Collegiate School (New York City)

This article is about the New York City school founded in 1628. For other uses, see Collegiate School (disambiguation).

Collegiate School
Address
260 West 78th Street New York , NY USA
Information
Type	Private
Motto	Template:Lang-la ("Unless God, then in vain") Eendracht maakt macht (In unity there is strength)
Established	1628
Founder	The Rev. Jonas Michaelius
Chairman	George R. Bason, Jr. '72
Headmaster	Lee M. Levison
Faculty	113
Grades	K-12
Number of students	613
Campus	Urban
Color(s)	Orange and blue
Nickname	Dutchmen
Newspaper	The Journal
Yearbook	The Dutchman
Affiliation	Ivy Preparatory School League
Website	Collegiate School

Collegiate School is an independent school for boys in New York City and is one of the oldest schools in the United States. It is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and is a member of both the New York Interschool and the Ivy Preparatory School League.

History

Collegiate was founded in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1628 by the Dutch West India Company and the Classis of Amsterdam. The school’s initial incarnation was located south of Canal Street and was an academic institution for both sexes. The school's location has changed several times over the last four centuries, although the school has been at its current location, next to the West End Collegiate Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, since 1892.

Founding date

Controversy surrounds the school's actual founding date. Prior to 1984, the common belief was that the school had been founded in 1638, placing it two years later than the founding of Harvard University and three years after the founding date of Boston Latin School. Massimo Maglione, a historian and Upper School teacher at Collegiate, conducted research into the accuracy of this date and found that Collegiate's founder—the Reverend Jonas Michaëlius, the first minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in America—had written of his efforts to teach the catechism to Indian children as early as 1628. Based on this evidence, the school in 1984 officially moved up its founding to the earlier date. Whether Michaëlius' early teaching actually constituted the founding of a school, however, remains under debate. Maglione told The New York Times in 1985 that "it seems clear that the school was not an official entity until 1638."

School seal and mottoes

Collegiate's official seal is an adaptation of the coat of arms of William of Orange, who was the founder of the Dutch Republic and of the Reformed Church in Holland and led the cause of independence and of freedom for the Reformed Church against Philip II of Spain. Included in the school's seal are two mottoes: Eendracht Maakt Macht, Dutch for "In unity there is strength", and Nisi Dominus Frustra, Latin for "unless God, then in vain."

Organization

Collegiate School campus

Mission

Currently, the school teaches students in grades K-12. The school's mission is the following: Collegiate School strives to educate each boy to reach his highest level of intellectual, ethical, artistic, and physical development. Drawing on what is known about boys' growth and learning, the school offers a rigorous K-12 program rich in opportunities for cultivating individual talents and interests in a climate of collaboration and respect.

Campus

The campus, located between 77th and 78th Streets and West End Avenue, consists of four separate buildings: The “Old Building,” Platten Hall, West End Plaza, and a new six-story extension that bridges Platten Hall with West End Plaza. The four-story “Old Building” is part of the original church and is home to the “Upper School,” grades 9-12. Platten Hall, originally nine stories, was extended in 1990 by two floors. It includes two gyms (in addition to the “Alumni” Gym located next to the “Old Building”), the recently renovated Ann and Edgar Bronfman Theatre, the Black Box Studio theatre, the “Lower School” (grades 1-4), the "Middle School" (grades 5-8), a full-service library, music and art studio facilities, a dark room, two computer labs, a weight-lifting room, and the science department. West End Plaza is a hotel that was purchased by the school in 1977. Though it still serves in part as a residence for teachers, Collegiate has renovated several floors into administrative offices, classrooms for the Kindergarten (added in 1997), “Lower School” and the "Middle School" (grades 5-8), and two cafeterias. All four buildings border a courtyard where students of all grades play various games ranging from Handball commonly played by the Lower School (although there has been a recent resurgence in the Upper School) students to Courtyard Football played by the Middle School students to Courtyard Soccer played by the Upper School students.

Structure

Each grade has approximately 50 boys, many of whom attend Collegiate for the full course of study, thirteen years (these young men are nicknamed "Survivors"). A financial aid program is in place: though as with many of its peer NYC schools, the majority of the students come from affluent households. More than a quarter of Collegiate teachers hold a Ph.D..

The school is private, though it functions under a New York City non-profit statute enacted in the 1940s. Collegiate is controlled by a Board of Trustees, and the school is administered by a Headmaster.

Leadership

Collegiate's Board of Trustees selected Lee M. Levison to serve as the school's 28th Headmaster, replacing W. Lee Pierson, who served as interim headmaster for two years after Kerry Brennan left to become headmaster at Roxbury Latin School, following a four-year tenure at Collegiate. Levison, who was head of school at the Kingswood-Oxford School for many years, began serving at Collegiate July 1, 2006.

Curriculum

Collegiate's Upper School (high school) curriculum consists of English, Math, Science, History, Modern Foreign Languages (Spanish, French, or Chinese), Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek), Religion & Ethics, Music, Visual Art, Drama, Technology, and Physical Education.

Rankings

In 2002, Worth ranked Collegiate third among the nation's independent schools in terms of percentage of graduates attending Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. In 2007, The Wall Street Journal ranked Collegiate number one in the world in terms of percent of the senior class matriculating to eight selective American colleges.

Sports and co-curricular activities

The school's athletic success has mainly been with the varsity basketball, baseball, track and field, soccer, and cross country teams. The Collegiate Soccer team won the NYSAIS state championship in 2010, proving to have the best private school soccer team in the state. Collegiate also has wrestling, lacrosse, and tennis teams. Students not participating in a sport take either physical education, yoga, or weightlifting. Yearly fitness tests are administered in the lower and middle schools.

The school has a number of clubs, especially in the Upper School. They include:

• The Journal, the school's student-run newspaper
• Prufrock, the Upper School's art and literary magazine
• Student Government
• Cenic (Collegiate and the Environment Naturally In Check), the school's official environmental club
• The Dutchman, the school's student-run yearbook
• Debate, a nationally competitive team in Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum Debate
• JAMAA, a support organization for students of color
• Asian Cultural Society, an organization which discusses issues relevant to Asian culture.
• JCS, the Jewish Cultural Society
• Chess Club
• Learning Through Listening, a student run organization to benefit Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic
• Community Service Club
• Model United Nations
• TRACKS, an organization that supports the town of Iten, Kenya
• Verse, the school's Spoken Word Club
• Young Independents
• Young Democrats
• Young Republicans & Conservatives
• Charabia, the school's French language magazine
• Voces, the school's Spanish language magazine
• Forum, the school's classics magazine
• Science Olympiad, which competes at the city and state levels
• Foreign Policy/International Relations Council, a discussion group that invites distinguished members in the political arena
• CALC, the school's math club
• Imaging at Collegiate, a club with the intent to expose the many photographers at Collegiate to their resources

Notable alumni

• George Axelrod, 1940, playwright
• David Benioff, 1988, screenwriter
• Peter Bogdanovich, 1957, filmmaker and author
• Edgar Bronfman, Jr., 1973, CEO of Warner Music Group
• Christopher d'Amboise, 1978, An American dancer, choreographer, writer, and theater director
• Robert J. Dixon, 1938, U.S. Air Force general
• Douglas Kennedy, 1972, novelist
• John F. Kennedy Jr, 1978, Son of President John F. Kennedy
• David Duchovny, 1978, Golden Globe-winning actor and director
• Edward Glaeser, 1984, economics professor
• Paul Hodes, 1968, U.S. Representative from New Hampshire
• Bill Kristol, 1970, editor of The Weekly Standard
• Ben Lyons, 2000, film critic and TV personality
• Ian McGinnis, 1997, NCAA Division I men's basketball leading rebounder
• Walter Murch, 1961 Oscar-winning editor, sound designer, and filmmaker
• Bill Perkins, 1968, New York State Senator
• Michael Shnayerson, 1972, contributing editor, Vanity Fair
• Sam Sifton, 1984, New York Times restaurant critic
• Robert F. X. Sillerman, 1966, media entrepreneur
• Cesar Romero, 1926, actor
• Mark Ronson, 1993, Grammy-winning producer and deejay
• Andrew Rossi 1991, documentary filmmaker
• John Rubinstein, 1964, actor
• Whit Stillman, 1969, filmmaker
• Luis Ubiñas, 1981, president of the Ford Foundation
• Andrew Wagner, 1981, filmmaker
• John Weidman, 1964, playwright
• Paul Weitz, 1983, filmmaker and playwright
• Alec Wilder, 1924, composer
• David Wise, screenwriter

• J. Peder Zane, 1980, journalist

Affiliated organizations

• Ivy Preparatory School League
• National Association of Independent Schools
• New York State Association of Independent Schools
• Interschool

External links

• Collegiate School