West Nottingham Academy

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Coordinates: 39°40′12″N 76°04′34″W / 39.670°N 76.076°W / 39.670; -76.076

West Nottingham Academy is the oldest boarding school in the United States. It was founded in 1744 by the Presbyterian preacher Samuel Finley, who later become President of Princeton College (now Princeton University). Today, the independent co-ed school serves both boarding and day students in grades 9-12. The 124-acre, tree-lined campus is located in Colora, Cecil County, Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay - an hour from Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Famous graduates include Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, both signers of the Declaration of Independence, and John Filson, historian, author and a founder of Cincinnati, Ohio.

More recent, notable alumni include world-renowned painter, Eric Fischl and basketball player Josh Boone(PG), a player on the University of Connecticut's 2004 Men's National Championship Team and current member of the NBA's New Jersey Nets.

Traditions of note at WNA include the Olympic Weekend and the school's resurrected Spartans vs. Athenians competition.

Academics

West Nottingham offers a college preparatory program that emphasizes critical thinking. Classes are offered in the arts, humanities, foreign languages, mathematics and sciences. The academic program also offers an English as Second-Language (ESL)program for international students (25% of WNA's students come from outside the US, including Japan, Germany, Korea, Russia and China).

History

West Nottingham’s early graduates include many of the most prominent colonial Americans. In 1744, an Irish Presbyterian preacher Samuel Finley was called to take charge of the newly formed congregation on the lower branch of the Octoraro Creek, a short distance south of what was soon to become the Mason-Dixon line. The congregation lived on the broad, rolling land known as the Nottingham Lots.

Finley, in later years became president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton University), was a teacher as well as a preacher. Finley held that to be an intelligent Christian one needed to use the mind God provided, and that one’s mind could reach full effectiveness only through training. The task of the church, for Finley, was to administer the sacraments and comfort the sick, to baptize the infants and consecrate marriage, to bury the dead and preach the Word of God. But the task of the church also was to teach men and women to think by exposing them to the great thoughts of the ages in order to produce rational beings capable of creative action in a new and swiftly changing world.

Finley opened the school in 1744. It was a crude log structure at the rear of his own home, located near the present site of the Rising Sun Middle School. The log building on the present campus was built as a replica of the original school building from descriptions in old records and students’ memoirs.

Within a few years, church and Academy were moved to their present location. A two-story building was erected to house the school activities at the site of what is now the sunken garden at Gayley. When it burned, a single-story building replaced it, only to be destroyed some years later by storm. In 1865 the red brick J. Paul Slaybaugh Old Academy was erected and stands to this day.

The Academy was the first of the Presbyterian preparatory boarding schools and the forerunner of some 1,600 similar academies in the country. As public education became the norm, the Presbyterian Church allowed most of its secondary schools to close or converted them to colleges. Nottingham dropped its formal ties to the church in 1972.

In the last twenty years, the Chesapeake Learning Center was founded, and the school’s decades-long commitment to the education of international students was formalized with the creation of the English as a Second Language curriculum. In addition, enrollment doubled and a middle school was started. The middle school failed and was closed in 2006, completing its last year in 2009.

Many new facilities were constructed, including the C. Herbert Foutz Student Center (1989), the East and West Dormitories (1998), and the Patricia A. Bathon Science Center (2003), or renovated including Magraw Hall (2000), and Finley Hall (2002). Summer 2007 saw the complete renovation of Rush Dormitory, renamed Rush House, and the construction of Durigg Plaza, an outdoor ampphitheater/meeting space for the campus community. Renovation of Rowland dormitory is scheduled for Summer, 2008.

Under the leadership of Dr. D. John Watson, Ph.D., West Nottingham focuses on the growth and definition of its programs through a process called CASCLE, an acronym for Constructing a Student Centered Learning Environment. Through CASCLE, work groups in the areas of academic curriculum, athletic and activities curriculum, and campus curriculum set goals for program improvement and develop the best pathway for their achievement.

However, under his leadership, WNA has been referred to as the "Watson Nepotism Academy" in recent years, as many members of Dr. D. John Watson's family have been given jobs at the school, including his wife, son and daughter-in-law. Even as the number of faculty at the school shrank in recent years, extra administrative positions were opened up in the school's bureaucracy in order to accommodate family members of key administrative people.

The historic core of the Academy were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 as the West Nottingham Academy Historic District.^[1]

Athletics & Activities

Though the school community is small, the academy does field a variety of sports including:

Soccer, Basketball, Wrestling, Lacrosse, Golf, Cross Country, Baseball, Softball, Volleyball, Yoga, and Physical Education.

Additional afternoon activities include Karate/Self-Defense Class, Yearbook, Photography, Green Rams Environmental Club and the school newspaper, The Arrow. As part of WNA's commitment to lifelong fitness and activity all students are asked to participate in a sport or club throughout the school year.

Notable alumni

• John Archer - early Maryland politician
• Josh Boone - NBA basketball player
• Ross Cameron - President of Charms Candy Company and pioneer of the Charms Blow Pop
• Austin Lane Crothers - Maryland governor, 1908 - 1912
• Taylor Crothers - photographer
• John Filson - author, founder of Cincinnati
• Eric Fischl - artist and sculptor
• Ebenezer Hazard - United States Postmaster General from 1782 to 1789
• Peter H. Kostmayer - former US Congressman from Pennsylvania
• Alexander Martin - early governor of North Carolina
• John Morgan - co-founder of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School
• Benjamin Rush - signer of the Declaration of Independence
• William Shippen, Jr. - co-founder of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School
• Richard Stockton - signer of the Declaration of Independence

References

History of West Nottingham Academy, 1744-1981, Scott A. Mills, Maryland Historical Project, 1985, ISBN 978-0917882173

External links

• http://www.wna.org