YEARS OF SCHOLARSHIP, LEADERSHIP & SERVICE
TWENTY-FIVE
THIS IS COVENANT MINDS ENLIGHTENED. HEARTS INFLAMED. LIVES TRANSFORMED.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” ROMANS 12:2
OUR HISTORY
OUR MIND
OUR HEART
OUR LIFE
OUR LEGACY
Roots Founders The First Day of School The Building The First Graduating Class STEM Fine Arts Spanish Immersion J-Term Worldview Volunteers Gone Servin’ Journey of Diversity School Culture & Tradition Faculty Excellence Covenant Abroad Athletic Achievements International Program Covenant Theatre Facilities Development The Commons In Times of Crisis Andrew Smith Court Covenant Celebrates Alumni
our HISTORY
The Commons under construction in 1997.
roots In the pews of Chapel Rock Christian Church, a dream was born: to found a Christian school close to home, a private school, but one open to everyone. A few members formed a committee to undertake their colossal dream. They prayed. They planned. They got the support of the elders at Chapel Rock. They got to work. An early flyer for CCHS states the goals of the Covenant project: “To build a student body which honors Christ in their daily activities,” “To be strongly supportive of the family,” “To develop the whole student through athletics, drama, music, and creative arts,” and, notably, “To instill in our students a sense of community, which includes accepting the responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship.” It’s amazing to see how recognizably these goals shape Covenant’s day-to-day character today. The Covenant committee undertook a fact-finding mission in Michigan, visiting a number of private Christian schools in order to learn what they’d need to go forward with the project. Firstly, they decided they would need some twenty-one professionals in a variety of departments, including a principal, office staff, and educators in each required discipline. Looking around, they realized with astonishment that the members of their “Covenant committee” collectively met that goal. They already had twenty-one professionals in each area needed to keep a school running effectively. “Professionals!” reiterates committee member John Noel in recalling his shock on that day. God provides. Secondly, they would need, as John Noel put it to the committee, “a free building.” That, one imagines, would have raised some eyebrows; how would they come across a school building of that size, a multi-million-dollar proposition, for free? For now, they could hold classes in the basement of Chapel Rock. The committee had no idea how near that pipe dream of a “free building” was to becoming reality. Only a few weeks before the start of the school year, one hurdle still remained: the committee had decided that, to move forward, they needed twenty students enrolled by June 20th. So far, there were nineteen; promising, but not enough. As the committee gathered to pray on the night of June 19th, the night before the deadline, they received a call: a parent, after lengthy thought and prayer with their spouse, felt that God was calling them to enroll their student at Covenant. And so it was that, with joy in their hearts at God’s answer to their prayers, CCHS’s founders moved forward to start the first semester, the first of fifty and counting in Covenant’s history.
Prepare students for success in the world of work or college
Develop the whole student through Athletics
and the Arts
Instill a sense of community in our students
Strongly supportive of the family be good stewards
A CHRIST CENTERED
A student body which honors Christ
Integrate technology throughout our curriculum
ATMOSPHERE
Produce a work ethic in young men & women by holding them accountable
stem
Covenant’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) program has experienced some amazing success stories over the years, especially considering our smallness. Our rocket team made it to nationals their first year, in 2003, and finished fourth in the country the very next year. Our robotics team has been to the VEX Robotics World Championship (conveniently held in Louisville, KY). Our math club, in its early years, would regularly send 40 or so students to math competitions. How do we do it? Covenant has always drawn devoted students, students who love to be involved in their school. Science and math teacher Sean Bird remembers of his first year at CCHS that “it was so interesting coming here, where the faith of the students was reflected in their lives.” He’s seen that faith molding an ethic of hard work and a love of discovery when his rocket team members showed up for launches over Spring Break, sometimes in freezing temperatures and snow, in order to get more practice in before competition. This isn’t always easy, he notes. “We had people coming from Crawfordsville, Shelbyville, Batesville,” to attend Covenant. “Getting together outside of class to be able to do a class project wasn’t the easiest thing.” Though the math club has become a bit more intimate in recent years, Mrs. Taylor remembers past years when she “would take a huge number of kids” to math competitions, “because that was an activity they could do together.” Math was a way to grow closer to friends. However, intellectual curiosity—and confidence—was actually the reason Mrs. Taylor started Math Club. “There was a group of sophomores I had who were really good in math, and kind of cocky about it,” she recalls. “So I needed to give them something to challenge them, honestly.” The devotion of our STEM teachers cannot be underestimated. For around 18 years, Mrs. Taylor has devoted Friday afternoons—the most cherished of quitting times—to Math Club, staying well beyond the official end of the school day. And Mr. Bird, in addition to hours and hours after school and on weekends spent coaching the rocket team and VEX Robotics, has also juggled coaching tennis and teaching often five or six different classes per semester. “I’m still teaching too many things,” he decides. And he is always on the lookout for new challenges and opportunities for his aspiring scientists. When he started, CCHS’s main STEM competition was Rube-Goldberg. But Mr. Bird was not sure it was worth the time it took students. “It’s interesting, and boy, sure are a lot of simple machines. There’s some learning going on, but is it valuable?” So, CCHS STEM moved higher. A few students were able to get a contract with NASA to design a rocket that would fly a mile high, and they flew down to Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Covenant students have also been invited to programs at Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers. One year, because the competition was conveniently being held at the IUPUI Natatorium, the robotics contingent decided to enter the SeaPerch underwater robotics competition. “I had a fish tank, a very large fish tank. We might have potentially thought about the pond but...ehh, too much debris and fun things like that. We actually did go to somebody’s pool.” The bottom line, however, when it comes to our success in any endeavour, is explained in Ps. 97:2, which is emblazoned on the robotics and rocket team badges: “May the favor of our God rest upon us, establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.”
Kylie Bright (‘16) and Kyra Joseph (‘16) conduct a lab.
school culture & traditions Ask a Covenant student about CCHS traditions, and you could hear any number of answers. Most think first of Spirit Week, with transformative hallway decorations, clever costumes, powderpuff, and, of course, dodgeball. Some may think first of football, soccer, basketball, or volleyball games, chanting together in the stands, dressing in blackout or whiteout or Covenant colors. Some remember more day-to-day traditions; at least one group of alumni claims to have eaten out on the mall every single day for their entire four years here. This vibrant culture of school spirit didn’t happen by chance. One teacher who had a big hand in creating this sense of community was Nate Gast, who also served as a coach and Athletic Director at Covenant. “We were trying to get it to be more of a high school experience,” Mr. Gast explains. He guesses it “took five years to establish” the Spirit Week traditions we now know and love, slowly adding to them and fleshing out the week of fun and dress-up days. “You forget how messy it is to build something.” Gast recalls some former traditions as well, such as meeting at the Einstein Brothers Bagels that used to be in Speedway before school each day. “On any given morning you would have twenty Covenant students meeting teachers for coffee. There was a vibrant culture of discipleship.” This was a time when relationships, Covenant’s beating heart, really got pumping. “These old guys would get to know all the students. They were there all the time.” He suggested Mrs. Towles and other office staff would remember the Einstein’s tradition well. “They were the ones getting on our case, because we were usually late getting back to the school.” Covenant athletic events have always been an inspiring rallying point for the community. But as Covenant has grown, it has necessarily grown more diverse and less unified. “There’s so many things now,” Vicki Towles says. In the past, “Everybody wanted to come to the basketball games. We had chili suppers. It was more like a church.” Now, “there are so many things to choose from that it’s hard to go to everything. You get so busy to do it all.” Mr. Gast has noticed this trend, as well. “All of your cultural events were really well attended because there was nothing else going on.” Now, we have far more clubs, a more involved fine arts program, and even more sports—giving the community far more activities to choose from. But Covenant’s community feel has remained. “If you have to force it with an event you don’t have a community,” Gast says. “If people just show up, that’s how you know.” Go to any CCHS football game and you’ll know: even without the much-missed chili suppers, this is still a place where we show up for each other.
The Class of 2020 in Senior blue celebrate their Powder Puff win in 2019.
facilities development The acquisition of a real, functional building in 1997 was an enormous blessing to the pilgrims on Covenant’s frontier. It was bigger than the fledgling student body needed, so rooms were used for storage or even made available to the community. For example, Facilities Director Scott Voehringer mentions rooms 111 and 112, currently classrooms of Chris Hutchison and Amanda Brown, are split by a retractable accordion wall. In the early days, Covenant rented the double room to a community member to teach ballet and gymnastics for children. “If I wanted to do an activity with my class I could just go into an empty classroom and set the classroom up and do it,” recalls Jane Taylor, who started at Covenant its first year in its own building. As Brad Spencer rightly points out, this is “a stark contrast to the past 15 years of never having quite enough space.” Indeed, it is hard now to imagine seeing empty classrooms; study halls fill teacher’s rooms during their free periods, and the Commons holds students nearly the entire day. There have been plenty of moves and changes over the years, as well. Mrs. Taylor originally placed herself in room 105, currently occupied by Andrea Reiss. In 2015, after a few retirements and several new additions to the staff, the decision was made to bring more order to the classroom assignments. English teachers are now grouped at the end of the “red hallway,” STEM classrooms run the length of that hall, history and bible classes line one side of the “tan hallway,” and music and world languages hold up the far end. Mrs. Taylor recalls a certain “territorialness” that had settled in after so many years of “free choice” of classrooms. “They were worried I wouldn’t give up my room because I’d been in it for 18 years, but I didn’t care. I actually like this room better—it has more sun.” What she missed from her old room was a line by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which had been painted on the east wall of 105: Earth’s crammed with heaven and evey common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes, the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. “One of my students painted that for me. And so I kind of miss that. It was there because it was to show that ... God is in everything.” Students and teachers have put their marks on several of Covenant’s classrooms. Mr. Bird’s famous portraits of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and John Clerk Maxwell, complete with notable equations discovered by each, comes to mind. Dana and Betsy Harris— “early eclectic [Covenant] people with crazy hair and fishnet [stockings], cool kids” as Mr. Bird describes them—painted a mural in Bird’s room of “the triad of the greatest physicists of all time.” “It was kind of a combined brainstorm. This was definitely the first mural in the school.” How did they get permission to dress up the walls of Bird’s room? “I don’t think we had to have too much permission.”
Photo of the Covenant campus in 2017 by David Colson (‘17)
covenant celebrates Every year, Covenant has held a celebratory fundraising event. It has gone by several names: “the Auction,” “the Gala,” or, most recently, “Covenant Celebrates.” But, as Tommy Featheringill, the event’s current organizer, points out, “the mission has always been the same: to raise scholarship dollars for deserving students.” Early on, this event was run by devoted volunteers like then-Covenant-parent Vicki Towles, who began volunteering in 1997. “It was a lot of work,” Mrs. Towles says, which appears to be an understatement. She and other volunteers were in charge of organizing a dinner, booking a speaker or two, and collecting auction items. “We’d ask each students’ parents to donate two items,” she reports, “Not personally, but if [they knew] someone who has a business or anything” they could solicit those donations from others. Mrs. Towles remembers at least one year they amassed something in the neighborhood of 2100 items! What a herculean task to collect, organize, and display such a huge collection of items. But, of course, it was for an excellent cause. The auction items were eclectic and, often, spectacular. One year, two cars were auctioned. John Williams, a founding Covenant parent, recalls vacation packages, lift chairs, and signed professional sports memorabilia. Many of the items were smaller, but more touching. Mrs. Towles remembers homerooms would auction off volunteer time; win the auction, and they would rake leaves or do other yard work. She also recalls that Covenant sports teams would sign a football or basketball and auction that off. “That ball would go for more than what a Colts football would,” she says. Most meaningful perhaps is that Covenant sophomores would write down the stories of their conversions. Mrs. Towles and other volunteers would compile those into a book for auction. “It just became real special and personal,” she says.
Covenant Celebrates 2017: “All Things New” was held at Fountain Square Theatre in November 2017.