St. Mark's School (Texas)

St. Mark's School of Texas
Courage and Honor
Location
Dallas, Texas, United States
Coordinates	32.890363°N 96.800762°W / 32.890363; -96.800762
Information
Type	Private, Non-sectarian
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. Mark's School of Texas is a nonsectarian preparatory day school for boys located in Dallas, Texas, USA. The School offers grades 1–12.

History

St. Mark's developed from three preceding private schools: The Terrill School (1906–1944), Texas Country Day School (1933–1950), and The Cathedral School (1944–1950). 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 nondenominational, led by an ordained Episcopalian Chaplain. 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.

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 50% of students are now involved with the financial aid program.

On its 40 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 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; the Lamar Hunt family donated a football stadium, completed in the fall of 2005, and Tom Hicks 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 Harlan 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.

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 2010-2011, donations were received from 87% of parents and 56% of all alumni; the percentage of alumni contributing was the highest percentage for any secondary school in the country.

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).

Academics

Its 849 students are spread across first through twelfth grade, and the overall student/faculty ratio is 8:1. 80 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 82 graduates in 2011, 22 were National Merit Semi-Finalists, and 35 others were Commended Students. Over the past 5 years, St. Mark's has had a higher percentage of seniors being named Semi-Finalists (28.4%) than any school in the Dallas-Ft. Worth region. The median SAT for seniors in 2011 was 2130 on a 2400 point scale.

From the class of 2011, the 82 seniors enrolled at 49 colleges and universities. Twelve will attend the University of Texas at Austin, while an additional 43 will attend a "national university" ranked in the top 25 by US News, and five others will attend a top 5 "national liberal arts college" or one of the military service academies. Between 2007 and 2011, ten or more students matriculated at the following schools: Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, SMU, Southern California, Stanford, University of Texas at Austin, Vanderbilt, and Washington University in St. Louis.

Athletics

St. Mark's organizes 17 varsity sports teams that compete against similarly-sized private schools in the Southwest Preparatory Conference.

Most St. Mark's teams have won recent conference championships, but several have been historically dominant within the 18-team SPC. For example, in the 2010-2011 academic year, Wrestling won its 14th consecutive conference title by winning 10 of the 15 weight classes and finishing among the top 3 in the other 5 classes. In addition, its long-time coach, Rick Ortega--who himself is in the national wrestling Hall of Fame--has now led 13 St. Marks wrestling teams to state championships (for both public and private schools) and coached 67 individual state champions and 62 prep All-Americans . Similar success has been had by Swimming, which won its 15th conference title in 16 years in 2011 by scoring 177 points (100 more than its closest rival) and setting conference records in all 3 relays . Track and Field won its 8th consecutive SPC championship in 2011 by scoring 190 points, 70 more than its nearest rival . St. Mark's has also done well in two sports that are not widely followed in Texas: Lacrosse finished among the top 4 in the state in 2011 for the third consecutive year after again winning SPC, and Crew won three state titles in 2010 as well as a state championship in 2011.

Overall, through the 2010-11 school year, St. Mark's has won 10 consecutive SPC Director's Cups, a quantitative measure of overall yearly athletic success within the conference.

One reason for the strong team success is the presence of numerous individual athletes who then succeed at the next level. For example, Sam Acho '07 starred in football at St. Mark's but was also the state private school champion in both the shot put and discus. Acho is currently the starting outside linebacker for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals after having been team MVP for the Texas Longhorns football team and winner of the 2010 Campbell Award for the top student athlete in college football. Sam's brother, Emmanuel '08, was also a multi-year starter for Texas, where he was first-team all conference in 2011, first team academic All Conference in 2009, 2010, and 2011, and the winner of multiple awards related to community service including the 2010 Arthur Ashe Award. He is expected to be drafted in the early rounds of the upcoming NFL Draft. At St. Mark's, he also played basketball and track, throwing the discus and shot put further than his brother, Sam. Kalen Thornton '00 also started at Texas before playing for the Dallas Cowboys, for whom his father also played. At St. Mark's, Thornton also starred in basketball and track and field. Thornton retired from the NFL in 2006 because of injuries and is now a student at Stanford Business School. From the 2011 class, 7 seniors signed to play intercollegiate sports, including football and track (Penn), lacrosse (Bates), track (Columbia), rowing (MIT), swimming (Bates), football (Stanford), and water polo (the U.S. Naval Academy). From this group of 2011 graduates, Ty Montgomery had perhaps the most successful freshman season, catching 24 passes and returning 27 kickoffs for Stanford's nationally-ranked football team after having been All SPC in basketball and football and the SPC champion in both the 100 and 200 meter dashes.

See also

• Bill Blakeley (1934–2010), Basketball Coach 1956-1966

Extracurricular activities

St. Mark's offers 42 Upper School clubs and academic teams for the 80 to 90 boys per graduating class. This extracurricular activity has led to significant external recognition.

For example, both the school newspaper, The ReMarker, and the yearbook, the Marksmen, won 2011 Gold Crowns, the highest award given by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. From around the country, approximately 20 school newspapers and ten yearbooks earn this recognition from among 1700 entries. For The ReMarker, it was the eighth consecutive Gold Crown, lengthening its record for consecutive Gold Crowns won by a high school newspaper. The Marksmen won its fourth Gold Crown in five years.

The debate team won a national championship in 1990, finished runner-up in 1987, 1992, 2002, and 2010, and has generally been ranked among the top ten in the country over the past 30 years. The school itself annually hosts one of the most prestigious high school debate tournaments in the country: The Heart of Texas Invitational.

The White House sponsors a Presidential Scholars Program that attracts about 7000 high school students with a special interest in the arts. 150 are invited annually to Miami for intensive instruction and evaluation, and 60 are then selected as finalists. In 2010, 4 St. Mark's seniors were named finalists (2 in photography, 1 in ceramics, and 1 in band), and 2 of the 4 were selected to be among the 20 Presidential Scholars in the Arts..In 2011, one student became a finalist and another a semi-finalist.

The school's photography program has been named best in state by the Association of Texas Photography Instructors for five consecutive years (2007–2011).

The St. Mark's Robotics team has won 2 of the last 3 state championships for autonomous robots.

The 4th grade "Wordmaster" team won a national title in 2011, competing against 694 teams from around the country.

As a Middle Schooler, Sai Gunturi '07 won the 2003 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The Middle School math team finished first in State in 2008, 2009, and 2010.

The Upper School "Whiz Kid" team won the North Texas championships in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

15 boys were named to the 2011 All State Orchestra (and 4 others to All State Band) by the Texas Private School Music Educators Association. 11 girls from Hockaday were also named, so that--combined--the two schools comprised over 40% of the entire orchestra.

Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs are probably the most famous alumni musicians; while in high school, they created a band called The Marksmen. The founder of Texas Monthly and a co-founder of the National Lampoon both attended St. Mark's. Prominent alumni actors include Tommy Lee Jones, who played football at both St. Mark's and Harvard, and Luke Wilson, who set the school record for the 800 meter run (1:54.99). Robin Lynn Macy was one of the four original Dixie Chicks while she was also teaching mathematics at St. Mark's in the 1980's.

The avidity with which students pursue extracurricular activities is mocked in the film Rushmore, which was co-written by another St. Mark's alumnus, Owen Wilson, set at a fictional cross between St. Mark's and a rival high school in Houston, St. John's School, and filmed on the campus of another Houston rival, the Kinkaid School; the film features a protagonist who participates in dozens of clubs and activities. In addition, the local press has long written about ways in which St. Mark's blends in and differs from the rest of Dallas .

Notable alumni

• Richard Bass, 1946. Owner of Snowbird Ski Resort, mountain climber.
• Steve Miller, 1961. Musician.
• Boz Scaggs, 1962. Musician.
• Michael R. Levy, 1964. Founder and publisher of Texas Monthly
• Robert Hoffman, 1965. Co-Founder, National Lampoon. Businessman. Namesake of new Hoffman Center building.
• Tommy Lee Jones, 1965. Academy Award-winning actor.
• Jeffrey Swann, 1969. Pianist.
• Alan Stern, 1975. NASA scientist.
• H. Ross Perot, Jr., 1977. Executive Chairman, Perot Systems; real estate developer.
• Randall Zisk, 1977, Producer/Director.
• Michael Weiss. (attended grades 1–7). Jazz pianist, composer.
• Kurt Eichenwald, 1979. Journalist.
• David Hudgins, 1983. Television writer and producer.^{[citation needed]}
• Clark Hunt, 1983. CEO, Kansas City Chiefs.
• Craig Zisk, 1983. Producer/Director.
• Steve Jurvetson, 1985. Venture capitalist.^{[citation needed]}
• Rhett Miller, 1989. Musician, Old 97's.
• Owen Wilson (expelled). Actor.
• Luke Wilson, 1990. Actor.
• Matthew Silverman, 1994, President, Tampa Bay Rays
• Miles Fisher Actor.
• Sam Acho, 2007. Defensive end for the Arizona Cardinals.

External links

• St. Mark's School of Texas website
• Admission Office
• Peterson's Guide to Private Schools
• St. Mark's Course Listing