Marvelwood School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marvelwood School is a college preparatory private boarding school located in Kent, Connecticut, USA. Marvelwood was founded in 1956 by Robert A. Bodkin and Ian Hanna in Cornwall, Connecticut. The co-founder, Robert A. Bodkin, remained Headmaster until 1981. He was succeeded by Peter B. Tacy until 1989, H. Mark Johnson until 1997, and Anne Davidson Scott until 2005. Scott E. Pottbecker is the current Head of School.
The co-founder of the school, Ian Hanna, named the school after his relative Donald Grant Mitchell, an American novelist who was best known under the pseudonym Ik Marvel. The family owned a six hundred acre estate also called Marvelwood in New Haven, Connecticut. [1] In 1924, the family donated a portion of their estate to Yale University, which is the current site of the Yale golf course.
Contents |
[edit] Overview
The Mavelwood School was founded in 1956 in Cornwall, Connecticut, on a campus previously occupied by Rumsey Hall School. Marvelwood is a small private school for students who are willing to get involved in their own education and committed to the challenge of preparing for college. In 1995, Marvelwood moved from its cramped campus in Cornwall to the former Kent School girls' campus about 10 miles away on Skiff Mountain in Kent, CT. Built in the early 1960’s, the campus has gone through a number of renovations, and is slowly being updated to meet the needs of its students and faculty. The school recently completed a capital campaign to build a new gymnasium and has begun a new campaign to renovate the campus. The Marvelwood campus itself is relatively isolated and is surrounded by conservancy lands.
Marvelwood has long enjoyed a reputation as a school that does a solid job of educating otherwise capable students who have been either unwilling or unable to succeed in a less structured environment.[citation needed] The school is currently attempting to carve out an admissions niche that distinguishes it from some of its peer schools, including Cheshire Academy, The Storm King School, Forman School, South Kent School and Darrow School. As is the case with many of those institutions, Marvelwood often struggles to recruit enough full-paying boarding students who can meet the demands of its relatively rigorous college-prep curriculum.[citation needed] Although the school has consistently shunned the learning-disabilities label, the reality is that a fair percentage of Marvelwood's student body fall into that category. As of late, the school has been consistently been improving since the arrival of the most recent headmaster, Scott E. Pottbecker. Pottbecker has been doing everything in his power to update and upgrade the quality and service of the school.
Though the school opened in 1956, Marvelwood had no athletic mascot for many years. In 1991, Marvelwood students voted on the school's first-ever mascot and chose the Pterodactyl in an effort to stand out from other schools.
Marvelwood is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) and is a member of The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), The Connecticut Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) and The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS).
[edit] Notable Alumni
- Nick Benson - Owner and Creative Director of The John Stevens Shop [2]
- Jake Burton - Founder of Burton Snowboards
- Robb Demarest - Lead investigator of the Sci-Fi channel program "Ghost Hunters International" [3]
- Lucien E. Forbes - Chairman, CEO of Forbes Group [4]]
- Arthur Levering - Modern composer of classical music [5]]
- Craig Rider - President of The Rider Group [6]
- Sidney Torres IV - Founder of SDT LLC Waste and Debris Services, entrepreneur, and real estate developer [7]
- Laura Tyson Li - Former correspondent for the Financial Times and author of "Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, China's Eternal First Lady" [8]
[edit] College Matriculation
Babson College, Bates College, Beloit College, Boston University, Clark University, Colby-Sawyer College, Connecticut College, Denison University, Drew University, Franklin & Marshall College, Gettysburg College, Hamilton College, Ithaca College, Lake Forest College, Michigan State University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, Northeastern University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Parsons School of Design, Pepperdine University, Pratt Institute, Salisbury University, Sarah Lawrence College, School of Visual Arts, Smith College, Syracuse University, Washington College, Wheaton College.
