Headmaster's Summer Letter

As we begin our second full week of summer, it seemed a good time to reflect upon the school year just past.

By almost any way that can be measured, the 2013-2014 academic year was a success for our School and for our boys.

Great achievements were made in the classrooms, on the stage, in the art studios and on the field. Lessons of character, responsibility, citizenship and accountability influenced all that was accomplished and as we watched the members of the Class of 2014 receive their diplomas in late May, there was a universal sense of pride as we celebrated the 112th graduating class of Brunswick School.

Specific achievements for the past year are honestly too great in number to effectively reference here but it seems to me that some of the more notable milestones included: regional and/or national recognition in Mathematics, Robotics, Science-Research and Shakespeare, national and/or league titles in a host of sports, league-wide sportsmanship awards and well-deserved recognition for our Community Service efforts.

Quantitative data for the past year also speaks to the strength of the School in terms of incredibly low rates of student attrition, embarrassingly high demand for the few available admissions openings, continued success with our “Above All Else” Capital Campaign, record Annual Fund participation and strong investment results for our endowment.

Rightly or wrongly, perhaps one of the most visible measures of the perceived strength of a school (and its students) is College Placement results, and this year the Class of 2014 continued in a strong tradition of matriculation at some of the nation’s finest universities and colleges. Institutions with the greatest number of Brunswick School matriculants from the Class of 2014 include: Duke and Harvard (6 each), University of Pennsylvania (5), Boston College (4), Bowdoin, Colgate, Dartmouth, Elon, George Washington, Georgetown, Hamilton, Northwestern, Princeton and Vanderbilt (3 each), Bucknell, Colby, Cornell, University of Michigan, St. Lawrence, Stanford, University of Connecticut, Williams (2 each).

The past year was also marked by ongoing improvement in the scope and quality of the facilities we are fortunate enough to be able to make available to our boys. Construction of our new 8-lane, swimming complex continued apace; (when that project is completed at summer’s end, we will also have added one new natural- grass playing field and one new artificial-turf playing field to the King Street campus as well).

Other current or upcoming physical-plant projects include the construction/addition of 9 new Faculty housing units, 5 new Upper School classrooms (including an additional Science-Research lab as well as an Engineering lab), and a new Boathouse on the Mianus River for our Crew program.

It is also worth noting that so much of Brunswick’s success in the last year is derived from the volunteer efforts of our parents and this year the BPA, yet again, worked tirelessly to support and enhance the day-to-day experience of our boys all while presenting a welcoming and inclusive message for the school.

Perhaps most significantly of all, the 2013-2014 school year saw the advent of several important programmatic initiatives for both our students as well as our faculty. The Foreign Language Immersion Program (FLIP), with the invaluable support of the McKinnon foundation, provided opportunities for Upper School students to pursue summer study in native-speaking learning environments, the Brunswick Faculty Institute began its first regularly scheduled summer of enrichment/enhancement for members of our faculty and planning continues on schedule for a Fall of 2015 roll-out of the Brunswick Center for Character and Leadership.

Committing all this to paper, it is amazing to consider just how much our School has been able to accomplish in a single year. More than anything, I think, it speaks to the strength of all constituencies in our community from students, to faculty, to Trustees, to parents, to alumni.

For all that each and every one of you did to help make the year the success that it was, many, many thanks and all the best for a well-deserved summer ahead.