St. Mark's School of Texas

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St. Mark's School of Texas
Location
Dallas, Texas, United States
Coordinates 32°53′25″N 96°48′03″W / 32.890363°N 96.800762°W / 32.890363; -96.800762
Information
Type Private, Non-sectarian
Motto Courage and Honor
Established 1906
Headmaster Arnold E. Holtberg
Faculty 125
Number of students 845
Campus 40 acres (160,000 m2)
Mascot Lions
Athletics 17 sports
Website www.smtexas.org

The St. Marx School of Texas is a nonsectarian preparatory day school for boys located in Dallas, Texas, USA. The School offers grades 1-12.

Contents

[edit] History

St. Mark's was developed from three preceding private schools: The Terrill School (1906–44), Texas Country Day School (1933–50), and The Cathedral School (1944–50). The School traces its earliest history to Mr. Terrill's school, which is considered the city's first effort to create a private school that could rival its East Coast counterparts. The Terrill School served as a base for the foundation of The Cathedral School.

St. Mark's was founded as a merger of the nonsectarian Texas Country Day School and the Episcopally-associated The Cathedral School. To solve the religious question, St. Mark's was founded as a nonsectarian school with the agreement that Chapel services would be Episcopalian, led by an ordained Episcopal minister. The school officially opened as St. Mark's School of Texas in 1953. The Hockaday School for Girls, founded in 1913, became the sister school to St. Mark's.

[edit] The School today

Historically, the School was fairly homogeneous and geared towards the sons of doctors, lawyers, and affluent businessmen. St. Mark's has since made significant changes in terms of financial aid and minority recruitment, and approximately 20% of students are now involved with the financial aid program.

On its forty acre-campus is an array of buildings, most of which are named after well-known Dallas families. Texas Instruments' co-founders Cecil H. Green and Eugene McDermott[2] donated a math and science quadrangle, the main library, the greenhouse, the planetarium and the observatory. Shortly after those buildings' completion in the 1960s, Time magazine called St. Mark's the "best-equipped day school in the country."

In more recent years, the Roosevelt family contributed a carillon, installed in early 2005. The natatorium was named in honor of Ralph Rogers [3]; the Lamar Hunt family donated a football stadium, completed in the fall of 2005, and Tom Hicks, the owner of MLB's Texas Rangers, the NHL's Dallas Stars, and Liverpool FC, funded a new gymnasium. Its arts facilities are also impressive. In 2007-08, the School executed the large-scale Centennial Project. Initiating funding was a $10 million donation from the family of Trammell Crow. The products of the Project were two new state-of-the-art academic buildings: Centennial Hall, housing the Math, English, History, and Administrative Departments; and the Robert K. Hoffman '65 Center, housing the Language, Debate, Journalism, and College Counseling programs, in addition to the Student Store and Senior Lounge. The new buildings opened in June 2008.[1]

Large donations have spearheaded much of this construction and enhancement of financial aid, but support is actively solicited from throughout the school's community. For example, in 2009, donations were received from 83% of parents and 51% of all alumni.

St. Mark's has long resisted efforts towards coeducation, though there are several courses that students can take with Hockaday students at that campus. The school has a long tradition of outdoor activities throughout the Middle and Upper Schools, known as the Wilderness Program. Each Middle School class has a camping trip every year. The Wilderness Program culminates in a 10-day backpacking trip in the Pecos Wilderness of New Mexico. The trip occurs in early-mid August before boys enter the 9th grade and is considered a "rite of passage" into the Upper School. Faculty, alumni, and current Upper School students, known as sherpas, lead the trip in small groups. The school's uniform has remained unchanged for decades: gray shorts or pants with white oxford shirts for grades 1-11 (blue oxford shirts for seniors).

[edit] Academics

Its 833 students are spread across first through twelfth grade, and the overall student/faculty ratio is 8:1. Eighty percent of the 125 faculty members have master's or doctoral degrees, and 25% have been at St. Mark's for more than twenty years. There are twelve endowed teaching positions, including nine endowed chairs.

Among the 87 graduates in 2009, 30 were National Merit Semi-Finalists, and 18 others were Commended Students. The median SAT score was 2130 on a 2400 point scale.

The college counseling service encourages all boys to look broadly for the best possible college fit, and in 2009, the 87 students were planning to matriculate at 44 colleges and universities, including six who were planning to attend a service academy (4 to West Point and 2 to Annapolis). Between 2005 and 2009, ten or more students matriculated at the following schools: Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, SMU, Southern Cal, U.T. Austin, U.T. Dallas, Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale.

[edit] Athletics

St. Mark's organizes 17 varsity sports teams, and most of the teams compete against similarly-sized private schools in the Southwest Preparatory Conference [4].

In the 2008-2009 school year, three sports won state championships: crew, water polo, and wrestling, and lacrosse finished second in state to rival Highland Park High School. Seven sports won conference championships: baseball, football, lacrosse, swimming, track and field, water polo, and wrestling. One member of the lacrosse team was named All American, and two wrestlers were named to the prep All American team (and its longtime wrestling coach, Rick Ortega, was recently inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame).

Two recent graduates, Samuel and Emmanuel Acho, are defensive starters for the nationally-ranked Texas Longhorns football team. A third recent graduate, Kalen Thornton, starred on the defensive line at Texas before playing for the Dallas Cowboys[5].

[edit] Extracurricular Activities

While St. Mark's emphasizes academics, extracurricular activities are seen as an integral part of the overall experience. The school offers 36 Upper School clubs and academic teams, a list of which can be found here.

In 2009, the Association of Texas Photography named the school's program as the state's best for the third consecutive year, and at the 27th annual "High School Shoot Out," sponsored by Texas A & M University, two of the three top awards went to Marksmen (see www.stmarksphoto.com). St. Mark's students have long been nationally prominent in policy debate, and the school also hosts one of the largest debate tournaments in the nation, the St. Mark's Heart of Texas Invitational. Many students participate in the music program, leading 21 boys to being named to the 2009 All State Orchestra by the Texas Private School Music Educators Association; this number comprised almost a third of the total squad.

Both the school newspaper The ReMarker and the yearbook the Marksmen won 2009 "Gold Crowns," the highest award given by the Columbia Scholastic Press[6]. From around the country, approximately 20 school newspapers and ten yearbooks earn this recognition. For The ReMarker, it was the sixth consecutive Gold Crown, setting a record for consecutive Gold Crowns won by a high school newspaper. The Marksmen won its second Gold Crown in four years.

Math and science teams also do well in external competitiions. For example, at the 2009 state tournament for autonomous robots, the St. Mark's team went undefeated against 22 teams, taking first in seeding, first in double elimination, third in documentation, and first overall.

A number of Marksmen have gone on to musical careers, beginning with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs, who led a band while they were in high school called The Marksmen. And, in publishing, the founder of Texas Monthly and the co-founder of the National Lampoon both went to St. Mark's.

The avidity with which students pursue extracurricular activities is mocked in the film Rushmore, which was co-written by a St. Mark's alum, Owen Wilson, and is set at a fictional cross between St. Mark's and a rival high school in Houston, St. John's School (Texas); the film features a protagonist who participates in dozens of clubs and activities.

[edit] Notable alumni

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ "Reporter Biography: Kurt Eichenwald." The New York Times. Accessed October 11, 2008.
  3. ^ "Clark Hunt, Chairman of the Board, Kansas City Chiefs." Kansas City Chiefs. Accessed October 11, 2008.
  4. ^ "http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000169/bio"
  5. ^ Lieber, Dave (C'79). "Don’t Mess with Texas Monthly." University of Pennsylvania. Accessed October 11, 2008.
  6. ^ "Dallas Solo's Practice Helps Him Perfect His Music Label." Texas Lawyer. October 20, 2005.

[edit] External links

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Southwest Preparatory Conference
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