From the Head of School

Catherine S. McGehee

Dear Foxcroft Community,

When I was a kid, I loved building with Lincoln Logs; big one-story log cabins, tall towers, and fenced-in yards. Decades later, our daughters spent countless hours creating all kinds of kingdoms with Legos. Today’s students design rooms or layout floor plans using computer-assisted design and then print 3-D prototypes. While the tools for building have changed with time, the essential urge to build, to create, and to innovate is timeless.

During this April’s Reunion, Foxcroft celebrated the ribbon cutting and rededication of the Music Building and kicked o our campaign to renovate Schoolhouse and construct a new STEAM wing and performing arts center. The Building for Our Future campaign is cause for excitement because it shines a spotlight on the very purpose for Foxcroft’s existence — to be a lively and joyful center of learning.

The campaign highlights our exciting curriculum and the programs that prepare our students for THEIR futures. It envisions learning spaces that reflect how we are teaching students: with a research-based pedagogy centered on how girls learn best through interdisciplinary lessons, collaboration, and solving real-world problems. It reflects our programs that are student-centered, active, and connected with the community outside of our campus. It provides for the technology and tools that enhance learning, research, communication, and presentation.

Most of all, the Building for Our Future campaign hones in on Foxcroft’s central educational goals: to prepare our students to learn and lead in college and in life and to make sure they develop their intellect, voice, and character to make a di erence in their professions, their communities, and the world.

This issue of our magazine is dedicated to sharing with you the exciting vision for the new buildings and renovated spaces we associate with Schoolhouse. More importantly, however, you will read about Foxcroft’s forward-thinking and engaging STEAM programs and how our students and faculty will benefit from this building project. For it is not the buildings themselves that matter, but rather the learning that takes place inside them and the students — present and future — who benefit from that learning.

When Miss Charlotte launched her first campaign in 1946 to raise funds to build Schoolhouse (completed in 1951), she wrote, “Give us the tools we need, and we will give the world fine women.” While the tools we need to educate our students have changed, just as the toys we built with as children have changed, the mission and foundation of Foxcroft are timeless and will unite us across the decades to make this vision become a reality.

With excitement for our future,