Why Support CRMS

Goal: A boarding school educates students both inside and outside the classroom, and the residential facilities should promote and enhance those unique opportunities for learning and growth.

Outcome: the remodel of existing dorms and construction of two new residence halls—Woody Pastures South Dorm and Woody Pastures North Dorm—now welcomes students with energy-efficient, home-like spaces. Attached to the new dorms were added faculty housing, providing boarding students with more engagement and interaction with caring adults.

Goals: Academics are at the core of at CRMS education, and our educational spaces should reflect it.

Outcome: the remodel of the Jossman Academic Building’s basement level now houses exceptional science teaching and lab facilities; the former science building was radically remodeled to become the Pargiter Library. Today’s students now enjoy the Weber Music Building for both classes and private practice sessions. Finally, generous donors enabled the relocation of the school’s maintenance facility to make way for the Alpenglow Base Camp, a leading-edge active and outdoor facility that now anchors the northeast side of the campus.

Goal: Community is at the heart of CRMS’s values. Improving campus life and student access to important resources will benefit community members and ensure that CRMS continues to remain a powerful learning environment for generations to come.

Outcome: the Welcome Center, located on the site of the old “New Boys Dorm,” centralized the admission and administration offices to better serve current and prospective families, and to serve as a first stop for alumni, family and friends visiting campus. The Wellness Center, which now houses the school nurse and counseling staff, is an outgrowth of the renovation of the historic Holden House, which returned to its roots as a residence for faculty living on campus. Finally, our generous alumni, parents and families enabled the upgrading of core campus technology, including a new fiber-optic backbone that powers student access to a world of information and knowledge.

Goal: the future of CRMS relies upon a strong, reliable financial foundation. Creating and enhancing the school’s endowed funds allows a school to attract and retain a talented and diverse student body and highly qualified faculty and staff, and to maintain the school’s modern facilities and historic grounds.

Outcome: thanks to the generosity of alumni, parents and families, new endowed funds now provide support for campus facilities, scholarships and financial aid, and . Many alumni and family also joined the Holden Circle by making a planned gift in the form of a bequest in their estate plan, which will create a legacy for the school for generations to come.

The Forging the Future, Preserving the Past campaign brought CRMS into the 21st Century. Now that we are here, what does the future hold? And, what must be done to provide today’s—and tomorrow’s—students with an authentic educational experience that will serve them as the future unfolds?

As we approach the 70th anniversary of our learning community, CRMS is faced with a rapidly changing educational landscape framed within a global context. The world that CRMS students and faculty experience today are often described as being “VUCA”: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. CRMS has a history of visionary leadership within the educational landscape and Forging the Future, Preserving the Past helped carry that tradition forward to the present. Yet, in order for a CRMS education to prepare students for this VUCA world, we’re approaching the time when the work must begin to enhance the campus and its programs.

In 2018, the CRMS Board of Trustees created a committee to imagine the next 10, 20, even 50 years of the school, and the path that students will need to follow in the future. Called Future Path, the process--less a strategic plan and more of a framework for the school’s continued evolution--explored key topics, including:

• What educational experiences will future graduates rely upon in adulthood?
• What is the path a CRMS graduate travels that prepares them for a complex and rapidly changing world?

The trustee committee completed its work on Future Path in the 20-21 academic year, producing a vision for the evolution of CRMS educational traditions over the next 20-30 years.

In this vision, a CRMS education provides experiences, programs, and spaces that facilitate connections—between individual study and collaboration, between different disciplines, and between students, faculty, and outside people and organizations. These connections link to the school’s core values, which we believe are not just relevant, but central, to a fruitful life in the future.

In this vision, students experience a rigorous academic program that pushes them to realize their capabilities, knowing that they have the support of their teachers and that these relationships have been nurtured throughout a broad spectrum of experiences and programs.

In this vision, the path to connection spans the entire curricula (academic, active, and community life) and emphasizes personal reflection and engagement in the community emphasizing plurality and inclusion.

The Future Path process revealed areas of needed investment that CRMS must make for the benefit of the next generation of students, faculty, and their families. These areas of need will form the basis of the next CRMS capital campaign.