported by three pillars. Can you expand on those a little bit? | Sure! With environmental education and stewardship, it’s really that notion that the land doesn’t belong to me and it’s being inherited by those who come after me. We want to develop an environmental ethic with students, and a lot of that comes from my training as a master educator of Leave No Trace.

Leadership development and community service is a really, really big one to me because I think the outdoors is such a great medium to take us away from some of the comforts and boundaries. The outdoors provides novel experiences, where we have to operate in a growth zone instead of a comfort zone. It teaches us to follow a leader and to step into leadership when needed. Plus, there are so many great organizations in the area where our students conserve outdoors, whether it’s trail building, waterway cleanup, or campground restoration.

For the third pillar, physical and mental health, we want kids to cultivate a sense of place because it’s so important, certainly for social-emotional development and physical and mental health. I want them to come away from St. Mary’s knowing how special this place is, having a personal connection to this place, understanding its larger human history and natural history, and having transformational memories made in these incredible natural environments. I’ve got a lot of optimism about the current generation.

Can you tell me more about Project WILD’s launch for our youngest students? | Every middle school student is going to get one mod of outdoor education. That’ll be a combination of environmental education, some social-emotional learning, plus an environmental ethic component and, of course, some outdoor living skills. They’ll learn how to build shelters and tie knots, but they’ll also get a chance to go through a whole Leave No Trace curriculum.

Let’s talk about the trips, the expeditions. Where can students expect to be adventuring under Project WILD? | One of the things I love the most about outdoor education is the expeditions. There will still be these extracurricular trips for students every year, as well as the ski program, but I aim to provide more opportunities for more expeditions. My preference is to seek out the amazing locations closer to us first but eventually have a once-a-year expedition that goes out of the region.

Of course Crater Lake and Mt. Shasta, and I would love to see more river trips, with multiple days on the Rogue, Umpqua, and Klamath. Those downriver expeditions really hit all of those pillar components. I’ve guided and instructed in the San Juan Islands, and I’d love to take a regular trip there for sea kayaking. It’s such an amazing place with considerable biodiversity.

Ultimately, what do you want kids to walk away with from their experience with Project WILD? | I want students to see all the possibilities for their lives in the outdoors, and I want them to be agents and advocates for all the wild places.

“The outdoors provides the perfect venue for developing a tolerance for adversity and uncertainty.” —Tommy Hurrell

The World Awaits

BY JIM MEYER

Fourteen intrepid students had the joy of traipsing all around Scotland for our Mod Abroad class. They spent the first 14 days of the mod learning about Scottish history, literature, and culture from a local historian and guide, then traveled throughout the country for the next 12 days. From visiting the famous western isles of Mull and Skye and exploring the Scottish Highlands, to touring the industrial, financial, and cultural capitals of Glasgow and Edinburgh—students saw a great deal of the country. It was a special trip with many unique and unforgettable opportunities to see the real Scotland.

“I loved everything about Scotland. The experiences far surpassed what I had ever expected.”

—Elsa Lee ’27

“The trip was fun and interesting, and it was a great opportunity to immerse ourselves in another culture.”

—Dawson Ghavam ’27

I now have the privilege of organizing the Japan Mod Abroad. We’ll be studying the literature, art history, and culture of Japan before we embark on a 10-day trip in December. Students have a packed itinerary and will see a good chunk of the country by traveling from Tokyo to Hiroshima on the bullet train and visiting a variety of cities, castles, and ancient sites along the way. There is no more fascinating and paradoxical country to visit than Japan. It’s going to be an incredible adventure!

Building Champions

Congratulations to all St. Mary’s scholar-athletes, who pursue excellence in the classroom and in competition.

At St. Mary’s, We Are…

DEDICATED SCHOLARS

who are college-bound, with the skills and knowledge to ask compelling questions and seek multiple perspectives

RESPONSIBLE COMMUNITY MEMBERS

who serve others and contribute to the betterment of the school and the world beyond

CREATIVE THINKERS

whose inherent curiosity ignites a passion for new ideas and empowers us to embrace challenges

At St. Mary’s, We Are…

JOYFUL SPIRITS

who make time for school, family, friends, personal interests, and spiritual growth

CITIZENS

who demonstrate empathy and integrity, guided by a sound moral compass GLOBAL

816 Black Oak Drive

Medford, Oregon 97504

We are situated on a beautiful 24-acre campus, much of which remains undeveloped, divided by Larsen Creek.

We support our families through financial aid, awarding more than $1.7 million in support in 2024.

We are an independent school. Although we celebrate our Catholic heritage, we receive no funding from the Church.

We have won 54 team state championships in athletics.

We are community partners. Our high school students have completed well over 20,000 hours of service in the Rogue Valley so far in 2024.

We have a brand-new collegiate-levelquality track, and we hosted the District 5 track meet in spring 2023.

We have a 5th- to 12th-grade archery program that is our largest team on campus.

We house two tended bee colonies on campus that will produce their first honey harvest soon.

We ensure that 100% of our seniors are accepted to college. The Class of 2024 will attend colleges as close by as the Rogue Valley and as far away as Scotland.

We were founded 160 years ago as an elementary school.