FEATURE
Prospects, Planning, and Potential
by Dan Scheibe, head of school
In order to illustrate some aspects of both vision and strategy for Lawrence Academy’s future, let me describe three concrete initiatives that require ample doses of both. These initiatives run from the one-year timeframe to the one-hundred-year timeframe and beyond. While one might get a case of institutional vertigo from such chronological chasms, looking back on more than 200 years of history of the school, one realizes that our present footing rests on just such spacious vistas.
Master Planning I will start with the large picture, both in setting and time. Beginning actively (and somehow fittingly) the afternoon before Reunion Weekend started this past spring, Lawrence Academy embarked on the creation of a campus master plan. Such a plan would literally comprise a map for refining and wisely developing the physical Lawrence Academy campus. Non-spoiler alert: this article will not reveal any final renderings or designs on the one hand, or plans for purchasing and franchising the Gibbet Hill cows on the other. Though we have a good idea of our needs, the structure of the plan is not far enough developed to reveal particular concrete (or turf or biofuel) proposals. What I can reveal, however, is that the early stages of thinking have to do with the general campus landscape form and architecture, particularly the means of entry, arrival, passage, and commerce on and around campus. While Lawrence Academy has a beautiful physical plant and a lovely, idiosyncratic, and anachronistic way of fitting into the local environment, it is less the design of an original, omnipotent campus master planner from 4 I FALL 2013
1793—or 1893 or 1993—and more the design of history, circumstance, fate, and occasional accident. (Historical fires and storms come to mind.) The initial stages of campus master planning, then, have centered on discovering the principles of design and flow that the existing campus suggests, as it sits in its view straddling hilltops and valleys. Once those “organic” principles of existing landscape architecture are articulated, we can start to enhance those aspects of the campus that most accurately and evocatively tell its story: entry from the outside world; arrival at the core of campus; gravitation around the academic quad; and the expression and organization of spaces for flow and play. Such a plan would help define paths and possibilities on campus, ultimately leading to those buildings and fields, that would not only have an impact today and tomorrow, but would shape building on campus hundreds of years forward. This vision will express an integrity of character for the campus, but it will also unfold a strategy that can be employed and deployed over decades of possibility and change. Though distant, 2093 and 2193 are parts of our future as well. No doubt, the future editions of the Academy Journal will reveal and promote this campus master plan.
The Great Doubling The second initiative I would like to explore here is a fundraising target that I will label “the great doubling.” Since my first meetings, including as a candidate for head of school, with Bruce MacNeil and other members of Lawrence Academy’s board leadership, the phrases “double the annual fund; double the endowment” have shaped the school’s aspirations with regard to stewardship. In practical terms (and depending on when you were to
