Appointed 1996

What do you do on campus?
Favorite campus pastimes: Teaching 2 sections of geology, aquaponics gardening, teaching 2 sections of biology, coaxing flesh eating beetles back into the box of death, running all school meetings, herding my two herding dogs so they don’t herd students too much, reminding Telemark skiers on the Telemark team that they should shower at least once a month, running the science department, cooking Rocky Mountain Oysters for the Oystermeister, looking up at sopris and wondering how I got to live below such a mountain.

What is your favorite School tradition?
hmmmm… I love the Harvest Dinner. I love the Oystermeister. I love cooking and serving Rocky Mountain Oysters at the Awards dinner at the end of the year. I love Coffee House. I love our graduation.

Why is fieldwork an important experience for high school scientists?
If you look back to the roots of John Dewey’s philosophy of education, you always land on education as experience. We are constantly anchoring what we learn into our experience. In science, an authentic place to anchor this connection is with the landscapes that are written in our hearts. The very same landscapes that are at the core of CRMS. The crags we climb, the mountains we ski through, the rivers we paddle, the valleys we backpack through. Academic work done in the field ties us right back to these spaces, these passions, these emotions and in doing so creates a continual loop between what we aspire to learn and our deep inner selves.

How does CRMS prepare students for higher education?
It provides the WHY. Why learn? Why continue to learn? Why pursue an education? I think these questions become quite easy to answer after a CRMS education.

kogilby@crms.org