Capital Campaign Ahead Of Schedule $ 5 Million Environmental Gift Adds To Sum
By Andrew Ricardo ’10
News Staff Reporter
Recently, the school received a pledge of up to $ 10 million from Board of Trustees Chair Herbert Kohler ’57 to fund a groundbreaking new project on environmental studies. The money will fund a new environmental research and education lab, which will eventually become the center of the Herbert V. Kohler ’57 Environmental Campus. The facilities will lie on the eastern edge of Choate property. This latest gift from Mr. Kohler comes on top of his earlier pledge of $ 10 million in support of the environment. Along with Mr. Kohler, another unnamed donor has given an additional $ 5 million for a “center” on campus, which will constitute a new extension of teaching and learning that hopes to promote ecological education and outreach.
The 268 acres, 150 acres of flat meadows and farmlands, and 118 acres of wetlands, watercourses, and inclined land that will comprise the Kohler Environmental Campus is but a small part of the land owned by Choate. The future campus is bordered by Christian Street, Durham Road, Old Durham Road, Rosemary Farm Road, and East Main Street. Three residential structures are currently located there; two of those are faculty housing, the homes of Mr. Ralph Valentine of the Arts Department and Mr. Ian Morris of the Science Department. The landscape features deciduous woodlands, softly rolling hills, grassy meadows, a rare vernal pool which developed from the old St. Andrews Camp swimming hole, and Wharton Brook, a 3.8-mile tributary of the Quinnipiac River that flows directly into Long Island Sound.
Choate’s sweeping grounds have been used in a variety of different ways during the school’s history. From 1925 to 1965, the school’s student-run charity, The St. Andrews Society, ran a two-week boarding camp on the grounds, where tents, a swimming hole, a mess hall, a bathroom and shower facility, and an indoor recreation center dotted the landscape. The land functioned as a potato farm during World War I and the area of operations for Choate’s dairy herd during the Great Depression.
Possible features of the environmental research center are an “Environmental Teaching Lab” for hands-on and computer-based research; a greenhouse; a space for lectures, classrooms, and group work; faculty office space; a small cafeteria; and faculty housing. Dormitories for between fifteen and twenty students are also being considered. The cost of the project is expected to be about ten million dollars, with the bulk of the money coming from Mr. Kohler and the unnamed donor.
This donation is part of the Capital Campaign effort. The Capital Campaign has a minimum goal to collect two hundred million dollars by 2011. According to Dan Courcey ’86, Executive Director of Developments and Alumni Relations, the total is divided up into funding for three specific areas: $ 100 million for the endowment, $ 70 million for the physical plan, and $ 30 million for “current operations,” such as scholarship funds. “Scholarships have been extraordinarily successful as of late… [they have gained] in excess of thirty million dollars,” says Courcey. Currently, the campaign is six months ahead of schedule, having accumulated $ 136 million. The latest goal is to have one $ 155 million by July 2009. Courcey feels comfortable about meeting this objective.
Choate will become the first school to have a structure of its scope on the environment among the New England prep schools.
