CA Campaign Expands to Reach Funding Goals

by Mike Davis, Ph.D.
Head of School

I am captivated by good quotations. For some, it takes many words to say just a little, and for others, with just a few words, they seem to say a whole lot. Consider Abraham Lincoln and his Gettysburg Address: it was just 272 words. Consider, as well, Dr. Seuss, whose prose was simple and poignant.

 

“You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!” Using a simple metaphor like a “mountain” — something we can all relate to in Colorado — help young people think about embracing the challenge of living and finding meaning and purpose.

 

There are even quotes about quotes: “Quotations resonate with the timeless desire to seize on the minimal remnant out of which the world could, in a pinch, be reconstructed.” And here is a quote that I like by Katherine Hepburn: “It’s not what you start in life, it’s what you finish.” I like it because it gives the underlying meaning to a project here at CA that we have chosen to call the “See it Through” campaign.

 

For nearly a year, trustees and CA staff members have been working behind the scenes to lay the foundation for this major capital effort. You are already seeing the results of that with last month’s opening of both the Ponzio Arts Center and the refurbished Welborn House. The excellence of CA abounds in many forms — through great people and great programming. It is clear that the spaces on this campus also set a tone and either raise (or limit) our ability to reach our full potential.

 

And now, as we introduce this work to our CA community, we are asking for you to

help us to “see it through” and complete the promise of right-sizing and aligning the rest of our facilities with the caliber of programming and instruction that we offer.

 

Today, we are at a critical juncture to fund much-needed work on our performing arts and athletic spaces. We have raised approximately $18 million toward $30 million in capital and endowment needs.

 

This fundraising is separate from our Annual Campaign, which helps to fund our day-to-day educational operations, and it is separate from what your tuition dollars cover. At CA, we also have a long-standing policy to begin a project only after all fundraising — in either pledges or payments — are in hand.

 

This project completes the dream of CA leaders who have come before us, who, over the past several decades, had a vision and hand in shaping things here at CA. A quote by Jimi Hendrix underscores why preserving that legacy matters: “I think that we honor ourselves by honoring our past.”

 

When the founders created the vision of the CA that you know today, this country was emerging from the two World Wars. Educators were asking, “What will be our future? And, “For what should we prepare our children?” Our modern, founding school leaders set forth a vision of a school where a child would get an essential education that would allow him or her — as a free individual — to be active in civic life.

 

It is actually a notion that dates back to Greco-Roman times, when the seeds were sown for what we know as a liberal arts education. Even in the times of antiquity, liberal arts covered these: Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic. In Medieval times, more subjects were added: Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. And these seven were considered the prerequisites for studying philosophy and theology.

 

It was the kind of education designed to produce a person who was virtuous and ethical, knowledgeable in many things, and highly articulate.

 

Fast forward centuries. We have added a few things to create a larger range of subjects and meet the needs of today’s students, but liberal arts curricula — both here at CA and in higher education — still hold at their core that same notion: that we help grow and develop well-rounded individuals with a general knowledge of a wide range of subjects, with a mastery of a few transferrable skills, who will become global citizens, and who are armed with the ability to contribute to their communities in whatever way the world calls upon them. Sounds strangely like CA’s mission!

 

Today, a CA education encompasses 21^st century skills essential for living and working as global citizens. It includes coding — the NEW foreign language. It includes building tiny houses, rockets, and bridges. It includes appreciating the outdoors, and serving others, — but also includes being savvy about social media, having the ability to be content producers in an electronically driven world, it includes problem solving, teamwork and adaptability. At CA, the magic is in how we do this. We start, first and foremost, with great teaching.

 

There is a Japanese proverb that says, “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great Teacher.” We have inspired and innovative teachers and administrators willing to say, “what if?” and teachers are willing to team-teach across disciplines and to let the process simply unfold.

 

We do it with great programs — from design thinking projects in the Lower School, to capstone projects in Middle School, to a new school-within-a-school program launching this spring called the REDI Lab, just like this quote from Theodore Levitt, “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” We do it through the formation of new and exciting partnerships such as our world literature scholars program in our Upper School with the help of the Neustadt Prize and the University of Oklahoma; and through partnerships with the Boettcher Teacher Residency Program, the Public Education and Business Coalition, Colorado College, The Denver Museum of Nature and Science, The Museum of Contemporary Art and others. And we do it by providing great and inspiring spaces, with parents, donors, and philanthropists willing to say “what if.”

 

I want to recognize the support and vision of Craig Ponzio who has been the major force behind our new Visual Arts Center. Open for just a few weeks, it houses CA’s marquee programs in digital content production and artistic achievements, which reflect the thriving and awarding-winning programs taught there.

 

We also have a newly renovated Admission and Business facility in the historic Welborn House. Our intention in this campaign has been to transform the future of CA, but also to honor the past by preserving this iconic center of our campus. I also want to recognize the support of Brooke Bansbach Maloy, alumna, trustee, and parent whose family led the alumni challenge that allowed the remodeling of the Welborn House.

 

We are at the precipice of completing a vision: a refurbished Performing Arts Building and Athletics and Wellness Center. If we are successful in our fundraising, all of these projects will be complete in 2018. You’ll see more information about the campaign, and you will receive information by mail. We also invite you to visit our campaign website at www.caseeitthrough.org. If you want to hear more in person, please don’t hesitate to call Bob Schmitz in our Development Office at 303-914-2507. We’ll continue to keep you apprised of our progress and timeline. With that, let me leave you with one final quote that also speaks to why at CA we continue to build for the students of both today and tomorrow, and we sincerely hope you’ll join us to “see it through.” I love this Lincoln Steffens quote to give us some perspective in our work: “Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done over. The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung. There isn’t in all the world a perfect railroad, nor a good government, nor a sound law.

 

Physics, mathematics, and especially the most advanced and exact of the sciences are being fundamentally revised. Psychology, economics, and sociology are awaiting a Darwin, whose work in turn is awaiting an Einstein.”